La configuración de los usos gráficos romances en las escribanías leonesas durante la Edad Media

Abstract

During the second third of the 13 Century the process that had started little by little in ihe 10 Century in the peninsular scriptoria was accepted. It was the substitution of the Latin graphic uses by the Romance ones. The need of giving an answer to the new writing challenges, forced the court clerks to the graphic experimentation making use on one hand of the few resources they liad and on the other hand, the widening of the phonetic values of the already existing written forms. This survey deals with the most problematic aspects from the author's point of view: palatal consonants. The field of study will be centred in the scriptoria from the ancient kingdom of Lleón placed in the south of the Cantabrian Mountain Rage, in the proximities of the region of Lleón. Three big document sources have been chosen in order to have sorne representation of the three big dialectal sub varieties: oriental (Sahagún); central (Cathedral of León) and the occidental one (Carrizo). The century chosen is the 13th Century due to a double motivation: the already mentioned substitution of the Latin forms by the Romance ones in the notary work and the arrival in the Leonese scriptoria of the first Castillian flows after the union of the two kingdoms.