Glossing Boethius Through Dante: Auctoritas and Philosophical Poetry in BML MS Plut. 78.20 and the Dante Commentary Tradition

ABSTRACTThe article examines the function and the significance of a quotation of Purgatorio xix, 7–73 on the margins of a copy of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy which belonged to Bartolomeo Nerucci, a Tuscan grammar teacher who copied several Dante commentaries. The quotation attests to the slow but steady establishment of Dante's vernacular authority among fifteenth-century readers, especially in scholastic circles; and the appreciation of Boethius's as well as Dante's philosophical poetry in Renaissance Tuscany. The study also considers Nerucci's own contribution to the exegesis of the Commedia as well as of the Consolation and concludes that he was, to some extent, an original interpreter, offering an uncommon reading of Dante and Boethius among Renaissance readers of the Commedia.KEYWORDS: Bartolomeo NerucciConsolation of Philosophyfemmina balbaBoethian Musescanon AcknowledgmentsI would like to thank Zyg Baranski for his suggestions on a previous version of this article. All translations, unless specified, are mine.Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 On Lupi, see Robert D. Black, Education and Society in Florentine Tuscany (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 64–65, 101–02, 111, 168–69; Fiammetta Cirilli, 'Mattia Lupi', in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 100 vols (Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, 1960–2020), lxvi (2006), 597–99; Fabrizio Franceschini, 'Grammatici e cultori di Dante tra Volterra, San Gimignano e Colle (secc. XIV–XV)', Miscellanea storica della Valdelsa, 119 (2013), 63–92, (p. 69–73); Tedd A. Wimperis, 'A Humanist Autograph Lost and Found. Mattia Lupi's Annales Geminianenses', Humanistica Lovaniensia, 67.1 (2018), 47–68. Franceschini includes Lupi among the Tuscan admirers of Dante ('Grammatici e cultori', p. 72). Appointed in 1403, Lupi taught in San Gimignano for nearly fifty years (1407–1456); however, while working in Pistoia in 1403, as an assistant of Maestro Antonio Vannini da S. Gimignano, he acquired a copy of Trevet's commentary to the Consolation (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Plut. 77.3), a text which he corrected in its entirety and then used when teaching the Consolation.2 Nerucci's autograph note on the first folio of the Boethian manuscript reads: 'Iste Boetius scriptus fuit a me Bartolomeo Petri de Sancto Geminiano morantis sic in scolis Domini Mathie plebani plebis Aioli pratensis comitatus' This Boethius was written by me, Bartolomeus Petrus de Sancto Geminiano, attending the school of Dominus Mathias, a citizen of Aioli, Prato (BML, Plut. 78.20, fol. 1v). On Nerucci see Robert D. Black and Gabriella Pomaro, Boethius's 'Consolation of Philosophy' in Italian Medieval and Renaissance Education. Schoolbooks and Their Glosses in Florentine Manuscripts – La 'Consolazione della filosofia' nel Medioevo e nel Rinascimento italiano. Libri di scuola e glosse nei manoscritti fiorentini (Florence: SISMEL, 2000), pp. 6, 115–17, and 202–13; Black, pp. 65, 101–02, 111; 'Grammatici e cultori di Dante', pp. 73–83; Fabrizio Franceschini, 'Bartolomeo Nerucci', in Censimento dei commenti danteschi. I commenti di tradizione manoscritta (fino al 1480), ed. by Enrico Malato and Andrea Mazzucchi (Rome: Salerno, 2011), pp. 74–85. On the tradition of lectura Dantis in the first centuries of the poem's reception see also: Da Boccaccio a Landino. Un secolo di 'lecturae Dantis', ed. by Paolo Procaccioli e Lorenzo Böninger (Florence, Le Lettere – Società Dantesca Italiana, 2021).3 Black and Pomaro, pp. 115–17, 202–13, 306–10. For general studies on the Latin Consolation and on Boethius in the Middle Ages and early modern Europe see: A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages, ed. by Noel Harold Kaylor. and Philip Edward Phillips (Leiden: Brill, 2012); 'Agnoscisne me?'