La 'biblioteca ideale' del card. Bona. Note e appunti intorno alle fonti degli scritti ascetici

The fragmentary and indirect nature of the available information on Card. Bona’s possessions of books – the main source for his intellectual work – makes it impossible to reconstruct their detailed picture. Therefore, when outlining his cultural background, it is essential to proceed more carefully by investigating the author’s connections to those sources that can be identified from his completed works and from manuscripts records. His working method shall be related to the international scene of the XVII century devotion. The ways he exploited and readapted the religious tradition, which he considered as both an authoritative voice and a linguistic model, come to light. Such intertextual reuse intends to keep the religious experience alive in two different ways: firstly, by revitalizing the monastic piety, and secondly, by bringing back the charm of mysticism to the quest for religious perfection. Moreover, this kind of ‘recycling’ aims at retrieving Christian original sources (biblical, patristic, theological) in the wake of the classical tradition and the encyclopedic universalism.