Giovanni Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio (, , ; 16 June 1313 – 21 December 1375) was an Italian writer, poet, correspondent of Petrarch, and an important Renaissance humanist. Born in the town of Certaldo, he became so well known as a writer that he was som ...
's notebooks or ''
zibaldoni'' have been preserved in three
codices
The codex (plural codices ) was the historical ancestor of the modern book. Instead of being composed of sheets of paper, it used sheets of vellum, papyrus, or other materials. The term ''codex'' is often used for ancient manuscript books, ...
, known as the ''Zibaldone Laurenziano'', the ''Miscellanea Laurenziana'' and the ''Zibaldone Magliabechiano''. These are
autograph manuscripts containing both texts copied by Boccaccio and original compositions, plus many notes. All three date from his early years in
Naples
Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...
and
Florence
Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico ...
.
The ''Zibaldone Laurenziano'' and the ''Miscellanea Laurenziana'' were not originally bound as such in Boccaccio's lifetime. They may not have been bound at all. They form a
palimpsest
In textual studies, a palimpsest () is a manuscript page, either from a scroll
A scroll (from the Old French ''escroe'' or ''escroue''), also known as a roll, is a roll of papyrus, parchment, or paper containing writing.
Structure
A scr ...
, written on 18
quarto
Quarto (abbreviated Qto, 4to or 4º) is the format of a book or pamphlet produced from full sheets printed with eight pages of text, four to a side, then folded twice to produce four leaves. The leaves are then trimmed along the folds to produc ...
s and 1
terno of
parchment
Parchment is a writing material made from specially prepared untanned skins of animals—primarily sheep, calves, and goats. It has been used as a writing medium for over two millennia. Vellum is a finer quality parchment made from the skins o ...
recycled from a
Beneventan gradual
The gradual ( la, graduale or ) is a chant or hymn in the Mass, the liturgical celebration of the Eucharist in the Catholic Church, and among some other Christians. It gets its name from the Latin (meaning "step") because it was once chant ...
of the late 13th century. The texts were rearranged into two blocks by Antonio Petrei in the 16th century and passed to the
Laurentian Library in 1568, after which the two blocks were separated into the two codices. The ''Zibaldone Laurenziano'' is a hodgepodge of texts, more miscellaneous than the ''Miscellanea''. They are mostly moral, literary and medieval. The ''Miscellanea'' contains mainly
classical texts. The ''Zibaldone'' was compiled between about 1327 and the late 1340s. The ''Miscellanea'' is mostly a product of the 1340s, possibly into the 1350s.
The ''Zibaldone Magliabechiano'' is written in cursive on paper. Its authenticity was once debated, but it is now universally accepted as Boccaccio's. It has been dated to 1342–1345 and to 1351–1356. It is named for the librarian
Antonio Magliabechi
Antonio di Marco Magliabechi (or Magliabecchi; 29 October 1633 - 4 July 1714) was an Italian librarian, scholar and bibliophile.
Biography
He was born at Florence, the son of a burgher named Marco Magliabechi, and Ginevra Baldorietta.
Although ...
and is now kept in
Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Banco Rari MS 50.
Notes
Bibliography
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{{refend
Works by Giovanni Boccaccio