. Diffusione e fortuna della 'Consolatio philosophiæ' in età medievale, ed. by Anna M. Babbi and Chiara Concina (Verona: Fiorini, 2018); Boethius. His Life, Thought and Influence, ed. by Margaret Gibson (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981); Boethius in the Middle Ages: Latin and Vernacular Traditions of the 'Consolatio Philosophiae', ed. by Maarten J. F. M. Hoenen and Lodi Nauta (Leiden: Brill, 1997); Boethius Christianus?: Transformationen der 'Consolatio Philosophiae' in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, ed. by Reinhold F. Glei, Nicola Kaminski, and Franz Lebsanft (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010); Pierre Courcelle, La consolation de Philosophie dans la tradition littéraire. Antécédentes et postérité de Boèce (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1967); New Directions in Boethian Studies, ed. by Noel Harold Kaylor and Philip Edward Phillips (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007); The Cambridge Companion to Boethius, ed. by John Marenbon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). For further interpretative studies on the Italian fortuna of Boethius see: Dario Brancato, 'Readers and Interpreters of the "Consolatio" in Italy, 1300–1550', A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages, pp. 357–411; Thomas Ricklin, ' … Quello non conosciuto da molti libro di Boezio. Hinweise zur Consolatio Philosophiae in Norditalien', in Boethius in the Middle Ages, pp. 267–86. For Dante and the Consolatio see Luca Lombardo, Boezio in Dante. La Consolatio philosophiae nello scrittoio del poeta (Venice: Edizioni Ca' Foscari – Digital Publishing, 2013), which includes a full bibliography. For further studies on the femmina balba and Boethius see note 13.4 Black and Pomaro analysed 325 manuscripts of the Consolatio that can be considered as textbooks used for the teaching and learning of Latin in lay grammar schools. Most of these manuscripts include marginal and interlinear glosses, many deriving from the most popular medieval commentaries on the Boethian prosimetrum, namely, those by William of Conches and Nicholas Trevet.5 This version of Trevet's commentary corresponds to the one transcribed in BML, MS Plut. 23 dxt. 11.6 For catalogues of the Consolatio manuscripts with Trevet's commentary, see Courcelle, pp. 412–13; Thomas Kaeppeli, Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum Medii Aevi, 4 vols (Rome: Istituto Storico Domenicano, 1980), iii, pp. 187–96. On Trevet see: Courcelle, pp. 318–19, 412–13; Alister J. Minnis and Lodi Nauta, 'More Platonico loquitur. What Nicholas Trevet really did to William of Conches', in Chaucer's 'Boece' and the Medieval Tradition of Boethius, ed. by Alister J. Minnis (Cambridge: Boydell Lodi Nauta, 'Some Aspects of Boethius' Consolatio Philosophiae in the Renaissance', in Boèce ou la chaîne des savoirs. Actes du colloque international de la fondation Singer–Polignac, ed. by Alain Galonnier (Louvain: Institut supérieur de philosophie, 2003), pp. 767–78.8 Black and Pomaro, p. 207.9 Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS II ii 16, fol. 101r. On Nerucci's Dantean contributions, see 'Grammatici e cultori di Dante'; 'Bartolomeo Nerucci'; see also Saverio Bellomo, Dizionario dei commentatori danteschi. L'esegesi della 'Commedia' da Iacopo Alighieri a Nidobeato (Florence: Olschki, 2004), pp. 345–48.10 BML, MS Plut. 42.14, copied in 1432, includes the text of the Inferno, the entire commentary by Buti on this cantica, glosses extracted from the first version of Guido da Pisa and from Graziolo Bambagioli, notes by a certain 'magister Christianus de Camereno', as well as other 'Dantean' material such as Giovanni del Virgilio's epitaph Theologus Dantes ('Bartolomeo Nerucci', p. 80); BML, MS Plut. 42.15 begins with glosses derived from the so called Falso Boccaccio to the first three cantos (fols 2–6, 9–11 and 12r), then proceeds with Buti's Purgatorio commentary, and Latin glosses that largely derive from the corpus of the Anonimo Latino (fols 1r and 7–8); BML, MS Plut. 42.16 includes 'il proemio al Paradiso [… dell'Ottimo Commento e di seguito il proemio … appartenente al Breve compendium. … il commento del Buti, inframmezzato dal commento integrale dell'Ottimo ai canti XXVII–XXXIII (fols 114v–133r) e da altri proemi ai singoli