What may be the oldest known manuscript of Iacomo della Lana’s Commentary on the Divine Comedy – the earliest comprehensive vernacular commentary on Dante’s poem, composed only a few years after the poet’s death – has potentially been identified. This is the conclusion suggested by a study I recently published in Studj romanzi (“Iacomo della Lana: nuovi frammenti inediti trecenteschi”, Studj romanzi, XX, 2024), which arose from the identification of five previously unknown fourteenth-century manuscript fragments. Four bifolia and a single fragment, now preserved at Philobiblon Bookshop in London, join the five bifolia, one folio, and three small fragments already known, now housed in the State Archives of Bologna and in a private collection. Together, these materials make it possible to reconstruct a much larger portion of a codex that, for more than a century, had been known only in fragmentary form.
The history of the manuscript spans more than a century of scholarship. In 1921, Giovanni Livi announced the discovery, at the then Notarial Archives of Bologna, of several parchment leaves reused as covers for the registers of the notary Cristoforo Guidastri (active between 1573 and 1611). The parchments contained Iacomo della Lana’s commentary on several cantos of the Inferno and the Paradiso. Livi immediately recognized their antiquity; however, after his initial report, the fragments disappeared once again from scholarly attention.
Only in 2011 was part of this material rediscovered in the State Archives of Bologna, while at roughly the same time an additional bifolium surfaced in a private collection. Subsequent investigations demonstrated that all these fragments originated from a single fourteenth-century manuscript of Iacomo della Lana’s Commentary: a medium-to-large codex laid out in two columns and characterized by restrained decoration, consisting only of pen-flourished initials, capitals touched with red, and paragraph marks alternating in red and blue.
The discovery of the London parchments now adds a new chapter to this story. They do not belong to a different manuscript but rather represent additional leaves from the same codex, which was dismantled between the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries so that its parchment could be reused as covers for notarial registers. Their common origin is demonstrated by the annotations left by the notary Guidastri, still visible on the parchments, as well as by the identical script, page layout, and decorative programme.
These newly identified fragments substantially transform our understanding of the codex. Whereas the previously known fragments preserved only the commentary on the Inferno and the Paradiso, the newly discovered material also transmits part of the Purgatorio, making it possible for the first time to reconstruct almost the entire original structure of the manuscript.
Palaeographical analysis reveals that the manuscript was copied by three different scribes, responsible respectively for the sections devoted to the Inferno, the Purgatorio, and the Paradiso (Figs. 3–4). The last of these can be securely identified as Galvano da Bologna, the celebrated scribe who also signed the Riccardiano-Braidense manuscript of the Divine Comedy with Iacomo della Lana’s Commentary (Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, Ricc. 1005; Milan, Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, AG.XII.2).
My investigation has also made it possible to identify the hands found in these fragments in several of the most important manuscripts produced in Bologna during the early fourteenth century, allowing the reconstruction of a dense network of collaboration among scribes, correctors, and illuminators active within the same milieu. The same workshop team can be recognized in the Decretum of Gratian preserved in Siena (Biblioteca comunale degli Intronati, MS K.I.3), where the scribe responsible for copying the Inferno commentary in the fragments served as the principal copyist. I further suggest that the two scribes who assisted Galvano da Bologna in the fragmentary manuscript may also be identified in the Stuttgart Dante (Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. poet. et phil. 2° 19), which transmits the Divine Comedy together with Cecco d’Ascoli’s Acerba. This proposal will be discussed in greater detail in a study currently in preparation.
Further connections emerge from the analysis of workshop practices and recurring decorative motifs shared with other manuscripts of exceptional quality, including the Munich Decretum (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 23552), the Riccardiana Miscellany (Biblioteca Riccardiana, Ricc. 1538), and the Roman de Troie preserved in St Petersburg (Rossijskaja Nacional’naja Biblioteka, fr. F.v. XIV.3). These manuscripts are renowned for the excellence of their execution and their rich illumination, produced by masters such as the Illustratore, the Master of B 18, and the Master of the Paduan Antiphonaries. Taken together, this evidence demonstrates that Iacomo della Lana’s Commentary did not circulate in a marginal environment but within the same elite book-production networks responsible for the principal legal, liturgical, and literary manuscripts of the period.
The examination of the manuscript’s mise en page has also yielded new evidence for reconstructing its original organization. In several places the commentary passes directly from one canto to the next. Comparison with the principal fourteenth-century witnesses of the text rules out the possibility that the manuscript was arranged like the Riccardiano–Braidense codex, in which the text of the Comedy occupies the centre of the page and is surrounded by the commentary, or like the Vatican manuscript (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Ottoboniano Latino 2358), where each canto of the poem is copied in full and followed by its commentary. It is more likely that the manuscript resembled the Frankfurt codex (Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek, Ausst. 33 [lat. Qu. 57]), in which the commentary forms an independent section following the complete transcription of the Comedy. It cannot, moreover, be excluded that the original exemplar of Iacomo della Lana’s Commentary itself was organized in this way.
