Welcome to The Manipulus/Somnium Project

This website provides Open Access research materials from the Somnium (1372) of Giovanni da Legnano in order to document the author's extensive reception of Thomas of Ireland's Manipulus florum (1306). The text is being transcribed from the printed critical edition compiled by Giulietta Voltolina for the volume published by Maria Consiglia De Matteis in 2004 with Banca di Legnano.

This digital resources thus serves as an addendum to the printed critical edition, following the template of two previous websites I developed in 2015-16 to document the reception of Manipulus in two 15th-century texts:

- Giovanni Dominici's Lucula noctis (The Manipulus/Lucula noctis Project)

- Walter Bower's Scotichronicon (The Manipulus/Scotichronicon Project).

Marble carving from the tomb of Giovanni da Legnano, by Jacobello & Pierpaolo dalle Masegne (1383-86), Museo Civico Medievale, Bologna

At present, this website provides several passages from the Prohemium (preface) to Somnium, with links to the relevant fons/fontes apparatus from the Open Access edition of Thomas of Ireland's florilegium provided on The Electronic Manipulus florum Project website. It is expected that this project will be completed by Spring 2025; new edition pages will be added as the work progresses.


©2024 Chris L. Nighman
History Department, Wilfrid Laurier University
Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto


The editor gratefully acknowledges financial support for this project provided by an Insight Grant awarded in 2021 by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for The Digital Auctores Project.
Funds allocated to this component of the Auctores project have been used to pay the salary of Sophia Starkey, an MA student at the Centre for Medieval Studies,
who is working as a Research Assistant on this project.