Entre la servidumbre y la adopción: a propósito de nutritus, -a y nutricatus, -a en la documentación latina de la Cataluña altomedieval

Abstract

[eng] This article aims to analyse the use of the terms nutritus and nutricatus –two lexical innovations in medieval Latin– in documentation written in Latin from Catalan-speaking areas between the ninth and twelfth centuries, specifically the examples recorded in the corpus of the Glossarium Mediae Latinitatis Cataloniae. The meaning of both words is established through an analysis of these documents, as well as the corresponding Romance language terms in Catalan. Both terms stem from the etymological sense of “somebody who is fed in another’s home” to designate different types of social relationships. This principal meaning may be further defined as “a servant who lives and is brought up in the home of a lord”, or as different types of fostering, adoption or guardianship scenarios found both in lay and church settings.