Tra antico e moderno: Iacopo Stefaneschi e la cultura letteraria del suo tempo

Between ancient and modern: Iacopo Stefaneschi and the literary culture of his time · This paper focuses on the so-called Opus metricum by Iacopo Stefaneschi, an important witness of the complex papal vicissitudes in the period between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It pays particular attention to the Prefatiuncula, in which Stefaneschi claims he wants to use the vetustior stilus and not the modernus. This statement, compared to some similar ones delivered by authors of the same period (from Dante to Giovanni del Virgilio), allows us to recognize as modernus the stilus of the Curia Romana (dominant in those centuries), characterized by metaphorical inventiveness and by plenty of cursus velox. In this way, Stefaneschi places himself on the same cultural line as other contemporary authors: a line of self-conscious rejection of the curial dictamen that will lead, with many variations, to Dante and Petrarch.