Latin across the Tyrrhenian Sea

The Latinists among us may be interested in two books from the last two years. It looks like we should read first Nicholas Zeir, on Orthographic traditions and the sub-elite in the Roman empire. Next would come a collection of essays Uniformity and regionalism in Latin writing culture of the first millennium C.E.. Subelite Latin would, out in the boonies, become local Vulgar Latin(s). Ultimately this glob of late-common-Latin alongside Church-Latin became Romance. Excepting maybe Sardinia.

Why "C.E." and not "A.D."? Because even the Christians weren't on the "A.D." system yet! I keep tellin' y'all this... sigh.

Rodney Ast talks (north-)Africa. Between Rome and Africa, Tino Licht notes the Visigothic script ... if we want to call it "Visigothic". The evidence is the Basilicanus D 182, mostly a collection of Saint Hilaire de Poitiers which codex you can look at online if you like. This made its way to Sardinia, where in Cagliari some African bishops corrected it 509/10. I don't know we should count this as Visigothic; Ostrogothic, maybe. Not-Vandal at least. Isabel Velázquez Soriano is writing from Spain so would appear to be better-situated to discuss Visigothic-era Iberian protoRomance.

I harp on Sardinia on account it held onto close-enough actual Latin. More to that point: Wolf Zöller contributes to the Papacy's use of Latin, on monuments. Who's to read those monuments? Coastal West Italians read those monuments, back when Sardinia and Latium weren't as mutually-distant as they became.