Guglielmo Cavallo


Guglielmo Cavallo is an Italian palaeographer and Byzantinist, Emeritus Professor of the Sapienza University of Rome.

Life

Cavallo graduated from the University of Bari in 1961, tutored by Carlo Ferdinando Russo; shortly after, he became assistant of Alessandro Pratesi, then Professor of palaeography and diplomatic. In 1969, he moved to Rome and first became Research assistant in Greek Palaeography at the Special School for Archivists and Librarians, also teaching 'Storia della tradizione manoscritta' at the 'Sapienza' University of Rome. In 1978, he became Professor in Greek Palaeography at Sapienza. He retired from his teaching duties in 2008 and was nominated Emeritus.
As of 2025, he is a member of the Comitato per l'edizione nazionale dei classici greci e latini and of the scientific board of its periodical journal, the Bollettino dei Classici. He has served as the President of the former and as General Editor of the latter.
He is national fellow of the Accademia dei Lincei since 2002 and of the Accademia delle Scienze of Turin since 2016.

Research activity

Cavallo is one of the leading Italian palaeographers, specializing in papyrology, Greek and Latin writing of the Ancient and Medieval times and history of the manuscript tradition. His first major academic publication was an extensive study of Greek uncial. In 1974, he delivered a paper at the International Colloquium of Greek Palaeography held in Paris, proposing a new method for studying Greek uncial of the VIII–IX centuries. In 1983, Cavallo produced the first catalogue of Greek hands found in the Herculaneum papyri.
He examined and described Codex Basilensis A. N. III. 12 and dated it to the early 8th century. He examined Papyrus 39, Uncial 059, 0175, 0187, Lectionary 1386 and many other Greek manuscripts from the Byzantine period and organized and directed facsimile editions of Greek manuscripts such as the Codex Purpureus Rossanensis and the Dioscurides Neapolitanus and the 25th and the 19th volumes of the Chartae Latinae Antiquiores. In 1997, with Giovanna Nicolaj, he founded the second series of the ChLA, containing volumes L to CXVI and voll. CXVII and CXVIII. He also edited facsimiles of Greek and Latin manuscripts and two collections of reproductions, with commentary, of Greek literary hands from the early Byzantine and Hellenistic periods, with H. Maehler. In 2008, he published a handbook of Greek and Latin Palaeography of papyri.
With Italian philologist Luca Canali he edited a collection of Roman epigraphs with translation and commentary; with Italian medievalist Giovanni Orlandi he edited the Histories of Rodulfus Glaber; in 2017, he wrote the introduction to the first volume of the Italian edition of Niketas Choniates' History. In 2023, he published a new, collected edition of the 'canons' or lists of exemplary Greek authors from the antiquity to Byzantium.
He authored and/or edited around 500 scientific works, some of which have been translated into foreign languages.

Reception of Cavallo's works by other scholars

In 1970, Paul Canart published an article praising Cavallo's work on Greek uncial. Ten years later, Armando Petrucci praised Cavallo as the "greatest specialist" in Greek Palaeography.

Works

The complete bibliography up to 2004 can be found in

Books

Editions of texts

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Facsimiles, specimina

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Monographs

Authored books
  • Edited books
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Papers, essays

Papers followed by have been reprinted with addenda in Il calamo e il papiro.
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