Volume 60, Issue 1, June 2020
Cristina Ricci
Pages 265-276
Hi quattuor egregii doctores […] ueluti clarissima sidera micant
la recezione dei Padri della Chiesa latina nell’Umanesimo mitteleuropeo
The article outlines some aspects of the reception of the so-called four Father of the Latin Church in Renaissance Europe, as emerging in the prefaces of their Opera omnia edited in Basel during the end of the 15th and the first half of the 16th century. Through selected passages from the prefaces, the article discusses (§ 1) the relevance of these sources of old Christianity to the cultural and spiritual renewal many humanistic scholars aimed at; (§ 2) the importance of print in promoting the formation and circulation of patristic editions; finally (§ 3) it illustrates the philological approach to late Antique Christian texts, which was innovative in comparison to former methods of their transmissions and is still very instructive to this day.