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Petronius on the Eastern Shores of the Adriatic: Codex Traguriensis (Paris, BNF, lat. 7989) and Croatian Humanists
Bratislav Lučin
orcid.org/0000-0003-2356-0353
; Marulianum, Split
Sažetak
1. Introductory Remarks
This paper endeavours to reconstruct the history of the celebrated Trogir codex of Petronius (Paris, BNF, lat. 7989) in the period from its origin until the middle of the 17th century, when it was found by Marin Statilić (Marinus Statileus) in the library of Nicolò Cippico (Nicolaus Cippicus) in Trogir.
Paris, BNF, lat. 7989 (Codex Traguriensis) was written in Florence, between 1423 and 1425, in the milieu of Niccolò Niccoli. One hand copied out the Tibullus, Propertius, and Catullus (at the end of the Catullus the scribe recorded the date, 20 November 1423), Ovid’s Epistula Sapphus (Her. 15), Petronius’ excerpta brevia (A) and Cena (H), Moretum. A later hand copied out Claudian’s Phoenix (Carm. min. 27); at the end of the codex, another hand added the epigram Ad Leonem ebreum. The scribe of the main text in Paris, BNF, lat. 7989 – the a hand, so called – remains unknown to this day. Albinia Catherine de la Mare (1976), following Remigio Sabbadini (1920), hypothesizes he might have been from Veneto or Dalmatia. The marginalia in the codex were written by three hands: a (the most numerous notes); b (a few short notes to both of Petronius’ texts); c (a copy of the Claudian poem, some short notes and variants in all the texts except the Cena).
2. Paris, BNF, lat. 7989 and Marko Marulić
In 2005, I established that the scribe of the Claudian poem in Paris, BNF, lat. 7989 was the Split humanist Marko Marulić (Marcus Marulus, 1450–1524). Marulić, to whom hand c belongs, entered annotations in almost all the texts; there are the fewest of them in the Satyricon and most of them relate to the Catullus poems. On the pages with Petronius’ text he recorded only two marginal titles and three curly vertical lines; all of these marginal interventions are in the part containing the excerpta vulgaria, in fact, only alongside the verses Troiae halosis and Bellum civile. On the other hand, Marulić entered numerous interventions in the Catullus part of the manuscript: alongside almost every poem, he wrote a short accompanying note in the margin, some kind of summary, and he entered many emendations into the text of the poems, writing them in the margins or between the lines, or even over the hand a. At a rough guess, there must be no fewer than four or five hundred such variants or emendations. In these interventions, he drew on a commentary to the poems of Catullus published in 1496 by the Paduan humanist Palladio Fosco (Palladius Fuscus, ca 1450/60–1520) and on an edition of Catullus, Tibulus and Propertius printed in 1502 by Aldo Manuzio. Marulić’s copy of Claudian was probably made in the 1490s (see Lučin 2006), and the notes to Catullus were made after 1496, or after 1502, and at least on two occasions. The abundance and the character of Marulić’s interventions in Paris, BNF, lat. 7989 and the length of time over which they were made, lead to the conclusion that he was not a fortuitous and coincidental user of the codex, but its permanent owner (see Lučin 2007).
3. Hypotheses concerning the history of Paris, BNF, lat. 7989 before it arrived in Marulić’s hands
Both Remigio Sabbadini (1920) and Albinia Catherine de la Mare (1976)noticed the uncommon circumstance that the codex – although it contained a previously unknown text – did not cause any ripples or spawn any new copies (to this day, H is the only extant manuscript of the Cena); they both explained this by the codex having gone out of circulation shortly after being produced. They assumed that it ended up in Dalmatia, where it was in fact discovered in the mid-seventeenth century. In her important study, De la Mare hypothesized that the owner of hand b might have been the humanist Georgius Begna from Zadar (died about 1437); he was a friend of the humanist Petrus Cippicus (Cepio) of Trogir (around 1390–1440), to whom he sent some of his copies of classical writers. This might explain the fact that in the middle of the seventeenth century the manuscript with the Cena was found in Trogir, in the library of the Cippicus family. It may be added now that a manuscript source of 1708 says the Petronius codex was once possessed by Coriolanus Cippicus (1425–1495), the son of Petrus, a warrior of renown and the writer of the wartime memoirs Petri Mocenici imperatoris gesta (Venice, 1477) (see Girolamo Cippico, Cronologia dell’Illustrissima casa Cippico dall’Anno 1171, unpublished manuscript, 1708, Split, State Archives in Split, Archives of the Ivčević Family, 11: Miscellanea, libro X, fols. 59r–66r).
