DIGITED.HEBDOMAD

This notebook is paused. From 2026 to 2027 my research time goes to a master's degree in education, and the close reading of the Hebdomades will resume later. The project page and the reading list remain available as they stand.

Digited Hebdomad

A close reading of Paolini’s Hebdomades

This notebook accompanies a long study of Fabio Paolini’s Hebdomades. The Hebdomades is a vast treatise, printed in Venice in 1589 and built on the number seven: seven books of seven chapters, written as a commentary on a single line of Virgil. The reading proceeds in measured phases. This site keeps the shape of the whole in view.

The whole project at a glance

Seven books, three of them substantial

The septenary, in brief I II III IV V VI VII

Of the seven books, three carry the argument: Book IV on the body, Book VI on nature, and Book VII on the divine. Read together, they articulate what I take to be an integral anthropology, in which body, nature, and the divine are held in relation without being collapsed into one another.

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The arc of the work

Three phases, one long reading

Phase A Paused
Began in 2026 and is paused
Body and nature. A cross-reading of Books IV and VI, and the correspondence they share.
Phase B
In mind
The divine. Book VII, never studied before, with Book VI revisited through it.
Phase C
In mind
The integrated monograph, drawing Books IV, VI, and VII into one reading.
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The project

Paolini’s Hebdomades

The treatise, the neglected books, and the question that organises the reading.
Reading list

The working bibliography

Primary sources and the secondary literature read alongside the project.