Paolo Diacono, Carmina, ed. Adriano Russo. Florence: Sismel-Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2024, pp. XII, 834.

An extensive introduction (over seven-hundred pages) accompanies the new critical edition of Paul the Deacon’s Carmina, edited by Adriano Russo. Beginning with a biographical profile (3–27), Russo traces Paul’s life – from his birth, ca. 730, to his retirement to Monte Cassino, and death, before 800 – in order to focus on the different moments in which the poetic production of the writer from Cividale del Friuli matured (particularly at the Lombard and Carolingian courts). Russo then moves on to analyze Paul’s experimentation with his poetic composition skills in various genres (28–67). Our author reworked the canons of the earlier poetic tradition in an original way; for example, we can recognize Paul’s growing interest in the didactic dimension peculiar to the Carmina through the versification of prosaic sources or the tendency to condense themes into a few simple verses. Moreover, Paul uses his verse compositions in different literary contexts: for instance, poems about Saint Benedict were cleverly incorporated into the Historia Langobardorum.