As Marulić was on friendly terms with Coriolanus Cippicus, it would seem that we could assume the following sequence of owners of the codex: Georgius Begna – Petrus Cippicus – Coriolanus Cippicus – Marko Marulić (see Lučin 2010). But while the last link in this chain has been determined with complete certainty, the first now appears to be extremely unreliable.
3.1. From Florence to Zadar? In 1976, De la Mare founded her hypothesis that the owner of hand b might have been Georgius Begna on the following considerations: 1) Begna was the only humanist from Dalmatia known to have been in Florence at the time of the creation of the codex: in August 1425 he was in the city completing his copy of the first book of Caesar’s De bello civili (Paris, lat. 6106); 2) from a comparison of several folios from Paris, BNF, lat. 6106 with the notes from hand b in Paris, BNF, lat. 7989 she concluded that both perhaps belong to the same scribe. From Paris, BNF, lat. 6106 she took the end of Caesar’s text (fols. 141r–143r, »apparently also by Begna«) for comparison. But by consulting the microfilm and colour photographs of the manuscript, I was able to determine that these very three folios surely did not come from Begna: the hand in which they were written is very different from Begna’s, the scribal abbreviations are also substantially different, as is the capitalization (cf. Figures 1, 2, 4, 6: Begna’s handwriting; Figures 3, 5: handwriting of an unknown scribe). Besides, as I was informed by Mme Amandine Postec, Service de réponses à distance de la BnF – SINDBAD, the quire which contains folios 135r–144r was reworked: folios 141r–143r were written later and sewn in with the other folios of this quire. Accordingly, the hypothesis that hand b was Begna’s must be discarded, as must, in consequence, the assumption that it was through Begna that the codex arrived in Zadar from Florence.
James L. Butrica pointed out in 1984 that in the manuscript Vat. lat. 5135 (which contains Cicero’s Sominium Scipionis and Macrobius’ commentary to that work) there are several marginal notes made by the scribe of the Trogir codex, i.e. the owner of hand a. I would add that hand a is clearly identifiable on the margins of Vat. lat. 5135, not only by the ductus, but also from the characteristic monogram Nota (cf. Figure 7 a-g). Butrica does not reference the numbers of the folios, but according to my examination (from the black and white digitised microfilm images of Vat. lat. 5135) they must be ff. 20v, 21r, 25r; cf. Paris, BNF, lat. 7989, pp. 194, 215, 220, 230.
In this context it is perhaps not unimportant to recall the circumstance that Butrica does not mention: in a letter from London to Niccolò Niccoli in Florence, of June 13, 1420 (?) Poggio Bracciolini suggests that he should seek for the explanation of the literary kind to which Petronius’ work belongs in Macrobius’ Commentaria in Somnium Scipionis (in the very text, then, that is written in Vat. lat. 5135 and alongside which the scribe of the Trogir Petronius put in several annotations). Unfortunately, in the Vatican manuscript (f. 5v, near the bottom) there are no marginal notes in the place to which Poggio alludes (Macr. Somn. 1.2.8),and we can only speculate as to whether the owner of hand a read Macrobius precisely because he knew of Poggio’s instruction.
