Francesco Lo Conte

SUMMARY: Pietro Mazzucchelli (1762-1829), scriptor and in the end prefect of the Ambrosiana Library (1823-1829), was an outstanding librarian, and a scholar of classical, patristic, biblical and liturgical texts as well. He acted also as librarian for the Marquis Trivulzio. In this old family library he made an important discovery: in 1814, studying MS Triv. 686, a 14th century paper MS, he identified the text (the poem Iohannis) as work of the 6th century poet Flavius Cresconius Corippus. The poem, in latin hexameters, was apparently lost since the 16th century. Mazzucchelli, showing a keen paleographical and philological skill, unusual in Italy at that time, published a still remarkable editio princeps in 1820. Mazzucchelli’s corrections to the text are here listed and compared with the readings of the following 19th and 20th century editions.