The manuscripts

Giorgio Padoan has provided a memorable description of Boccaccio’s method of composition: he created neither a single original copy from which the manuscript tradition of the work mechanically descends, nor several distinct originals, from which the variant versions of his works descend. Rather, he composed a series of related autographs – «un ventaglio di autografi» – gathered around the stem of one or more versions. As a result, we have two forms of the Genealogia deorum gentilium and the De casibus virorum illustrium, three redactions of the Trattatello in Laude di Dante, and (as a kind of testament of Boccaccio’s self-editing) De mulieribus claris in seven or perhaps nine versions. In addition, this habit of composition was a life-long process: as Vittore Branca’s edition of Il Decameron (1976) demonstrates, Boccaccio continued revising his prose masterpiece even in the last years of his life.

The 68 presently known manuscripts of Boccaccio’s Teseida suggest that he followed a similar process in producing his epic. The Teseida appears to have been created in three versions. The first, here labelled alpha, begins in the 1340s, the period when Boccaccio is assumed to have originally composed the Teseida. The second version, here labelled beta, is Boccaccio’s production of the Teseida autograph (Aut) in the late-1340s or c.1350, while the third version is a beta autograph (NO1) most likely copied in the mid-1350s or later, that survives in a manuscript copy produced in mid-15th century Florence. While the second and third versions are clearly and closely related to each other, the first version is vexingly difficult to describe precisely because it represents the complex type of evolution that Padoan described. See the print introduction for detailed discussion of the manuscripts and their groupings. Note that the use of alpha and beta here is different from (though overlapping with) Battaglia's division of the manuscripts into alpha, beta and gamma. That division applies only to the 47 (of a total of 68) MSS of the first recension of the poem, MSS all deriving from copies of the poem preceding both Boccacio's surviving autograph (Aut and the lost later autograph copy underlying NO.

As Boccaccio's own autograph, and the only surviving autograph, Aut, Firenze, Bibliotea Medicea Laurenziana, Cod. Acquisti e Doni 325, is the base for this edition. Two other factors recommend Aut as the principal manuscript for an edition. First, it was written around 1348-50, up to ten years afer the composition of the Teseida dated by Branca before Boccaccio's return from Naples to Florence in 1341 (Branca, Giovanni Boccaccio: profilo biografico, 2nd. edition, Florence: Sansoni, 1992, pp. 48-9). Accordingly, Aut represents the key transition from the alpha version (of which it can be seen as an autograph) to beta, with its extensive glossing and use of sophisticated paratextual features (paraphs, introductory sonnets, rubrics) showing how Boccaccio's formal expression of the text on the manuscript page evolved towards what we see in Aut. A second factor is the apparent continued presence on Boccaccio's desk of Aut from around 1348 to his death. This is suggested by the naming of Aut in the "Parva Libreria" at the Augustinian church of Santo Spirito in Florence, to which Boccaccio bequeathed his books (Sources and Analogue of the Canterbury Tales, Volume II, edited by Robert Correale and Mary Hamel, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2005, p.100, footnote 72), and confirmed by the presence of glosses added by Boccaccio in his later gothic and cursive hands.

Boccaccio's continued ownership of Aut led to the manuscript becoming the source of a further autograph, refining yet further the elaborate presentation of the Teseida. This further autograph does not survive. However, the exceptional closeness of NO, Biblioteca Oratoriana del Monumento Nazionale dei Gerolamini, Cod. C.F.2.8, to Aut in details of presentation and text (sharing while refining rubrics, paraphs and the positioning of illustrations and adding some 225 glosses) suggest that NO is a direct copy of this lost autograph and preserves those features from this last later autograph. Accordingly, NO shows the continuing evolution of Boccaccio's conception of the Teseida in the years following the writing of Aut.

Aut Firenze, Bibliotea Medicea Laurenziana, Cod. Acquisti e Doni 325

Il Teseida, the first Italian epic poem, with a commentary by Boccaccio; an autograph copy of the alpha version, with occasional beta revisions.

Tuscany, mid 14th century

SCRIBE: Giovanni Boccaccio

Parchment; ff. I, 141, I’, with modern numbering in pencil and ink, in upper right corner, recto (ff. 1-141) and occasionally in lower right recto corner; a 16th-17th hand has numbered several pages. Fasc. 1-178 185 (orig. 1-188); catchwords: 8v-56v; 64v (decorated: ornate trace-work with a crown above and F – for Fiammetta? – below); 72v-136v. Missing: f. 137a (orig. f. 138), with 80 lines of the poem (XII.47.1-56.6) and c. 14 glosses; f. 141a and f. 141b (orig. ff. 143-144), both of them blank; mm. 275 x 195 (198 x 99), rr. 41 / ll. 40, dry-point. Boccaccio’s commentary is in the text block and in the margins.