3.2. From Zadar to Trogir? We know reliably that Georgius Begna gave Petrus Cippicus at least one of his manuscripts: a copy of the Pseudo-Pliny’s work De viris illustribus (Marc. lat. XIV 124 [4044]) and, adds De la Mare, probablybequeathed him his incomplete manuscript of Cicero’s Philippicae and Topica (Bodleiana, MS. Canon. Class. lat. 224). De la Mare thus hypothesises that Paris, BNF, lat. 7989 too might have come into Petrus’ hands as a gift from Begna while he was still alive, or as part of his legacy after his death in August 1437. But since her hypothesis that Begna might have been the possible owner of the Petronius codex has proved to have been unfounded, it is not very likely that Petrus Cippicus obtained the manuscript from the Zadar humanist.
3.3. From Florence via Padua to Trogir? More light on the history of Paris, BNF, lat. 7989 might perhaps be thrown by the textual tradition of Propertius. It would seem that the only descendant of Paris, BNF, lat. 7989 is a manuscript kept in Mons (Bibl. Publ. 218/109; it contains neither Petronius nor Moretum). Butrica noticed that some of the interpolations in the Propertian text in Mons 218/109 derive from one of three (or four) manuscripts of the so-called eta group, which were written in Padua around 1460—probably from that which was first owned by Marcantonio Morosini (Vicenza, Biblioteca Comunale Bertoliana G.2.8.12 [G.19.2.3]). He concludes that the eta readings in Mons 218/109 suggest that it might have been written in Padua around 1460–70 (see my Filiation 1). Since Mons 218/109 derives from Paris, BNF, lat. 7989, this might mean that the Petronius codex was in Padua (or in Veneto) at about the same time. Accordingly there still remains the question how it could have remained unnoticed by the Italian humanists. However, De la Mare (according to Butrica) suggested that the place of origin of Mons 218/109 might have been Trogir, where, then, Paris, BNF, lat. 7989 must have been in 1460–70, as must have some eta manuscript (Butrica was thinking actually of the Morosini manuscript, because, according to his description of Mons 218/109, »there is also present some interpolation from Vicenza G.2.8.12. or a related manuscript«). Trogir is also given as a possible place for the production of the Mons manuscript on Catullus Online – Manuscripts, http:// www.catullusonline.org/CatullusOnline/index.php?dir=edited_pages&pageID=11 (accessed 1 February 2013).
Tending to confirm this possibility is Coriolanus Cippicus’ having dedicated his book of wartime memoirs to none other than Morosini. Perhaps Coriolanus might have been a mediator in the transmission of Morosini’s manuscript from Padua (or from Venice, where Morosini lived) to Trogir. What is more, the Propertius text in the Morosini manuscript also belongs to the eta branch of the textual tradition, as does the Propertius in Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 5174, which was completed in Trogir in 1464 (see my Filiation 2). At the end of Vat. lat. 5174, in around 1465 Ioannes Lipavich of Trogir inscribed his elegy concerning his return from Venice to his native city. Palladio Fosco (Palladius Fuscus), too, might have had a certain role in mediating between Padua/Veneto and Trogir; in the 1480s he dwelt in Trogir as rector et magister scholarum. He was on friendly terms with Coriolanus Cippicus and his son Aloysius (Alvise), also a distinguished humanist.
3.4. From Trogir to Split or from Padua to Split? It would seem then that the Petronius codex arrived in Split sometime between 1460–70 and 1490, either directly from Padua, or via Trogir. A direct connection need not be ruled out, for many people from Split studied in Padua, and the family of Marulić possessed a house in the city. But more likely is the hypothesis that the codex arrived, in some still unknown way, in Trogir, where it was the property of some member of the Cippicus family, and thence into the hands of Marulić. Perhaps it is not accidental that the earliest Marulić’s notes in Paris, BNF, lat. 7989 can be dated in the 1490s: in fact, Coriolanus died in 1493 and in the same year Fosco left Trogir for Zadar (where he stayed until 1516).
