Studio della tradizione dei Miracles de Nostre Dame di Gautier de Coinci, con edizione critica dei miracoli di Laon

Gautier de Coinci’s Miracles de Nostre Dame are one of the masterpieces of the genre of the miracles of the Virgin in medieval literature. Written between 1215 and 1230 by Gautier de Coinci, a monk from Saint-Médard in Soissons, the Miracles form a symmetrically-organised two-book collection which also includes songs, prayers and two treatises in verse. This thesis opens with an introduction primarily focused at creating a fresh biographical portrait of the author and exploring the connections between the Miracles and the Cantigas of Alfonso X. Nearly a century after A. Ducrot-Granderye’s 1932 book centred on the manuscripts of the Miracles, this dissertation provides a catalogue of the 40 complete manuscripts of the Miracles, including an analytical description of their textual content and a re-assessment of their dating, location, and early owners. The manuscript catalogue is supplemented by tables (Appendix I) containing information (headings, Latin glosses, illustrations) for each text in the collection. This section devoted to the Miracles manuscripts serves as a basis for chapter 3, which revolves around the tradition of the collection. The main contributions of this chapter concern the multiple redactions of the Miracles (with the identification of a new redactional phase attested by manuscripts D and I). The second part of the thesis presents the critical edition of the miracles of Laon (II Mir 14-17 and II Mir 26). It is introduced by a chapter aimed at study all the Latin and Romance versions of the miracles of Laon and is accompanied by a discussion of the relationships between the manuscripts and philological notes. Finally, Appendix II presents the edition of two previously unpublished texts discovered during the preparation of the manuscript catalogue.