Several pages have been water-damaged, causing text to fade. Boccaccio has retraced some faded text; a 16th-17th hand (C3) has subsequently – and often incorrectly – retraced many faded glosses. Trimming during a later rebinding of the manuscript has caused some loss of text in several glosses.

DECORATION: At f.1r, a drawing in colored ink is badly water-stained: the author, kneeling, offers his book to a seated lady (Fiammetta?). The text-block contains spaces for 58 drawings; as many as 11 additional drawings may have been planned for the margins. Rubrics in red ink. Large illuminated initials in a blue background at prologue and 1.1. Large initials in blue and red with filagree in alternating colors at the first octaves of bks. 2-12. After each rubric, three-line initials are alternately painted in red and blue. Bks. 1-5 have 101 marginal painted parafs in red and blue. Five angular symbols, in brown ink and perhaps copied by Boccaccio, were later added at 1.64, 74, and 86-88; three circular symbols in brown ink, quite likely copied by Boccaccio since they appear as parafs in NO, were later added at 7.3, 14, and 15. Two arbitrarily capitalized and painted two-line capitals: A at I.13 and G at I.36 (for «Autore» and «Giovanni»?). This is another example of the sort of self-identifying mark that Boccaccio often includes in his works. (The same monogram is in the beta NO; the gamma copy, P2, has G alone.)

HAND: the poem and most of the glosses are in Boccaccio’s library/university gothic hand (littera textualis); revisions to the poem plus added glosses in Boccaccio’s later-gothic and cursive hands.The manuscript also contains a few lines of poetry in an anonymous 16th-17th century hand (ff. 104v, 139v).

BINDING: 19th cent. parchment over cardboard; on the spine: «TESEIDE / DEL / BOCCACCIO».

PROVENANCE: [Giovanni Boccaccio]; Stefano Audin (1840); George John Vernon Warren, 5th Baron Vernon (†1866); Hoepli booksellers, Milan (Italian government purchase), 1927; Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, 1928.

Besides serving as the basis of the modern critical editions of the Teseida, the Laurentian Library autograph also provides a record of Boccaccio’s revisions during the 1350s. Paleography and ultra-violet/infra-red technology document that the Teseida autograph was copied in two stages: (1) c. 1350: the poem plus c. 1075 glosses; (2) mid-to-late 1350s: several revisions in the text of the poem plus c. 225 added glosses in Boccaccio’s later gothic and cursive hands. The first version of the autograph originally consisted of an alpha version of the poem with a program of approximately the same number of glosses as in NO, the copy of the lost beta autograph. The various textual revisions document Boccaccio’s revisions from the original alpha version of the text to beta and, occasionally, to gamma readings. (These revisions, which sometimes occur in three stages, indicate that amendment was a continuing process for Boccaccio.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Audin, Amazonide; Vandelli, Autografo della Teseide; Barbi, Vita Nuova, cxcv-cxcvi; Battaglia, Boccaccio. Teseida, xi-xv, lxxxix-xcix, cxi-cxlvii; Contini, Teseida Review; Dempster, MPh; Roncaglia, Boccaccio. Teseida, 470, 472-94, 494-96; Boccaccio 1956, 17-19; Mostra del 650° anniversario, 10-11; Limentani, Boccaccio. Teseida, 876-884; Auzzas, Codici autografi, 12-13; Mostra del Boccaccio, 32-33; Agostinelli, Catalogue, 17-19; Malagnini, Libro d’autore; Malagnini, Varietà; Coleman, Oratoriana Teseida; Coleman, Teseida autografo.

NO Napoli, Biblioteca Oratoriana del Monumento Nazionale dei Gerolamini, Cod. C.F.2.8 (Pil. X.36)

Il Teseida, poem and commentary, a copy of a lost beta autograph Florence, c. 1450,

SCRIBE : Guido di Piero di Giovanni de’ Ricci (1429-1502)

Paper; WM: Florence, 1446-47 (Piccard, WZ Kreuz, 107); ff. I, 144, I’ with modern numbering, in pencil, recto page, lower right (ff. 1-44) and upper right (ff. 45-138) corners; ff. 139-44 are blank. In the upper margin of each page, the (Roman) number of each book of the poem, in red; fasc. 1-916; mm. 295 x 215 (205 x 125/205 x 80), ll. 40: drypoint ruling. Boccaccio’s commentary is in the text block and in the four margins.

