There had been no news of it for almost three centuries, but now, thanks to the work of an interdisciplinary group of scholars from the University of Pisa, the real identity of what is now known as the Beinecke MS. 1153, dating back to the 14th century, was finally revealed: inside there are several lives of saints, including an unpublished Life of San Terenzio, and the story of the journey to the Holy Land of a Pontremoli clipper.
It is a precious manuscript once belonging to the diocese of Luni and the protagonist, starting from the second half of the eighteenth century, of an adventurous journey which, between bequests and sales, took it all the way to the United States. More precisely, on the shelves of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. Found by an enthusiast and digitized, the manuscript thus arrived at the University of Pisa where it was identified, recognized and studied by Paolo Pontari, philologist of the Department of Philology, Literature and Linguistics; Enrica Salvatori, historian of the Department of Civilization and Forms of Knowledge, and the hagiologist Gianni Bergamaschi.
“The text, attributable to the second half of the fourteenth century, is a very precious source for understanding the Tuscan and Lunigiana Middle Ages and has led and will lead to important historical discoveries – explains Professor Enrica Salvatori – It is a miscellany that contains several lives of saints , including an unpublished Life of San Terenzio, the story of the journey to the Holy Land of a Pontremoli clipper, the ordering of the canons of the cathedral of Luni, calendars, lunar schemes and a treatise for the identification of Easter”.
“The study we are conducting on the Beinecke manuscript is transversal to all the texts that make up this interesting miscellany of clear Lunigiana origin – adds Professor Paolo Pontari – Among the documents contained in the manuscript, however, an odeporic text stands out, the critical edition of which , currently in preparation, will allow us to follow the traces of the shearer Franceschino da Pontremoli in his pilgrimage to Rome and the Holy Land”.
“The interest of this manuscript lies precisely in the heterogeneity of the texts it contains, most of which are hagiographic but which are not arranged according to the annual liturgical cycle – concludes the hagiologist Gianni Bergamaschi – The problem that remains open is to understand for what reasons a code of this kind was created, in which even the hagiographic texts are heterogeneous: some are very rich, others are poorer, there is a large Franciscan component, but in the middle there also appear saints whose presence in this context is difficult to understand, as in the case of Saint Ivo of Brittany and Audomaro of Thérouanne. How they ended up there remains to be discovered”.
