Il canone agiografico di san Bernardino (post 1460)

Abstract

The book edited byDaniele Solvi is the second volume of ‘LeVite quattrocentesche di S. Bernardino da Siena’ to be published. The editorial project, coordinated by Daniele Solvi and Alessandra Bartolomei Romagnoli, intends to cover the fifteenth-century hagiographical corpus of vitae of St Bernardino of Siena in four volumes. This will help scholars re-evaluate the complex construction of the hagiographical profile(s) of this canonized preacher. In 2014, the book containing the texts produced between 1450 and 1460, immediately after Bernardino’s canonization (see the review in Medieval Sermon Studies, 59 [2015], 88–90), was published. While the first volume of the series, which will focus on the vitae written during the process of canonization (i.e. 1444–50), is still missing, the present book provides scholars with seven texts (two of them with a double version) that span over one century, from the 1460s to the 1570s, thus covering the period of the sedimentation and crystallization of the official memory of the new saint. The table of contents immediately shows the richness of the volume as well as the considerable differences in terms of authorship, length, and function of each text: