«L’icona, somiglianza visibile dell’archetipo». Edizione critica, traduzione e studi sulla tradizione testuale degli Antirrhetici I-II di Niceforo di Costantinopoli

This dissertation presents the first critical edition, together with the first Italian translation, of the Antirrhetici I–II by Nicephorus, Patriarch of Constantinople from 806 to 815. The most recent edition of the work is that published in volume 100 of J.-P. Migne’s Patrologia graeca (1863), which reproduces the editio princeps prepared by Angelo Mai in 1849 (Nova Patrum Bibliotheca V). The study aims to fill a long-recognized gap in scholarship by providing a critically established text and an updated translation of a work of central importance for the understanding of Byzantine iconoclasm and the development of related theological and dogmatic reflection. The edition is preceded by extensive Prolegomena, which offer a historical, literary, doctrinal, and above all textual framework. Part I, entitled Life and Works of Nicephorus Patriarch of Constantinople, reconstructs the author’s biography and surveys his literary production within its historical and political context. Part II (Introduction to the Antirrhetici I–II) provides a structured analysis of the work’s contents and proposes a reconstruction of the lost Christological treatise of Constantine V, numerous fragments of which are refuted by Nicephorus; this is followed by an examination of the main dogmatic lines of the Constantinian text and of the argumentative strategy employed in the theological refutation. Part III (History of the Manuscript Tradition) is devoted to a systematic study of the direct and indirect transmission, as well as to an examination of the printed editions. On this basis, Part IV (Textual Criticism) develops a detailed analysis of conjunctive and separative innovations and of paratextual evidence, which proved crucial for elucidating the dynamics of transmission, reconstructing the stemma codicum, and establishing the text. In light of the significance of the discovery, made during the research, of the complete pinax of the so-called “Great Treatise against the First Iconoclasm”, its critical edition is included in Part V (Edition of the Pinax of the “Great Treatise against the First Iconoclasm”). Part VI (Critical Edition and Italian Translation of the Antirrhetici I–II) finally presents the critically established Greek text, accompanied by the facing Italian translation.