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

2023; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 78; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00751634.2023.2237828

1748-6181

Paola Nasti,

Medieval Philosophy and Theology

ABSTRACTThe 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.KEYWORDS: Bartolomeo NerucciConsolation of Philosophyfemmina balbaBoethian Musescanon AcknowledgmentsI would like to thank Zyg Baranski for his suggestions on a previous version of this article. All translations, unless specified, are mine.Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 On Lupi, see Robert D. Black, Education and Society in Florentine Tuscany (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 64–65, 101–02, 111, 168–69; Fiammetta Cirilli, 'Mattia Lupi', in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 100 vols (Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, 1960–2020), lxvi (2006), 597–99; Fabrizio Franceschini, 'Grammatici e cultori di Dante tra Volterra, San Gimignano e Colle (secc. XIV–XV)', Miscellanea storica della Valdelsa, 119 (2013), 63–92, (p. 69–73); Tedd A. Wimperis, 'A Humanist Autograph Lost and Found. Mattia Lupi's Annales Geminianenses', Humanistica Lovaniensia, 67.1 (2018), 47–68. Franceschini includes Lupi among the Tuscan admirers of Dante ('Grammatici e cultori', p. 72). Appointed in 1403, Lupi taught in San Gimignano for nearly fifty years (1407–1456); however, while working in Pistoia in 1403, as an assistant of Maestro Antonio Vannini da S. Gimignano, he acquired a copy of Trevet's commentary to the Consolation (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Plut. 77.3), a text which he corrected in its entirety and then used when teaching the Consolation.2 Nerucci's autograph note on the first folio of the Boethian manuscript reads: 'Iste Boetius scriptus fuit a me Bartolomeo Petri de Sancto Geminiano morantis [sic] in scolis Domini Mathie plebani plebis Aioli pratensis comitatus' [This Boethius was written by me, Bartolomeus Petrus de Sancto Geminiano, attending the school of Dominus Mathias, a citizen of Aioli, Prato (BML, Plut. 78.20, fol. 1v). On Nerucci see Robert D. Black and Gabriella Pomaro, Boethius's 'Consolation of Philosophy' in Italian Medieval and Renaissance Education. Schoolbooks and Their Glosses in Florentine Manuscripts – La 'Consolazione della filosofia' nel Medioevo e nel Rinascimento italiano. Libri di scuola e glosse nei manoscritti fiorentini (Florence: SISMEL, 2000), pp. 6, 115–17, and 202–13; Black, pp. 65, 101–02, 111; 'Grammatici e cultori di Dante', pp. 73–83; Fabrizio Franceschini, 'Bartolomeo Nerucci', in Censimento dei commenti danteschi. I commenti di tradizione manoscritta (fino al 1480), ed. by Enrico Malato and Andrea Mazzucchi (Rome: Salerno, 2011), pp. 74–85. On the tradition of lectura Dantis in the first centuries of the poem's reception see also: Da Boccaccio a Landino. Un secolo di 'lecturae Dantis', ed. by Paolo Procaccioli e Lorenzo Böninger (Florence, Le Lettere – Società Dantesca Italiana, 2021).3 Black and Pomaro, pp. 115–17, 202–13, 306–10. For general studies on the Latin Consolation and on Boethius in the Middle Ages and early modern Europe see: A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages, ed. by Noel Harold Kaylor. and Philip Edward Phillips (Leiden: Brill, 2012); 'Agnoscisne me?'. Diffusione e fortuna della 'Consolatio philosophiæ' in età medievale, ed. by Anna M. Babbi and Chiara Concina (Verona: Fiorini, 2018); Boethius. His Life, Thought and Influence, ed. by Margaret Gibson (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981); Boethius in the Middle Ages: Latin and Vernacular Traditions of the 'Consolatio Philosophiae', ed. by Maarten J. F. M. Hoenen and Lodi Nauta (Leiden: Brill, 1997); Boethius Christianus?: Transformationen der 'Consolatio Philosophiae' in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, ed. by Reinhold F. Glei, Nicola Kaminski, and Franz Lebsanft (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010); Pierre Courcelle, La consolation de Philosophie dans la tradition littéraire. Antécédentes et postérité de Boèce (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1967); New Directions in Boethian Studies, ed. by Noel Harold Kaylor and Philip Edward Phillips (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007); The Cambridge Companion to Boethius, ed. by John Marenbon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). For further interpretative studies on the Italian fortuna of Boethius see: