The project was conceived as the ideal extension of research on song books of the 13th century. Earlier studies by d'Arco Silvio Avalle in Concordanze della lingua poetica italiana delle Origini (CLPIO) (Milan-Naples, Ricciardi, 1992) were continued by Lino Leonardi in the four volumes of I canzonieri della lirica italiana delle Origini (Florence, Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2000-2001), which was developed into a National Edition with the same title. After a first phase dedicated to the 13th century tradition, we intend to continue the analysis of manuscripts from the Stilnovo period to Dante, with the prospective of reaching the completion of medieval Italian lyric tradition up to Petrarch.

The project was initially launched in collaboration with the Accademia della Crusca, the base of the two previous research projects, and through a long-term agreement with the CNR Institute «Opera del Vocabolario Italiano (OVI)», which manages the corresponding digital corpus of medieval texts.

In addition to the continuing financial support of the FEF, the project contributed to a research unit, first at the Università per Stranieri di Siena and then at the Università di Siena, and thus was cofinanced by government funds for research projects of national interest (PRIN 2002, 2004, 2008 coordinated by Roberto Antonelli of the Università La Sapienza in Rome) adding to the publication of the first significant results.

Between 2008 and 2011, the activities related to LIO were developed further in the frame of a project funded by the Ministry of Education (FIRB 2006), intitled Archivio dei manoscritti medievali nella tradizione culturale europea. Bibliografia, repertori, storia dei testi, immagini (coordinated by Lino Leonardi, based at the FEF). These advances included improvements to the version of the database which is available for online consultation on mirabile.