Organising a Literary Corpus in the Middle Ages: The Corpus Nazianzenum and the Corpus Dionysiacum

Through the word corpus, the metaphor of the body is applied to a collection of works by the same author that are transmitted together. These works not only share the same skin, the manuscript, but also function organically thanks to a complex system of paracontents. It is possible to see this system at work in the case of only a very few medieval authors throughout history, cultures and languages; the Corpus Nazianzenum and the Corpus Dionysiacum are such instances. Both Gregory of Nazianzus and Dionysius the Areopagite are super-authors, who forged their own literary identity as much as they shaped the body of their writings. This sets both corpora apart from other collections of patristic works. They are also exceptional because of the large scale and enduring character of their cultural impact in the different cultures in which the corpora were translated, commented and annotated. By confronting these two exceptional cases, it is possible to gain some new light on the intellectual and book-historical aspects of literary creation and reception in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.