La "Descriptio de locis sanctis" di Rorgone Fretello. Analisi della tradizione manoscritta e edizione critica

This dissertation aims to offer an updated critical edition of Rorgo Fretellus’ spiritual and geographical guide to the Holy Land, the "Descriptio de locis sanctis", dated back to the first half of the 12th century. Thus far, two versions of this text are known. The first one is dedicated to the Bohemian bishop Henricus Sdyck and it was composed on the occasion of the second of his pilgrimages to Jerusalem, occurred in 1137. It is initialled ‘H’, after the name of the addressee. This first redaction was unknown to scholars until the editio princeps of P.C. Boeren (1980), who listed eight manuscripts, but did not reconstruct their genealogical relationships. Boeren published the "Descriptio", according to the codex optimus method, on the basis of manuscript Montpellier, Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire, Section de Médecine H 39, ff. 1r-15v, recording the main variants of the other copies in the apparatus. The second redaction, slightly later than H, was first published in 1653 by the theologian and scholar Leo Allacci within the Σύμμικτα, a collection of Byzantine and medieval Latin texts on the Holy Land. However, due to the status of the unknown witness employed by Allacci, probably found in the Vatican Library and now lost, Fretellus’ second version appeared here in mutilated form, lacking the prologue, and ascribed to an author called ‘Eugesippus’. The complete version with prologue was not printed until a century later, when it was published in the "Miscellanea" of Baluze-Mansi (1761) on the basis of manuscript Lucca, Biblioteca Capitolare Feliniana, 545. In his 1980 edition of H, Boeren chose not to produce an edition of the second redaction, limiting himself to listing ten witnesses for it and offering a comparison between some notable passages from the two versions. The second redaction is furthermore addressed to a different person, Rodricus Toletanus (hence the initial ‘R’ to refer to it). Starting from this status quaestionis, this thesis is intended to produce a new critical edition for each of the two redactions. The first chapter presents the historical and literary context surrounding Fretellus’ work, a text rooted in a rich tradition intended to accompany the faithful along their pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and it discusses the few surviving biographical data on the author, an elusive figure of whom only a few testimonies remain. An exposition on the contents, structure, models and main sources of the first version is then offered, followed by an analysis on the relationship between H and two anonymous descriptions derived from it, namely the "Descriptio locorum circa Hierusalem adiacentium" and the "Innominatus VI". The second redaction, R, consists in a reduced and simplified version of H, with many cuts and rare new additions: the main differences in content and the stylistic deviations from H are also examined in the first chapter, and so is the possibility of attributing this redaction to the author himself or to a collaborator of his. The text of R was moreover included in a collection of works concerning the history of the Church and its power over the centuries, commissioned by the cardinal of Aragon Nicolás Rosell and entitled "Collectanea ex diversis registris et libris Camerae Apostolicae" (1356): within this corpus, Fretellus’ "Descriptio" appears in its second version, with a dedication bearing the name Raymundus. The second chapter of the thesis firstly traces the history of critical studies on the "Descriptio" and its editorial path, thereafter it offers the description of the witnesses, whose number has greatly increased thanks to a new recognitio codicum, which made it possible to identify new manuscripts for the second, more widespread redaction. The eight codices identified by Boeren as witnesses of H are now reduced to six (dating from the second half of the 12th to the 15th century), since two of the manuscripts listed by him are actually representatives of the second redaction partly contaminated with the first. On the other hand, it was possible to acknowledge a number of thirty-nine codices for R, which are dated between the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 17th century. However, the approximately forty manuscripts hosting the "Collectanea" are not counted within these thirty-nine: they contain Fretellus’ text, but have been excluded from the recensio, as they are all later than 1356 and belong to a closed-circulation tradition. The few known witnesses of the "Descriptio locorum" and "Innominatus VI" are also listed and described. Subsequently, the recensio of H is presented, which made it possible to identify two branches of transmission descending from a common archetype; one of them, in particular, is represented by a codex from the second half of the 12th century, the ms. Douai, Bibliothèque Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, 882, ff. 35v-49bisv (D), which presents a series of corrective interventions by a second copyist, made on the basis of the text of the anonymous "Descriptio locorum", taken as a new model. The relationships between H, the "Descriptio locorum" and D are also discussed. On the contrary, the recensio of the second redaction, discussed in the next section, has allowed to identify an archetype and three branches (κ, ξ and ζ) depending from it. The stemmatical location of two other manuscripts and of some small groups of codices remains doubtful, due to their textual status. In the chapter dedicated to recensio it is also possible to find an analysis regarding the two families of the R version interpolated with materials from H, labeled λ and σ. Then, the notes to the text for both the editions of H and R display the editorial criteria and present the cases of selectio and emendatio; the choices made in terms of graphic layout, division into chapters (innovated in this edition with respect to the previous scansion adopted by Boeren) and writing of the critical apparatus are here examined. Then, the third chapter offers the critical editions of both redactions. The text is accompanied by a double band of apparatus: the one concerning the sources, which contains references to biblical passages and references to the works from which Fretellus borrowed material, and the apparatus of the variants, which is complete and generally negative, but becomes positive in correspondence of the loci for which it was necessary to accomplish the selectio. The fourth chapter gives the Italian translations of the two Latin texts, preceded by a brief explanation on the criteria adopted; the translation of H is accompanied by an apparatus of notes that elaborates on the manner in which the sources were taken and provides clarifications regarding the identification of the places and episodes cited for some selected passages of the text. Finally, the fifth chapter displays two tables: in the first one the text of H is compared with that of manuscript D and with the anonymous "Descriptio locorum"; in the second table the text of H is placed side by side with that of R in order to compare them, as well. A third appendix offers the transcription of an abridged version of the "Descriptio" (R) offered by manuscript Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek 609.