Libri per il paradiso: aspetti di mentalità nei colofoni armeni del XIII secolo

The article aims to highlight some of the fundamental causes for the remarkable spread of colophons in the medieval Armenian world, using the colophons themselves to illustrate the phenomenon. A special focus is devoted to the colophons of the 13th century gathered in the collection published by Artashes Matevosyan at Erevan in 1984. These texts can be seen to have assumed over time a formulaic language, and, even if varied on occasion, their compositional scheme repeats itself with a certain constancy. This makes possible the ready identification of certain key concepts that are related amongst themselves and that reveal the immense worth attributed to the colophons and their manuscripts by the community that produced them.