Multilingualism in Medieval mercantile texts. Evidence from the Cantelowe Accounts

The focus of this article is on the multilingualism of a medieval mercantile text, the Cantelowe Accounts (1450-1451), which were written in Italy by a Londoner. This text is peculiar, since the writer used a particular mixture of Middle English (ME), Anglo-Norman (AN), Latin (Lt) with Italian (It). This is the reason why the Accounts show interesting analogies with the administrative-business texts produced in England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in relation to the degree and type of language contact. Firstly the multilingual practices of the Accounts are investigated, particularly in relation to the insertion of foreign fixed forms and to the organisation and analysis of particular mixing forms; secondly in order to explain this peculiar multilingualism a writing modality is suggested.