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The Saint Clement and Sisinnius inscription, written around the end of the eleventh century, is located in the subterranean chapel of the Basilica of San Clemente al Laterano in Rome. It is the very first example of the Italian language used in a work of art. [1]
The inscription consists of the dialogue of the characters depicted on the fresco. In a scene taken from the Passio Sancti Clementis ("Martyrdom of Saint Clement"), a certain Sisinnius is instructing his servants to drag Saint Clement off to prison, unaware that the latter has escaped and that what they are dragging along is really a stone column.
The dialogue is as follows:
Or in English:
This is an early example of dialogue written next to the characters who speak it, a phenomenon that would later become common in comics. [2]
Sisinnius and his workmen speak in an early form of Romanesco while Saint Clement expresses himself in Latin. This juxtaposition of the 'rude' vernacular with the 'holy' liturgical language is deliberate and meant to reflect the different moral standings of the characters involved.
Nevertheless, St. Clement's dialogue contains a number of mistakes. Duritiam, the accusative, is written instead of the ablative duritia; the form vestris is a mistake for vestri, likely by contamination with the ending of the preceding cordis; and finally, the letter h is missing from trahere.
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The name Carvoncelle, ultimately derived from Latin carbonem 'charcoal', shows the passage of /rb/ to /rv/, a change characteristic of Romanesco as well as other Central Italian dialects. [3]
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The Basilica of Saint Clement is a Latin Catholic minor basilica dedicated to Pope Clement I located in Rome, Italy. Archaeologically speaking, the structure is a three-tiered complex of buildings: (1) the present basilica built just before the year 1100 during the height of the Middle Ages; (2) beneath the present basilica is a 4th-century basilica that had been converted out of the home of a Roman nobleman, part of which had in the 1st century briefly served as an early church, and the basement of which had in the 2nd century briefly served as a mithraeum; (3) the home of the Roman nobleman had been built on the foundations of republican era villa and warehouse that had been destroyed in the Great Fire of AD 64.
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