Abstract
The article examines a particular kind of 19th century Ladin occasional poetry: the “sonetti per la recita del catechismo” (sonnets for the recitation of the catechism), documented in particular in the village of La Valle in Val Badia. These are small personalized poems that the village priest dedicated to the schoolchildren who took part in the so-called "religion examination", a public examination celebrated annually with great solemnity, which focused on the content of the catechism. The poems were intended as a prize, but they could be very explicit about the moral and intellectual qualities of the pupils taking part in the exam. They constitute the oldest known examples transmitted in writing of the use of the Ladin variety of Val Badia for aesthetic and literary purposes. The genre was meticulously developed, especially by the Rev. Janmatî Declara (1815-1886) who wrote almost 500 of these sonnets during his stay in La Valle (1852-1868). About thirty of them are published and accompanied by philological-linguistic commentary.