Sicily and Southern Italy: A Long-Lasting Byzantine Multilingualism

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine the literary and documentary sources produced in the ninth- and tenth-century border contexts of Sicily and Apulia, two western regions still central to imperial policy at the time. The former between Byzantium and Islam, and the latter almost reconquered by Latin Lombards, these regions appear as an excellent field for revisiting the Greekspeaking turn of the empire in the middle centuries. The monolingualism of the state was adapted to the plurilingualism of society by means of various strategies that ensured a long western history for Byzantine Hellenism.