Corrado di Hirsau e il “Dialogus de cruce”. Per la ricostruzione del profilo di un autore monastico del XII secolo

[Autom. eng. transl.] The Clm 14159 code of the Staatsbibliothek of Munich contains a long dialogue, transmitted by this single manuscript, concerning the centrality of the cross in the Scriptures and the salvation of the saints, including those lived before Christ. The dialogue is accompanied by an extraordinary cycle of miniatures, partly depicting diagrams and symbolic representations. The work must be attributed to the author of the more well-known Speculum virginum, a character with an discussed identity, and yet a more thorough reconsideration, now also based on the text examined here, leads us to identify with Corrado, a monk of Hirsau, active in southern Germany between the fourth and fifth decade of the twelfth century, a thinker attentive to tradition as well as to the theological novelties of the time, which he reported in his own symbolic language. Coming therefore to fix the traits of a figure so far historiographically elusive, the research expands the knowledge of the theological culture of the central Middle Ages and of the monastic environments fully involved in the intellectual dynamism of the time.