Massimo da Torino e le agiografie dei santi Canziani: un esempio di intersezione di materiali

At the beginning of the fifth century, Maximus Taurinensis wrote the Sermo Cantianorum using as source a very antique historia referred to the three saints Cantius, Cantianus and Cantianilla. The Sermo circulated anonymous or attributed to saint Ambrosius and it was later used to develop the Passio Cantianorum, built upon the ancient historia and through other hagiographical sources (as the Passio Chrysogoni). A later version of the Passio employed again the Sermo to refresh the text and put it under the authority of Ambrosius due to its pseudo-epigraphical attribution. It is possible to highlight the great interaction of homiletic and hagiographical materials, to indicate new manuscripts and demonstrate the large circulation of both the Sermo and the Passio, always neglected by scholars as operas with a poor, restricted circulation.