La Visio Ludovici fra letteratura edificante e divertissement cortese

The present article sets out to analyse a Visio from the second half of the 14th century, the Visio Ludovici, the content and editorial peculiarities of which make it practically unique in earlier and contemporary visionary literature.The text was certainly composed in Italy, and currently there are ten witnesses to its textual tradition: two of these provide a short Latin version, four a long version, also in Latin, two a Catalan vernacularisation and two others a remake from the Veneto area. The article employs a combination of documentary and philological data to demonstrate the fictitious nature of the purported beneficiary of the vision and the intent of the latter to hand down to posterity the pilgrimage made by Galeotto Malatesta Ungaro to the Purgatory of Saint Patrick. It also sheds light on the possible identity of the author of the text: Niccolò de’ Beccari, a man of the court and man of letters who had accompanied the Ungaro on the venture.