canti (fols 133v–137r)' ('Bartolomeo Nerucci', p. 80); the manuscript also includes further material from Jacopo Alighieri and Bosone da Gubbio. Finally, Prato, Biblioteca Roncioniana, MS Q III 12 contains the Inferno with the volgarizzamento A by Graziolo Bambaglioli and the so–called Falso Boccaccio.11 On Buti see Fabrizio Franceschini, 'Il commento dantesco del Buti nel tardo Trecento e nel Quattrocento: tradizione del testo, lingua, società', Bollettino storico pisano, 64 (1995), 45–114; Fabrizio Franceschini, 'Francesco da Buti', in Censimento dei commenti danteschi, pp. 192–218.12 Fabrizio Franceschini's contributions are fundamental in helping us understand the Tuscan tradition. In addition to the studies cited so far, see also his 'Letture e lettori di Dante nella Pisa del Trecento (con una postilla su Mart)', in Pisa crocevia di uomini, lingue e culture. L'età medievale. Atti del convegno, Pisa, 25–27 ottobre 2007, ed. by Roberta Cella and Lucia Battaglia Ricci (Rome: Aracne, 2009), pp. 235–78. For a broader overview of Dante's reception in the Renaissance and more generally in the Quattrocento, see Carlo Dionisotti, 'Dante nel Quattrocento', in Atti del Congresso Internazionale di Studi Danteschi, 2 vols (Florence: Sansoni, 1965), i, 333–78; Simon Gilson, Dante and Renaissance Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).13 On the Consolatio and the femmina balba episode see above all: Sara Calculli and Sonia Gentili, 'Dante e lo statuto della poesia tra Boezio e Orazio', Studi Danteschi, 84 (2019), 101–52; Teresa Caligiure, 'La 'femmina balba' e la 'dolce serena', Rivista di Studi Danteschi, 4.2 (2004), 333–66; Gentili, 'Poesia e immagine'; Lombardo, Boezio in Dante, pp. 332–49; Olivia Holmes, 'The Consolation of Beatrice and Dante's Dream of the Siren as Vilification Cure', in The Erotics of Consolation: Desire and Distance in the Late Middle Ages, ed. by Catherine Léglu and Stephen Milner, The New Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan; 2008), pp. 61–78; Giuseppina Mezzadroli, 'Dante, Boezio e le sirene', Lingua e Stile, 25.1 (1990), 25–56; Giuseppe Mazzotta, 'The Dream of the Siren (Purgatorio XIX–XXXI)', in her Dante's Vision and the Circle of Knowledge (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 135–53; Gabriele Muresu, '"Io volsi Ulisse … " (Purg. XIX 22): Dante e le sirene', in his Il richiamo dell'antica strega. Altri saggi di semantica dantesca (Rome: Bulzoni, 1997), pp. 137–51; Luca Lombardo, 'Dante, Mussato e le Muse: sulla difesa della poesia dal primo Trecento a Boccaccio', in Integrazioni all'esegesi dantesca nel cinquecentenario della morte di Bernardo Bembo, ed. by Antonio Sorella (Florence: Cesati, 2021), pp. 233–56; Michelangelo Picone, 'Canto XIX', in Lectura Dantis Turicensis. Purgatorio, ed. by Michelangelo Picone and Georges Güntert (Florence: Cesati, 2001), pp. 287–306; Umberto Taccheri, 'I sogni boeziani del Purgatorio dantesco' (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 2000). On Dante's dreams in Purgatorio: Guglielmo Barucci, 'Simile a quel che talvolta si sogna'. I sogni del 'Purgatorio' dantesco (Florence: Le Lettere, 2012). On Boethius and Dante, as well as Lombardo, Boezio in Dante, see the fundamental studies: Stefano Carrai, 'Sul Boezio di Dante', Bollettino di Italianistica. Rivista di critica, storia letteraria, filologia e linguistica, 2 (2016), 24–30, and Stefano Carrai, Dante elegiaco. Una chiave di lettura per la 'Vita Nova' (Florence: Olschki, 2006).14 ''Io son' cantava, "io son dolce serena / che 'marinari in mezzo mar dismago; / tanto son di piacere a sentir piena!