Glossing Boethius Through Dante: Auctoritas and Philosophical Poetry in BML MS Plut. 78.20 and the Dante Commentary Tradition

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article examines the function and the significance of a quotation of Purgatorio xix, 7–73 on the margins of a copy of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy which belonged to Bartolomeo Nerucci, a Tuscan grammar teacher who copied several Dante commentaries. The quotation attests to the slow but steady establishment of Dante’s vernacular authority among fifteenth-century readers, especially in scholastic circles; and the appreciation of Boethius’s as well as Dante’s philosophical poetry in Renaissance Tuscany. The study also considers Nerucci’s own contribution to the exegesis of the Commedia as well as of the Consolation and concludes that he was, to some extent, an original interpreter, offering an uncommon reading of Dante and Boethius among Renaissance readers of the Commedia.