“Utrum angeli loquantur et qualiter”. Discussioni sulla locutio angelica tra XIII e XIV secolo: Egidio Romano, Durando di San Porciano e Tommaso di Strasburgo

Is it right to investigate language skills and communicative propensities of the angelic creature? Similar to human nature, but still superior to it, the celestial substance incarnates the gnoseological ideal to which the homo viator tents and aspires: the celestial intellect owns and holds ab origine the totality of ideas and species that man can just formulate ab intellectu. Why then should angels, who know everything, feel the need to communicate? What should they talk about? The biblical text, which contains many dialogues between the angelic and the earthly speaker, is the most effective argument to support the hypothesis of the lingua angelorum. My work aims to analyze three of the most significant reflections concerning the locutio angelica developed between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. A preliminary study simply introductory, is dedicated to the reading of the corpus areopagiticum, the necessary term of comparison for anyone meant, in the Middle Ages, to contend with the angelologic issues. Large part of the thesis is also dedicated to the analysis of Egidio Romano’s De cognitione angelorum, who offered to the Medieval angelology the most appropriate reflection aimed to investigate the characteristics, properties and operations of the angelic nature. The work proceeds with an illustration of the reflections developed by Durand of St. Pourçain and Thomas of Strasbourg on the philosophy of the angelic language. Even if each of the medieval masters intends the notion of the angelic virtus communicativa in his own way and interprets it through his own instruments, from a reading of the texts it seems to emerge a single and constant trend: rather than a comparison with the biblical data, the hypothesis of the locutio angelica responds to the need to cherish the hope that angels turn to us to support and join us in hac vita, and to save us from the mundane solitude to which we would seem otherwise destined instead. [edited by Author]