Questione di modelli : Petrarca, Gerolamo e lo Hieronymianus di Giovanni d'Andrea

Abstract

Two Petrarch's letters (Familiares IV 15 and 16) are commonly taken into account for their autobiographical and apologetic aspects. The present article places them into the debate about the limits and characteristics of the academic knowledge (represented by the great jurist Giovanni d'Andrea) and its relationships with the new humanistic culture, with its myths and its models. Petrarch's discussion and comparison between St Jerome and St Augustine has to be considered in this context: the two Fathers stand for two well-defined and basically opposite ideas of culture. In its Hieronymianus (BHL 3876), a multipurpose work, which is not only a hagiography or a florilegium, Giovanni d'Andrea shapes an image of St Jerome's holiness and lays down methods and areas of its use for different purposes, from popular devotion to theology and to juridical culture. Attention is focused on the fourth section of the Hieronymianus, which has a particular importance in the textual history of Jerome's work.