Un nuovo testimone e una nuova redazione della Visio Alberici

Around 1109, the nine-year-old Alberic of Settefrati fell ill and experienced a vision of the afterlife while in a coma. Once recovered, he joined the Benedictine community of Montecassino. At the time of abbot Gerard (1111-1123), Guido of Montecassino wrote the first account of Alberic’s vision, which is believed to have been lost. At the time of abbot Seniorect (1127-1137), Guido’s version was revised by Alberic himself together with Peter the Deacon, as it is reported in the prefatory epistle that precedes the Visio Alberici in the only surviving witness known so far, MS. Montecassino, Biblioteca Statale del Monumento Nazionale, 257. Peter Dinzelbacher and Claude Carozzi have already pointed out how certain passages of the Visio that present stylistic and structural inconsistencies must have been added to the original text at a later stage, most probably during the revision carried out by Peter and Alberic. This paper presents a hitherto unknown copy of the Visio Alberici in a manuscript compiled between the end of the 12th century and the first half of the 13th by the canons regular at Santa Cruz de Coimbra. The Visio Alberici is preserved here in a shorter form which lacks the final part of the text. The comparative analysis of the two versions trough textual criticism, linguistic analysis, and sources criticism seem to confirm Dinzelbacher and Carozzi’s hypotheses, as the version transmitted by the Portuguese copy apparently predates that of the Cassinese witness and it is likely to be identified with Guido’s early account.