De Vulgari Eloquentia: manuscript and editorial history

The unfinished De vulgari circulated late and in a limited manner. It is not mentioned in the early commentaries on Dante, nor is it mentioned by other authors of the time, apart from a few comments in Villani’s Chronicle and Boccaccio’s Trattatello. The manuscript tradition is similarly limited, comprising only of three fourteenth century codices: the Trivulziano 1088 (T) and the more correct Grenoble 580 (G), both modelled in Padua and deriving from the same manuscript, with the spurious title of Liber de vulgari eloquio sive ydiomate; and the older Berlin Lat. fol. 437 (B), possibly originating in Bologna, in which the De vulgari, indicated as Rectorica Dantis, appears together with the Monarchia. After obtaining T (Trivulziano 1088), Trissino had it translated into Italian, and printed this Italian edition in 1529. He also spread the news of his manuscript discovery to Florence and Rome. In Rome, Bembo had a copy made (the current Reg. Lat. 1370), while Angelo Colocci included his annotated transcription in his collection of miscellanea (currently Vat. Lat. 4817), thereby including Dante’s text in the sixteenth century debate on language. G (Grenoble 580), previously belonging to Jacopo Corbinelli, was used for the editio princes, published in Paris in 1577. These two versions form the basis for the first critical edition of the treatise, edited by Pio Rajna in 1896, who was especially precise in his discussion on the spelling of medieval Latin. Nonetheless, from a textual perspective the most reliable codex is B, which has been less productive in the manuscript tradition (it was in fact rediscovered only in 1917 by the German Bertalot), but can be traced directly to the archetype, making it possible to rectify many of the errors in G (Grenoble 580) and T (Trivulziano 1088) and validate Rajna’s hypotheses. It is no coincidence, therefore, that the later and more authoritative critical edition of the De vulgari, published in 1968 and edited by Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo, is based mainly on manuscript B (Berlin Lat. fol. 437), complete with a substantial commentary.