Custodire l’invisibile. Scritture scartate, trasformate e nascoste tra Medioevo ed Età Moderna

The paper aims to focus on wide heterogeneous and extraordinary contexts of reusing writing media. In fact, between the Middle and the Modern Ages several texts on papyrus, parchment and paper were discarded, transformed and hidden into various types of objects: for example clothes (babies’ garments, skirts, capes, petticoats, bodices, accessories as well as bags, pieces of jewellery and also crowns), packaging for food and coins, musical instruments (violas, organs, drums and bells), shoes, bookbindings, liturgical ornaments (cowls, copes, orphreys, mitres), lampshades, or as substitutes for windows glasses and so on. Those choices, far from being an ultimate condemnation to destruction and oblivion of several manuscripts, have instead often led to the revaluation of their physical medium and finally allowed the preservation of the texts written on them. Writing supports that now, thanks to interdisciplinary studies – especially related to Palaeography, Codicology, Diplomatics and Art History – can be traced back to the surface of the visible.