The Miraculous Virgin of Olovo

On the island of Majorca, around 1400, agents of Francesco Datini's Tuscan business company traded closely with Jewish or new Christian merchants and craftsmen in a context of forced conversions and spatial segregation that followed the persecutions of 1391. The Datini Company of Majorca left many writings. Its agents multiplied the commercial registers and records that were repatriated to Tuscany during the very existence of the business company. These sources, particularly accounting sources, which are a priori less controversial or ideological in content, reveal the close commercial links between individuals belonging to different religious groups. These writings, while testifying to an almost daily proximity of business within spatially segmented groups, reveal at the same time a complex linguistic reality and situations of diglossia, where the use of languages was directly influenced by the social norms in force. In these complex communication conditions, when no one mastered all the languages of the actors involved (in this case Italian in its Tuscan form, Majorcan Catalan, Hebrew and Majorcan dialectal Arabic), all had to master the language of the majority social group. In this paper, I will present the situation of cohabitation between Jews, Christians and converts in Ciutat de Mallorca (the current Palma) as it emerges from the normative texts, and as it is actually experienced in the writings of everyday business practice. The objective will be to highlight the contradiction between norm and practice and to explore the interactions between these different ethnic groups, particularly through language practices.