Vincent of Ferrieres and Don Martin, son of
Peter the IVth of Arragon;[BG] and that this language must once have
been common in that kingdom appears manifestly from the present name of
the Spanish, which is still usually called Romance.[BH] These
circumstances considered, I am not so much inclined to discredit a fact
related by Mabillon,[BI] who says, that in the eighth century a
paralytic Spaniard, on paying his devotions at the tomb of a saint in
the church of Fulda, conversed with a monk of that abbey, who, _because
he was an Italian_, understood the language of the Spaniard. Neither
does an oral tradition I heard some times ago appear so absurd to me, as
it did when it was first related to me, which says, that two Catalonians
travelling over the Alps, were not a little surprized when they came
into the Grison country, to find that their native tongue was understood
by the inhabitants, and that they could comprehend most of the language
of that district.
This universality of the Romance in the French dominions during the
eleventh century, also accounts for its introduction in Palestine and
many other parts of the Levant by Godfrey de Bouillon, and the multitude
of adventurers who engaged under him in the Crusade.
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