Dicitur tra auctoritas, normatività ed opinio nelle enciclopedie medievali

My paper examines the notion of ‘dicit/dicitur’ in Thirteenth-century Latin encyclopedias, with special reference to the work De proprietatibus rerum written by Bartholomew the Englishman around 1230-1240. In this paper, such notion is examined by establishing a ‘typology’ of the reference to sources used by Bartholomew, and by analyzing the role played by ‘Mit- tlerquellen’ (‘filter-sources’) in the construction of a certified knowledge and in the communication of an information characterized by a consensus. Furthermore, the paper examines the role of the auctoritates in the treat- ment of branches of knowledge characterized by their fluid nature, and by their representation in form of summae, as well as in the representation of disciplines where the circulation of information occurs through oral and ‘internal’ communication among experts or communities of experts.