This study examines Franciscae meae laudes by Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), the only poem in Les Fleurs du Mal not written in French. It is in fact a Latin poem of 33 octosyllabic lines, inspired by late medieval hymns. After reconstructing the circumstances that led the author to compose the piece, the analysis focuses on its metre, emphasising how it presupposes the Latin pronunciation used in France at the time. This is followed by a detailed examination of the poem, with particular attention to the language employed by the poet and the medieval Latin poetic models that influenced him; in this section, several errors made by earlier scholars are also corrected. The study concludes with two appendices. The first discusses a parody of Franciscae meae laudes in macaronic Latin, anonymously published in the journal Figaro on 4 June 1857, and also corrects past interpretative errors. The second examines Jean Richepin's (1849-1926) In honorem Baldelarii novempedalis prosa, published in 1896, which was heavily inspired by Franciscae meae laudes.
The manuscript catalog of the library of the humanist Aulus Ianus Parrhasius (ms. Napoli, Biblioteca Nazionale, Lat. 61) hands down the title & laquo;Marinus in Plinium & raquo;, not yet identified by scholars with any volume of Parrhasius. In this paper, through much significative philological evidence, we try to identify this title with a Neapolitan printed copy of the commentary on the Pliny The Elder's Naturalis historia made by the scholar Marinus Becichemus (Neap. S. Q. 30. C. 0167).
Paolo Giovio-physician, bishop and historian-was one of the most influential figures in Italian culture in the first half of the 16th century. His letters offer a privileged insight into the complex political scene in Europe and the Mediterranean, reflecting the climate of tension and shifting alliances that characterised the period. A recurring motif throughout his correspondence is the Ottoman threat, perceived as a constant and crucial danger to Christendom. Through an analysis of his correspondence, this study reconstructs the evolution of this perception in the political and cultural context of Italy and Europe during the Early Modem Age.
Angelo Colocci (1467-1549) played a central role in the development of Roman antiquarianism, yet his actual work on ancient inscriptions remains largely overlooked. This article explores his approach to epigraphy, drawing upon his annotated copies of the Epigrammata antiquae urbis (Rome 1521) and the Inscriptiones sacrosanctae vetustatis (Ingolstadt 1534), alongside his epigrammatic and antiquarian manuscripts. During the 1520s, Colocci transcribed a few inscriptions and collated the Epigrammata with three manuscript collections. He preserved materials from the Roman Academy (ca. 1500), including a topographic description owned by Bertrandus Vaqueras and an excerpt by Annius of Viterbo. In the 1530s-1540s, he accessed sylloges from various scholars and continued to receive epigraphic transcriptions, often being the earliest extant source. For the first time, this study presents a comprehensive list of inscriptions transcribed by Colocci.
A prince of the Church, a man of spirituality, and an authoritative interpreter of the Catholic Reformation, Federico Borromeo (1564-1631) was also a distinguished scholar and a writer. He devoted close and continuous attention to the art of government as well and, in the 1620s, published three political treatises. The following pages are dedicated to the history of the composition of these treaties, based on a series of important manuscripts preserved among Federico Borromeo's papers in the Ambrosiana Library, with the dual purpose of reaffirming his central interest in matters of government and contributing to a topic of great importance, both for those who study his figure and his works today and for the Cardinal himself, who devoted much energy to it in his time: namely, writing and its methods.
The article proposes a new insight into the production of the scribe Niccolo Fonzio (the younger brother of Bartolomeo Fonzio), who was active in Florence from the 1460s onwards. Using palaeographical and archival evidence, the paper also demonstrates that Niccolo joined the Camaldolese monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Florence in the late 1470s, taking the name of Mauro. The article is complemented by a revised list of the manuscripts that can be attributed to Niccolo Fonzio (later Mauro), which includes nine new items and excludes others that had been attributed to him in the past.