The dating of the manuscript can now also be refined. A consistent body of palaeographical, codicological, linguistic, and textual evidence suggests that the codex was produced in the early 1330s. This proposal is supported not only by the characteristics of the script and decoration, but also by a linguistic layer preserving Bolognese and Emilian features that disappeared or evolved after c. 1330 and are absent from the witnesses previously regarded as the oldest. Should this hypothesis be confirmed, the manuscript would represent the earliest known witness of Iacomo della Lana’s Commentary, predating even the Riccardiano-Braidense manuscript, long considered the oldest surviving copy.
From a philological perspective, the codex is likewise distinguished by its independence from the three principal witnesses of the Commentary: the Frankfurt manuscript, the Riccardiano-Braidense, and the Vatican manuscript. In addition to preserving previously unknown vernacular rubrics, it frequently transmits superior readings. A significant example occurs in the commentary on Paradiso IX, where Cunizza da Romano foretells the punishment of the “wicked shepherd” of Feltre. Whereas the Riccardiano-Braidense identifies this bishop as Gorgia de Lusa, who held the see only between 1327 and 1349 – thus after the composition of the Comedy – the fragmentary manuscript correctly identifies him as Alessandro Novello, bishop of Feltre and Belluno from 1298 to 1320, traditionally associated with Dante’s figure. Similarly, in the commentary on Paradiso XI, it preserves the name of Pope Honorius III, omitted in the Frankfurt manuscript.
Finally, the study confirms that the fragmentary codex belongs to the branch of the textual tradition represented by the Frankfurt manuscript, of which it would constitute the earliest known witness, while also suggesting the existence of an archetype underlying Iacomo della Lana’s Commentary. Particularly significant evidence emerges from the commentary on Paradiso XI, in the passage where Dante recalls Mount La Verna, where Saint Francis received the stigmata, describing it as “nel crudo sasso intra Tevero e Arno” (“upon the rugged crag between the Tiber and the Arno”). Precisely at the point where the commentator is expected to explain this periphrasis by identifying the place-name, the fragmentary manuscript and the three oldest witnesses of the Commentary, representing different branches of the tradition, all leave the space blank. The same omission also recurs in later manuscripts. The presence of this identical lacuna across the different branches of the tradition, beginning with the earliest witnesses, would be most plausibly explained by the existence of a common archetype.
L'autore
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Silvia De Santis è studiosa di filologia romanza, paleografia e storia della tradizione manoscritta, con un percorso di ricerca che intreccia filologia del testo, cultura materiale del manoscritto e storia della ricezione. Formata presso la Sapienza Università di Roma, dove ha conseguito la laurea in Lettere con lode e il dottorato in Filologia e Letterature Romanze, ha ulteriormente approfondito la dimensione codicologica e archivistica diplomandosi presso la Scuola Vaticana di Paleografia, Diplomatica e Archivistica. La sua ricerca si sviluppa all’incrocio tra filologia romanza medievale, studi danteschi, teatro e musica del Medioevo, storia dell’illustrazione e cultura manoscritta. Fin dagli esordi si è concentrata sul rapporto fra testo, immagine e performance, dedicando contributi significativi al Mistero provenzale di Sant’Agnese e al Roman de Troie di Benoît de Sainte-Maure, oggetto di studi ecdotici, linguistici e storico-artistici. Parallelamente, ha sviluppato una linea di ricerca originale sulla ricezione figurativa di Dante, in particolare nell’ambito inglese tra Sette e Ottocento, culminata nella monografia su William Blake e la Commedia e in numerosi studi sull’iconografia dantesca. La sua attività scientifica si distingue per un approccio integrato che coniuga filologia materiale, critica testuale, storia delle immagini e Digital Humanities. In questo orizzonte si collocano i progetti di ricerca nazionali e internazionali cui ha partecipato – dai PRIN dedicati alle letterature romanze medievali ai progetti di digitalizzazione e metadatazione dei manoscritti – fino all’attuale responsabilità scientifica nell’ambito della Digital Library dell’Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. Dopo esperienze di ricerca presso la Sapienza, l’Università di Milano e l’Università di Reading come borsista British Academy–Lincei, è oggi Ricercatrice in Tenure Track di Filologia e Linguistica Romanza presso la Sapienza Università di Roma e Conservatrice dei manoscritti della Biblioteca dell’Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei e Corsiniana. Alla produzione scientifica – monografie, edizioni critiche, curatele, saggi e cataloghi – si accompagna un’intensa attività di organizzazione scientifica, testimoniata dalla partecipazione a comitati ordinatori e scientifici di convegni e mostre internazionali dedicate alla valorizzazione del patrimonio librario medievale. Nel complesso, il suo lavoro si inscrive in un’idea di filologia come pratica interpretativa capace di ricostruire, attraverso i manoscritti e le tradizioni culturali, la complessità storica della trasmissione e della reinvenzione delle opere.
