Nel segno di Luigi Schiaparelli: scrivere documenti e scrivere libri nella Tuscia longobarda

This essay reassesses the scholarly legacy of Luigi Schiaparelli by situating his work at the intersection of diplomatics and palaeography and by emphasizing its decisive role in redefining the study of early medieval written culture. Starting from the exceptional documentary and manuscript evidence preserved in Lucca and Verona, the author reconstructs Schiaparelli’s methodological shift from a strictly diplomatic approach to an integrated analysis of documents and books as complementary expressions of the same graphic and cultural systems. Central to the discussion are two paradigmatic case studies: the Lucchese Codex 490, interpreted as an “anti-book” or fluid bibliotheca shaped by multiple scribes and uses, and the Mozarabic Orationale of Verona, whose itinerant history and marginal annotations illuminate processes of transmission, reuse, and cultural mediation. Particular attention is devoted to Schiaparelli’s pioneering attention to individual scribes, graphic habits, and material contexts, which allowed him to capture the social density of early medieval writing practices beyond rigid typological or localizing schemes. By revisiting Schiaparelli’s analyses in dialogue with later scholarship, the essay argues for the enduring heuristic value of his approach and proposes it as a model for overcoming disciplinary boundaries in the study of Lombard and post-Lombard Italy, where documents and books must be read together as agents of memory, authority, and cultural continuity.