The project PRODIGI has produced a native digital lemmatized edition of a hitherto unpublished text of the Franco-Italian Middle Ages, the second mise en prose of Benoît de Sainte-Maure’s "Roman de Troie" or "Prose 2" (ante 1298), from the manuscript Grenoble Bibl. Municipale 861, an important witness of "Prose 2" and a fascinating historical artifact. The interest of "Prose 2" lies, among other things, in being an original French text written in Italy (Veneto). It is therefore a particularly significant witness of the Franco-Italian textual and linguistic galaxy, which has seen a renewed interest over the past decade, especially with regard to the contribution made by Italian scribes in the spread of Medieval French literature. Finally, from the point of view of cultural history, "Prose 2" is a key component of the Italian reception of the Trojan narrative, a complex panorama that is still being defined in detail. From this perspective, the Paduan-Venetian region between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries shows a singular receptivity: several cities, primarily Venice and Padua, endorse a mythology of origins entirely based on the world of Trojan heroes. As Trojan history becomes integrated into urban historiography, this “familiarity with the ancient” contributes to the later emergence of a cultural attitude known as “Veneto pre-humanism”. The choice of the witness fell on the ms. Grenoble for its remarkable cultural value: this manuscript is the work of a copyist-prisoner, and it is one of the witnesses attributed with certainty to these unusual ateliers since it is explicitly signed; it was commissioned by the podestà of Padua, that is the highest political authority. The studies on the reception of the "Roman de Troie" in Veneto have highlighted a peculiar receptivity of the late fourteenth-
century Padua for Trojan narrative. The ms. Grenoble represents therefore a first emergence of a trend that will fully emerge in the following century. Finally, we must mention the importance, for urban identity, of the myth of Padua’s foundation by the Trojan hero Antenor.
This project have had two main objectives: (1) the complete edition of "Prose 2", that remains understudied, above all due to the lack of editions; (2) the linguistic study of the ms. Grenoble, since "Prose 2" is a very significant text for Franco-Italian studies as it belongs to the category of original French works written in Italy. From these first results, the next step, in the future, it will be the in-depth comparison between the mise en prose and the versified roman, in order to detail the cultural project and the working
methodology of the prosificator with respect to the poem, and identify at least the stemmatic family of the version used as the basis for prosification. This latter element will consistently contribute to the picture of "Roman de Troie" circulation (manuscripts and textual versions) in north-eastern Italy.