This article aims to fill a gap in two investigative areas: Brunian studies (and his translation activity), and Greek oratory tradition (even in its apocryphal ramifications), providing the first critical edition of the Latin translation of letter XII of Pseudo-Aeschines, traditionally ascribed to Leonardo Bmni. The introduction examines the rich manuscript collection (with bibliographical references), to which new codes are added (for a total of 42 units), and its unexpected placement in combination with the Demosthenic or Platonic corpora. The text, constituted according to the rigorous method of text criticism, with its apparatus of the variants, is followed by the Italian translation.
The paper presents an anonymous, carnival-like chant, Li Solfanzini di Siena, which turns out to be the only attestation of the existence of a youth-group of Sienese nobles, active in the second half of the 16th century. The text has come down to us in a ms. preserved in the Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati in Siena and was published, with some alterations, by Curzio Mazzi in 1882 in vol. II of La Congrega dei Rozzi di Siena nel secolo XVI. A brief historical reconstruction of the identity of the company is followed by the publication of a new edition of the chant, based on the ms. and followed by a thematic and stylistic-rhetorical commentary: the possible literary inspirations of the poem are identified and an attempt is made to highlight the author's cultural profile and the group's worldview.
Teresa Verzeri in her letters to confessors is called to fulfill an autobiographical task that is strongly influenced by two factors: the first concerns the writer's relationship with her spiritual directors; the second concerns the particular relationship between the terms `I' and `God'. While the first ascribes the epistolary to the `spiritual' genre, the second reveals a mystical experience. This study focuses on the pole of emission, immersed in an autobiographical self that sees of itself only the effects of an operation that tends to remove it, and whose agent (God) never appears on the scene. The writing moves from a `I' well defined in its psychological concreteness to a repressed `I', since it sees of itself only its own ontological impossibility. Finally, the narrative procedure is no longer modeled on the topographies of an self but in the of the soul.
Although it represents a minor work compared to the astigiano's tragedies, the tragicomedy Adelonda di Frigia, written by Federico Della Valle, appears as a text of multiple resonances. The article investigates the servant-sovereign relationship which, tripled in the plot and characterized by the theme of the fidelity, seems to be a central motif. In the significance of the inspiration, put in relation with Della Valle's biography, a moral intent pursued by the author could be discerned, as in the political passages of the tragicomedy, compared with extracts from Botero's Della ragion di Stato, an attempt to virtuously influence the dukes, main recipients of the representation, may be perceived.
This article sheds light on literary life in the Duchy of Milan during the second half of the sixteenth century through the figure of the poet Giovanni Filippo Gherardini, revealing a more dynamic and multifaceted landscape than commonly assumed. Gherardini skilfully navigated the leading institutions of Milanese society with notable independence and freedom: the Spanish governorship, the local patriciate, the Borromean curia, and the academies of the Val di Blenio and the Affidati. He also held public offices within the Magistrato di Sanity and the archepiscopal charitable institutions. Drawing on unpublished sources, the study reconstructs his biography, networks, and poetic production, distinguished by metrical experimentation and stylistic virtuosity. For the first time, his dispersed and unedited works are brought together. These include ekphrastic poems dedicated to Arcimboldo and Lomazzo, verses on the "Plague of St. Charles", academic compositions, encomiastic and epithalamic poems addressed to ecclesiastical and political figures, funeral elegies, and poetic exchanges with prominent intellectuals such as Goselini, Morigia, Baldini and Puteano. Together, these works offer a significant insight into the vibrant literary culture of late Renaissance Lombardy.
The article analyzes Fitzgerald's corrections to the original typescript of his short story Two Wrongs prior to its publication in the & laquo;Saturday Evening Post>>, and compares them to the subsequent alterations made by the author when republishing the story in Taps at Reveille. This work constitutes the first stage of a broader study on Fitzgerald's cluster stories of Tender Is the Night, whose aim is to demonstrate how short fiction, novels, and autobiographical materials should be understood as a continuum in defining the author's identity as a writer. The analysis draws on the original typescripts held in the Manuscripts Division of Firestone Library at Princeton University, and the research is being conducted through in-person archival visits.
