Un'antica attestazione siciliana della cantilena sui mesi dell’anno in caratteri ebraici

Abstract

An Ancient Sicilian Testimony of the Rhyme on the Months of the Year in Hebrew Script

The traditional mnemonic rhyme “Thirty days hath September”, used to recall the lengths of the months, enjoyed great popularity in the Middle Ages especially in texts dealing with calendrical calculations, mainly in a scientific or religious context. Many variants are known in several languages (English, French, Italian, Spanish, etc.), while the oldest versions are in Latin, dating from at least the 13^th century. The present work is an edition of the presumably oldest known Italian vernacular version of the rhyme: a Sicilian vulgarisation in Hebrew script found in the Cod. Ebr. 246 of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek of Munich. The manuscript dates back to 1429-31 and belonged to the famous Sicilian Jewish humanist scholar Šemûʾel ben Nissîm Abû l-Faraǧ, also known as Guglielmo Raimondo Moncada or Flavius Mithridates. A concise linguistic analysis of the distinctive Sicilian features of the text is also provided, along with two comparative tables listing the names of the months in different vernaculars and in Hebrew script, as featuring in the codex.