Dario Brancato, 'Readers and Interpreters of the "Consolatio" in Italy, 1300–1550', A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages, pp. 357–411; Thomas Ricklin, ' … Quello non conosciuto da molti libro di Boezio. Hinweise zur Consolatio Philosophiae in Norditalien', in Boethius in the Middle Ages, pp. 267–86. For Dante and the Consolatio see Luca Lombardo, Boezio in Dante. La Consolatio philosophiae nello scrittoio del poeta (Venice: Edizioni Ca' Foscari – Digital Publishing, 2013), which includes a full bibliography. For further studies on the femmina balba and Boethius see note 13.4 Black and Pomaro analysed 325 manuscripts of the Consolatio that can be considered as textbooks used for the teaching and learning of Latin in lay grammar schools. Most of these manuscripts include marginal and interlinear glosses, many deriving from the most popular medieval commentaries on the Boethian prosimetrum, namely, those by William of Conches and Nicholas Trevet.5 This version of Trevet's commentary corresponds to the one transcribed in BML, MS Plut. 23 dxt. 11.6 For catalogues of the Consolatio manuscripts with Trevet's commentary, see Courcelle, pp. 412–13; Thomas Kaeppeli, Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum Medii Aevi, 4 vols (Rome: Istituto Storico Domenicano, 1980), iii, pp. 187–96. On Trevet see: Courcelle, pp. 318–19, 412–13; Alister J. Minnis and Lodi Nauta, 'More Platonico loquitur. What Nicholas Trevet really did to William of Conches', in Chaucer's 'Boece' and the Medieval Tradition of Boethius, ed. by Alister J. Minnis (Cambridge: Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 1993), pp. 1–33 (with further bibliography).7 For the reception of the Consolatio in the Renaissance, see Lodi Nauta, 'A Humanist Reading of Boethius's Consolatio Philosophiae: The Commentary by Murmellius and Agricola (1514)', in Between Demonstration and Imagination: Essays in the History of Science and Philosophy Presented to John D. North, ed. by Lodi Nauta and Arjo J. Vanderjagt (Leiden: Brill, 1999), pp. 313–38; Lodi Nauta, 'Some Aspects of Boethius' Consolatio Philosophiae in the Renaissance', in Boèce ou la chaîne des savoirs. Actes du colloque international de la fondation Singer–Polignac, ed. by Alain Galonnier (Louvain: Institut supérieur de philosophie, 2003), pp. 767–78.8 Black and Pomaro, p. 207.9 Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS II ii 16, fol. 101r. On Nerucci's Dantean contributions, see 'Grammatici e cultori di Dante'; 'Bartolomeo Nerucci'; see also Saverio Bellomo, Dizionario dei commentatori danteschi. L'esegesi della 'Commedia' da Iacopo Alighieri a Nidobeato (Florence: Olschki, 2004), pp. 345–48.10 BML, MS Plut. 42.14, copied in 1432, includes the text of the Inferno, the entire commentary by Buti on this cantica, glosses extracted from the first version of Guido da Pisa and from Graziolo Bambagioli, notes by a certain 'magister Christianus de Camereno', as well as other 'Dantean' material such as Giovanni del Virgilio's epitaph Theologus Dantes ('Bartolomeo Nerucci', p. 80); BML, MS Plut. 42.15 begins with glosses derived from the so called Falso Boccaccio to the first three cantos (fols 2–6, 9–11 and 12r), then proceeds with Buti's Purgatorio commentary, and Latin glosses that largely derive from the corpus of the Anonimo Latino (fols 1r and 7–8); BML, MS Plut. 42.16 includes 'il proemio al Paradiso […] dell'Ottimo Commento e di seguito il proemio […] appartenente al Breve compendium. […] il commento del Buti, inframmezzato dal commento integrale dell'Ottimo ai canti XXVII–XXXIII (fols 114v–133r) e da altri proemi ai singoli canti (fols 133v–137r)' ('Bartolomeo Nerucci', p. 80); the manuscript also includes further material from Jacopo Alighieri and Bosone da Gubbio. Finally, Prato, Biblioteca Roncioniana, MS Q III 12 contains the Inferno with the volgarizzamento A by Graziolo Bambaglioli and the so–called Falso Boccaccio.11 On Buti see Fabrizio Franceschini, 'Il commento dantesco del Buti nel tardo Trecento e nel Quattrocento: tradizione del testo, lingua, società', Bollettino storico pisano, 64 (1995), 45–114; Fabrizio Franceschini, 'Francesco da Buti', in Censimento dei commenti danteschi, pp. 192–218.12 Fabrizio Franceschini's contributions are fundamental in helping us understand the Tuscan tradition. In addition to the studies cited so far, see also his 'Letture e lettori di Dante nella Pisa del Trecento (con una postilla su Mart)', in Pisa crocevia di uomini, lingue e culture. L'età medievale. Atti del convegno, Pisa, 25–27 