I "Gradi di san Girolamo" in due inediti testimoni settentrionali (Siena, Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati, I.II.37 e Venezia, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, It. I.14 [5173])

My dissertation project presents a critical edition of two unpublished manuscript witnesses of the so-called Gradi di san Girolamo, a vernacular translation of a French treatise from the late 13th century: mss. Siena, Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati, I.II.37 and Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, It. I.14. A linguistic commentary and a glossary complete the edition of the manuscripts. The Gradi di san Girolamo is a religious florilegium in thirty chapters disposed as metaphoric steps of a symbolic ladder from earth to heaven. Because of their linguistic features and the outstanding extensiveness of the text they conveyed, the two manuscripts deserved a dedicated study. CORBELLINI 1985 censed the senese manuscript and pointed out its northern and, most probably, Emilian linguistic features. Through a thorough analysis of the text, I was able to confirm and refine Corbellini’s initial evaluation. The frequency and the consistency of certain linguistic phenomena indeed point to Bologna and they can contribute to further define the characteristics of the vernacular of that area. The linguistic characterisation and stratigraphy of the marciano manuscript offer further interesting insights. Firstly, in addition to generic northern traits the language presents some diagnostic phenomena which can be traced back to the Piedmont area. Therefore, the manuscript contributes to define the characteristics of the fourteenth-century vernacular of an area (Piedmont) for which little contemporary documentation survives. Additionally, the northern linguistic patina and the generic tuscan traits of this text coexist with some phenomena specific to western Tuscany, the area of origins of the vernacular translation. Besides that, the text contains traces of some forms that are difficult to fit within the framework outlined. These forms are apparently non-indigenous and they might provide some guidelines to reconstruct the diffusion of the text. In addition to the linguistic analysis of the two manuscripts, this dissertation includes a study of the tradition and of the primary and collateral sources of the translation. First of all, I executed a new census of the manuscript witnesses, identifying two new manuscripts to supplement the previous inventories (mss. Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Magl. VIII. 1282, Verona, Biblioteca Civica, n. 2098-2099). This is a relevant find, as it confirms the enormous fortune that befell the Gradi, for which more than forty manuscript witnesses are known so far. I have also included an analysis of the sources of the Gradi. This required going back to the Liber Scintillarum, an 8th-century ascetic florilegium in eighty one chapters covering a series of biblical and patristic sentences. Since the beginning of its transmission, the text was subjected to frequent reworkings which over time altered its structure and content. One of these modified versions seems to have been the subject of a now lost Latin text in thirty chapters, which is referred to in the tradition as Scala virtutum maior. The existence of this text is only hypothetical for now, but it can be inferred with reasonable certainty on the basis of indirect textual clues. The Scala virtutum maior would be the Latin text at the base of the French treatise, for a long time only hypothetical but now identified by DE NISCO 2020 in the Traitéis des XXX greis de l’eschiele, served as a model for the italian translation.