Ways Through Medieval Rome [Swedish Institute in Rome]

The medieval Latin manuscript no. 326 in the Abbey Library of Einsiedeln, Switzerland, is the single most important textual source for the topography of Rome in the Middle Ages. It contains ten pilgrim routes through Rome, where churches and martyr tombs are listed, but also ancient Roman monuments and locations. In an appendix, transcriptions of Latin inscriptions along the routes are collected.

The manuscript shows the way to so much more than Rome as goal for medieval pilgrimage: it is the key to understanding how Rome was constructed as a cultural heritage site and a center for learned travel around the year 800 CE.

In a previous project on the history of guidebooks to Rome, I analyzed the importance of the manuscript for the establishment of the guidebook as a genre, and was also able to reconstruct the medieval routes in the text to a large extent. The aim of the present project is to describe the ways through medieval Rome in a topographical and historical context, with a special focus on how the collection of inscriptions in the manuscript relates to these routes, something which has not yet been done.

Even though some attempts previously have been made at such reconstructions, an overall approach to the contents and functions of the manuscript in its entirety remains to be performed, which would be of great value for the understanding of the construction of Rome as a cultural heritage place as well as for a deeper knowledge of the medieval topography of Rome.