/ Io volsi Ulisse del suo cammin vago / al canto mio; e qual meco s'ausa,/ rado sen parte; sì tutto l'appago!"': (Purg. xix, 19–24); "mi venne in sogno una femmina balba, / ne li occhi guercia, e sovra i piè distorta, / con le man monche, e di colore scialba": (Purg. xix, 7–9). Dante citations are from La Commedia secondo l'antica vulgata, ed. by Giorgio Petrocchi, 4 vols (Milan: Mondadori, 1966–1967).15 Citations are from Boethius, Tractates. De Consolatione Philosophiae, trans. by H. F. Stewart, E. K. Rand, and S. J. Tester (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), pp. 130–435.16 'Who let these theatrical tarts in with this sick man? Not only have they no cures for his pain, but with their sweet poison they make it worse. These are they who choke the rich harvest of reason with the barren thorns of passion. They accustom a man's mind to his ills, not rid him of them an unlettered man, as they usually do, I should not take it so seriously – after all it would do no harms to us in our task – but to distract this man reared on a diet of Eleatic and Academic thought! Get out you, Sirens, beguiling men straight to their destruction! Leave him to my Muses to be cared for and restored to health' (Boethius, Tractates. De Consolatione Philosophiae, p. 135).17 As noted by Lombardo, 'il confronto con la Consolatio è già caldeggiato da autorevoli chiosatori trecenteschi della Commedia (Ottimo, Pietro, Buti)' (Boezio in Dante, p. 333). In his most recent study of the Boethian tradition, Lombardo analyses aspects of this older tradition, paying particular attention to its development during and after Boccaccio ('Dante, Mussato e le Muse'). We will touch upon Boccaccio and his imitators in the latter part of this study.18 Pietro Alighieri, Super Dantis ipsius genitoris Comoediam Commentarium, nunc primum in lucem editum, ed. by Vincenzo Nannucci (Florence: G. Piatti, 1845), pp. 260–62. The whole text is available at 'Dartmouth Dante Project' accessed 19 June 2023. English translation: this author … imagines that he finds this Siren in a dream; that is, he contemplated what moved us to the said three vices, which was the said attraction, which deceives us either about avarice, or about gluttony, or about lust. … This Siren, that is, the aforesaid attraction, in the middle of the sea, that is, in the middle of this world, with her song, that is, with her deceptive delight, makes us drown in the said three vices … Whence Boethius says about this: if men were to be looked at with lynx eyes … For like a swallow is a singing and expert bird, the so-called Siren, that is, worldly attraction, which blinds our eyes with dung. Considering this, Boethius, in the person of Philosophy, exclaims, saying: Go away rather, Seirenes, sweet to destruction.19 Pietro Alighieri, Comentum super poema Comedie Dantis: A Critical Edition of the Third and Final Draft of Pietro Alighieri's Commentary on Dante's 'The Divine Comedy', ed. by Massimiliano Chiamenti (Tempe, Arizona: Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2002), pp. 395–97. For the evidence of what is said in this first part of the premium of the 19th chapter, it must be mentioned that, according to the fictions of the poets, the river Achelous is said to have had three daughters from the muse Calliope … and they were called 'mermaids'. Fulgentius says that this is an integumentum: In truth the sirens were girls who sang very well, and therefore they are imagined to be the daughters of the river Achelous because of his sonority, but because sonority is not worth without artifice, poets also imagine that they were the daughters of Calliope the muse, who sounds like consonance, and because said girls attracted men to themselves with their sweet songs, they were called 'mermaids' from 'syren' which is 'attraction', just because in this world, as if in a certain sea, such earthly and carnal pleasures attract us for the most part and drown us in sins and vices, they are imagined so that the sirens sing in the sea to draw men and boats to themselves …. From there he imagines that she sang so sweetly, as the text says, in which the author wishes to indicate that even above the aforementioned threefold main attraction is the attraction of song and worldly sound. In vain, he leads Philosophy to say of them: Go, O Sirens, even to destruction, etc. Cons. 1 p. I.11.20 Gian Carlo Alessio, 'La "Comedìa" nel margine dei classici', in Studi di filologia medievale offerti a D'Arco Silvio Avalle (Milan: Ricciardi, 1996), 3–26, p. 10.21 Ottimo commento alla 'Commedia', ed. by Giovanni Battista Boccardo, Massimiliano Corrado, and Vittorio Celotto, 3 vols (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 2018), ii, 1085–86.22 