Maniacoria, Nicola

MANIACORIA, NICOLA. - Deacon of the church of S. Lorenzo in Damaso in Rome at the time of Lucius II (1144-45). Later he became a Cistercian monk in the monastery of S. Anastasio alle Tre Fontane under Abbot Bernard (later Eugene III).

M. composed an excellent little work entitled Suffragones bibliothecae, published by J. P. P. Martin (Introduction à la critique générale de l'Ancien Testament. De l'origine du Pentateuque, Paris 1886-87, pp. cv-cviii) and by H. Denifle in 1888 (Archiv für Literatur und Kirchengeschichte, 4 [1888], pp. 270-76). In it M., who knew Hebrew, offers excellent advice for the correction of biblical manuscripts and for their faithful transcription. He also wrote a Vita of St. Jerome (Beati Hieronymi vita; PL 22, 183-202), perhaps around 1150, making use of the genuine or spurious writings of the Saint, of St. Augustine, of St. Damasus, of St. Gelasius and of St. Gregory; it represents an advance over earlier biographies of the genre, even though it naively accepts many legendary and anachronistic details. M. revised the entire Bible, paying special attention to the Psalter, on the basis of the Hebrew text. He composed a Libellus de corruptione et corruptione Psalmorum et aliarum quarundam Scripturarum; this work (still unpublished), like the Suffragones, is an expression of M.'s critical spirit, which always watched carefully for an exact transmission of biblical or patristic texts on the part of the monk copyists. A work known to and cited by the liturgist Odo, not hitherto traced, was of a liturgical character: De ecclesiasticis officiis secundum ordinem ecclesiae Romanum.

Angelo Penna