“Figura testuale”, “libro delle figure”, “testo contenitore”: alcune categorie per l’organizzazione delle opere di Gioacchino da Fiore

In Joachim of Fiore's writings it's very common to find diagrams and symbolic representations. Mostly these famous «figure» can be found in the pages of his major works, and in the collection known – from the testimony of Salimbene of Parma – as «Liber Figurarum». On this basis Scholars distinguished Joachim's pictures in «textual figures» (those we find in the writings), «Liber Figurarum» (the collection of diagrams and pictures) and «Fragments of the Liber Figurarum» (single or little groups of diagrams in a manuscript)). Actually, pictures can be found which appear both in the writings and in the Liber Figurarum, and conversely others that aren't neither in this collection nor in the writings. Some remarks about Joachim's figure, and especially about their texts, suggest that their production and their first circulation was in single images on single sheets. Most of those materials were then copied on codex, and the single parchments leaves went lost. One of them can still be found in Vercelli, Archivio Capitolare, in which diagrams and short texts are combined. These considerations show that the manuscript fo Vercelli is a very important trace of a great and lost circulation.