Abstract
On what grounds was a manuscript containing a legal document discarded? Who, when, and why decided on its preservation or abandonment? Which documentary types suffered this fate? Were there medieval and modern regulations on the practice of discarding? What paths did the discarded material take? Such are the questions from which the REDDIS project plans to approach for the first time the study of recycled medieval diplomatic fragments preserved in Italy, providing an original contribution to some of the main topics in documentary and cultural history. The first new feature is the aim of the inquiry. Despite its cultural relevance and widespread diffusion, the reuse of manuscripts containing legal documents has never been systematically studied. Moreover, what makes REDDIS so innovative is the perspective of the investigation. We are not only interested in bringing to light previously unpublished documentation. We also want to study the distinctive elements of each functional phase undergone by the recycled diplomatic fragments. This means that we will investigate the essential data of this phenomenon, i.e., the material, visual and conceptual relationship between the recycled medieval diplomatic fragments and the geographical, chronological, and cultural contexts in which they were written, used, discarded, transformed, and reused. Each fragment is modified and, at the same time, modifies the context in which it is inserted, becoming the protagonist of a mechanism of mutual transformation and attribution of meaning. Exploring these processes of use, abandonment, reception, and reinterpretation thus means reflecting on the unstable and transformative nature of the material and textual culture of documentation. We also believe that, in addition to constituting a largely unexplored field of inquiry, the study of recycled medieval diplomatic fragments might pave the way to approach many crucial topics in Diplomatics in a radically new way: the material culture of documentation; the issue of discarding, linked to the changing perception of the usefulness of documents over time; and the relationship between legislation and practice concerning archival preservation. To achieve these objectives, a census of sources will be undertaken and a descriptive methodology will be studied to represent and enhance the specificities of the recycled medieval diplomatic fragments, while remaining interoperable with other descriptive systems already existing within memory institutions. Finally, particular attention will be devoted to the circulation of the research results among the wider public. Since recycling is at the centre of European environmental, economic, social, and institutional policies, REDDIS aims to contribute to this debate by disseminating a historical approach to a highly topical issue.
Results achieved
The project has first of all led to the identification, survey, and digitisation of thousands of reused fragments from manuscript documents dating from the Middle Ages and the early modern period. These fragments, mostly written in Latin and in Latin script, but also including Hebrew and Greek examples, were discarded and later reused mainly as binding material or to repair other volumes and registers. The survey was carried out through the direct inspection of numerous archival fonds and library collections in Emilia-Romagna, Lazio, and other Italian regions. The institutions involved include, among others, the Archivio di Stato, the Archivio Generale Arcivescovile, the Biblioteca Universitaria, and the Biblioteca dell’Archiginnasio in Bologna; the Archivio di Stato in Modena; the Biblioteca Comunale Ariostea in Ferrara; the Biblioteca Palatina in Parma; the Biblioteca Universitaria in Padua; the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, the Biblioteca Angelica, and the Archivio Storico della Comunità Ebraica di Roma. A second major result concerns the development of the REDDIS database. The Bologna research unit actively collaborated with the other research units in designing the database, developed by the Milan unit within the metaFAD digital repository. The system is conceived to describe and enhance the distinctive features of reused documentary fragments. It integrates palaeographical, codicological, diplomatic, and archival approaches and is structured hierarchically in order to record both the current features of each fragment and the reconstructable stages of its history. The cataloguing of the thousands of fragments identified and the creation of the corresponding records are still ongoing. Once completed, the REDDIS database will be made publicly available, giving the scholarly community access to a large body of documentary material that had previously remained almost entirely unknown. Another central objective of the project, especially for the Bologna research unit, has been the comparative study of documentary reuse. Two seminars organised by the University of Bologna provided important opportunities for discussion: Ambiti di