The lines of this riddle tell us of a somebody with oxen who used to plow white fields with a white plow, sowing a black seed. This person is the writer himself, the monk whose business is to copy old manuscripts. The oxen are his fingers which draw a white feather across the page, leavingblack ink marks.
Origins of the ''Indovinello''
This document dates to the late 10th-early 11th century, and the above text was followed by a small thanksgiving prayer in Latin: gratias tibi agimus omnips sempiterne ds. These lines were written on codex LXXXIX of the Biblioteca Capitolare di Verona. The parchment, discovered by Schiapparelli in 1924, is a Mozarabic oration by the SpanishChristian Church, i.e. a document in a Romance language first written in Spain in an area influenced by the Moorish culture, probably around Toledo. It was then brought to Cagliari and then to Pisa before reaching the Chapter of Verona.
Many more European documents seem to confirm that the distinctive traits of Romance languages occurred all around the same time. Though initially hailed as the earliest document in Italian in the first years following Schiapparelli's discovery, today the record has been disputed by many scholars from Bruno Migliorini to Cesare Segre and Francesco Bruni, who have placed it at the latest stage of Vulgar Latin, though this very term is far from being clear-cut, and Migliorini himself considers it dilapidated. At present, however, the Placito Capuano is considered to be the first document ever written in Italian, although Migliorini concedes that since the Placito was put on record as an official court proceeding, Italian must have been widely spoken for at least one century. Some words do stick to the rules of Latin grammar. Yet more are distinctly Italian, with no cases and producing the typical ending of Italian verbs: pareba, araba, teneba, seminaba instead of Latin imperfect tense parebat, arabat, tenebat, seminabat. Albo versorio and negro semen have replaced Latin album versorium and nigrum semen. Versorio is still the word for "plow" in today's Veronese dialect as the verb parar is still the word for 'push on', 'drive', 'lead'. Michele A. Cortelazzo and Ivano Paccagnella say that the plural -es of boves may well be considered Ladin and therefore not Latin, but Romance too. Albo is early Italian, especially since Germanic blank entered Italian usage later, leading to current Italian bianco.
