The Tractatus of Bartolomeo of Ferrara, a Dominican preacher and inquisitor of heresies in the first half of the 15th century, is extant in a single copy in Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS Conv. Soppr. G.VIII. Internal evidence indicates that Bartolomeo was working on the tract in 1424. The incipit says that the text was copied shortly after the death of the venerable Bartolomeo in 1448 (151). While the manuscript attests to the post mortem cult of the author, the fact that the tract survives only in one copy suggests that the use of the text may have been limited.

Bartolomeo's tract is edited in volume 68 of the series Medieval Latin Texts of Italy by Giovanni Paolo Maggioni, whose expertise in medieval Latin philology and sermon studies is demonstrated by critical editions and studies of Iacobus de Voragine's sermons and Legenda aurea. The text, which occupies approximately 133 pages in the latter half of the volume, is preceded by three introductory studies in Italian that establish three different contexts for the tract.

The first study by Tommaso Duranti delineates the shifting attitudes towards the plague in Ferrara, Padova and Bologna from the 14th to the 15th century. Duranti demonstrates the waning interest of chroniclers in plague reports and the emerging anti-epidemic strategies employed by urban authorities after 1430. Duranti contests the stereotype of total social paralysis in the aftermath of the plague, as perpetuated by iconic literary works such as Boccacio's Decameron. Despite the prohibition of public activities such as preaching, education and spectacles, cities were not abandoned and social care was not entirely undermined by the supposed mass exodus of the population. Furthermore, as Duranti shows, remaining in the city was occasionally regarded as a more prudent option in comparison to fuga (23). The study meticulously demonstrates the ways in which the awareness of the correlation between poverty and plague, as well as the nascent concept of the dignity of the diseased gradually led to the establishment of appropriate hospitals with due provisions.

The second part of the study surveys five influential medical plague tracts written between the 1440s and the late 1470s. The discussion of the discourses, structure and medical assumptions of these texts helpfully anticipates the typical and the atypical in Bartolomeo's tract. Duranti underlines the recurrent opposition between medical theory and practice, the charges against medical doctors as ineffective in countering the plague and their focus on causes and prevention instead of therapy, which repeats standard dietary cautions.

The second study by Chiara Crisciani presents Bartolomeo and the features of his Tractatus. The study raises the question of whether the tract was intended to be preached (61). Its explicit references to the reception of the text through both hearing and reading reveal the characteristics of a transitory genre positioned between the practice-oriented tract and the theoretical treatise, popular in fifteenth-century Italy. Subsequently, Crisciani surveys the major topoi and discourses in contemporary Italian plague sermons (by Bernardino of Siena, John of Capestrano and Antonio Bettini). Like other preachers, Bartolomeo is also informed of the medical assumptions of his age and emphasises the superiority of spiritual conversion as the only way of combatting the epidemic. However, he is much less critical of medical doctors than his Franciscan Observant contemporaries. Also, as Crisciani observes, Bartolomeo is more inclined to acknowledge the efficacy of escape. The study ends on two important notes on enigmatic absences in Bartolomeo's writing: his reluctance to cite medical sources (besides Aquinas, the sole medieval authority cited is Robert Holcot) and the lack of references to pastoral texts (93).

The third study by Giovanni Maggioni briefly presents the manuscript, the structure of the text and the macaronic orthography influenced by patina padana. The last section of the study explains editorial principles. The illustrations of the anomalies of the main (first) scribe justify Maggioni's decision to standardise punctuation and spelling in specific cases (116). The critical apparatus running parallel with the edited text in footnotes precisely records all editorial interventions. Readers may still wonder why certain items have not been selected for orthographic standardisation, such as the variant forms of benedicio vs. benedictio (265).

Four full-page colour images (including the first and last pages of the manuscript) and a rich bibliography separate the introductory part from the edition of the text. The images have been reproduced in high quality and relevantly illustrate certain passages of the studies. However, they could have been more organically integrated into the volume by inserting in-text references to the figures when relevant information is discussed in a study.

The edition itself will undoubtedly appeal to a more international readership, as Latin remains more accessible to medievalists than Italian. The text surprises us with its hybridity in many ways. It oscillates between two modes of delivery: oral and reading. The register of the text ranges from very personal reminiscences (203-4 and 237) to very impersonal theoretical summaries of Aristotelian and Thomistic teachings on causation. If the text was conceived as a collection of raw materials for sermons, as Crisciani suggests (111), the degree of elaboration is very eclectic, ranging from a sheer list of points to rhetorically overwrought passages as the following one loaded with puns and alliteration: "Sed quando peccatum est causa peccati, ymmo et peccati pena, et sub peccato unius sepe multi peccant, isto iudicio dei permittitur quod clero peccante publice cum laico in peccato cleri infecto, laicus usurpato iudicio cum peccato in pena sui peccati clericum temere iudicet et puniat dicente domino [...]" (190).

The edition is practically flawless with only a few minor typographical errors: cuipia for culpa (188), nom for non (197), dominorum for deorum (234, sentence 9). Biblical and non-biblical sources are mostly tagged by Bartolomeo and precisely identified by the critical apparatus. Silent biblical quotes could also be referenced, such as "Utinam saperent, et intelligerent, ac novissima providerent."(Deut 32: 29) (153) and "Deus [...] uult homines saluos fieri" (1 Tim 2: 4) (223). The edition is completed with indices of manuscripts, proper names of persons and places in the studies and of proper names of persons and places mentioned in the Tractatus. The volume would benefit from the addition of an index of biblical verses and an index of concepts in the source text.

The edition invites medievalists who will find themselves perplexed by the infinite optimism in Bartolomeo's belief that only faith and spiritual conversion offer a cure against lethal epidemics, as well as by the infinite helplessness of medieval people vis-à-vis the plague. One of these scholars may be able to answer the enigma why Bartolomeo quoted altogether fifteen biblical verses explicitly mentioning the words pestis (and its derivatives) or plaga (in the sense of plague) despite there being approximately 165 occurrences of these words in the Vulgate.

Tamás Karáth