The essay concentrates on the study of a manuscript in the Biblioteca Comunale in Como, ms. 1.1.11. The codex contains a Meditation de la passione del nostro Segnor Ihesu Christe, a devotional text. Each meditation is illustrated by coloured designs by Lombard masters. The illuminator, active between the XIV and XV century mainly in Milan, is to be identified with the Master of the Modena Book of Hours assisted by the Master of the corali of Lodi. The manuscript is studied in comparison with other devotional texts as example of a vernacular literature on the meditation of the passion, particularly spread among the laity.
The article contains an annotated edition of Della stirpe regale è nato il Fiore, a canzone by Lucrezia Tornabuoni (1427-1482), mother of Lorenzo de’ Medici, contained in ms. Magl. VII.338 of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale of Florence.
This paper presents the identification of the autograph of Ferrara poet Tito Vespasiano Strozzi (1424-1505) through the rediscovery of archival documents and his personal correspondence. Furthermore, the poet’s handwriting is recognized in the manuscript Vaticano Ottoboniano 1661, which contains the most advanced stage of Eroticon libri, the collection of elegies for which Strozzi is best known. The manuscript also reveals the involvement of several secretaries from the Strozzi household, whose hands are traced throughout the codex, providing valuable insights into the dating of its production.
The starting point of this study is manuscript C 56 of the Vallicelliana library in Rome. First, it is shown that three sections of this miscellaneous manuscript originally belonged to the same codex. The now lost manuscript contained texts dealing with canonical law and history and was assembled in the Vallicelliana library: the works contained in these sections of C 56 are all apographs of texts transmitted by other manuscripts from the same library. One of the texts is an unedited Latin version of a history of the Ecumenical Synods: through philological and codicological analysis, the Greek model of this text is identified, and the authorship of the Latin translation is attributed to Portuguese humanist Achille Stazio.
The figure of Giovan Battista Marino, after about three centuries of sinister reputation both as a poet and as a man, requires today to be reconsidered especially in a sector of his production (that of lyricism of devotional subject matter) needed of being finally freed and cleansed from the heap of stratified misunderstandings that shortsighted prejudice or sectarian ideology have gradually made its burden on it. In this essay, by attempting a general framing of his poems of pious theme and an examination of their theological and rhetorical grain, new yardsticks of judgment and new horizons of research of the believing and praying Marino are envisaged.
Among the numerous examples of literary travesty written during the 17th century, Giovanni Battista Lalli’s Eneide travestita and Paul Scarron’s Virgile travesti represent a curious coincidence. The relationship between the two texts, published 15 years apart from each other, has been studied by different critics, who have highlighted either the analogies, that may suggest a direct influence of one author (Lalli) over the other (Scarron), or the differences, which on the contrary could imply the complete independence of the latter from the former. A close analysis of both works, however, shows that the truth might be more complex.
This essay focuses on the phenomenon of clandestine marriages, long widespread in early modern Italy, although the Council of Trent had deprecated them, while still maintaining the free consent of the spouses as a substantial element for the validity of marriage. Some unpublished ecclesiastical trials held in the diocese of Milan in the second half of the 18th century against young people who had married without parents’ consent provide the historian with a valuable opportunity to verify the functioning of ecclesiastical justice and its interaction with the justice of the sovereign; and to observe live the clash between persistent mentalities and new sensibilities in the society of that time, in families, and in affective relationships.
Around 1777 the Cistercian monks of the Imperial Monastery of S. Ambrogio Maggiore in Milan established a printing press within their monastery and a paper mill. In a couple of years they succeeded in producing important and fully illustrated books in the field of history, arts, and sciences. In order to promote sales, they used different methods, including flyers, notices to readers, placards for individual volumes, and a selective editorial catalogue covering the years from 1778 to 1784: this catalogue, the policy of the monks’ publications and collaboration with other printers and booksellers active in Milan are here investigated.
The first part of the article reconstructs the wartime genesis and difficult publication history of Monsignor Alberto Castelli’s Italian translation of T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral (1935), issued by Bompiani in 1947, on the basis of hitherto unexplored archival documents, including the correspondence between Castelli and Eliot, some of whose letters to the Italian scholar have recently been donated to the library of Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan. I then analyse Castelli’s translation, placing it in relation to his pioneering essay on Eliot’s drama in Scrittori inglesi contemporanei (1939) and comparing it with Cesare Vico Lodovici’s earlier unauthorised version.
Ezio Franceschini (1906-1983), Professor of Medieval Latin and Rector of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore during the 1968 student protests, active in the Resistance in the Second World War, was also a writer of short stories. From 1941 to 1967 he wrote short stories for the women’s magazine «Gioia!», the newspaper «L’Italia», and the journal «Vita e Pensiero» published by his University. The aim of the present study is to analyze the author’s autobiographical memories and the echoings of Medieval Latin and modern literature present in the characters and plots of the stories.
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