Poesia epigrafica pavese di età longobarda: le iscrizioni sui monumenti

In the most successful period of the Lombard kingdom Pavia benefitted from the commissions of rulers who contributed to the construction and decoration of religious buildings. Churches and palaces, especially the one at Corteolona, planned by king Liutprand, were embellished with metrical inscriptions. Though the originals are lost the texts are preserved in the manuscript tradition, in particular in the ‘Sylloge circumpadana et subalpina’, a collection of early Christian and medieval inscriptions from northern Italy, copied in the 9th century, in MS Vat. Pal. lat. 233. This paper analyses the Longobard inscriptions from Pavia – in the city and in the Corteolona palace – and offers a new critical edition with a detailed commentary on their technical and literary qualities, placing them on the context of Lombard culture in the 9th century.