Le opere perdute nel Medioevo latino. Casi di studio, strategie di ricostruzione e di ritrovamento

The article examines the hagiographic tradition concerning the blessed Dominican friar Giacomo Bianconi of Bevagna (†1301), which originates from the lost Vita beati Iacobi de Mevanea composed by friar Ventura da Bevagna († post 1414) and repeatedly rewritten between the 15th and 17th centuries. Through a comparative analysis of the main versions – from the one transcribed by Girolamo Borselli in the Appendix to the Chronica magistrorum generalium Ordinis fratrum praedicatorum (1493- 1497) to the version by an otherwise unknown Albertus de Alemannia (1514), to the redaction by Lorenzo Fongoli (early 17th century) – the characteristics are highlighted of a text that can be considered a sort of matryoshka of lost works, two of which may be considered rediscovered, while the third appears never to have existed. Indeed, the tradition attributed to Giacomo Bianconi two treatises (Speculum humanitatis Christi and Speculum peccatorum) and a collection of sermons. In the two treatises one can respectively recognize Hugh of Strasbourg’s Compendium theologiae veritatis and James of Benevento’s Tractatus de antichristo et de iudicio; the sermon collection almost certainly arose from a mistaken reading of Albert of Germany’s judgment on the style of those very treatises («brevi et grata facundia, sermoneque loculentos»).