page_title: Opicinus de Canistris
section_title: The Vaticanus latinus 6435 manuscript
hierarchical_section_title: Opicinus de Canistris / Works / Work after 1334 / The Vaticanus latinus 6435 manuscript
caption_attribution_description: English: Biblioteca Apostolica Vatican, Vat. Lat. 6435fol 79v, 1335-1338
context_page_description: Opicinus de Canistris, also known as the Anonymous Ticinensis was an Italian priest, writer, mystic, and cartographer who generated a number of unusual writings and fantastic cosmological diagrams. Autobiographical in origin, they provide the majority of information about his life. When his works were rediscovered in the early twentieth century, some scholars deemed his works to be “psychotic” due to their extraordinary theological musings and schematic diagrams. The merits of this psychoanalytic interpretation, however, are currently under debate.
context_section_description: Opicinus wrote the Vaticanus latinus between June and November 1337 and subsequently inserted addita (the last in December 1352). This manuscript, which was only identified on the eve of World War II, was recently fully published and translated by the medievalist Muriel Laharie as well as several studies by the psychiatrist Guy Roux – a multi-disciplinary collaboration essential to examining this singular work.
  The Vaticanus comes in the form of a paper codex with 87 folios, with only written text in the first half, text and drawings (often map based) in the second half. It is a very dense document.
  This codex looks similar to a journal written in chronological order. However its polymorphous content which is difficult to decipher bears witness to the encyclopaedic culture of its author. Opicinus used all his knowledge to construct a cosmic identity appearing in numerous guises; he is God, the Sun, the Pope, Europe, Avignon, etc. Its colour anthropomorphic maps of the Mediterranean area, precise and curiously organised, illustrate "good" and "bad" characters and animals on which he projects himself and his enemies. The use of symbols, his taste for dissimulating and manipulating (words, numbers, space), and his attraction to the obscene and scatological are omnipresent and relate strongly to similar themes found broadly in medieval culture.
caption: Vatican Lat. 6435 folio 79v.
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