Il cod. Taur. gr. CCXVI (Typikón di Casole) tra Diehl, Omont, Batiffol e Luigi G. De Simone. Lettere e documenti editi ed inediti

The letters of Pierre Battifol (1889), Charles Diehl (1883, 1884, 1886), and Henri Omont (1890) to Luigi G. De Simone are published here, along with drafts of two reply letters by De Simone to Diehl (1884, 1886) and a brief paragraph that appeared in the Rome-based daily newspaper La Tribuna (1886). Through his acquaintance Gioacchino Stampacchia, Luigi G. De Simone (Lecce, 1835-1902) discovered in 1880 the manuscript Taur. gr. CCXVI in the Royal Uni-versity Library of Turin, which is the Greek manuscript known as the Codex of the Typikón of the Byzantine Monastery of Casole, near Otranto (Lecce). The texts, now published here for the first time with commentary, reveal that De Simone was not only the discoverer of this manuscript or the recipient of Giuseppe Cozza-Luzi’s Lettere casulane (1898 and 1900) regarding the manuscript, but also a scholar who contributed significantly by offering suggestions and planning research on this Typikón. For instance, he commissioned a complete transcription of the manuscript by Abbot Filippo Matranga in Messina, conceived of an editorial project to publish the entire manuscript with a Latin translation, and envisioned the involvement of the City of Otranto in this project – especially as 1880 marked the fourth centenary of Otranto’s conquest by the Turks. Finally, the texts published here also confirm that De Simone was the goto person for the authors of the letters presented here whenever they sought information about the ancient Terra d’Otranto. This included even a case of sensational false news regarding Greek parchments supposedly discovered in Bari’s Cathedral in 188