Homilies of Organa

Fragment of the manuscript of the Homilies of Orgañá.

The Homilies of Organyà (or Orgañá; in Catalan: Homilies d'Organyà) is one of the documents of a literary nature, and that goes beyond the fragment, the oldest known written in Catalan, due to the antiquity of its language between Vulgar Latin and the Romance language of Catalan. There are other older texts in Catalan, such as the fragment of the translation of the Forum iudicum (from the mid-12th century), the feudal oath of 1098, the Greuges de Guitard Isarn (Agrivios de Guitard Isarn) from 1080-1091, also from Orgaña and much shorter, or the oath of Radulf Oriol, written between 1028 and 1047, as well as glosses with Catalan terms, without syntactic link, in Latin documents dating back to 1135.

It was discovered in the rectory of the church of Santa María de Organa (Alto Urgell) in 1904 by Dr. Joaquim Miret i Sans, historian and jurist. It is dated to the end of the XII century and is made up of six sermons commenting on various gospels and epistles.

The original is kept in the Library of Catalonia while a reproduction is on display in Organaña.

Origin:

The Homilies found in Orgaña are related to others found in Tortosa at the end of the XIX century by Antoine Thomas. Both have a common homily: that of Ash Wednesday, which is why they have been related to collections of homilies of Provençal origin, which were frequently used at the time. While those of Tortosa copy the Provençal text and have a more popular tone, the homilies of Orgaña are translations into Catalan romance and are of a more cultured nature.

Level of evolution of the language:

The Homilies stand out for their archaic level of the evolution of the Catalan used in them, such as plader (to please), pad (peace), crod (cross), fed (do), etc., as well as retention of the final s in the first person plural of verbs as soms (we are, in modern Catalan som) or vulams (we want, in modern Catalan vulguem, or in current Tortosino Catalan volem). The interferences of the Provençal language are manifested in graphic, phonetic and morphological archaisms. This is due to the close political, economic and cultural relations that linked the Occitan territories with the Catalan counties.

References:

External links:

• Digital version of Orgaña Homilies