Lo scriptorium di San Nicola di Casole (Otranto, Lecce) e il suo typikon (Codex Taurinensis Graecus 216): un’analisi storico-letteraria

A typikon, stored in the library of the University of Turin under the signature Graecus 216 (ex-Royal Library Codex C III 17), portrays the industrious cultural activity of the monastery of St. Nicholas of Kasoulon, founded in 1098/99 by the monk Joseph, thanks to the patronage of Bohemund, prince of Taranto and Antioch, about a few miles south of Otranto (Lecce), in the south-eastern tip of Italy. According to the testimony of the manuscript, it can be given a broad outline of the scriptorium’s daily activity as a crucial centre of culture and knowledge’s transmission through the manuscripts’ copying. This factor allowed a considerable diffusion of texts both in the religious either in the secular milieu, by making the Hydruntine coenobium to become one of the Byzantine culture’s most outstanding centres in Southern Italy.