Filologija, No. 74, 2020.
Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.21857/y6zolbrp0m
Manuscripts, witness collation and paratexts of the funeral oration of Nicholas, bishop of Modruš, for cardinal Pietro Riario (1474)
Neven Jovanović
orcid.org/0000-0002-9119-399X
; Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu
Abstract
The Latin funeral oration of Nicholas, bishop of Modruš (1427–1480) for the cardinal priest of St Sixtus and the nephew of Pope Sixtus IV Pietro Riario (1445 – 5 January 1474), Oratio in funere reverendissimi domini d. Petri cardinalis Sancti Sixti (after January 18, 1474), is known from seven printed editions (1474–1484) and six more manuscript copies. It was, obviously, a popular example of the funeral rhetoric of papal Renaissance Rome. In Croatian literary history, the oration is also significant as the first printed book by a Croatian author. We bring new material for the history of the reception of Nicholas’ oration, first by reviewing its known manuscript sources. All are humanist miscellanies; six of them are today in Italian libraries; a copy was transcribed by the German humanist Hartmann Schedel, and there is another one in Olomouc, today in the Czech Republic (the only one written in bastarda, typical for Bohemia during the 14th and 15th century; others are in humanist minuscule). There are no traces of authorial interventions and no significant marginal notes or corrections in the manuscripts.
Next, we present a collation of printed and handwritten witnesses, carried out during preparations for a critical edition of the oration. The collation shows that there are two main families, with four witnesses remaining outside these. We encounter readings which dramatically change the sense of the author’s words (in the list of variant readings these are especially 2.1i, 2.1.k, 2.3.o, 2.3.p). A whole sentence (2.4.f) is left out in one family of witnesses, suggesting an editorial intervention; author’s strong claim of holiness of Pietro Riario’s death was in this way somewhat toned down.
Finally, it turns out that the Venetian manuscript, Marc. Lat. cl. XIV, 180 (4667), in which the oration is joined with writings by the humanist monk Girolamo Aliotti from Arezzo, occupies a special place in the textual tradition: it is the only witness to preserve four epideictic epigrams added after the end of the oration; the first epigram praises Nicholas’ book (and proves that Riario was a controversial figure, whom Nicholas’ words had to make more popular), while the remaining three are epitaphs for the deceased cardinal (stressing his contempt for earthly possessions, transience of glory in this world, and capriciousness of Fortune). The epigrams, well written, with a number of subtle parallels with Renaissance Italian poetry (especially Landino’s Xandra from 1460 and Pontano’s Eridanus, began in 1483) were obviously intended as paratexts in an edition, but it was not one of those known to us today.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
241119
URI
Publication date:
17.7.2020.
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