Dialettica e ontologia nella dottrina carolingia delle immagini: i Libri Carolini e le loro fonti

The Opus Caroli regis contra synodum, written under Charlemagne's name as an answer to the Second Nicene Council, have been considered by several historians as the first latin text in the Early Middle Ages concerning philosophical issues. In detail, the work presents a reflection on the nature and the function of sacred pictures that is between iconoclasm and iconodulism, both phases experienced by Bizantine christianity from the first half of the 8th century, in order to consider images as res insensatae so unuseful to be destroied or worshipped. The ontologic definition of images is made possible by ars dialectica, which the first generation of carolingian scholars, led by Alcuin, took in high consideration. The early reception of the Opus was apparently poor, while it was fully interpreted as a Opus de imaginibus only after the Protestant Reformation. The thesis tries to cast light on the real nature of the Libri Carolini in order to establish the correct role of images in text's economy and the development of image theory in the early Carolingian period. PhD dissertation