Franco-Italian, also known as Franco-Venetian or Franco-Lombard, in Italy as lingua franco-veneta "Franco-Venetan language", was a literary language used in parts of northern Italy, from the mid-13th century to the end of the 14th century.
[1] It was employed by writers including Brunetto Latini and Rustichello da Pisa and was presumably only a written language, and not a spoken one.
[2] Franco-Italian literature began to appear in northern Italy in the first half of the 13th century, with the Livre d'Enanchet.
Its vitality was exhausted around the 15th century with the Turin copy of the Huon d'Auvergne (1441).
[3] The last original text of the Franco-Italian tradition is probably Aquilon de Bavière by Raffaele da Verona, who wrote it between 1379 and 1407.