The aim of the research proposed is to investigate the
transmission of Augustine’s De civitate
Dei in the collection of excerpta
compiled by Eugippius, touching the following topics:
- strategies of selection: analysis of the larger
context from which the excerpta are
taken out, in order to examine the possible reasons of this preference, that
conditioned the reception of the work in the following centuries;
- this survey is closely linked to the evidence that
the great majority of the excerpta from
the De civitate Dei is taken from the
second half of the work (books 11-22). It is unlikely to think that Eugippius
could not dispose of the whole work, but the early circulation of the De civitate Dei in groups of books with
different composition, and the independent circulation at least of the first
ten books, suggest to connect the analysis of the strategies of selection also
to the type of text of civ. known by
Eugippius;
- this last issue is also connected to the problem of
the origin of the tituli of the De civitate Dei that appear, in a disorganized way, in many manuscript witnesses dated
from the sixth century. Henri-Irenée Marrou, and later Pierre Petitmengin, were
inclined to attribute them to Augustine himself, while Michael Gorman recently proposed
Eugippius as the author.
- in order to delve deeper into this matter, it will
be necessary:
a) to verify the correspondence between the excerpta compiled by Eugippius and the capitula witnessed by the manuscript
tradition: actually this correspondence seems to be only partial;
b) to examine, at least by surveys on the Late Antique
and Carolingian tradition, the possible correspondence between the variant
readings present in the Eugippius’ excerpta
and those of the manuscripts provided with one of the different forms of capitulatio.
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