«Molte altre anchora profetie abiano veduto». Alcuni testi profetici «intrusi» nell’unica copia manoscritta conosciuta della Pronosticazione del Lichtenberger

Abstract

The article aims at shedding light on a collection of prophetic texts contained in an early sixteenth-century Italian manuscript of medical prescriptions and prognostications from Florence and Ferrara (ms. 425, Wellcome Historical Medical Library, London). This collection shows unusual peculiarities: the prophetic texts are inserted in the text of Johannes Lichtenberger’s Pronosticatio (in its Italian vernacular version) at apparently random positions. Moreover, the manuscript, considered as a whole, allows the author to appraise the social milieu of circulation of the prophetic genre.

Keywords

• prophecy
• prognostication
• Lichtenberger
• Middle Ages
• Renaissance
• prophets