Abstract EN:

As far as communication from learned clerics towards illiterate lay people was concerned, the use of the vernacular had been allowed, during in the mass or in the church, since the beginning of the ninth century, but only for homelies. Hagiographical works written in the vernacular from the ninth to the eleventh century did not affect this organisation of the diglossia. At the turn of the twelfth century, texts with evident liturgical purpose appeared, in which roman language was introduced in latin context : they are epitres farcies and bilingual liturgical plays. Unlike an evolutionnist approach which wiews bilingual texts as the outcome of secularization movement, the prelsent work purports to show that bilingual texts had a concessive as well as a controlling function, in a attempt to reform the tripudia, to control the will of participation of lay people, to challenge the birth and expansion of vernacular literature. The bilingualism of these texts is considered as a meaningful structure : the passages in roman language in bilingual texts are meant to represent the participation of lay people mainly women - (caracterised by the deploration chorus), but also an image of mother tongue (which was supposed to be limited to the expressive function, and to lirical expression. In these texts, roman language had access to dramatic speech or to biblical elements only in a relationship of dependency and subordination to latin.