Pietro Gibellini proposes new linguistic theory for Saint Francis’s Canticle

Philologist and literary critic Pietro Gibellini has proposed a new hypothesis regarding the linguistic transmission of the ‘Cantico delle creature’ (Canticle of the Creatures) by Saint Francis of Assisi. In his essay, ‘San Francesco poeta’, Gibellini suggests that the scribe of the oldest surviving manuscript, Codex 338 from the Biblioteca di Assisi, may have inadvertently altered the original Umbrian vernacular.

Because the manuscript was composed primarily of Latin texts, the scribe—accustomed to Latin orthography—likely applied graphic Latinisms to the vernacular sections. While this did not change the underlying meaning, it altered the phonetic rendering of the words. Gibellini argues that modern editions have continued to faithfully reproduce these archaic forms, such as ‘cum tucte’ or ‘et pretiose’, despite knowing they do not reflect the original pronunciation.

Gibellini proposes a ‘restored’ version of the text to recover the original pronunciation and suggests that adjusted punctuation in key passages could offer new interpretations of the work’s meaning.