Irene Malfatto | Independent Scholar (original) (raw)

Papers by Irene Malfatto

Desperta Ferro. Arqueología e Historia, 2020

En la Edad Media, el conocimiento del mundo y sus distintos espacios dependia principalmente de t... more En la Edad Media, el conocimiento del mundo y sus distintos espacios dependia principalmente de textos tradicionalmente considerados como auctoritates, fuentes cuya autoridad era incuestionable. Entre estos textos se hallaban las sagradas escrituras, los escritos de los padres de la Iglesia y algunos trabajos enciclopedicos. El conocimiento que por entonces se tenia de Asia derivaba en buena medida de estos libros acreditados.

© Irene Malfatto Christopher Columbus’s “Enterprise of the Indies” and the subsequent period of E... more © Irene Malfatto Christopher Columbus’s “Enterprise of the Indies” and the subsequent period of European transatlantic expansion traditionally mark the beginning of the Early Modern era, with a paradigm shift characterized by a dramatically new perspective on the world and the universe. However, notwithstanding the significance of the events of 1492, the cultural background of Christopher Columbus’s ambitious project was rooted in the Christian cosmographic tradition of medieval Europe. A survey of cosmographic knowledge at the dawn of the so-called Age of Discovery, with a special focus on Columbus and his known readings, highlights the way early modern cosmography was characterized as much by continuity as novelty. Tellingly, Columbus perceived himself not as ushering in a new era of exploration so much as fulfilling traditional prophesy: religious and scholarly knowledge was difficult to disentangle from the technical and practical knowledge gained by advancements in navigation a...

In 1355 an Italian Franciscan, John of Marignolli, was asked by Charles IV to compose a chronicle... more In 1355 an Italian Franciscan, John of Marignolli, was asked by Charles IV to compose a chronicle of Bohemia. His Chronicon Bohemorum is conserved into three manuscripts, two of which are now in Prague’s National Library. Marignolli’s work followed a project of historiographical renovation: Charles aimed to rewrite Bohemian historiography in order to celebrate his election as Emperor. It was Marignolli’s task to collect all the previous chronicles, revise them and bring about a brand new universal narrative leading to contemporary Bohemian history. Shortly after Marignolli’s death, Charles IV gave the Bohemian writer Přibík Pulkava of Radenín the same appointment: in 1374 he wrote an alternative Chronica Bohemiae, copied beside Marignolli’s one in both of the Prague manuscripts. These two chronicles are very different from one another: it’s likely that Charles didn’t appreciate Marignolli’s work and asked Pulkava to write a text more suitable for his purposes.

Le digressioni sull'Oriente nel Chronicon Bohemorum di Giovanni de' Marignolli edizione critica a... more Le digressioni sull'Oriente nel Chronicon Bohemorum di Giovanni de' Marignolli edizione critica a cura di Irene Malfatto Il frate fiorentino Giovanni de' Marignolli, vissuto nella prima metà del '300 1 , fu l'ultimo di quei viaggiatori francescani che, tra XIII e XIV secolo, contribuirono allo sviluppo di una serie di contatti missionari tra la curia papale e l'impero mongolo, culminati nella fondazione di una sede arcivescovile di Pechino 2 . Dopo Giovanni di Pian di Carpine, Guglielmo di Rubruk, Giovanni da Montecorvino e Odorico da Pordenone, Marignolli partì alla volta di Pechino nel 1338, in occasione di una missione diplomatica indetta da papa Benedetto XII: dopo un lungo viaggio che lo vide attraversare l'Asia centrale fino alla capitale dell'impero mongolo e quindi alle coste del Pacifico, per poi tornare passando dal sud della Cina, dall'India e infine dalla Terra Santa, egli fece ritorno ad Avignone nel 1353, dopo quindici anni di assenza.

