Monaci che scrivono nei margini. Varietà di interventi nella tradizione camaldolese medievale

Some medieval Camaldolese manuscripts present corpora of glosses in the margins. Two case studies are proposed here. The first concerns the glosses in the Psalter Ms. London, British Library, Yates Thompson 40 (12th century), which were added in the 13th century by a Camaldolese hermit. These glosses come from many authors of the Patristic and Medieval era, including Augustine, Petrus Lombardus and the Glossa ordinaria, but also from ‘modern’ authors such as Bernard of Clairvaux and the Dominican Guillelmus Peraldus. The sources are selected with great skill, in order to identify the most important steps for the spirituality of hermits. The second case regards the glosses that accompany the normative code of the Order of Camaldoli, in the manuscripts Camaldoli, Biblioteca del Sacro Eremo 42 (early 14th century) and Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Conv. Soppr. C.VIII.380 (year 1476). These glosses explain the texts, identify correspondences, put order in the norms; they show that the hermits of Camaldoli knew well the practices of religious and giuridical writing of their time and are able to make original comments. The glosses were written in the late thirteenth century, when Camaldoli was in an age characterized by cultural fervor, scholastic practice and new forms of literary and documentary writing.