Entro la galassia dei manoscritti di sermoni: il caso di Bernardino da Feltre

Abstract tesi Armillotta Among the dimensions of sermon manuscripts: the case of Bernardino da Feltre This PHD thesis focuses on the study of a specific type of medieval book, the sermonaries, which contains the textual content of medieval preaching, and were considered reference mass communication instruments. The case study analyzes the manuscript witnesses of the Bernardino da Feltre sermons (born Martino Tomitano, 1439-1494), which was a famous preacher belonging to the Franciscan Observance. Since the early 20th century, only three printed sermons and a booklet on Confession are still available; this represents a limited legacy compared to his fame, with 3,600 sermons attributed to him by the epitaph in the San Giacomo church in Pavia, where he is now buried. A turning point in studies on Bernardino occurred in 1937, when Father Carlo Varischi discovered 120 of his sermons. These manuscripts, written using a mix of Latin and vernacular, are preserved in the archives of Milan, APCL, A 17 and A 18. Varischi also published an important three-volume edition of these collection of sermons in 1964, which has become the subject of numerous studies focusing on their content and linguistic style. This thesis, however, is concerned on the detailed analysis of another manuscript, APCL, A 13, also discovered by Varischi, even if it remained unpublished and largely overlooked until recently. This manuscript contains 31 sermons by Bernardino, which have their counterparts in A 17 and A 18. Despite this, the manuscript A 13 was surprisingly neglected by scholars until a few years ago. The research highlights the connection between the material codex structure, seen as a physical medium of transmission, and its content. It also examines the main production dynamics and circulation of these books, which were part of a specific dissemination network. The thesis is divided into four chapters. The first chapter reviews the bibliographic literature on Bernardino da Feltre, focusing on the current state of research and the relevant sources on his life and preaching. The second and third chapters provide a detailed description of manuscript A 13 and analyze the methods and purposes behind its compilation. The fourth chapter explores the different types of sermonaries associated with Bernardino’s texts, and offers a comparative study of the multiple versions of the same sermon preserved across different manuscripts. Eventually, the thesis also includes two appendices. The first appendix presents a transcription of a sermon from manuscript A 13 that has no counterparts in other known sermons but could be attributed to Bernardino. The second appendix contains descriptive records of the known manuscript witnesses of Bernardino, which date from the late 15th century to the first half of the 16th century. The work concludes with a general bibliography.