Critical Edition of Latin

“Mirror of Chivalry: Salâh al-Dîn in the Medieval European Imagination,” in Images of the Other: Europe and the Muslim World before 1700. Cairo Papers on Social Science 19:2 (Summer, 1996), 7-38. Republished in J. Tolan, Sons of Ishmael: Muslims through European Eyes in the Middle Ages. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2008.

Lo sviluppo degli studi sulla latinità medievale e la conseguente pubblicazione di un numero sempre maggiore di testi induce a riflettere sulla specificità della composizione e della trasmissione di queste opere, con le inevitabili conseguenze che esse comportano anche sulla prassi editoriale. Dalla considerazione di questa specificità è nata, nel 1994, «Filologia Mediolatina», che, per la peculiarità dei temi trattati, si propone come uno strumento di indagine unico nel panorama scientifico. Particolare attenzione viene dedicata agli aspetti metodologici, siano essi attinenti alle modalità di composizione dei testi, alla loro trasmissione e circolazione, alle fonti, alla ricostruzione critica, così come alla riflessione teorica in materia di ecdotica. Vengono anche accolte edizioni critiche di brevi testi, quando presentino rilevanza da un punto di vista metodologico.
Tutti gli articoli sono sottoposti al giudizio di uno o più revisori anonimi. La decisione in merito alla pubblicazione spetta al direttore, tenuto conto del parere dei revisori.
La rivista, che ha periodicità annuale, pubblica articoli nelle principali lingue europee. Ogni articolo è corredato da un abstract in lingua inglese.
"Filologia Mediolatina" è interamente consultabile on line al sito www.mirabileweb.it.

Edizione critica, traduzione e commento a cura di Pierluigi Licciardello.
Questo testo agiografico di origine altomedievale, che ha goduto di ampia fortuna in Italia e Oltralpe, viene pubblicato in un’edizione critica che rende conto di una complessa tradizione fatta di scritture, riscritture e contaminazioni che attraversano tutto il medioevo. Il testo critico è accompagnato dalla traduzione in italiano ed è ampiamente commentato per far emergere il suo interesse dal punto di vista agiografico, storico e linguistico.

The MS 47 of the Bibl. Univ. Aldini in Pavia contains 298 sermons, mainly on Franciscan themes and are anonymous. The paternity of St Bonaventure for some of them hypothesises, on the basis of doctrinal and terminological similarities, the same attribution for the sermon 226 “Illa quae east sursum Ierusalem” (Gal 4, 26) on the excellence of the Minorite Order. It has its origin in 1260-1262.

Il ms. 47 della Bibl. Univ. Aldini di Pavia contiene 298 sermoni, per lo piú di tema francescano e anonimi. La paternità di san Bonaventura per alcuni di essi ipotizza, in base a somiglianze dottrinali e terminologiche, la stessa attribuzione per il sermone 226 “Illa quae sursum est Ierusalem” (Gal 4, 26) sull’eccellenza dell’Ordine Minoritico e la datazione agli anni 1260-1262.

The article deals with problems connected with the interpretation of fragments transmitted as quotations. An introduction about the types of context and the levels of contextualization specified in communication theory is followed by an analysis of two verses of Ennius quoted by Cicero, and their treatment in our critical editions. It will be asked, in which ways readers reconstruct the meaning of the de-contextualized utterance, and which kinds of „context“ they use as arguments. The investigation will show the impact of their decisions on the supposed meaning of the quoted fragment as well as on the assessment of Cicero as the quoting author.

Francis of Meyronnes (1288 – 1328) was a theologian and a sermonist, disciple of John Duns Scoto. He wrote an impressive number of philosophical, political and devotional works. He studied at the University of Paris and taught in several provincial studia in France and in Italy.

The authors of the Late Middle Ages had two main ways to tell the Passion: in form of “meditations” or in form of “narrative representations”. Meyronnes’ Tractatus de Passione Domini belongs to this second typology, which allows the author to invent dialogues or to describe characters’ emotions and thoughts and to offer sometimes also his own point of view to the reader. Moreover, his work is probably the first example of this textual typology.

The Quatuor principalia is possibly the work of the Oxford Franciscan John of Tewkesbury, active between ca. 1351 and 1392, who was also the maker and owner of the earliest extant copy of the treatise, and the author of an astronomical work, De situ universorum.
Codicological evidence is compiled from 13 manuscripts. Supplementary evidence is adduced from one of the earliest convent library catalogues compiled by the Oxford Franciscans, as well as from study of Franciscan history in England and the available sources in Britain and elsewhere at the time of the Quatuor principalia's compilation in the mid-14th century.
A full catalogue raisonne of manuscripts is an intrinsic part of the dissertation.

The article analyses the transformation of the topos of the Muslim enemy by proposing an excursus through the patristic and epic literature until to the diaries of the late medieval pilgrimage. From idea of heresy to that of idolatry, the Western perception towards the Muslim world passes through a representation which depends by political dynamics. In the background of a system of high knowledge, as the monasticism, Islam was considered as a form of Christian heresy. But when the description was developed in the context of the normal people, usually poorly educated, Islam became a pagan idolatry with demonic tones. Although the epic and patristic echoes remain intense, the matter changes deeply when one observes the representation of the Muslims in the pilgrimage diaries. In this kind of sources is obvious the friction between the stimulus derived by the comparison with others and the resistance of a generally conservative cultural background. The research covered the entire corpus of Florentine diaries and this is the peculiarity of the research. Although there are excellent works about the Italian pilgrimages, none had yet developed, in this sources genre, a systematic study on the representation of otherness, a subject full of consequences for the history of Western thought.