A Vademecum for a Missionary. Turin, Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria, ms. E. V. 8

This paper presents a new codicological, palaeographical, and textual analysis of ms. E. V. 8 from the Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria of Turin. It is a composite manuscript consisting in three units, the first of which, datable to the 14th century, is a miscellany. It consists of five texts: a universal chronicle, a treatise on eastern religious and ethnic groups, a treatise on the Tartars, a treatise on the Saracens, a description of the world. The sources of these texts, their adaptation, and the logic presiding their collection are investigated. This study reveals that the collection was composed in the second half of the 13th century as a vademecum for a missionary involved in the the project pursued by the Roman Pontiffs to unite humankind in the Catholic faith. These texts were meant to instruct the missionary about the territorial, ethnographic, and religious context he was supposed to work in and the important role he was being asked to play in the divine plan.