Questio: textual history and authorship issues

The tradition of the Questio consists of a handful of imprints, all deriving from the Venetian princeps of 1508 which was published by the Manfredo da Monferrato Press and edited by the Augustinian friar Giovanni Benedetto Moncetti, who claims to have found a casket containing a manuscript of the work hidden among other documents. Up until then, the text was unknown to commentators and biographers, nor are there any traces of the public lecture for which it was allegedly composed at the beginning of 1320. These circumstances led to a number of doubts regarding the Questio’s authenticity, with some holding it to be a forgery by Moncetti himself, and others believing it was forged by the fifteenth century monk Paolo Veneto. In his essay of 1959, Bruno Nardi vigorously denied Dante’s authorship of the Questio, on the grounds that its account of the relationship between water and land mass diverges completely from the theological argument (Lucifer’s fall from heaven) presented in Inf., XXXIV 121-126 to explain how the chasm of Hell and the mountain of Purgatoryo were formed. However, the existence of the cursus and the identification of imprint errors that could stem from mistaken interpretations of forms no longer used in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries confirm the existence of a source manuscript, thereby refuting the hypothesis of a forgery. Further support is provided by the frequent concordances with the stylistic patterns found in texts knows to be authored by Dante. Above all, as pointed out by Francesco Mazzoni, the third redaction of Pietro Alighieri’s commentary on the Commedia contains a passage alluding to the Veronese disputatio, thus dispelling most of the doubts regarding the inclusion of the Questio among Dante’s works.

Francesco Mazzoni’s substantial commentary (Milan-Naples, Ricciardi, 1979) is based on Ermengildo Pistelli’s critical edition of 1921. Giorgio Padoan also produced an important edition, complete with philological apparatus and commentary (Florence, Le Monnier, 1968).