Emilio Giazzi

Giuliano de Anzolis, who lived in Cremona in the XVth Century, is well known as the owner of manuscript Firenze, Bibl. Naz. Centrale, Pal. 556. New documents found in the State Archive of Cremona prove that he was a cloth merchant. An inventory of his books, written on 28th April 1478, includes some books in French and Italian...

A treasure of fragments from medieval parchment codices, mostly taken from bindings, is found in the State Library of Cremona. The majority of these fragments are from legal and liturgical manuscripts. Classical texts are very rare, just three, all of Italian origin: Seneca, Epistulae (14th - 15th cent.); Pliny the Elder and Cicero’s Epistulae familiares, both 15th cent. and written in humanistic script.

The Crotti of Cremona, an old merchant family, counted notaries and officiales of the Duchy of Milan among its members. On 9th August 1486, when the eldest brother came of age, all three Pietro Crotti’s sons received their late father’s property from their aunt Violante Fondulo. The notarial document of receipt includes an inventory of the household goods and four crates of books. The books are individually listed and are Latin grammars and school texts, Latin classical poets and historical works, modern exempla epistularum, humanistic tracts, Dante and Petrarch. Most of them are parchment manuscripts.

A 13th-Century preacher’s book (Cremona, Bibl. Statale, Civ. AA. 1. 72) bears a collection of texts, including St. Bernard of Clairvaux and St. Anthony of Padua. The present binding is 15th-Century: front fly leaves in this binding are two 9th-Century folios taken from a Sacramentary, written in Germany. The texts (fragments of a Missa de devoto and ritual for the dead) follow the 8th-Century tradition of the Gelasian Sacramentary and show close connections with the Gellone and Rheinau Sacramentaries.

Sono qui censiti sei testi classici, tutti di provenienza norditaliana, rinvenuti tra i fragmenta codicum di diversi Archivi cremonesi in cui sono perlopiù impiegati come coperte di atti notarili o di registri vari: un Livio (sec. XV med.) ed un Terenzio (sec. XV in.) in Archivio di Stato; un Lucano (sec. XIV2), un Seneca Oedipus (sec. XIV2) ed un Virgilio Eneide (sec. XIV ex.-XV in.) in Archivio Storico Diocesano; un altro Virgilio Eneide (sec. XIV ex.-XV in.) nell’Archivio della Parrocchia di S. Maria Assunta in Piadena (CR).

Dei molti fragmenta codicum pergamenacei databili tra i secc. IX e XV, conservati nell’Archivio di Stato di Cremona, sono qui censiti i testi classici, sette in totale, reimpiegati come coperte di atti notarili o di registri del Comune. Solo due erano già noti: il famoso Brutus (s. IX, Italia del nord) ed alcuni fogli con le commedie di Terenzio. Gli altri sono nuovi reperti, tutti localizzabili per origine nell’Italia del nord: Seneca Ad Lucilium (s. XIV2) e Thyestes (s. XV in.); Seneca retore Declamationes (s. XIV2); Ovidio Fasti (metà s. XIV); Livio volgarizzato (s. XIV2).