3.5. Marginalia as signpost to Trogir and Split? An additional sign of the connection of the owner of hand a with Trogir and Split can be seen in the previously unnoticed correspondences of several of the Nota monograms and the short textual marginalia of different manuscripts. It has already been remarked that the monogram and the ductus of hand a from Paris, BNF, lat. 7989 appear in the margins of Vat. lat. 5135. But in Vat. lat. 5135 there is a monogram in f. 43r that was entered by some other hand; in its form, it corresponds with the monogram that we can find several times in the margins of MS. Canon. Class. lat. 224 (on f. 23v, 27v, 28r, 33v), that is, in the part of the codex that was copied by Petrus Cippicus (cf. Figure 8).
Apart from that, I have noticed that the characteristic monogram of hand a appears, if only once, in the margin of the oldest manuscript (perhaps the autograph) of the Historia Salonitana of the 13th century Split historian Thomas the Archdeacon (Archives of the Split chapter, KAS 623, f. 34r). The ductus of the short note by this monogram is also similar to the annotations of hand a on the margins of Paris, BNF, lat. 7989 (cf. Figure 7 h).
It is possible, then, that the scribe of the main text in Paris, BNF, lat. 7989 and Petrus Cippicus had in their hands the same manuscript (Vat. lat. 5135); the tenuous connection of the owner of hand a and Trogir would accordingly be at least hypothetically reinforced. The marginalia on the Split codex of Thomas the Archdeacon might perhaps indicate that the scribe of Paris, BNF, lat. 7989 had some kind of connections with Split (for, as far as is known, codex KAS 623 never left Split).
4. The history of Paris, BNF, lat. 7989 after it left the hands of Marulić
After Marulić’s death the codex (once again?) came into the hands of the Cippicus family. Three sources tell of its subsequent fate: the signature on the codex itself »Questo libro sia di mi Polantonio Cipico« (f. 1r); the preface Typographus lectori in the Frambotto’s editio princeps of the Cena Trimalchionis (Petronii Arbitri fragmentum nuper Tragurii repertum, Patavii 1664); G. Cippico, Cronologia dell’Illustrissima casa Cippico from 1708 (see above, 3).
4.1 The learned Hector Cippicus. The preface Typographus lectori is the first to mention »Hector Cippicus, great-grandfather of Nicolaus Cippicus«, as the reputed owner of the Petronius codex. The Cronologia gives as its first owner after Coriolanus Cippicus the »exceptionally learned and distinguished Ettore Cippico«. The writer of the Cronologia speculates that Ettore Cippico (Hector Cippicus the elder, ca 1482 – 1533) might have found the Petronius codex among the prose works of the famed Coriolanus, his forebear, who in turn might have come across it in his campaigns in the Aegean, on Cyprus or in Asia Minor (ibid.,
f. 65v). His speculation about the place of the find is clearly wrong, but the report itself perhaps preserves the trace of the tradition that the codex had been owned by Coriolanus.
4.2. Polantonio Cipico. Polantonio Cipico, author of the signature at the beginning of the codex, is probably Polantonio no. 4 in Table 1, the grandson of Ettore, born around 1550. Nicolò Cippico (1621 – ca 1679), in whose library the codex was found, was the great-grandson of Ettore and the grandnephew of Polantonio (4). Unfortunately, we know nothing in any detail of either of them. (See Table 1: Diagram showing the history of Paris, BNF, lat. 7989 in the Cippicus family; the owners of the codex are indicated in bold.)
The finding of the codex probably took place around 1645, a little earlier than has been thought to date: as Paolo Tremoli pointed out in 1995, Marin Statilić (Marinus Statileus, 1615–1680), who found it »after having returned from the college of Padua«, obtained his doctorate in utroque iure in Padua on 21 May 1644 (see M. P. Ghezzo, I dalmati all’Università di Padova dagli atti dei gradi accademici 1601–1800, Venice, 1992, p. 42).
