AEVUM - 2011 - 3

Felice Feliciano’s collection of inscriptions is transmitted by several manuscripts; one of them, which was supposed to be the oldest and is named Labusianus after the former owner, Giovanni Labus ({ 1853), is presently lost. It is known only from 19th and 20th century scholarly descriptions and photographs of four pages, kept in Albino Garzetti’s archive in Brescia. The history and content of the Labusianus are here studied and it is also compared with other witnesses to the same epigraphic collection, in order to establish its position in Feliciano’s antiquarian production. Against the opinion of Theodor Mommsen, it is suggested that the Labusiano was not the earliest epigraphic manuscript of Feliciano.

Members of the Meli family, a prominent one in the 15th century Cremona, were jurisconsults, notaries and students in artes. Giovanni Meli, iuris utriusque doctor, made his will in 1479, bequeathing his library to his nephew Giovanni Francesco. An inventory of the books (38 or 39 volumes) is included in the will: these are texts of Roman law and canon law with standard commentaries, a few are described as ‘printed’. The book description gives incipit, explicit and estimated value, ranging from 1 1/2 to 35 gold florins.

Hernan Nunez de Guzman, called Pincianus (ca. 1470/75 - 1553), published an edition of Pomponius Mela with castigationes (Geographia Pomponii Melae cum castigationibus Fredenandi Pinciani, Salamanca 1543). The work is here studied in the context of castigationes written by other humanists, and its sources and method are discussed; Hermolaus Barbarus, Mariangelus Accursius, Petrus Iohannes Olivarius, who wrote on Mela and Pliny, are often quoted by Pincianus. Marginal notes in the hand of Pincianus, extant in the incunable of Hermolaus, Castigationes, now Salamanca, Bibl. Universitaria, Inc. 313, are edited and commented. A list of passages of Mela corrected by Pincianus is offered in the Appendix as well as a list of Greek and Latin authors quoted in his castigationes.

The sonnet Euro gentil, che gli aurei crespi nodi has been ascribed to Baldassar Castiglione since the edition printed by Gabriel Giolito, Rime disperse, in 1545. Not long after Giovan Battista Giraldi Cinzio, in his Discorso intorno al comporre dei romanzi (1554), suggested Ercole Strozzi (1471-1508) to be the real author of the sonnet. In spite of that, Euro gentil has been included in Castiglione’s vulgata until modern days. The article investigates the tradition of the sonnet, which include six MSS witnesses; five of them attribute it to Strozzi. A new edition of Strozzi’s lyric poems is provided, with new readings from 16th century MSS. Two previously unknown Strozzi’s sonnets are published from MS. Piacenza, Bibl. Passerini- Landi, Pallastrelli 230. The double tradition of Euro gentil is reviewed and the text compared with the rest of Strozzi’s vernacular poetry, showing the most important common features.

Analysing both the duel scenes and the witchcraft scenes (characterized by an action/ reaction pattern) and the route of Rinaldo towards the crusaders’ camp (intended as the way to conversion) by means of the figures of speech, we can perceive a recurrence of some figures which could have become representative both of the archaic world picture and of the Christian one. Anthitesis, chiasmus, anaphore, parallelism thus become the images of a sort of ‘‘poetic theory of metamorphosis’’ which reveals itself when magic forces or violence affect the action and which is complementary to the ‘‘poetic theory of conversion’’ already codified with reference to Divina Commedia. The latter theory shows forms that go beyond the fixed and repetitive structures of antithesis through the use of correctio and adversative formulas in order to symbolize the way to repentance and to spiritual growth. So Rinaldo’s journey becomes the illustration of that route which, in its rethorical devices and in the reuse of some themes, offers several similarities with the travel of Dante as a character.

Jewish libraries are a valuable source «for the study and history of the handwritten book in all other civilizations around the Mediterranean in general». Collections of Hebrew books in Italy at the end of the XVI century were remarkably rich, both in quality and in quantity. Printers established their activities in several cities and made use of them. Private Jewish libraries were usual in Mantua, Ferrara, Modena, Venice, Verona, Rome, Florence, Trento, Turin since the Renaissance. Moreover, princes and popes, friars and cardinals, paid great attention to Jewish books. Most of these manuscripts, however, were later transferred to public libraries when religious orders were suppressed. The 17th century was characterised by the flourishing of scientific academies and public libraries – such as in Bologna and Milan – where Hebrew books were collected.

For centuries the most precious documents of the Commune of Brescia have been preserverd in an iron coffer (cassone ferrato). A text on the martyrs Faustinus and Jovita, printed at Brescia in 1624, tells that the coffer had been originally made to contains the relics of the Saints, but it was soon turned to keep the documents.

The monastery of S. Salvatore a Settimo, near Florence, founded in the 10th century, joined the Cistercian Congregation of ‘‘San Bernardo in Italia’’ in 1497 and was suppressed in 1782; its MS library was substantial. In the 17th century a large group of MSS was transferred to the main house of the Congregation, S. Croce in Gerusalemme of Rome. This paper aims at providing a census of the surviving MSS, which are to be found all over the world. More than a hundred have been identified. Main places of conservation are Florence and Rome, in Florence the Laurenziana Library, the Central National Library, the archiepiscopal Seminary (ex Cestello Nuovo), the Archivio storico dell’Istituto degli Innocenti, the Archivio di Stato. In Rome all the MSS have been directly inspected, at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Vittorio Emanuele II, the monastery of S. Croce in Gerusalemme, the Vatican Library.

In the early 19th century, Carlo Rosmini, a writer of history and biographies, devoted himself to study the lifes of Francesco Filelfo and Guarino of Verona. In Milan several scholars and book collectors were of great help to him with his research. Marquis Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, patron and in the end dedicatee of the book on Filelfo, gave him free access to his personal library. Pietro Mazzucchelli, scriptor and custos of the Ambrosiana Library, inspected catalogues and other sources for him and checked countless data, saving Rosmini from a lot of mistakes. The result of these joint efforts are two well-designed biographies: Vita e disciplina di Guarino Veronese, which has been superseded by Remigio Sabbadini’s books on Guarino a hundred year later, and Vita di Francesco Filelfo da Tolentino, which is basic up till now.

Heroic poems are important in the literary and human experience of Luigi Pirandello, beginning from his first collection of poems (Mal giocondo, Palermo 1889). In this collection two poems, Romanzi II and IX, show a thematic and lexical similarity with Orlando furioso, cantos VI-VIII, as well as a close existential confrontation with Gerusalemme liberata, cantos XIII and XVIII. Likewise, in both poems of Pirandello, the charm of a fairy woman luring a knight to his ruin reveals its very illusory and deceptive nature. Yet, such allure inspires a desire for eternal beauty, existing only in the Earthly Paradise. Pirandello’s youthful intuitions become afterwards object of academic study: three different editions of Gerusalemme liberata (now in Rome, Library of the Istituto di Studi Pirandelliani) bear a set of marginal annotations in his hand, which he used in his course on literary style at the Istituto Superiore di Magistero.