latino evidently means easy, clear, plain. "Forse contrario di barbaro, strano," says Volpi, "noi Lombardi in questo significato diciamo ladin." The "discreto latino" of Thomas Aquinas, elsewhere in Paradiso (xii. 144.), must mean "sage discourse." Chaucer, when he invokes the muse, in the proeme to the second book of "Troilus and Creseide," only asks her for rhyme, because, saith he,—
"Of no sentement I this endite,
But out of Latine in my tongue it write."
Where "Latine," of course, means Boccaccio's Filostrato, from which Chaucer's poem is taken.
In the "Poema del Cid," latinado seems to mean person conversant with the Spanish or Romance language of the period:
"Quando esta falsedad dicien los de Carrion,
Un Moro Latinado bien gelo entendio."—v. 2675.
Mr. Ticknor remarks, that when the Christian conquests were pushed on towards the south of Spain, the Moors, who remained inclosed in the Christian population, and spoke or assumed its language, were originally called Moros Latinados; and refers to the Cronica General, where, respecting Alfaraxi, a Moor, afterwards converted, and a counsellor of the Cid, it is said he was "de tan buen entendimento, e era tan ladino que semejava Christiano."—Ticknor, Hist. Span. Lit., iii. 347.
Cervantes (Don Q. Parte I. cap. xli.) uses ladino to mean Spanish:
"Servianos de interprete a las mas destas palabras y razones el padre de Zoraida como mas ladino."