Boccaccio illustratore e copista di se stesso

Decameron

The story of the text

Amongst the numerous attestations of the Decameron^[1] (the last count reached 98 units for the sole purpose of transmission of manuscripts, without counting the codes lost to posterity), scholars have identified three testimonies on the basis of which has been drawn up the reconstruction of the version that can today be considered the most credible: the edition based on the Hamilton 90 Code edited by Branca in 1976^[2].

A need to fill the gaps of missing text in the manuscript^[3] as well as a need to amend eventual errors of transcription, to which it would seem not even the author was immune, led the editor to select a series of testimonies, the indications of which, recognised to be genealogically in line with the Berlin manuscript (not for a direct relationship, but rather of descent from a common source), could be consulted for the purpose of integrating or correcting the Hamilton manuscript. On the basis of such presuppositions, it proved logical to concentrate on the Hamilton 90, (B) manuscript, kept at the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin and classed as being written sometime in the last thirty years of the XIV century.

Another important original is the Laurenziano Pluteo XLII 1 at the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence, (Mn), which Francesco d’Amaretto Mannelli’s subscription indicates to be of 1384. It is this manuscript that is said to be “excellent” in the Annotationi^[4] of the Deputies, who as of 1571 presided over the “readjustment” of the Decameron as decided by the Council of Trent. Until the discovery of the Hamilton 90 manuscript this other manuscript was held to be the most authentic available and was looked at as the “bon manuscrit”, that is to say the version that was most correct and closest to the original.

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[1]V. Branca, Tradizione delle opere di Giovanni Boccaccio. II, Rome, 1991, pp. 73-146; 471-474.

[2]Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron. Edizione critica secondo l’autografo Hamiltoniano, ed. V. Branca, Florence 1976. The annotated editions published by Einaudi and edited by the scholar.

[3]The manuscript lacks a title, the summaries of the novellas, the major part of day VII (1,16-9,32), the end of day IX and almost the whole of day X (IX 10,12-X 8,50).

[4]Annotazioni e discorsi sopra alcuni luoghi del Decameron di M. Giovanni Boccaccio fatte dai Deputati alla correzione del medesimo, Florence, 1573-74, (reprinted 1857), p. 12 (new edition, ed. G. Chiecchi, Rome-Padua 2001)