Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, 1232

Shelf mark in the Parva Libraria of S. Spirito: V.12

Material: parchment

Dimensions: 160 x 115 mm (93 x 62)

Leaves: I + 90 + I’

Place of origin: Florence

Script used by Boccaccio: littera textualis

Date of writing: 1367–1368

Contents:

Boccaccio, Giovanni, Buccolicum carmen (fols. 1r-89r)

Description:

Identified by Oskar Hecker as an autograph manuscript by Boccaccio, and held in the Parva libraria of Santo Spirito (the shelf mark «V.12» can be seen on folio 91v), this copy of the Buccolicum carmen was produced around 1367–68 and was perhaps intended as an elegant plaquette for his friend Donato Albanzani, the dedicatee of the eclogues. The dating proposed by Marco Cursi on a palaeographic basis to 1362–63 is untenable, because the later eclogues contain clear allusions to historical events occurring after those years, such as the return of the papal see to Rome in 1367 after the years of the Avignon ‘captivity’ (in Eclogue XI, Pantheon).

The manuscript, due to its small format and similarities in layout, bears a resemblance to the ms. Vat. lat. 3358, Petrarch’s autograph copy of the Bucolicum carmen dated 1357, which Boccaccio consulted and copied during his stay with Petrarch in Milan in 1359, likely using it as a model for the layout of his own Bucolicum carmen. Dissatisfied with his own verses, Boccaccio soon undertook an intensive process of revising and rewriting his eclogues, which, unfolding through several phases, lasted until the final years of his life. The parchments of the Riccardian (designated as witness R by editors) appear to quite tormented and in a rough state and show how Boccaccio frequently made erasures, scraping away textual segments that were sometimes minimal (individual graphemes) and sometimes extensive, comprising groups of verses (even as many as ten). Boccaccio sometimes replaced the text and amended the wording by rewriting over the erasure; at other times he deleted verses without replacing them, filling the blank spaces with the annotation «vacat»; in a couple of cases he added verses in the upper or lower margin of the page (fols. 33r-v, 36r, 37r-v, 38r, 40v, 41v, 44r, 48r, 52v, 79v). From being an elegant dedication copy, this codex thus became an ‘editorial copy’, taking the form of a ‘moving original’. As has been known since the pioneering studies of Hecker and Aldo Francesco Massèra, the Buccolicum carmen was transmitted, like other works by Boccaccio, in distinct versions: a textual form predating R has been identified in the manuscripts Florence, BML, Plut. 39.26, Kynžvart, Státní Zámecká Knihovna, 2 D 4 and Siena, Bibl. Comunale ‘degli Intronati’, H VI 23. These three manuscripts descend from a second, lost original compiled by Boccaccio himself, which was recorded as follows in the 1451 inventory of the Parva Liberia of Santo Spirito: «Item in eodem banco V liber 6 bocolicorum domini Iohannis Boccaccii, completus, corio rubeo, cuius principium est Tindare, non satius, finis vero in penultima carta Lilibeis vallibus edos etc».

Although Boccaccio’s eclogues may be regarded as an example of ‘unfinished’ (or perhaps it would be better to say ‘unpolished’), the text still visible in R corresponds to the one Boccaccio left us upon his death and reflects the work’s ‘final’ editorial form. Within the tradition of the Buccolicum carmen, one manuscript deserves special mention for its particular connection to R: it is the ms. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 558, a manuscript copied by the Florentine notary Domenico Silvestri, a contemporary of Boccaccio, directly from R around 1370. This witness proves so important because it allows us to recover the original reading from passages that Boccaccio had erased in R and which are now no longer legible.

The Riccardian autograph manuscript offers further points of interest. Of particular note are the exegetical notes added here and there by Boccaccio, especially alongside names of Greek origin: fol. 38r «Lipi grece anxietas / Batracos grece rana»; fol. 60v «Saphu genitivus grecus»; fol. 64v «Elpis grece spes latine»; fol. 66r «Critis grece iudex»; fol. 66v «dylos grece timidus»; fol. 68v «Lycos grece albus»; fol. 69r «camalos grece hebes latine»; «Terapon grece»; fol. 78r «Tiphlos grece orbus»; fol. 81v «Trinos grece luctum / penos grece dolor et labor / thlipsis grece mestitia / lipis grece  anxietas / scotines grece obscuros»; fol. 84v «nuntius» to translate into Latin Aggelos, the title of the 16th and final eclogue, etc. The exegetical note on fol. 88r does not concern a Hellenised name; here Boccaccio has noted ‘papa’ to clarify the identification of the character Egon (Bucc. XVI 107); similarly, the gloss ‘proprium nomen’ serves to disambiguate the word ‘Violantes’ (Bucc. XIV 242), the name of the deceased young daughter (which risked being misinterpreted as a present participle). A grammatical note, useful for clarifying the exegesis of the passage, appears on fol. 60v: «Saphu genitivus grecus». There are further grammatical clarifications, such as the explanations regarding the use of quīs to be understood as quibus, which help to avoid misunderstandings in the exegesis of the hexameters.

In fine handwriting, however, the word «anapestus» is specified on folio 22v, indicates the prosody of the word sŭpĕrīs, which is placed in the fifth foot of the hexameter in place of the dactyl. Boccaccio’s elective affinity with Greek culture is further demonstrated in the final unnumbered parchment of the codex, where Boccaccio has inscribed a Greek saying painstakingly transliterated into Latin letters: «Anippos agramatos fylon acarpon». Giuseppe Di Gregorio traced it back to a non-literary motto of oral and popular tradition: «Ἄνθρωπος ἀγράμματος ξύλον ἄκαρτον [ἐστίν] », that is, «the illiterate man is a fruitless tree». Having probably heard it spoken aloud in class by his teacher Leontius Pilatus, the saying was placed, after mentally reconstructing its wording, as a seal upon his most ambitious poetic work, serving as a warning and a seal upon his life as a man of letters. This particular penchant for transliterating a Greek saying into letters of the Latin alphabet finds its counterpart in Boccaccio’s Greek signature on the final page of the Toledan Dante, at the foot of the portrait of Homer.

Link to the integral reproduction: teca.riccardiana.firenze.sbn.it/index.php/it/

Bibliography:

Boccaccio autore e copista, pp. 209-22 (T. De Robertis); CURSI, La scrittura, pp. 29-31; DE ROBERTIS, Il posto, pp. 151-52, 160, 165; PIACENTINI, ‘Varianti attive’, pp. 1-20; ID., Una redazione sconosciuta, pp. 39-43.