produzione, scarto e riuso del documento nel Medioevo: primi risultati a confronto (8 November 2024) and REDDIS – Recycled Medieval Documentary Fragments. Esperienze a confronto e presentazione della mostra virtuale (13 February 2026), devoted to the comparative approach and to discussion of the results achieved by the different research units. The study of documentary fragments sheds light on contexts of disposal and reuse that partly differ from those traditionally associated with the manuscript book: chanceries, administrative offices, public and private archives, and notarial, ecclesiastical, and family archives. At the same time, the paths followed by discarded books and documents often intersected within the same places and practices. Whether Latin or vernacular, Hebrew or Greek, and whether produced in communal, seigneurial, ecclesiastical, or notarial contexts, each reused fragment reflects specific cultural choices and mentalities: different ways of conceiving documents, assessing their usefulness, preserving or discarding them, and giving them a new life through craft practices. REDDIS has shown that these practices sometimes followed local logics and recognisable criteria, linked to material and codicological considerations, political factors, or legal and administrative conditions; beyond local specificities, however, broader and shared tendencies also emerge. Dissemination and public engagement The project has promoted several initiatives aimed at disseminating its results to both the scholarly community and the wider public. Among them was Medioevo sostenibile, organised within the Sustainable Development Festival 2024: a series of guided tours open to citizens and devoted to the recycled documentary fragments preserved at the Archivio Generale Arcivescovile of Bologna. A documentary exhibition entitled Post-scriptum. Sopravvivenze d’inchiostro e pergamena. Tesori manoscritti di riuso dall’Archivio Arcivescovile di Bologna was organised in Bologna at the Lercaro Art Museum, from 25 September to 16 November 2025, in collaboration with the Archivio Arcivescovile di Bologna and the Fondazione Museo Lercaro. The exhibition was part of a broader series organised simultaneously in several Italian archives by the different research units of the REDDIS project. The Bologna unit also curated, in collaboration with the other research units, the open-access virtual documentary exhibition REDDIS – REcycled meDieval DIplomatic fragmentS, published on the website dedicated to virtual exhibitions of the Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies at the University of Bologna: https://exhibits.ficlit.unibo.it/s/reddis/page/introduzione The virtual exhibition presents a small but significant selection of these “former documents”, representing the much larger documentary heritage brought to light during surveys in more than fifty holding institutions across Italy, from Lombardy, Piedmont, and Liguria to Emilia-Romagna, Lazio, and Campania. The fragments range in date from the tenth to the eighteenth century and include Latin, vernacular, Hebrew, and Greek evidence, demonstrating the pervasiveness of parchment reuse. Finally, the results of the research carried out during the project have been presented at several international conferences and have contributed to publications produced by members of the Bologna research unit and of the REDDIS team, including: • C. CARBONETTI, M. MANGINI, M. MODESTI, V. RUZZIN, Il progetto REcycled meDieval DIplomatic fragmentS, in «Studi di Storia medioevale e Diplomatica», n.s., VIII (2024), pp. 555–562, DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.54103/2611-318X/25654. • C. SOLIDORO, Frammenti latini tra le carte estensi, in Manoscritti, scritture, scriventi I. Storia della scrittura o storia degli scriventi? Atti del Convegno di Napoli, 6–7 maggio 2024, ed. by F. DE BIASE, D. GRIECO, R. MONTALTO, P. REA, E. ZAMBARDI, Roma-Padova, Antenore, 2025, pp. 350–351. • C. SOLIDORO, Latin Fragments in the Estensi Archives: New Considerations on the Reuse of Manuscripts, poster presented at the Twenty-third Colloquium of the Comité international de paléographie latine, Scribes and Hands. Old and New Methods of Scribal Identification, 800–1550, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, 17–19 September 2025; forthcoming in the proceedings volume, in preparation for Brepols. • C. CARBONETTI, M. MANGINI, M. MODESTI, V. RUZZIN, Prassi di scarto e riuso documentario tra medioevo ed età moderna, Roma, Tor Vergata University Press, 2026, ISBN 979-12-82347-18-1, DOI: 10.35948/TVUP/979-12-82347-18-1, https://tvupress.uniroma2.it/it/catalogo/prassi-di-scarto-e-riuso-documentario-tra-medioevo-ed-et-moderna/542.Project details
Unibo Team Leader: Maddalena Modesti
Unibo involved Department/s:
Dipartimento di Filologia Classica e Italianistica
Coordinator:
Università degli Studi di ROMA Tor Vergata(Italy)
Total Unibo Contribution: Euro (EUR) 59.151,00
Project Duration in months: 24
Start Date:
30/11/2023
End Date:
28/02/2026
