Per la storia della parola-segnale: dai manoscritti degli autori antichi a una cappella piemontese del Settecento

One of the most promising results of recent Latin philology deals with the identification of marginal additions wrongly merged into texts in wrong places. Often these notes were accompanied by a signal-word, i.e., the repetition of the preceding or following term of the gap, originally intended to precisely underline the place of restoration. In light of the numerous indirect occurrences of this strategy now confused in the text, only about ten Latin manuscripts with signal-words still preserved in margins are known. To these testimonies is now added the case from the rural chapel of San Carlo Borromeo in Ala di Stura, an Alpine municipality near Turin. The building dates back to the year 1700, and the author of the façade-inscription forgot to report two words, which he then added alongside, indicating the integration through the repetition of a signal-word. This occurrence perfectly overlaps with Latin mediaeval manuscripts and offers a valuable testimony of the prolonged, underground, and unconscious vitality of correction strategies found by philologist in codices.