Opere perdute nella tradizione camaldolese medievale (XI-XIV secolo)

LOST WORKS IN THE MEDIEVAL CAMALDOLESE TRADITION (11TH-14TH CENTURY) Many works written in the Camaldoli Hermitage and the monasteries of its congregation were lost during the Middle Ages or are only partially preserved. Some are known through literary tradition, others through library catalogues, erudite accounts, fragments, or through reworkings and vernacularizations. Among these lost works are an Expositio super Tobiam by Prior Rudolf II-III, known from the 1406 library catalogue; the mystic Revelationes of Blessed Peregrinus (1287); the Sermones de tempore by Paolo Camaldolese; the Vitae of Blessed Parisio of Treviso and Blessed Jacopo from Certaldo; and most of the letters written by the monks. Maybe even a treatise De pugna demonum and a commentary on the Psalms attributed to the founder, Saint Romuald, are lost. This extensive loss is due to a lack of will to preserve the documents, in part because the monks viewed themselves primarily as ascetics and not literary men. However, attention to document preservation increased from the mid-thirteenth century, and the letters of the general priors began to be copied into registers starting in 1278. Subsequently, literary consciousness grew among the Order’s hermits and monks between the 14th and 15th centuries.