A Festschrift for Clive Ruggles

Abstract

Centiloquium, not by the translation of this text itself, but by that of the two appendices corresponding to the Trutina Hermetis and the De cometis. Unfortunately, this edition offers fewer and less rich notes than does Rinaldi’s and includes no appendix and no glossary. All these indications suggest that Calcagno’s work is much less thorough and scrupulous, especially philologically, than that of Rinaldi, an acknowledged specialist in Italian Renaissance astrology and the humanist versions of the Centiloquium who worked for a long time on the edition of this volgarizzamento. Moreover, Rinaldi shows (p. 136, n. 34) that the MS Magliabech. XX.22 is certainly very close to the Latin model which could have inspired this Italian translation (as attested by many common lessons and errors) but is not necessarily its direct source, contrary to what Calcagno claims (pp. 36–43). This does not detract from the remarkable interest of this volgarizzamento of the Centiloquium. It is in fact mainly in Italy that a rich manuscript tradition of marginal annotations to the Latin text in Plato of Tivoli’s version continued from the 13th to the end of the 15th century, intended to explain the meaning of the text and of the transliterations from the Arabic it contains, a tradition that perhaps goes back to Gerard of Cremona and his companions (Stefan Georges, Seb Falk and Emanuele Rovati are presently working on this topic), and of which traces can still be found in the incunabula editions published in Venice in 1484 and in 1493. Like about 10 other Latin manuscripts where this tradition of glosses is preserved, the two Florentine codices of the BNC, Magliabech. XX.22 and Palatino 641, are witnesses to the depth and sophistication of astrological acculturation in Italy in the last centuries of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, an acculturation better transmitted to the lay elites than in other European countries at that time.