Il volgarizzamento dei testi storiografici ospedalieri: Esordio e Cronaca dei Gran Maestri da tre inediti quattrocenteschi

The codices containing the Rule and the Statutes of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem were translated, since the beginning of the fourteenth century, into the vernacular languages. In addition to the legislative texts, the manuscripts include narrative texts including the so-called Exordium Hospitalis, a chronicle on the origins of the Hospitallers written by William of Santo Stefano, and the Chronica Magistrorum Defunctorum, which consists of a sequence of short biographies of the grand masters. In the appendix, we propose the Italian version of these texts, which are part of some codices written in Tuscan, at the middle of the fourteenth century, with a Latin-Venetian patina that reflected the Hospitallers' geopolitical horizon. It was addressed to the knights of the tongue of Italy.