4.3 How does Marko Marulić fit into the history of the codex owned by the Cippicus family? The codex probably came into Marulić’s possession from Trogir, actually, from Coriolanus (1) Cippicus, with whom the Split poet was on good terms. There is no doubt that the manuscript, if not before, at least not long after Marulić’s death (January 5, 1524) went back to the same city – indeed, into the same family – from which it had probably come into his hands in the first place. How did that happen? Instead of a firm foundation in facts, we have here only a few contextual items of information. Two female members of the Split Alberti family – to which Marulić’s mother belonged – were married to two members of the Cippicus family. Ludovica Alberti was married in 1525 (a year after Marulić’s death) to the wealthy Michael (2) Cippicus. Still more interesting is that Bunava Alberti (who died before 1551) married (in around 1518) the learned Hector Cippicus, brother of Michael (2) and the first confirmed owner of the celebrated codex after Marulić.
5. Two excurses
5.1. Who is Leo ebreus? An epigram written at the end of Paris, BNF, lat. 7989 is addressed to Leo ebreus, a pawnbroker, to whom the anonymous author of the poem surrenders his last piece of property – a coat. But it does not necessarily follow from the fact that Leo was the addressee of the epigram entered into the codex – as Émile Chatelain and Stephen Gaselsee thought – that he got the codex as well as the coat. Some scholars hold Leo to be the celebrated Judah Abravanel (Abrabanel), known as Leone Ebreo. But it is hard to imagine that this distinguished physician and philosopher, the writer of Dialoghi d’Amore, would have dabbled in petty money-lending activities. In addition, when Judah arrived in the Apennine Peninsula, in 1492, the codex must already have been in Marulić’s possession, and after Marulić’s death it ended up directly in the possession of the Cippicus family, from all accounts. For all of this, it seems that under the name of Leo ebreus there is some other and very much less distinguished person.
5.2. Who is the writer of the foreword Typographus lectori? The writer of the foreword Typographus lectori published in the 1664 edition of Cena is uncommonly well informed about the circumstances in which the codex was discovered and its history in the Cippicus family, and the question arises as to whether this text might really have been written by the typesetter himself, i.e., Paolo Frambotti. Doubts were raised even by Peter Burmann in his celebrated edition of the Satyricon of 1709.
It was Stjepan Krasić who in 1987 established that the preface Typographus lectori was composed jointly by diplomat and polymath Stjepan Gradić (Stephanus Gradius, 1613–1683) of Dubrovnik, at that time Second Curator of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, together with renowned historian Ivan Lucić (Ioannes Lucius, 1604–1679) of Trogir. Krasić indeed found a foreword written in Gradius’ own hand, prepared for the edition of 1664 (Vat. lat. 6919, ff. 36-37).
6. Conclusion
The first solid and completely incontestable fact in the history of the Codex Traguriensis, after the inscription of the year 1423 at the bottom of p. 179, consists of the notes and emendations of Marko Marulić, made at the end of the 15th and in the early 16th century. The early history of Paris, BNF, lat. 7989 is thus divided into two segments: before and after Marulić’s proprietorship. The first period is still shrouded in the mist of ignorance, filled out with some more or less acceptable hypotheses, while in the second period there are intermittent but properly documented items of information that show that from the second quarter of the 16th century the codex was constantly owned by the Cippicus family: from Hector the elder, via Polantonio (4) to Nicolaus, in whose library it was found by the then thirty-year-old Marin Statilić. It is very clear today that, after Florence, Trogir and Split were the key places in the early history of the codex; perhaps in the written heritage of these three cities, the answers to numerous still unresolved issues are nevertheless hidden.
Ključne riječi
Codex Traguriensis (Paris, BNF, lat. 7989); Petronius; history of manuscript; marginalia; monograms; Georgius Begna; Coriolanus Cippicus; Marko Marulić; Cippicus family; Split; Trogir
Hrčak ID:
120326
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Datum izdavanja:
22.4.2014.
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