Nuovi spunti su Benedetto Bacchini e il paratesto editoriale

Three centuries after the death of the Benedictine abbot Benedetto Bacchini (1645-1721), the publication of the proceedings of an important conference dedicated to him has made it possible to reconsider his figure as a religious and intellectual of European rank. Among the aspects worthy of renewed attention, the significant role of the paratextual apparatus emerged, as a privileged area for expressing in deep the historical thought and vision proposed by Bacchini. The editorial paratexts of some of Bacchini’s works that were entrusted to the printing houses without the intervention of the author, edited by scholars who had great esteem and / or had been very close to him, also offer relevant ideas. Among those works, the reissue by Lodovico Antonio Muratori of his edition of the Liber pontificalis by Agnello Ravennate within the Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, a new published version of his De Sistris by a Dutch author, and the posthumous editorial project relating to his Lettere polemiche against the Calvinist Giacomo Picenino. The function of the paratext is briefly examined also regarding a literary case of a certain importance, namely the collection of writings by Elena Lucrezia Cornaro published shortly after the female writer’s death (1688) in Parma at the presses of Ippolito Rosati ; in the circumstance, under commission by her family the abbot, in addition to taking care of the selection and arrangement of Cornaro’s works, signed both the dedication letter and the preface.