The article presents a recent discovery at the Archbishop's General Archive in Bologna: a 14th-century parchment bifolium containing the statutes of Bologna reused as leaf paper. The fragment is a 14th-century bifolium containing the statutes of Bologna. While some parts correspond to known statutes from 1335, 1352, and 1357, it includes previously unpublished sections that highlight the role of the rector and the presence of the Sancta Romana Ecclesia. Cross-referencing the text with its various corrections, the hypothesis is that the fragment is the only surviving testimony of the Bolognese statutes issued by Cardinal Legate Bertrand du Pouget in 1332. The author offers a diplomatic-interpretative edition of the whole fragment.
John Tzetzes' Carmen de metris is one of the earliest surviving treatises on Greek metrics and among the oldest from the Byzantine era. It was edited by John-Anthony Cramer in 1836 based on only five manuscripts, whereas today as many as twenty are known. The collatio and the recensio of the available witnesses reveal significant differences from Cramer's edition. This study highlights the presence of additional verses: in most cases, these are authorial verses omitted either by Cramer or by the recentiores he used. However, some verses represent later additions to the textual tradition. The restored text not only re-establishes the logical coherence of Tzetzes' statements but also provides a clearer understanding of his metrical doctrine.
Squaring of the circle was a problem warmly debated between the fifth and the sixth century A.D. among Neoplatonic philosophers, an exclusive group, to which the architect Anthemius belonged. The solution proposed by Hippocrates of Chius (fifth century B.C.) was held in great esteem, notwithstanding residual objections, and it is expounded in detail by Simplicius at the beginning of his commentary on Aristotle's Physics. Hippocrates drawing can be superimposed to the plan of the two elements, which in Saint Sophia are added on opposite sides of the central square. Sheer coincidence must be excluded. At that time, as the pseudo-Areopagite warned, Jesus Christ's person, true God and true man, was the insoluble problem for theologians. Justinian would have approved that the very foundation of his church were an appeal to recognize men's deficiency towards the mystery.
The article compares Petrarch's Vita Scipionis, in its three redactions, with the text of Livy's Ab Urbe condita as transmitted in three manuscripts either known to have belonged to, or at various times attributed to, the poet's library: namely, Lat. 5690 of the Bibliotheque nationale de France in Paris, Harley 2493 of the British Library in London, and Arch. Cap. S. Pietro C 132 of the Vatican Library. Aiming to determine which of these witnesses Petrarch used in composing the tractatus, the study concludes that, from the early stages of his work, his knowledge of Livy was primarily based on the Paris manuscript, acquired in 1351, diu tamen ante possessus.
This study focuses on the presence of Western European elements in material culture in Rus' from the second half of the 12th c to the 15th c. It examines the possibility of incorporating various dress accessories, jewelry, and household items from the medieval West into the Old Rus' population. Special emphasis is placed on the reception of Western European symbolism within the Old Rus' context and the use of Catholic objects of personal devotion in an Orthodox world. The study utilizes objects of Western European origin found during archaeological excavations in the territories of Old Rus' principalities as its material.
During the Middle Ages the ascetic-pastoral treatise De uita contemplatiua (CPL 998), written in the early 6th century by Pomerius of Arles, was one of the most widely diffused Latin Patristic texts. While recent studies have focused on the surviving manuscript witnesses of the work, this article provides a survey of the Medieval and Early Modern booklists (9th-17th centuries) that include entries referring to manuscripts of De uita contem platiua. The value of this survey is twofold: first, it allows us to better understand the diffusion of the extant manuscripts of the treatise and, second, it enables us to get more insight into the transmission of the text in areas from which no extant manuscripts are known. As such, this article complements earlier research on the manuscript transmission and reception of Pomerius' treatise.
The article addresses the relationship between Philippe Mousket's Chronique rimee and its epic sources. It specifically focuses on the summaries of four chansons de geste included by Mousket in his work (Destruction de Rome-Fierabras, Garin le Lorrain, Girart de Vienne, Renaut de Montauban), comparing them to the versions of these gestes known from other sources and to the chronicle sources (Geste de France) versified by the chronicler. Particular attention is given to the rewriting of the Chanson de Roland contained in the Chronique rimee.
