Friday Faves: Laura Light talks about "De claustro animae" by Hugo de Folieto
May 22, 2020This stately volume, with large accomplished script and decorated red initials, is an unstudied addition to a group of North Italian copies of an influential treatise on the monastic life by a twelfth-century author. Still in need of a critical edition, Hugo’s text was a true “best-seller” in the Middle Ages, and the author’s use of monastic architecture to correlate with the cloistered life is innovative and makes for captivating reading. The manuscript was once part of the collection of the notorious nineteenth-century book thief, Guglielmo Libri.