Alice Montalto

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Academia

In 2022 Alice Montalto graduated with a master degree in Classics (vote: 110 e lode e menzione speciale per l’eccezionalità del lavoro svolto) at the University of Siena (supervisor: Prof. Simone Beta, co-supervisor: Prof. Tommaso Braccini). She studied for one semester in Germany at the University of Heidelberg, participating in an Erasmus Plus-Elan project. In 2022 she participated in a three-month internship at the Historical Collection of the University Library of Heidelberg, working with the team of the Polonsky Project for the digitisation and cataloguing of the Palatini Graeci manuscripts. She is currently involved in a PhD project in Cotutelle between the University of Pisa/Siena and the University of Vienna, Institute for Byzantine Studies. She collaborates with the team of Pinakes, for the development of the digital platform. She is member of the Österreichische Byzantinische Gesellschaft and of the organising committee of the doctoral conference “Classicamente. Dialoghi senesi sul mondo antico”. She has participated as a speaker in several international conferences and is one of the organisers of an international conference at the University of Pisa (4-5 November 2024: “Le molte vite degli oggetti”).

Current research interests: Reception of ancient philosophy (especially the Neoplatonism) and scholarly literature (paradoxography) in the so-called first Byzantine humanism, with a particular focus on the production and transmission of manuscripts and on the tradition of the marginal notes and collection of scholia. Intellectual and philosophical history of Byzantium. Greek palaeography and codicology.

Current research project: Alice Montalto is currently writing a commentary on the content and the palaeographical and codicological features of the manuscript Palatinus Graecus 398, a miscellaneous collection of paradoxography, mythography and minor geographical production. The project aims to reconstruct the process of reception of these forms of scholarly literature in the Byzantine reading and writing circles at the end of the ninth century, taking into account the literary and philosophical background of the manuscript and its affiliation to the so-called Collectio Philosophica. The content of the manuscript is analysed through specific literary and philosophical categories concerning the meaning and the use of the paradox motif in various forms of scholarly literature. Following the process of emergence and development of these literary expressions (with a particular attention to their relationship with the Neoplatonic cultural environment of Late Antiquity), the research focuses on the process of their rediscovery and interpretation in the Byzantine scholarly activity of the ninth and tenth centuries. As far as the palaeographical features are concerned, the literary and cultural profile of the copyist, the “Hand I” of the Collectio Philosophica, is reconstructed thanks to the application of the new principles of the so-called “sociography”: through the analysis of the usus scribendi and the peculiarities of the language adopted by the scribe, it is possible to identify specific elements of his cultural and graphic education. The comparison with the other codices of the so-called Collectio Philosophica, and the description of the forms of interaction between the “Hand I” and the other copyists (which include the levels of interpunction, accentuation and marginal commentary) represent another central point of research, together with the analysis of other possible related manuscripts, such as the production connected to Arethas and the Codex Marc. gr. Z. 450 of Photius’ Bibliotheca.    

Publications:

  • Publication online in team of the following descriptions for the cataloguing of manuscripts Palatini Graeci (Polonsky Project, Bibliotheca Palatina: https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/bpd/index.html):  Pal. Gr. 23, 116, 130, 153, 283, 43, 98, 107, 114, 136, 205, 249, 261, 306, 317, 372, 402, 406.
  • I marginalia del manoscritto Pal. gr. 398: un’ipotesi di classificazione paleografica, in «Medioevo Greco», 23 (2023), pp. 265-305.
  • Storie di manoscritti e di catalogazioni: la collezione dei Palatini Graeci, in «Pluteus», 13 (2023), pp. 71-110.