Per una critica “archeologica” della tradizione manoscritta e a stampa delle lettere di san Francesco di Paola: santità, eruditi e falsari nell’Europa moderna (1447-1655)

The work addresses the belief that led to the formation, constitution, dissemination and redefinition of the correspondence traditionally attributed to Francesco di Paola. He was a Calabrian hermit of the 15th century, then become saint from the following century. At the beginning, the analysis identifies the difficulties encountered by the historiography in the 19th-20th centuries, that was struggling to overcome models and effects of the 17th century censorial judgment by the Congregation of the Index. In the second chapter, the shift from the historiography to the early-modern scholarship is then motivated by the persistence encountered in historiographical evaluations. In particular, the centrality for censors and historians of the Centuria structure, the main collection of the Saint's letters, move the gaze on the cultural operation that led to the construction of the correspondence of San Francesco di Paola. The renewed contextualization of the Centuria opens to the problems of its fortune and its genesis: the former allows us to address the repercussions on devotional and hagiographic literature, starting with the death of the Saint (1507); the latter allows us to outline the processes of reproduction, transmission and use of a documentary heritage, spread on a European scale between the 15th and the 17th centuries (chapters III to VI). The final considerations and appendix present several hypotheses for the future research. This should face the widening of the traditional reconstruction relating to the belief of Francesco di Paola epistolographer: the Postellian and Savonarolian inspiration for the prophetic component and the attempt at family ennobling for the hagiographic component. The mid-seventeenth century censorship remains not sufficiently addressed, although it represents the final moment in the structuring of the documentary complex.