Identità di testo in agiografia: testi latini, testi greci, testi in movimento nello specchio di PA.L.M.A. («Passionaria Latina MEDII AEVI»)

On the ground of some recent critical editions and editorial experiences of the author, the paper investigates how stemmatic philology can deal with the extreme ‘fluidity’ of hagiographical texts, which are most frequently subject to every kind of rewritings, adaptations, linguistic and textual modifications. Are there uni- voque scholarly definitions for the different shapes a text can take? When should a text be considered self-standing, and hence deserve an edition on its own? When, instead, a manuscript is just one of the multiple copies of the same text, although containing some innovations? To answer these questions, some different typologies of textual traditions are considered: from Latin translations of Greek texts, to rewritings arranged for political purposes, to liturgical epitomes. Each of the proposed case-studies throws light on the elements that must be taken into account, and reveals that the value of the innovations has to be established in the specific context of the tradition under consideration. Sometimes, the decision is easy to take, as in the case for Latin translations of Greek texts that have been drawn from different Greek manuscripts; however, in other instances, even a very slight modification is able to transform a given text into something else. The final paragraphs are devoted to a new digital project (Passionaria Latina Medii Aevi, by S.I.S.M.E.L.) that aims at studying hagiographic manuscripts in a new way, moulded by the theoretical issues discussed in the paper.