Gazette 69

This article reframes hybridity in medieval bookbinding as an interpretative condition rather than a typological deviation. Drawing on the Cambrai corpus and comparative case studies, it defines three axes – diatopical, diasystemic, and diachronic – to analyse how hybrid structures emerge from situated practices. These bindings are not transitional anomalies, but deliberate reconfigurations shaped by institutional memory, technical habit, and historical layering. In this reading, hybridity becomes a material expression of codicological continuity and adaptation.

This article presents the results of research conducted on several membra disiecta from two Atlantic Bibles held at Archivio di Stato di Catania, in the ‘Pergamene ex copertine notarili’ collection. In the first part of the article, a detailed analysis of palaeographic, codicological and textual elements was carried out to verify the hypothesis that eighteen fragments from this collection belong to a single Atlantic Bible produced in central Italy at the end of the 11^th century, named the “Randazzo Bible”. The Bible was given this name from the discovery of another fragment with similar features, found in a private archive in the town of Randazzo, where it is currently held. The second part of the paper focuses on the identification of further five fragments belonging to a second Atlantic Bible from the first half of the 12^th century, which was also produced in central Italy and has never been studied in depth. The presence of these fragments constitutes evidence of the large circulation of this kind of books in Sicily from the end of 11^th century throughout the 12^th century.

At the court of Alfonso the Magnanimous in Naples, a select group of intellectuals played a key role in shaping the cultural policy of the reign and the identity of the centre for producing luxury manuscripts associated with the Royal Library. Giacomo Curlo’s elegant writing style quickly set the standard, contributing to the spread and affirmation of the Florentine humanistic minuscule in Naples.
On the other hand, the emergence of an imitative style of Curlo’s handwriting led to a situation of graphic homogeneity that makes it difficult to distinguish between the handwriting of other scribes, particularly in unsigned manuscripts.
The article illustrates this circumstance through the comparative observation of the handwritings of Curlo and other two contemporary scribes, Pietro and Virgilio Ursuleo, and aims to provide new insights into the study of the establishment of an imitative style during the scriptorium’s first decade of activity.

This article presents the initial research results of “BIB.LA.M.A – Bibliotheca Latina Manuscripta Apuliensis”. The main objective is to catalogue Latin manuscripts copied in Apulia between the 11^th and 15^th centuries. Most of this material is scattered across national and international libraries and archives. The results obtained from the preliminary survey of the codices are important for reconstructing the cultural activity of Puglia in the late Middle Ages. The data from the census on local manuscript production have been supplemented with some codices from outside centres, either commissioned or acquired from other libraries, which, although unrelated to Puglia’s production, are fundamental for reconstructing the composite and fragmentary cultural background of the region. Thanks to the data collected, it has been possible to identify the cultural centres that distinguished themselves for the production and circulation of manuscripts between the 11^th and 15^thcenturies.