The Passio XII fratrum. History of a Text and its Rewritings

One of the most decisive text in the genesis of Central Italian hagiographic traditions is the so-called Passio XII Fratrum. Known to scholars as the “cycle of the Syrians”, this text brings together, in an inconsistent narrative plot, vitae et passiones of twelve saints from Syria. By the study of its manuscripts tradition, the Passio shows a very complex stratifica- tion also in its redactions, linked with the difficulties related to an active tradition of the text. The case of the twelve Syrians, in fact, offers itself as a truly paradigmatic example of the life-cycle of a hagiographic text: started as a rudimentary plot (7th-8th cent.) and, after successive readjustments (9th-10th cent.), it evolved into a relatively stable text (11th-12th cent.). Decontextualized from the places whose Christian origins it extolled and, therefore, stripped of its ideological function, the Passio XII Fratrum provided a malleable and resilient liturgical material, that was able to withstand its reuse by cultural operators in the century of sermo modernus, finally producing new rewritings.