DECORATION: a beta version of Boccaccio’s rubric program, in red, with a 3-line red initial capital at the octave following each rubric. Two arbitrarily capitalized and painted capitals: A at 1.13 and G at 1.36 (for «Autore» and «Giovanni»?).This is another example of the sort of monogram that Boccaccio often places in copies of his works. (The same monogram is in Aut; the gamma copy, Pal. 352, has G alone.) One-hundred marginal parafs appear in bks. 1-5, 7-10, and 12. Thirty-five pen and ink drawings, from the proemio to 6.50: 31 in the text-block, 2 in the margins, and 2 in the text block and adjacent margin; from 7.29-12.80, spaces for 25 drawings in the text-block. As many as seven additional drawings may have been planned for the margins. Deganhart and Schmitt cite Domenico Veneziano as an influence on the drawings, while Scognamiglio refers to Apollonio di Giovanni or his circle; Ciardi Duprè proposes Marco del Buono Giamberti, but dates NO to 1430-1435, which is not possible since the scribe, Guido de’ Ricci, was born in 1429.

HAND: libraria mercantesca (preface and poem); a smaller mercantesca for the interlinear and marginal glosses.

BINDING: 15th cent. parchment over cardboard; on the spine: «Il | Theseo Poesie | M.S.».

PROVENANCE: Guido di Piero de’ Ricci (Florence, 1429-1502); library of Giuseppe Valletta (Naples, 1636-1714); Biblioteca de’ Girolamini, c. 1714; Antico Catalogo della Biblioteca dei Padri dell’Oratorio di Napoli (MS S.M 27.1.10, Bibl. dei Girolamini di Napoli 1726), «La Theseide, Poema cum figure».

Copied a century after the the Teseida autograph, NO both resembles Aut and differs from it. The most significant variant is the language: the manuscript is the work of a young, non-professional scribe, whose spelling, grammar, and language reflect the conventions of mid-15th century Italian. But the paratexts of NO – the 60 (or more) drawings and drawing-spaces, the 1090 glosses, the 101 marginal parafs, plus minor details such as Boccaccio’s A G author-signature and the similar layout of certain glosses – indicate that both Aut and NO are products of Boccaccio’s notebooks. (NO, however, is the descendant of a lost beta autograph produced from those workbooks during the decade after Boccaccio produced the surviving alpha autograph.) NO can well be described as representing Boccaccio’s rethinking of Aut. Besides creating a variant text in the poem and glosses, he shortened the number of parafs to the “perfect” number 100 and more evenly distributed them in the poem. He also reduced the poem by eight lines, most likely to reflect the length of his copy of the Aeneid. In addition, he re-arranged the drawings, creating several paired designs on facing pages and provided space for a full-page marriage portrait of Emilia, followed by several glosses that equate the qualities of Emilia with those of the author’s beloved «dama».

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Mandarini, I codici, 335-36; Degenhart-Schmitt, Corpus, I/2, 414-15 (but scribe’s name is misread); I/4 tab. 287d-290d; Mostra del Boccaccio, I, 33-34; Agostinelli, Catalogue, 45-47; Coleman, Watermarks, 107-8; E. Scognamiglio, «G. Boccaccio, Teseida, CF.2.8», Codici miniati della biblioteca Oratoriana dei Girolamini di Napoli, A.P. Murano and A.P. Saggese, eds., Napoli, 1995, 62-67 (quotation should read: «il codice napoletano sarebbe stato realizzato prima del 1451», 65); Boccaccio visualizzato, II: 34-36 (M. G. Ciardi Duprè), II: 99-103 (M. C. Castelli); Coleman, Oratoriana Teseida, 105-85, Figs. I.VIII; Malagnini, Reinterpretazione figurativa, 187-272; Agostinelli, Boccaccio 2013, «10. Un Teseida riccamente illustrato, copia di un perduto autografo b», pp. 95-97.

For the convenience of readers we here provide access to the Coleman article on the Oratoriana Teseida (NO), printed in Studi sul Boccaccio 2012: the text of pages 110-153, and the tables on pages 154-186. The figures given in that article are not reproduced here. We are grateful to the editors of the Studi sul Boccaccio for permission to reproduce this article in this online publication.