In the Middle Ages Latin was the main subject of the school curriculum. Knowledge of Latin was a requirement not only for those who wished to enter university but also for those who wanted to play a role in the public or private administration of a city. At the end of the 13th century, in the Italian peninsula, teachers started using vernacular languages to make Latin more accessible to their students. Therefore, the language we observe in the schoolbooks used at the time reflects the language of the audience to which the texts were addressed.

My research focuses on the study of the vernacular language – the volgare – used to teach Latin as a second language in Lombardy, a very prolific area in the production of school texts. Particular attention will be dedicated to the koineisation process that characterised Old Lombard at the time.

The research also aims to investigate how schoolbooks were used in the teaching practice, to verify whether the deliberation on the Latin grammar and its linguistic problems influenced the process of grammaticalisation and normalisation of Old Lombard.