Appendix E—Bibliographical Note of the Earliest Biographies and Biographical Notices of Dante
APPENDIX E
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE OF THE EARLIEST BIOGRAPHIES AND BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES OF DANTE
1. GIOVANNI VILLANI (d. 1348): in his Cronica or Istorie de’ suoi tempi (ix. 1351); first printed at Venice, 1537. [English translation by P. H. Wicksteed (Hull, 1898).]
2. GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO (1313-1375): Vita di Dante2; first printed at Venice, 1477 (prefixed to the edition of the Divina Commedia, published by Vindelin da Spira). [English translation by J. R. Smith (New York, 1901); and by P. H. Wicksteed (London, 1904).]
Boccaccio also inserted brief biographical notices of Dante in his Comento sopra la Commedia (Lezione prima), first printed at Naples (with the imprint of Florence), 1724; and in his De Genealogia Deorum (xv. 6), first printed at Venice, 1472 (Italian translation by Giuseppe Betussi, first printed at Venice, 1547).
3. ANTONIO PUCCI (circ.1310-circ. 1390): in his Centiloquio, in terza rima (cap. 55) (written in 1373); first printed at Florence, 1772-1775 (in vols. iii.-vi. of Delizie degli Eruditi Toscani, published by Padre Ildefonso da San Luigi).
4. BENVENUTO DA IMOLA (circ.1338-1390): in Latin, prefixed to his Commentary on the Divina Commedia; first printed at Florence, 1887.
5. MELCHIORRE3 STEFANI (d. 1403); in his Storia Fiorentina (Lib. vi. rub. 340); first printed at Florence, 1759 (by Mehus, in his Vita Ambrosii Traversarii).4
6. FILIPPO VILLANI (d. 1404): in Latin, in his Liber de Civitatis Florentiœ famosis Civibus (ii. § 2); first printed at Florence, 1826.
7. FRANCESCO DA BUTI (1324-1406): prefixed to his Commentary on the Divina Commedia; first printed at Pisa, 1858.
8. ANTONIO CARTOLARIO : in Latin,5 appended to De Vita ac Moribus Philosophorum veterum; first printed at Florence, 1759 (by Mehus, in his Vita Ambrosii Traversarii)6 (anonymous Italian translation, printed at Venice, 1521).7
9. DOMENICO DI BANDINO (circ. 1340- circ. 1414): in Latin, in Book v. of his Fons memorabilium Universi8 (completed about 1412); first printed at Florence, 1759 (by Mehus, in his Vita Ambrosii Traversarii).
10. SIMONE SERDINI DA SIENA (otherwise known as Il Saviozzo) (circ. 1360-circ. 1419): biographical details in his poem in terza rima on the Divina Commedia (written in 1404)9; first printed at Paris, 1577 (in the editio princeps of Dante’s De Vulgari Eloquentia, edited by Jacopo Corbinelli, pp. 76-81).
11. GIOVANNI DEI BERTOLDI (otherwise known as Giovanni da Serravalle) (circ. 1350-1445): in Latin, prefixed to his Commentary on the Divina Commedia (completed 16 January, 1417)10; first printed at Prato, 1891.
12. LEONARDO BRUNI (otherwise known as Leonardo Aretino) (1369-1444): Vita di Dante; first printed at Perugia, 1671; and at Florence, 1672. [English translations by P. H. Wick-steed (Hull, 1898); and J. R. Smith (New York, 1901).]
13. SECCO POLENTONE (circ. 1375-circ. 1448): in Latin, in his De Scriptoribus illustribus latinœ linguœ11; first printed at Florence, 1747 (by Mehus in his edition of Manetti’s lives of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio).
14. SANT’ ANTONINO (1389-1459); Archbishop of Florence, 1446): in Latin, in his Opus Historíale: first printed at Nuremberg, 1484.12
15. GIANNOZZO MANETTI (1396-1459): in Latin, Vita Dantis (originally written in Italian); first printed at Florence, 1747.
16. FLAVIO BIONDO (1388-1463): in Latin, in his Historiarum ab inclinato Romano Imperio Libri xxxi (Dec. ii. lib. ix.) (completed about 1440); first printed at Venice, 1484; a compendium of Biondo’s work was made, in Latin, by Enea Silvio Piccolomini (1405-1464; Pope Pius II, 1458), and translated into Italian by Lucio Fauno (“Le Historie del Biondo, da la declinatione dello Imperio di Roma, insino al tempo suo, che vi corsero circa mille anni. Ridotte in compendio da Papa Pio, e tradotte per Lucio Fauno,” Venice, 1543).13
17. Anonymous Notice, in Cronica Generate del 1321 al 1470, at Ferrara; first printed at Milan (s.a.) (by A. Solerti, in Le Vite di Dante, Petrarca e Boccaccio, scritte fino al secolo decimosesto).14
18. FILIPPO DI CINO RINUCCINI (1392-1462); Vita did Dante;15 first printed at Florence, 1779 (in Delizie degli Eruditi Toscani, vi. 245 ff.).16
19. GIOVANNI MARIO FILELFO (1426-1480): in Latin, Vita Dantis; first printed at Florence, 1828.
20. CRISTOFORO LANDINO (1434-1504): prefixed to his Commentary on the Divina Commedia; first printed at Florence, 1481.
21. JACOPO FILIPPO FORESTI (commonly known as Filippo da Bergamo) (1434-1520): in Latin, in his Supplementum Chronicarum orbis ab initio mundi usque ad annum 148217; first printed at Venice, 1483 (anonymous Italian translation, printed at Venice, 1488; and another, by F. Sansovino, Venice, 1581).18
22. HARTMANN SCHEDEL (d. circ. 1500): in Latin, in his Liber Chronicarum19 (the famous Nuremberg Chronicle, the printing of which was completed under the author’s supervision on 12 July, 1493); first printed at Nuremberg, 1493.
