Vergil in the Middle Ages

From its first complete Italian printing in 1872 up to the present day, Domenico Comparetti's Vergil in the Middle Ages has been acknowledged as a masterpiece, regarded by some critics as "a true and proper history of European consciousness from antiquity to Dante." Treating Vergil's poetry as a foundation of Latin European identity, Comparetti seeks to give a complete history of the medieval conception of the preeminent poet. Scholars of the time had transformed Vergil into a sage and a se...