Medieval Latin Philology

Medieval Latin Philology

Director Paolo Chiesa (Università di Milano) paolo.chiesa@unimi.it

Ezio Franceschini held the first Italian professorship in History of Medieval Latin Literature, and was convinced that first and foremost among the missions of the new discipline was the critical edition of the many texts, still unpublished or poorly edited belonging to the thousand-year tradition of medieval Latin. With this in mind, and continuing the impassioned work of one of the founders, Giovanni Orlandi, research carried out by the FEF in the domain of medieval Latin was soon predominantly oriented towards studies of textual philology and history of the manuscript tradition, with the objective of publishing the critical edition of literary texts.

In particular, in 1990 two conferences uncovered many rich seams of research and publishing intiatives. From the conference on autographs in the Middle Ages was born the series of studies «Autographa Medii Aevi», while the conference on textual criticism of medieval Latin texts was the source of the first journal dedicated to medieval Latin philology «Filologia mediolatina», published yearly since 1994. At the same time the FEF publishes a series of editions with translation and commentary, which receives new critical editions of texts and new presentations of medieval Latin works ranging from the classic to the lesser known «Per Verba. Testi mediolatini con traduzione».

With regard to the history of the manuscript tradition, the FEF has launched together with SISMEL a systematic research plan on the transmission of medieval Latin texts: the Te.Tra project has already seen the publication of four volumes, and an online database to hold the findings is underway.

After many conferences and workshops over the course of years, in 2010 a formal conference to be held annually was created named «Prassi ecdotiche. Seminari filologici in memoria di Giovanni Orlandi» (Ecdotic praxis. Philological workshops in memory of Giovanni Orlandi).