23. Anonymous Notice, in Latin, in the Supplement to the first Venice edition (5 September, 1494) of the Speculum Historiale of Vincent of Beauvais.20
24. JOHANN TRITHEIM (1462-1516): in Latin, in his De Scriptoribus Ecclesiasticis (c. 79)21; first printed at Basle, 1494.
25. RAFAELLO MAFFEI DI VOLTERRA (commonly known as Rafaello Volterrano) (1451-1522): in Latin,22 in his Commentariorum Urbanorum Libri xxxviii; first printed at Rome, 1506.
26. PAOLO GIOVIO (1485-1552); in Latin, in his Elogia Virorum literis illustrium; first printed at Florence, 1549.
27. FRANCESCO MAUROLICO (fl. circ. 1550): in Latin, in his supplement to the De Poetis Latinis of P. Crinito and P. Sampieri; first printed at Messina, 1865.23
28. GIAMPIETRO FERRETTI (1482-1557): in Latin, in his Vitae virorum illustrium civitatis Ravennae; first printed at Ravenna, 1864.24
29. GIROLAMO DELLA CORTE (fl. circ. 1560): in his Storia di Verona lib. xxii25 fino al 1560; first printed at Verona, 1596.26
30. BERNARDINO DANIELLO DA LUCCA (d. arc. 1560): prefixed to his Commentary on the Divina Commedia; first printed at Venice, 1568.
31. ALESSANDRO VELLUTELLO (circ. 1519-circ. 1590): prefixed to his Commentary on the Divina Commedia; first printed at Venice, 1544.
32. LODOVICO DOLCE (1508-1568); prefixed to his edition of the Divina Commedia; first printed at Venice, 1555.
33. MATHIAS FLACH FRANCOWITZ (known as Flaccus Illyricus) (d. 1575); in his Catalogus Testium Veritatis; first printed at Basle, 1562.27
34. JACOPO CORBINELLI (fl. 1570-1590); in the editio princes of Dante’s De Vulgari Eloquentia (pp. 81-2), printed at Paris, 1577.
35. MARCANTONIO NICOLETTI (1536-1596); in his Vite degli scrittori volgari illustri libri iv; first printed at Milan (s.a.) (by A. Solerti, in Le Vite di Dante, Petrarca e Boccaccio, scritte fino al secolo decimosesto).28
36. JEAN PAPIRE MASSON (1544-1611): in Latin, in his Vitae trium Hetruriae procerum Dantis, Petrarchae, Boccacii; first printed at Paris, 1587.
37. FRANCESCO BOCCHI (1548-1618): in Latin, in his Elogia Florentinorum Doctrinis Insignium (i. § 20); first printed at Florence, 1609.
38. ALESSANDRO ZILIOLI (fl. 1600-1630); in his Istoria delle Vite de’ Poeti Italiani; first printed at Milan (s.a.) (by A. Solerti, in Le Vite di Dante, Petrarca e Boccaccio, scritte fino al secolo decimosesto).29
The above lives and notices of Dante (with the exception of Nos. 3, 10, 26, 29, 33), many of which were previously more or less inaccessible, as being either in MSS. or in rare early editions, have recently been printed, some for the first time, by Angelo Solerti in his collection of the lives of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, down to the end of the sixteenth century, published at Milan under the title of Le Vite di Dante, Petrarca e Boccaccio, scritte fino al secolo decimosesto (s.a.).
Information as to the credibility and sources of many of these notices of Dante will be found in Storia della Letteratura Italiana (vol. v.), by Adolfo Bartoli (Florence, 1884); Dante and his Early Biographers, by Edward Moore (London, 1890); Studi Danteschi, by Vittorio Imbriani (Florence, 1891); Alcuni Capitoli delta Biografia di Dante, by Michele Scherillo (Turin, 1896); and in the volume of Solerti mentioned above.
