Dante, fragments of Paradiso XI.103–XII.42, decorated manuscript [Italy, Florence, (c.1345–50?)]

DANTE ALIGHIERI

Divina commedia, Paradiso XI.103–XII.42, decorated manuscript in Italian [Italy, Florence, mid-14th century (c.1345–50?)]

a single vellum leaf cut into pieces of various sizes, originally c.355(?)×235 mm; three large, two small, and eleven very small pieces, written in two columns of 42 lines; the pieces comprise:

(1) the largest and most legible piece, c.170×105mm, plus the width of the turn-ins (approximately 5mm is visible, there is perhaps more underneath the paper pastedown), is used as the cover for one board of a printed book; it preserves more than half of a left-hand column and includes Canto XI.107–132; (2) part of one column of text, c.155×105mm, that belongs to the right of the previous fragment: Canto XII.10–33; (3) the bottom of both the previous columns of text, c.115×235mm: column 1: Canto XI.136–39, followed by a four-line rubric: ‘Canto .xii. nelqual frate bonauentura da bagnoregio delordine de minori in gloria di sancto domenicho parla & breuemente la sua uita narra.’; column 2: Canto XI.34–42; with a wide lower margin and centrally-positioned catchwords; (4) the top of the first column of text: Canto XI.103–105; (5) the top of the second column of text, with a 3-line initial in red, flourished in blue penwork: Canto XII.1–6; (6–16) small pieces, some with only a few words of text, or none; one contains part of Canto XII.7–9, and thus supplies text between nos. (5) and (2) above; another has the last words of Canto XI.134–35 and thus supplies text between nos. (1) and (3); others could doubtless be identified and allotted their correct places; one of the largest pieces is attached to one cover of the Tomus tertius orationum Philippi Melanthonis (Wittenberg: Caspar Peucer, August 1557), whose other board is covered with a piece of a 12th-century manuscript, written in a fine Romanesque bookhand, containing part of Jerome’s Commentary on Zephaniah (‘plebs universa consurgit … nec retinent sua pec[cata]’, Migne, PL, XXV, col. 1344); the blind-tooled 16th-century pigskin of the binding has a stamp with the initials ‘VFH’; the Dante pieces rubbed, stained, and otherwise imperfect to varying degrees, but the text on the verso is mostly easily legible

TEXT

As enumerated above, the text comprises Canto XI.103 to XII.42 (‘Et per tornare a conversione acerba … non per esser degna [catchwords:] Et come e’), with only short passages lacking. Differences in wording and orthography between the present manuscript and standard editions can be seen in the very first words, which read ‘Et per tornare a conversione acerba’ as opposed to ‘e per trovare a conversione acerba’.

This is an important new and unstudied witness to the text. The writing on the recto of each fragment is mostly illegible under normal light, but may perhaps be recoverable using digital image enhancement.

PROVENANCE

The present fragmentary leaf is apparently part of the same parent manuscript as a leaf sold in our rooms, 1 December 1998, lot 16, with full-page plate, now Geneva, Bibliothèque de Genève, Comites Latentes MS 316. It was described as A HITHERTO UNRECORDED FRAGMENT FROM ONE OF THE ‘HUNDRED CODICES’ WHICH FORM THE PRIMARY MANUSCRIPTS OF THE DIVINE COMEDY, THE GREATEST LITERARY TEXT OF THE MIDDLE AGES. Like that leaf, the present one was found in the Netherlands in the 20th century; they doubtless share a nearly identical provenance.

The sister leaf is the opening leaf of the Paradiso, starting with its rubric at the top of the left column. This is likely to have been the first leaf of a quire, but even if not, the fact that the text is written in verse, with a regular layout of double columns of 42 lines, means that the present leaf – the last leaf of a quire, with a catchword – may now allow the collation of the parent manuscript to be reconstructed.

It hardly needs stating that 14th-century manuscripts in Italian are rare; medieval copies of the Divine Comedy are very rare (we have found none recorded on the market since the late-14th or early-15th-century copy sold in our rooms, 25 June 1985, lot 82); and any part of any of the ‘Hundred Codices’ is exceptionally rare.

