Il codice Cocharelli e le sue scritture: una nota paleografica

This essay offers a palaeographical analysis of the so-called Cocharelli Codex, a highly fragmented and exceptional manuscript known primarily for its lavish and unconventional pictorial decoration. Shifting the focus from the miniatures—which have long dominated scholarly attention—to the writing itself, the study investigates the script, mise en page, and material features of the surviving fragments in order to reassess the manuscript’s cultural positioning and chronology. Through detailed examination of letterforms, ductus, and graphic habits, the author identifies a coherent scribal practice grounded in a disciplined littera textualis, consistent with models employed in scientific and didactic books of late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century Latin culture. Particular emphasis is placed on the close integration of script and decoration, which reveals a sophisticated collaborative workshop and challenges traditional separations between textual and visual analysis. By comparing the Cocharelli fragments with dated manuscripts and with documentary book forms associated with urban and notarial milieus—especially in Genoa—the essay supports a dating of the codex between the second and third quarters of the fourteenth century. More broadly, the study reflects on the limits and possibilities of palaeographical method when applied to highly standardized Gothic scripts, arguing for an approach that combines graphic, codicological, textual, and cultural evidence in order to reconstruct the complex dynamics of medieval book production.