The Collectio Avellana and Its Revivals

Description

The Collectio Avellana (CA) has an extraordinary richness and variety of content. Imperial rescripts, reports of urban prefects, letters of bishops, and exchanges of letters between popes and emperors, some of which only this compilation preserves, constitute an exceptional documentary collection for researchers of various sectors of antiquity. This volume is the first publication to reconstruct the history of this compilation through the fascinating questions that it poses to the scholar. There are essays on its general structure, and on some of the most singular texts preserved therein. Other papers offer a comparison between this compilation and the other canonical collections compiled in Italy between the fourth and sixth centuries, as well as between the CA and other contemporary literary products. Adopting a new approach, some contributions also ascertain who could physically have access to the materials that were collected in the CA, and where the compiler could find them. All these fresh studies have led to new hypotheses regarding the period in which the collection, or at least some of its parts, took shape and the personality of its author. Table of Contents Introduction I. The Collectio Avellana and Its Materials Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve II. Between Imperial and Episcopal Chanceries Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty One Chapter Twenty Two III. Medieval Revivals Chapter Twenty Three Chapter Twenty Four General Bibliography Contributors