Fabio Troncarelli – författare

The almost invisible images of a hitherto unknown painter called Eusebius, who worked in San Vitale Ravenna and in Vivarium, are a gallery of portraits of his famous contemporaries such as Theodoric, Vitiges, Amalasunta and a visual commentary of Justinian''s tyrannical behaviour. Living between two ages, without belonging to either, this solitary man represents the fullest embodiment of a type of cultural "hybridisation" that is well attested throughout history. Eusebius is a spiritual brother of those "hybrid" artists, who have left extraordinary examples of "grotesques" populated by fantastic beings. After having embodied for so long the unbiased tolerance which had been the core of his own life and those of his companions in Ravenna: that mixture of confidentiality, intelligence, pointed irony, fantasy, and – why not? – touch of madness which had helped him to navigate through the troubled waters of his age, always leaving at the margins the demons who haunted him.

Fabio Troncarelli examines the Late Antique Cassiodorian edition of the "Consolation of Philosophy" by Boethius in this new study consisting of five chapters. The first one offers a brief sketch of the lives of the two protagonists of the story. The second concerns the medieval copies of the edition, some very close to the original archetype, preserving even its formal aspect, and the indication of its first transcription in Ravenna in the sixth century. The third chapter establishes a comparison between some typical rhetorical, philosophical, and editorial methods used by Cassiodorus and the ones found in Boethius''s edition. The fourth chapter explores possible reasons for Cassiodorus''s decision to produce such an edition during the years of the collapse of Osthrogotic rule in Italy. The final chapter discusses the "living memory" of Boethius''s reputation at Vivarium and the relationships between his murder and Amalsuintha''s murder as understood and covertly preserved by the Vivarian monks.