Un elefante percorre il Tirolo (1551/52) e lascia traccia della civiltà libraria del Rinascimento

At the turn of the year 1551/52, an elephant travelled through Europe accompanied by the entourage of Archduke
Maximilian before he became Emperor Maximilian II. The event was widely circulated and documented in numerous
sources. On January 6, 1552 the entourage reached the city of Innsbruck. The fragment labeled “Innsbruck, Universitäts
– und Landesbibliothek Tirol (University and Provincial Library of Tyrol), Frg. 81” (henceforth: ULBT, Frg. 81) is one
of 236 fragments being studied in the Anniversary Fund of the Oesterreichische Nationalbank project, “Die abgelösten
Handschriftenfragmente der Universitäts – und Landesbibliothek Tirol und ihre digitale Erschließung” (The Detached
Manuscript Fragments of the University and Provincial Library of Tyrol (ULB Tirol) and Their Digital Cataloguing), and represents an additional little-noticed source that appears to describe this elephant passage. This paper focuses on the genesis of the fragment and its secondary use as a cover lining. The paleographical-contextual assessment of ULBT Frg. 81 takes us to late medieval humanism; the linguistic assessment to the early modern era. The text contained in the fragment will be published here for the first time. Anton Zingerle already identified parallels to antique texts within the fragment. In the best case, the edition of the fragment will reveal if other records of the text exist in other places, or if it is a unique and not widely disseminated record (Schreiber-zeugnis) or creation (Schreib-erzeugnis) of a courtly or conciliar scribe.