DESCRIPTION OF THE SISTER LEAF

For those without access to the 1998 auction catalogue, we reproduce here below the complete description of the sister-leaf:

_{Single leaf, 356mm. by 235mm., double column, ruled in plummet, 42 lines, written space 274mm. by 180mm. written in brown ink in a neat and elegant Italian notarial hand, a 12-line heading in red, versal initials set out into the margins and touched in yellow, large illuminated initial and three-quarter illuminated border, the initial 8 lines high, 52mm. by 46mm., in lush leafy design in orange, grey, pink and pale and dark blue, with white tracery and burnished gold, full-length border (partly cropped) in scrolling design of similar coloured leaves and burnished gold, recovered from use around the outside of a binding, rubbed and worn, some stains and spots, edges defective, verso very rubbed and text more-or-less effaced, in card folder}

_{A HITHERTO UNRECORDED FRAGMENT FROM ONE OF THE ‘HUNDRED CODICES’ WHICH FORM THE PRIMARY MANUSCRIPTS OF THE DIVINE COMEDY, THE GREATEST LITERARY TEXT OF THE MIDDLE AGES.}

_PROVENANCE

_{Discovered by the present owner in about 1983 as the wrapper around the binding of a copy of Aristotle’s Physics with the commentary of Johannes Landuno, Venice, 1596. The book had been in the Netherlands since at least 1926.’}

_TEXT

_{The Divina Commedia of Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) is universally accepted as one of the greatest literary texts ever written and as the foundation text of the Italian language. No autographs of Dante are known and, apart from a few fragmentary quotations in the margins of notarial documents from Bologna, no codices of the Divina Commedia are older than about 1335. The primary manuscripts, then, are the so-called ‘I Dante del Cento’. This becomes a fascinating occasion where legend and fact seem strangely to coincide. A tale first reported by the Dante scholar Vincenzo Borghini (1515-1580) tells how a certain fourteenth- century Florentine scribe, Ser Francesco di Ser Nardo da Barberino, provided dowries for his many daughters by writing out and selling a hundred copies of the Divina Commedia (cf. V. Borghini, ‘Lettera intorno ai manoscritti antichi’, Opuscoli inediti e rari, 1, 1844, pp.23–4). The story seems scarcely credible, but there are, in fact, a whole group of closely related extant manuscripts of the Divina Commedia, all datable to between about 1335 and 1355, of which two are actually signed by Ser Francesco da Barberino himself, Milan, Bibl. Trivulziana, cod.1080, dated 1137, and Florence, Bibl.Laurenziana, cod. Gaddiano 90.sup.125, dated 1347. They are beautiful books, illuminated by the Master of the Dominican Effigies. “The proceeds of even a few such books would make any daughter worth chasing” (C. de Hamel, A History of Illuminated Manuscripts, 1994, p.157). Around these two signed books are a whole group of almost identical copies of the text, all copied in Florence under the supervision of the same scribe in a single programme of production, all exactly the same size, in double columns of 42 lines of ‘cancellaresca toscana, with exactly the same page layout, versal initials and headings. Whatever the truth of the legend of a hundred copies, this mass-produced set of multiple and almost identical manuscripts acoeaee us with the core codices from which the whole text of the Divina Commedia descends.}

_{Approximately thirty of the ‘Dante del Cento’ survive, including at least six with the arms of Alighieri, which may suggest active publication by Dante’s own family as much as by Francesco da Barberino (e.g., Milano, cod.Braidense, AG xiii, 41; Florence, Strozzi cod.151; Laurenziana cod.40,14; and Riccardiano cod.1010; Eton MS.112; and Morgan M.289; cf. M. Barbi, Per il testo della Divina Commedia, 1891, pp.46-7; G.Folena, ‘La tradizione delle opere di Dante’, Atti del Congresso Internazionale di studi danteschi (20-27 aprile 1965), 1965, I, pp.3-64; G. Petrucci, Introduzione to Dante, La Commedia secondo l’antica vulgata, I, 1966, passim; and M.Roddewig, Dante Alighieri, Die Gottichle Komédie, Vergleichende Bestandsaufnahme der Commedia-Handschriften, 1984; a good plate of Morgan M.289 with the Alighieri arms is in M. Harrsen, Italian Manuscripts in the Pierpont Morgan Library, 1953, pl.25).}

_{The present leaf may be from the same copy as three fragments in Modena (Archivio di Stato, Carteggio di letterati, Dante, and Bibl.Estense, cod. Campori M.1.19; cf. Petrocchi, p.78, with bibliography). It represents a remarkably pure text. By happy chance, this is the opening leaf of the Paradiso, preserving Dante’s name as author, “Comincia la terca cantica de la commedia di dante allegheri di firence chiamata paradiso nella qual tracta de beati…”, with the text to verse 69 “... chel feo consorto in mar degli altri dei”. Almost no manuscripts of the Divina Commedia now survive in private hands, and the last fragment on the market, Sotheby’s, 17 December 1991, lot 6, was no more than a few lines in palimpsest, visible only by ultra-violet light. No copy or fragment of any of the ‘Dante del Cento’ has been sold since Pierpont Morgan bought his copy in 1907.}