Printing Press and Catalan Standardization in 15th-Century Valencia

The Printing Press and Catalan Standardization

The printing press helped to spread the language and to consolidate the last third of the unitària. During the 15th century (s. XV), Valencia became the main center for the first editions of llibres. The first printer installed in Valencia was the German Nicholas Spindel, who published works in 1474; these works, in praise of the Virgin Mary, are considered among the first printed in the literary language of the peninsula.

The written unitària still showed vacillations between different forms: it had not yet been decided which letters, words and printed structures (estampades) should be used. Ultimately responsible for these selections were notaries, lawyers, administrators and teachers with a solid language training who corrected texts before printing. They tended to prioritize three types of solutions: cult (Latinizing), urban (the cities of Valencia and Barcelona) and western (especially Valencian) forms.

Examples of Form Choices

• Cult (Latinizing) words: Aidar ? help, care for ? cogitar.
• Urban words: Giner, gener.
• Western words (Valencian): ? two ? mirror espill.

Factors Driving Linguistic Modernization

This threefold activity, which modernized the linguistic unit toward occidentalizing norms, obeyed three main factors:

1. Latin's continuing importance as the language of international culture, even as Catalan lost some public space.
2. Urban cultural leadership: the cities of Barcelona and Valencia concentrated much of the publishing and cultural activity in our llengua.
3. Western hegemony and prestige: demographic, economic, political and cultural dominance—especially in Valencia—reduced the prestige of Catalan. After the civil war, Valencia experienced one of the largest waves of immigration by Catalans, which influenced language use and publication.

Explicit examples of early printed works connected with these processes are these two titles: The Liber elegantiarum, written in 1472 and published in 1489, is considered the first bilingual dictionary of Europe. In addition, the treatise sometimes referenced as "Vocables circumvent rules" is a corrective work written by the Valencian authors Bernard Fenollar and Jerome Peace, printed in Barcelona in 1496.

The Catalan Preliterary Period

The Catalan preliterary period: the language spoken in Catalonia derives from Vulgar Latin and began (començava) between the 6th and 8th centuries to diversify into what we call Catalan. The main heirs of Latin were the Church and the learned, cultured layers of society. In the year 813, the Council of Tours decreed that preaching of homilies in church should be done in the vernacular (Romance languages) because people did not understand Latin.

Before the 12th century there are few documentary texts, but we can find some popular Catalan words interspersed within Latin texts. Indirect testimony supports this assertion: the Council of Tours indicates that preaching to the people should be in Romance languages (Occitan, Catalan, Spanish, Italian, etc.). Direct testimony appears in the existence of glosses (annotations or explanations in Romance languages, therefore in Catalan) written in Latin to aid comprehension.

Terminology and Textual Evidence

• Glosses: annotations in Romance language written alongside Latin texts to explain meaning.
• Indirect testimony: documentary and institutional references (e.g., Council of Tours) showing the use of vernacular speech in religious practice.
• Direct testimony: surviving popular words and interspersed vernacular forms within Latin documents prior to the 12th century.

These elements together trace the gradual formation of written Catalan: from sporadic vernacular elements within Latin texts, through the influence of Church and urban learned classes, to the stabilizing effect of early printing presses in Valencia and Barcelona.