Giovanni VI Cantacuzeno e l’Islam

Overview & Synopsis

This volume presents a revised interpretative framework and a comprehensive analysis of the anti-Islamic corpus composed by Emperor John VI Cantacuzenus. Particular attention is devoted to the transmission of the text within the broader manuscript tradition of Cantacuzenus’s oeuvre, its intertextual relationship with earlier sources, and, most significantly, its engagement with Demetrios Cydones’s Greek translation of Riccoldo da Monte di Croce’s Contra legem Sarracenorum. These dimensions are indispensable for situating the corpus within the wider context of Cantacuzenus’s literary and ideological production. By approaching the work as an instance of apologetic polemic, this study repositions the corpus within the author's intellectual trajectory and underscores its remarkable originality in the context of Byzantine anti-Islamic literature. The volume includes a complete Italian translation of the text.