Xavier Barral i Altet, Université de Rennes, Université de Venise Cà Foscari
The oldest known redaction (Vat. 3973) of the Mirabilia Urbis Romae is dated between 1140 and 1143. It is inserted in the Liber Polypticus of Benedict, canon of St. Peter, published by Paul Fabre and Louis Duchesne in their edition of the Liber Censuum of the Roman Church. It is a description of Rome which, for some historians, may have been originally conceived as an antiquarian treatise and, for others, as a sort of inventory of the monumental units located within the city walls. At least five other texts were modeled on the Mirabilia: the Graphia aureae urbis (post-1154), the Miracles of Rome (thirteenth century), the De mirabilibus civitatis Romae (1360-1362), the Tractatus de rebus antiquis et situ urbis Romae (1411), and the one of most interest to us in the context of the Roman Days, Master Gregory’s late twelfth-century De mirabilibus urbis Romae, discovered at St. Catharine’s College, Cambridge [ms. Nr. 3 (Lv 87), ff. 190r-203v], in 1917, by Montague Rhode James, provost of Eton College. The city of Rome was certainly a marvelous place in the times of Romanesque ; but what wonders were they? What wonders did medieval travelers think they would find in Rome, and what wonders did they recall on their return?