Poggio Bracciolini and Coluccio Salutati: The Epitaph and the 1405–1406 Letters
From FirenzeUniversity Press Book: Poggio Bracciolini and the Re(dis)covery of Antiquity: Textual and Material Traditions
Stefano Baldassarri, ISI Florence
Manuscript Magliabechiano VIII.1445 of the Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze seems to be the only witness of an epitaph that Poggio Bracciolini wrote for Coluccio Salutati and that Francesco Novati published in his edition of the latter’s epistles almost a century ago (Salutati, 1911: 4.484).
Sometime in the seventeeth century an unidentified hand added this brief text in the blank space left by the previous scribe, who probably wrote in the mid-fifteenth century. The epitaph was transcribed after a passage from Salutati’s reply to Loschi’s Invectiva in Florentinos.
More precisely, the passage in question (ff. 205r-207v) is the one between 16.4 and 32.25 in my critical edition of this work of Salutati’s1 . As suggested by the incipit and explicit («Videbimus, ecce videbimus […] originem a Romanis») this section concerns one of the topics that Salutati and his fellow citizens held most dear: the account of the Roman origins of Florence2 . The extraordinary political import of this subject may be the reason why the unknown seventeenth-century scribe inserted the epitaph attributed to Bracciolini in that specific part of the manuscript.
Before commenting on the epitaph, I will briefly describe the only witness preserving it and then publish the text in question. As I already noted when introducing the edition of Salutati’s so called Responsiva, ms. Magl. VIII.1445 is a thick, miscellaneous paper codex (ff. II + 374 + IV), middle-sized (217 x 150 mm.), with a modern binding in paper and leather.
In keeping with the title Opuscula varia on its spine, it gathers a number of texts, mostly concerning mythological and rhetorical matters. Assembled in Florence in the mid-fifteenth century, it was likey produced within the Donati family, as argued by Luca Boschetto in a detailed assessment of this manuscript listing all related bibliography (De Robertis, et al. 2008: 102–04). Written in humanistic cursive hand by several scribes (especially A on ff. 1r-210r and B on ff. 211r-256r), this exemplar belonged to the Strozzi library for some time, bearing «730» as its call number.
After the death of Alessandro Strozzi in 1784, it was purchased by Pietro Leopoldo, Granduke of Tuscany, together with the rest of that library, eventually entering the Biblioteca Magliabechiana two years later.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/978-88-6453-968-3.07
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