In addition to these, the reader may be referred to the Vita di Dante of Count Cesare Balbo (first published at Turin in 1839; reissued at Florence by Le Monnier, with additional notes by Emmanuele Rocco, in 1853), of which an English translation, with modifications and additions, by Mrs. F. J. Bunbury, was published in London in two volumes in 1852; the Vita di Dante of Melchior Missirini (published at Florence in 1840); the Storia della Vita di Dante by Pietro Fraticelli (first published at Florence in 1861), which is based upon the Memorie per servire alla vita di Dante, collected by Giuseppe Pelli (first published at Venice in 1758, in second part of vol. iv. of Antonio Zatta’s edition of Le Opere di Dante; second and enlarged edition published at Florence in 1823); the Companion to Dante (London, 1893) of G. A. Scartazzini, which is a translation (with modifications), by A. J. Butler, of the same author’s Dante-Handbuch (Leipzig, 1892), which in its turn is a rifacimento of the author’s own Prolegomeni della Divina Commedia (Leipzig, 1890); and, lastly, to the first part of Nicola Zingarelli’s exhaustive volume upon Dante in the Storia Letteraria d’ Italia (Milan, 1903), of which a compendium (La Vita di Dante in Compendio), was published at Milan in 1905.
References to numerous other works (many of them by English writers), including the valuable monographs by Isidoro Del Lungo, will be found in the bibliographical sections30 of the above-mentioned works of Scartazzini, as well as, under various headings, in the same writer’s Enciclopedia Dantesca (Milan, 1896-9).
1 In modern editions of Villani this chapter is numbered 136.
2 Boccaccio’s Vita di Dante exists in two forms, one of which, commonly known as the Compendio, is shorter than the other. The latest writer on the subject (E. Rostagno : La Vita di Dante, Testo del così detto Compendio attribuito a Giovanni Boccaccio. Bologna, 1899) argues, with some probability, that the so-called Compendio is Boccaccio’s first draft of his work.
3 In the Delizie degli Eruditi Toscani (vol. iii. ff.) the author’s name is given as Marchionne di Coppo Stefani.
4 See A. Solerti: Le Vite di Dante, Petrarca e Boccaccio, scritte fino at secolo decimosesto, p. 81.
5 Based on Benvenuto da Imola.
6 See A. Solerti: Le Vite di Dante, Petrarca e Boccaccio, scritte fino al secolo decimosesto, p. 76.
7 See Haym, Biblioteca Italiana, 1781, p. 157 note 5.
8 See Tiraboschi: Storia della hetteratura Italiana, vi. Pte. 2, pp. 1141-5 (ed. Milan, 1824).
9 See Carlo del Balzo: Poesie di mille Autori intorno a Dante Alighieri, iii. 224-241 (Rome, 1891); and Moore: Dante and his Early Biographers, pp. 88 n. 3, 113-15.
10 See Moore: op. cit. 110-13. Of this work but four MSS. are known, only three of which are complete; one of these is in the British Museum, another in the Vatican Library, and the third in the Escorial (see A. Farinelli, Dante in Ispagna, p. 70 n.).
11 See Tiraboschi: Storia della Letteratura Italiana, vi. Pte. 2, pp. 1145-7 (ed. Milan, 1824). Polentone’s work exists in two forms, the one much shorter than the other—the notice of Dante is printed in both forms by A. Solerti, in Le Vite di Dante, etc. pp. 154-5.
12 Tiraboschi mentions an edition of Venice, 1480; but this is unknown to Hain, Brunet, and Proctor.
13 See Bullettino della Societa Dantesea Italiana, No. 8 (1892), pp. 21-2, 25 ; and Haym : Biblioteca Italiana, 1781, p. 29 note 7.
14 No. xvi. p. 157.
15 Written circ. 1450 ; based on Vellutello and Leonardo Bruni.
16 See A. Solerti: Le Vite di Dante, etc., p. 97.
17 The text of this notice is printed in the Modern Quarterly of Language and Literature for March, 1898 (p. 52), where reference is made to an article in the Historisches Jahrbuch by Prof. Grauert, who shows that the Speculum notice (No. 23) was borrowed from that in the Nuremberg Chronicle (No. 22), and that that was borrowed from the notice in the Supplementum of Filippo da Bergamo, which in its turn was based on two passages in the De Genealogia Deorum of Boccaccio. (See above, No. 2.)
18 See Haym: Biblioteca Italiana, 1781, p. 36 note 5.
19 See above, note 4.
20 See Paget Toynbee: A Biographical Notice of Dante in the 1494 edition of the Speculum Historiale (in Eng. Hist. Rev., April 1895); and supplementary article on the same, in Mod. Quart. Lang. Lit., March 1898 (see above, note 4).
21 See A. Solerti: Le Vite di Dante, etc. p. 197.
22 See Père Hardouin: Doutes sur l’âge du Dante, pp. 25-6 (ed. Paris, 1847); and Tiraboschi: Storia della Letteratura Italiana, vii. p. 1166.
23 See A. Solerti: Vite di Dante, etc. p. 199.
24 See A. Solerti: Vite di Dante, etc. pp. 200-1.
25 Actually only xx.
26 See Bullettino della Società Dantesca Italiana, No. 8 (1892), pp. 24-5; and Haym: Biblioteca Italiana, 1781, p. 73, n. 8.
27 See Edward Leigh: A Treatise of Religion and Learning, and of Religious and Learned Men (1656), p. 177; and Paget Toynbee: Dante in English Literature from Chaucer to Cary, vol. i. p. 148.
28 No. xxxi. pp. 222-33.
29 No. xxxii. pp. 234-6.
30 Omitted from the English edition.