Lettere Originali del Medioevo Latino (VII-XI Secolo). Vol. 1: Italia

The work, of wich is now published the first volume devoted to testimonies preserved in Italy, has as its aim the reproduction in integral facsimile (recto and verso), the diplomatic transcription and critical edition, with commentary and editorial notes, of all the letters belonging to the vii-xi centuries written in the Latin alphabet that have come down to us in the original.
At present there is no collection of testimonies in letter form analogous to this, or comparable with it. Indeed, whereas lists have been published with a description, reproduction and at times also transcription of book or documentary testimony in Latin writing that are older, the only istrument analogous to ours is, with regard to letters, the one edited by Paolo Cugusi and devoted to Latin letters of the Classical Age i.e.
up to the vith century inclusive (CEL).
The main of a work such as this is the study of the graphic and material aspects of Late Middle Ages epistography in Western Europe; i.e. the processes, practices and techniques of production, including graphic typologies, articulation and layout of the text, affixing of the address and any seals, techniques of closing, sending and conservation of individual letters. Finally, with regard to the criteria adopted, it must be said that the choice together of the diplomatic transcription and the critical edition, next to the integral reproduction, has seemed necessary for texts almost always short and often in bad states of conservation or mutilated.