Talks by Irene Malfatto

With the expansion of trading routes, pilgrimage, and missionary endeavours in the 13th century, ... more With the expansion of trading routes, pilgrimage, and missionary endeavours in the 13th century, Latin travel literature emerged as a distinctive literary genre like never before. The texts within this genre contributed to increasing geographical and ethnographical knowl-

1. Giovanni de' Marignolli, vita e opera Dalla lettera a Papa Benedetto XII da parte dei dignitar... more 1. Giovanni de' Marignolli, vita e opera Dalla lettera a Papa Benedetto XII da parte dei dignitari alani: In fortitudine omnipotentis Dei, et in honore Imperatoris Domini nostri. Nos Futim Juens, Caticen Tungii, Gemboga Evenzi, Ioannes Iuckoy, sanctum Patrem Dominum Papam nostrum, capitibus ad terram positis, pedes osculantes, salutamus […]. Hoc autem sanctitati vestrae sit notum, quod longo tempore fuimus informati in fide Catholica, et salubriter gubernati, et consolati plurimum per Legatum vestrum fratrem Ioannem, valentem, sanctum et sufficientem virum, qui tamen mortuus est ante octo annos, in quibus fuimus sine gubernatore, et sine spirituali consolatione, licet audierimus, quod providistis de alio legato, ille tamen nondum venit. Quare supplicamus Sanctitati vestrae, quod mittatis nobis bonum, sufficientem ac sapientem Legatum, qui curam habeat de animabus nostris, et quod cito veniat, quia male stamus sine capite, sine informatione et sine consolatione […]. Quare provideat Sanctitas vestra, quod hac vice, et deinceps habeat certum a vobis responsum et nuncium, sicut decet Sanctitatem vestram, quia magna verecondia est Christianis in partibus istis, quando mendacia inveniuntur in ipsis. Scripta in Cambalec in anno Rati, mense sexto, tertia die lunationis. Dalla lettera a Papa Benedetto XII da parte del Gran Khan Toghan Timur:

Desperta Ferro. Arqueología e Historia, 2020

The material accidents affecting manuscripts, which are frequently dismembered and recomposed in ... more The material accidents affecting manuscripts, which are frequently dismembered and recomposed in multiple ways, can have a substantial influence on the transmission of medieval texts. This session explores the manuscript tradition of selected works, in order to shed light on the material aspects of various transmission issues including the genesis of miscellaneous codices, the gathering of heterogeneous materials, or particularly complex and contaminated stemmas. Sometimes, the examination of manuscripts' physical features allows us to formulate hypotheses concerning their origin and the strategies employed by their compilers, or to postulate antigraphs that do not take the usual 'codex' form. Such matters are of great interest to scholars working on philological investigations and transmission histories.

Encounters with otherness in the Middle Ages could take place as a result of long and short journ... more Encounters with otherness in the Middle Ages could take place as a result of long and short journeys, from northern Europe to the Middle or Far East for trade or crusade or from one side of a mountain frontier to the other, taking the traveller from a Christian to a Muslim space. In every case travellers confronted existing ideas of the Other with direct experience to create new syntheses of knowledge or rejections of it. These three papers will examine the ways in which ideas about Others shaped accounts of meetings with them in a range of different narrative sources.

The panel aims to explore the relationship between travel, memory and travel accounts. Memory is ... more The panel aims to explore the relationship between travel, memory and travel accounts. Memory is a powerful tool, enabling the traveller to preserve and relive ones' experience from a journey and also becomes an important source for travel accounts. The first session of the panel focuses on the relationship between personal (in)experience of travel, memories of travel and travel writing. Paper a) Rebecca Lawton, Remembering pilgrimage to Rome and Jerusalem: Analysing eye witness testimony in early medieval topographical texts and travel accounts Paper abstract: Through memory pilgrims shared their experience with those who many never make the journey themselves. The eye witness experience of the original pilgrim lies at the heart of pilgrim itineraries and syllogae collections of inscriptions from Rome. It is also at the forefront of how travel is recorded in the accounts of pilgrimage to Jerusalem, namely the 'Hodoeporicon' of St Willibrord and Adomnan's De Locis Santis. This paper seeks to analyse how eye witness testimony is presented in these travel texts and its impact on the reader. This discussion aims to understand how the memory of the original pilgrim experience, accessed via eye witness testimony, gave the readers their own experience of pilgrimage to these holy places. Paper b) Felicitas Schmieder, Il Milione-Marco Polo's travel memories? Paper abstract: Marco Polo's Milione is certainly one of the most famous medieval travel reports – but the text(s) we possess of it have neither been written by Marco himself nor by another traveller. The success the Milione had resulted in translations into several languages, some of them going hand in hand with quite considerable redactions, and the text or parts of it were put in many different contexts none of which left the text completely untouched. So on