“Scribal behaviour” e “scribal habits”: un problema metodologico. Fenomenologia dei codices descripti

Abstract

Mi tesis doctoral pretende ilustrar los datos surgidos del estudio de los codices descripti en la tradición manuscrita de la comedia de Dante. Desde hace varios años, en diversos campos de investigación (filología genealógica y reconstructiva, New Philology, filología bíblica y del Nuevo Testamento), se estudian los manuscritos individuales con el objetivo de profundizar en el papel de sus copistas. El presente trabajo forma parte también de esta línea de investigación: de hecho, la tesis trata de investigar las habilidades promedio de un copista del siglo catorce, y a la postre proporcionar una herramienta diagnóstico útil para la identificación de los codices descripti. En una primera parte, propondré una revisión de las contribuciones particularmente significativas que tienen como objeto la investigación del comportamiento de los escribas en la Antigüedad tardía y en el Edad Media.

En una segunda sección, en cambio, estudiaré cinco pares de manuscritos, vinculados por una relación de descendencia directa. Para cada apógrafo procederé con la demostración de la descriptio, basada en criterios internos (textuales) y externos (pistas materiales de naturaleza codicológica-paleográfica). Se hará la collatio de los descripti gracias a/ a través de una muestra de 1625vv (que corresponde aproximadamente al 11,4% de las 14233 líneas que conforman el poema de Dante). La muestra textual consiste – con ajustes mínimos, debido a lo incompleto de algunos testimonios – de los cantos III, X, XIV y XV de cada cántica. Las variantes analizadas se dividirán en categorías y subcategorías. Por lo tanto, las encuestas realizadas servirán para extrapolar datos estadísticos, útiles para investigar la fenomenología de la copia manuscrita. En conclusión, intentaré ver si y cómo el análisis de los descripti puede permitir alguna consideración general sobre los hábitos de los escribas.

In recent years, in various research fields (genealogical-reconstructive philology, New Philology, biblical and New Testament philology), many studies have focused on single manuscripts, aiming to detect their scribal habits. My study falls within this framework: the thesis sets out to investigate the average skills of a fourteenth-fifteenth century scribe and to provide a diagnostic tool for determining if a codex in exam is a descriptus (which could be useful for scholars who are engaged in editing Medieval poetic texts, or in the stemmatic reordering of other manuscript traditions). Compared to previous contributions, the present study follows a different method: In my researches, I rely on the precise comparison between five codices descripti of Dante’s Comedy and their respective exemplars, availing myself of the devices developed by neolachmannian philology. I have approached this subject for the first time in 2015, with a short contribution published in the journal «Filologia italiana». In my essay I tried to prove the descriptio of the codex Imola, Biblioteca Comunale, ms. 31, acknowledged to be the direct copy of another northern witness of the Divine Comedy, Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria, ms. 589. From here, I chose to embark on a broader research project, with the aim of finding and collating other pairs of manuscripts, characterized by a direct descendant relationship. My PhD thesis can be included within a larger body of work carried out by professor Paolo Trovato’s research group, aimed at a stemmatic rearrangement of the non-fragmentary manuscript tradition of the Divine Comedy. In this perspective, in the preliminary stages of my studies I had the opportunity to take advantage of the collation matrix adopted by the team. As one can easily imagine, the thesis is divided into two separate sections. In the first part, I shall propose an in-depth review of several studies investigating scribal habits in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, coming from philological schools which position themselves very far apart from each other. In this first section I will not only illustrate the state of art; I will also compare different methodological approaches, evaluating their degree of reliability. In the second section I shall illustrate some of the data that emerged from the comparison between five exemplar-descriptus pairs in the manuscript tradition of the Comedy. The five pairs of codices have been collated on a sample of 1625 verses (equivalent to 11,4% of the 14233 verses which form Dante’s poem). This textual portion – with minor adjustments, due to the lacunosity of some of the witnesses – comprises cantos III, X, XIV and XV of each cantica; more specifically, 493 have been scrutinized for the Inferno, 567 for the Purgatorio, and 565 for the Paradiso. I tried to demonstrate the direct derivation of every supposes codex descriptus relying both on internal criteria (that is, textual features) and external criteria (physical evidence supporting the descriptio); in other words, I tried to undertake, alongside a manual-like eliminatio codicum descriptorum, a meticulous research of what Michael Reeve calls codicological evidence. As far as the textual element is concerned, I drew up a rigorous classification of innovations and variant readings, aiming to both prove the descriptio with reasonable certainty and to investigate the phenomenology of error in manuscript copies.