Italia medievale epigrafica. L'alto medioevo attraverso le scritture incise (secc. IX-XI)

In order to delineate the cultural path of a communication society such as ours, a recovery of the tracks written and carved according to the use of a historical memory, especially in Italy, where in some cities, including Milan, Brescia, Verona and Aquileia, the great tradition of monumental Roman inscriptions has been passed down continuously, albeit limited, throughout the Middle Ages. The connecting link of the cultural richness and the linearity evident from the Late Empire was, according to recent studies, Christian funerary epigraphy, but it is to the lasting presence in the various cities of a bishop's throne and for the territory surrounding the great abbeys, such as those of Fruttuaria and Pomposa, that we owe the persistent medieval epigraphic use over the centuries IX, X and XI, generally defined by historians specialized "epigraphic vacuum". Certainly the epigraphy of that period was almost entirely the prerogative of ecclesiastical committments, though there were some eminent secular people, both male and female. Around, therefore, the key figures who were the bishops and great abbots, as a few other lay personalities during the post-Carolingian and the Ottonian periods as well in the age of the ecclesiastical reform of the eleventh century, monumental writings of different types were produced, that are yet in situ or have been lost but have been transmitted through an indirect tradition, a collection of the most emblematic inscriptions has been set up, which later became the primary source for historical analysis and social use of writing inscriptions throughout the early m Middle Agesl, related to contemporary events and supported, in the appendix, by a large collection of photographs of the epigraphs used in the book. lo