Tradurre e traslitterare la Bibbia nei Salteri bilingui tardoantichi e altomedievali. Il caso del Salterio di Verona I (1)

A very consistent trend, spreading between the Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages (5th-7th centuries), in the circulation of the Bible, were Gospels and Psalters with facing translation. The oldest examples (mostly eastern) of this trend had a precise meaning: they signaled that the Biblical text, after many tensions and instabilities highlighted by the ecumenical councils, have had to reach a point of equilibrium and that, therefore, its canon could be considered firmly ‘closed’. It was this achieved stability that allowed the production of manuscripts with facing translation (mainly Greek-Coptic, Greek-Latin, and then even Greek-Gothic and Latin-Gothic) of the most read biblical books. Only in mid 6th century, or rather at the end of the Greek-Gothic war of Italy (535-553), did this book model also extend to the west. The notable flow of ecclesiastics, military and bureaucrats from the Byzantine East to Italy determined an audience of learned men, interested in luxurious books that was supposed to facilitate the religious dialogue between different linguistic communities. Despite being apparatus books, these codices were intensely used, both as a liturgical and interlinguistical tools and as didactic devices: the Verona Psalter I (1), written with the same Latin uncial script for both Greek and Latin text, bears the signs of a thorough and relentless revision (by a reader from 8th to 12th centuries) of the two translation, with the purpose of merging and balancing as better as possible a very multifaceted cultural asset.