Matthew Paris, i Plantageneti, la crociata Studio ed edizione dell’Iter de Londinio in Terram Sanctam

Abstract

Matthew Paris’s Iter de Londinio in Terram Sanctam is a work on the boundary between cartography and travel literature. Contained in four autograph manuscripts and accompanied by a precious iconographic apparatus, the Iter is conceived as an itinerary that starts in London and, passing through France and Italy, reaches the Holy Land. Along the way there are Anglo-Norman captions relating to the main stops encountered along the way: from Rome to Sicily, passing through Antioch and Damascus, Armenia and the rich East, crossing Africa, until reaching Jerusalem and Acre. This volume, starting from a philological and linguistic methodology, aims to provide a new edition of the work to replace the previous, now dated and unsatisfactory, edited by Michelant and Raynaud (1882). The edition is accompanied by an introductory study that intends to address Matthew Paris’s production, both Latin and vernacular, in its entirety, in the light of a new and broader historical, linguistic, and material contextualisation. In this way, it has been possible to fully consider the Iter de Londinio in Terram Sanctam, its peculiarities, and the dynamics through which it fits into the broader artistic-literary production of its author. What ultimately emerges is a profound link between Matthew Paris’s vernacular production and the historical and cultural context of the Plantagenet court in the mid-thirteenth century, marked by King Henry III’s crusade plans.