The narrative elements handed down by folklore are often like the breadcrumbs sown by Hop-o’-My-Thumb. They help us to find a path again. Put differently, they allow us to trace our way back to the spiritual horizons of distant cultural cycles, enfolding them and letting them slip down to us. In this sense, the medieval folklore, or folklore of medieval origin, surrounding Arthur, Parsifal, the Grail and Prester John is of considerable interest. Distinguished scholars have investigated and made explicit what lay hidden in the chivalric narratives that revolved around these figures. A cycle of an analogous kind, which in Italy too enjoyed a cross-cutting diffusion not comparable to that of any classic or of Dante himself (seventeen manuscripts, twelve incunabula, sixteen sixteenth-century printings, forty-six editions from 1618 to 1929; immediate translations into French and Spanish, cinematic and theatrical reworkings, etc.), is that of the Guerrin Meschino of Andrea da Barberino (1370-1432). To the labor of Mauro Cursietti (Antenore, Rome-Padua 2005) we owe the critical edition of the text, whose original title, willed by the author, was Il Meschino di Durazzo. Cursietti reconstructs, with exemplary philological work, both the authentic physiognomy of the fifteenth-century text and the tortuous process of transmission that over the centuries led to notable alterations of structure and of language. The story sets out from the siege and fall of Durazzo, to the detriment of Milone, son of the duke of Burgundy and father of Guerrino. While the parents are imprisoned by the new conquerors, our hero is brought to safety by his nurse, but the ship on which they are embarked falls prey to pirates and Guerrino is sold as a slave at Salonica. Adopted by a merchant, on account of his appearance and his poverty he receives the nickname of “Meschino”. His anonymity will not last long, however; through a series of adventures he is joined by the son of the Emperor. There then begins a veritable quête in search of his parents and his origin, during which he will free Greece from the Turks and will accomplish long and interminable journeys (from Mecca to the earthly paradise), giving proof of extraordinary valor. He will push as far as the Ethiopia of Prester John, to the cave of the Sibyl of Norcia – this is the moment of the tale that here we are concerned to explore – to the trees of the Sun and of the Moon; he enters the enchanted kingdom of Alcina and pushes as far as Ireland. At the end of his wandering, having discovered his origin, he returns to Italy, frees Durazzo, finds his parents again and re-establishes his father as lord of Durazzo, while he himself moves to Taranto, where he will live for many years together with the beautiful princess Artemisia. After the death of his beloved, while he is on the point of withdrawing into the desert to lead the life of a hermit, Guerrino too dies.

This, in extreme synthesis, is the story that in Cursietti’s edition unfolds across eight books and two hundred and eighty-two chapters. The central episode of our knight’s saga is his entry into the kingdom of the Apennine Sibyl (the final part of Book IV and the whole of Book V). It is to be noted, however, that this is not the only Sibyl mentioned in the tale (the etymology of the name remains unknown; she is a sort of “prophetess”, but also an enchantress); alongside her appear the Sabaean one and the one of the Atlas. But let us return to our Apennine Sibyl. The place adjoining her kingdom is defined with a sharp character of primordiality: there are falcons, griffins and wild beasts of the most diverse species. To reach the Sibyl’s cave Guerrino passes by a castle and by a hermitage. As though these were the symbols of the two stages, of action and of asceticism, that precede the knowledge which the figure of the Sibyl personifies. Guerrino leaves castle and hermitage behind him to set about a most perilous trial; the pious hermits try to dissuade him from venturing into the kingdom of the fay, where he would go to «risk his life with the peril of damning himself in hell eternally». The Sibyl is presented as the holder of a most ancient wisdom, prior to Christianity. At the entrance of the cave a dreadful warning is carved: “Whoever enters herein and passes a year without seeking to depart shall not die until the day of judgment, at which time he shall be eternally damned”, almost a reminder of the illusoriness of longevity with respect to eternity. In the cave, which resembles a labyrinth, Guerrino meets various monstrous beings before coming into the presence of the Sibyl and of her court of fifty-three damsels. Guerrino is besieged by the sorceress, but he manages, by means of prayer, to resist her blandishments and all her attempts at seduction. From her he manages, in the end, to learn that his parents are alive; he thus reconquers his origins and abandons the enchanted kingdom. The rest of the story we have already touched upon.
Until Cursietti’s edition, the kingdom of the Sibyl – protagonist of the Guerrino episode – had always been placed in the Sibillini mountains, where a “grotta della Sibilla” and a “fonte del Meschino” are to be found (cf. L. Paolucci, La Sibilla appenninica, Florence 1966; the studies of Desonay, of Rajna and of Febo Allevi). But Cursietti has shown that, when there is talk of Nocea/Norcia, «it is not at all a question of Norcia in Umbria, as has always been believed, but of Lucera, in the province of Foggia, indicated in historical sources also by the denomination of Nuceria and present under the name of Norcia, also in one of the prophecies of Merlin rendered into the vernacular by Paolino Pieri […]. Its seat is found in the Apennine that crosses Apulia and Calabria. The expression “l’Alpi d’Appennino nel mezzo d’Italia” does not therefore indicate central Italy, but simply the median placement of the heights, inland with respect to the coast. The confirmation that cancels every identification with the Umbrian Norcia is offered by the account of Guerrino’s journey from Reggio Calabria to Nocea (VI 4), where it is clearly said that the city lies beyond Aspromonte. Finally the Sibyl herself speaks of queste nostre montagne di Calavria (VXV 4), evidently referring to heights situated in the vicinity» (Cursietti, cit., p. 332, note 3).
The Sibyl has thus lost her kingdom in Umbria but has found it again in Calabria. Now, this discovery, while it takes nothing away from the symbolic value of the cycle of the Meschino, nevertheless opens two interesting lines of inquiry. The first is the identification of Guerrino’s Calabrian route and thus of the itinerary that leads him to the cave; the second is given by the historical-religious problems bound up with the identification of the Nursine Sibyl, which now, purged of this erroneous conflation, can start afresh and await resolution, obviously as far as the documentation may allow.