caregiar, pogiato, possa (posa), &c. There is a short colophon (in a later hand) giving the date of Dante's birth, '1265 sedente Urbano quarto1. There is no title except, in a very much later hand, ‘expurgatum juxta indicem expurgatorium hispanum. panormi. ibiq (?) Fr Decio Carrega ord. pred. This refers to the complete erasure in ink of the three passages condemned by the Spanish Inquisition in 1614, viz. Inf. xi. 8, 9; xix. 106–117; Par. ix. 133-1422. In a comparatively modern hand the three passages have been reinserted above. The text seemed to me to be on the whole decidedly good. The following were some peculiar readings, noticed mostly too late for insertion among the collations, since the MS. was inspected after that part of the work was already in type. quanto la stella. (So U, Þ and two others.) Inf. ii. 55 Mille dugent' uno. Fesso dal mento. (So O, D, F, r.) E come qual sol presso. (So and two others only.) Così n' andò. (So ♣ and two others only.) (So O, F, and V. Comp. '68.') This is an error for Clement IV., since Urban IV. died Oct. 2, 1264. It occurs however in Boccaccio's Life, and in Benvenuto da Imola's Introduction to his Commentary, and I think I have met with it elsewhere also. 2 This expurgation occurs also, as noted supra, in a Ms. in the Barberini Library (p. 641), and I noticed it some years ago in two or three MSS. in the Royal Library at Madrid. 3 Since p. 332 was in type this rare reading has been found in the following MSS., 56, 57 and 90. See also the curious variant registered under '30' supra. As I omitted to examine this passage in time to include it among the selected passages discussed supra, I may add a short note upon it here. The variants trenta and tre are interesting, but the latter has very slight Ms. support, and is adopted, among the old Commentators, by Peter Dante alone. The question depends, as is pointed out in Scartazzini's interesting note, on the period assigned by Dante to the revolution of Mars. It has been assumed from a loose and inaccurate citation of Conv. ii. 15 that Dante took it at two years. But he expressly says 'un anno quasi' in reference to half a revolution of the planet, and the whole passage is one in which a rough and merely approximate description was all that was required. But assuming (thus needlessly and even wrongly) Dante to have committed himself to the period of two years, 580 revolutions would give the date of 1160 for the birth of Cacciaguida, whereas he died in the 2nd Crusade, which There seems to be prima facie evidence of a relation between this MS. and U and, but the two latter MSS. were not examined in all the selected passages, and were of course not at hand for comparison with this MS. O and F (which are closely related, see supra p. 539) have also some points of resemblance to this MS. began in 1147 (see Par. xv. 139). Hence the reading tre was suggested, which would give 1106 as the date of his birth, at least a possible date. But as we know from numerous passages that Dante was acquainted with not only the principles but the details of the Ptolemaic planetary theory [see especially a recent work by Angeletti, Cronologia delle Opere Minori di Dante] it is far more probable that he refers here to the Ptolemaic period of Mars, viz. 687 days. This would give the date 1091 for the birth of Cacciaguida, and would make him to be 56 years old when he joined the Crusade. The 'quasi' of Conv. ii. 15 would thus cover a difference of only about 21 days. There seems therefore no reason whatever to doubt the usual reading trenta. 2 Acquired by the British Museum, at the sale of the Wodhull Library, to which it belonged when I examined it. 484 All the MSS. of the Ashburnham Collection are now removed to the Batines seems also to refer to this same Ms. under No. 516. |