My project aims at clarifying some features of the relations between migrant and resident population in Ostrogothic Italy, with particular reference to their religious aspects. I am taking into account a very peculiar and underexploited source from 6th century Italy: the MS Veronensis LI (and its seven folios preserved in Venice, Collezione Giustiniani Recanati, CE.12.16). This manuscript, edited by Roger Gryson in 1982 as part of the Scripta Arriana Latina (CCSL 87), is particularly relevant since it represents the only extant “Arian book”. It includes anonymous non-nicene homilies and short treatises of unknown origin in Latin, and has very interesting marginal notes  - some of them, in Gothic, were erased, presumably in the VII century. Though not all of its writings are ostensibly “Arian” (texts by Jerome and Augustine are also included in the Collection), subordinationist statements are never corrected, tempered or dismissed, a circumstance that has led scholars to imagine it was compiled and used in a non-nicene milieu – possibly a biligual religious community in Ostrogothic Italy. My aim is to take on an in-depth analysis of the so-called Collectio Veronensis, by examining the MS as a whole (cosidering its features and history) and by analysing the Veronese texts as single units, focusing on the background of their original composition and on the history of their tradition.

For more information about Viola Gheller, please click here.