'Le postille che sono d'intorno a questo libro et allo 'Nferno et al Paradiso di mia mano trassi io d'uno Dante antiquo tanto che dove era alcuno texto dubio et obscuro era legato insieme quello tale texto … .': 'Bartolomeo Nerucci', p. 78; the note is on fol. 172r of Plut. 42.15.23 Black and Pomaro, p. 116.24 Commento di Francesco da Buti sopra la 'Divina Commedia' di Dante Allighieri, ed. by Crescentino Giannini, 3 vols (Pisa: Nistri, 1958–62), ii, 444–45; also: 'Il Commento alla Commedia di Francesco da 2 vols (unpublished doctoral thesis, Pisa, 2011), and 'Francesco da Buti's Commentary on Dante's New on MS Purgatorio, (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of the at note Black notes that it was taught a in the to the grammar the and Black and Pomaro, p. On this, as well as 'A Humanist 'Some Aspects of and 'The see Black and Pomaro, pp. of the Florentine manuscripts analysed by Black and Pomaro Plut. Plut. Plut. Plut. 23 dxt. II 'A 3 … si … e … in altri Da sono in margine di Black and Pomaro, p. in particular fol. For Trevet's commentary see: Nicholas Ordinis – super De ed. by available in his accessed 19 June Alessio, p. A Dante quotation also on the volgarizzamento of the Consolation by Andrea dantesco di Boezio in Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, in e di Il per Dante, ed. by Luca Sonia and Teresa De (Florence: 2021), pp. The of of the Consolation are a of his the there is no that the of Boethius the with modern poets like Dante. is a on the of the see at 'Consolatio Philosophiae' e nel Trecento which also contains a by de la lo del in volgarizzamento della Consolatio Philosophiae', La del testo, 12 On the authority of Boethius as a author see the studies in Boethius and in particular for the reception the contribution to this by Anna nel volgarizzamento di da pp. For see 'The of Lorenzo A in the of Renaissance Studies, William 'The of Boethius' Boethius and University of Press, of the in Vernacular Traditions of Boethius's De ed. by Noel Harold Kaylor and Philip Edward Phillips (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, pp. Black and Pomaro, p. not only in this but in the of the a of for a on the [… of on the of which in the of and of the of by the which he De to the the the in one person of he most the of and and the to me that this from Thomas Super de ed. by (Leiden: Brill, p. p. On Boethius' see The of in the Middle Ages: The Boethian und zur des (Leiden: Brill, MS Plut. 78.20, fol. the is to Black and Pomaro, pp. On the margins of p. ii è che tanto in / da che li / de a On è sì e non la / da e che / li a e i, Black and Pomaro, p. Black and Pomaro, p. For this manuscript see pp. Alessio, pp. For see for Guido da and Buti's and for see and at 'Dartmouth Dante Project' [accessed 19 June On Dante in the and as well as the studies cited at see also Luca and Boccaccio in the first commentaries on Dante's Commedia Dante e della tra Medioevo e (Rome: Alessio, pp. also notes dantesco a una lettura del che a il p. 'The Muses in the from Philosophiae, 4 (1995), pp. On see Courcelle, pp. Nauta, p. p. p. p. in Plut. 78.20, fol. the Muses themselves for the that a man such as was by p. is that Boethius and are the mind from the of and reason from the of Boethius in the Renaissance', in His Life, and Influence, ed. by Margaret Gibson (Oxford: Blackwell, pp. On the of Boethius by and see and Philosophy for or in New on Renaissance Essays in the History of Science and Philosophy in of ed. by John and pp. Francesco ed. by Francesco (Florence: Le Lettere, p. Giovanni ed. by Vincenzo 2 vols ii, p. by the consolation of not by not even by he or the of the but by and he that with which the are On of poetry as well as 'Dante, Mussato e le see Guido 'La difesa della poesia nel Boccaccio e su Studi 4 Giovanni sopra la di Dante, ed. by Giorgio (Milan: Mondadori, 1965), p. pp. super Dantis ed. by Saverio (Florence: Le Lettere, of poets in to from the of the and their about the of the of the which they on the For a commentary on this see 'Dante, Le pp. Pietro Alighieri, p. Dante's son had a about this also in the first version of his commentary, but there is no of see Super p.