ottobre 2007, ed. by Roberta Cella and Lucia Battaglia Ricci (Rome: Aracne, 2009), pp. 235–78. For a broader overview of Dante's reception in the Renaissance and more generally in the Quattrocento, see Carlo Dionisotti, 'Dante nel Quattrocento', in Atti del Congresso Internazionale di Studi Danteschi, 2 vols (Florence: Sansoni, 1965), i, 333–78; Simon Gilson, Dante and Renaissance Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).13 On the Consolatio and the femmina balba episode see above all: Sara Calculli and Sonia Gentili, 'Dante e lo statuto della poesia tra Boezio e Orazio', Studi Danteschi, 84 (2019), 101–52; Teresa Caligiure, 'La 'femmina balba' e la 'dolce serena', Rivista di Studi Danteschi, 4.2 (2004), 333–66; Gentili, 'Poesia e immagine'; Lombardo, Boezio in Dante, pp. 332–49; Olivia Holmes, 'The Consolation of Beatrice and Dante's Dream of the Siren as Vilification Cure', in The Erotics of Consolation: Desire and Distance in the Late Middle Ages, ed. by Catherine Léglu and Stephen Milner, The New Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan; 2008), pp. 61–78; Giuseppina Mezzadroli, 'Dante, Boezio e le sirene', Lingua e Stile, 25.1 (1990), 25–56; Giuseppe Mazzotta, 'The Dream of the Siren (Purgatorio XIX–XXXI)', in her Dante's Vision and the Circle of Knowledge (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 135–53; Gabriele Muresu, '"Io volsi Ulisse … " (Purg. XIX 22): Dante e le sirene', in his Il richiamo dell'antica strega. Altri saggi di semantica dantesca (Rome: Bulzoni, 1997), pp. 137–51; Luca Lombardo, 'Dante, Mussato e le Muse: sulla difesa della poesia dal primo Trecento a Boccaccio', in Integrazioni all'esegesi dantesca nel cinquecentenario della morte di Bernardo Bembo, ed. by Antonio Sorella (Florence: Cesati, 2021), pp. 233–56; Michelangelo Picone, 'Canto XIX', in Lectura Dantis Turicensis. Purgatorio, ed. by Michelangelo Picone and Georges Güntert (Florence: Cesati, 2001), pp. 287–306; Umberto Taccheri, 'I sogni boeziani del Purgatorio dantesco' (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 2000). On Dante's dreams in Purgatorio: Guglielmo Barucci, 'Simile a quel che talvolta si sogna'. I sogni del 'Purgatorio' dantesco (Florence: Le Lettere, 2012). On Boethius and Dante, as well as Lombardo, Boezio in Dante, see the fundamental studies: Stefano Carrai, 'Sul Boezio di Dante', Bollettino di Italianistica. Rivista di critica, storia letteraria, filologia e linguistica, 2 (2016), 24–30, and Stefano Carrai, Dante elegiaco. Una chiave di lettura per la 'Vita Nova' (Florence: Olschki, 2006).14 ''Io son' cantava, "io son dolce serena / che 'marinari in mezzo mar dismago; / tanto son di piacere a sentir piena!/ Io volsi Ulisse del suo cammin vago / al canto mio; e qual meco s'ausa,/ rado sen parte; sì tutto l'appago!"': (Purg. xix, 19–24); "mi venne in sogno una femmina balba, / ne li occhi guercia, e sovra i piè distorta, / con le man monche, e di colore scialba": (Purg. xix, 7–9). Dante citations are from La Commedia secondo l'antica vulgata, ed. by Giorgio Petrocchi, 4 vols (Milan: Mondadori, 1966–1967).15 Citations are from Boethius, Tractates. De Consolatione Philosophiae, trans. by H. F. Stewart, E. K. Rand, and S. J. Tester (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), pp. 130–435.16 'Who let these theatrical tarts in with this sick man? Not only have they no cures for his pain, but with their sweet poison they make it worse. These are they who choke the rich harvest of reason with the barren thorns of passion. They accustom a man's mind to his ills, not rid him of them an unlettered man, as they usually do, I should not take it so seriously – after all it would do no harms to us in our task – but to distract this man reared on a diet of Eleatic and Academic thought! Get out you, Sirens, beguiling men straight to their destruction! Leave him to my Muses to be cared for and restored to health' (Boethius, Tractates. De Consolatione Philosophiae, p. 135).17 As noted by Lombardo, 'il confronto con la Consolatio è già caldeggiato da autorevoli chiosatori trecenteschi della Commedia (Ottimo, Pietro, Buti)' (Boezio in Dante, p. 333). In his most recent study of the Boethian tradition, Lombardo analyses aspects of this older tradition, paying particular attention to its development during and after Boccaccio ('Dante, Mussato e le Muse'). We will touch upon Boccaccio and his imitators in the latter part of this study.18 Pietro Alighieri, Super Dantis ipsius genitoris Comoediam Commentarium, nunc primum in lucem editum, ed. by Vincenzo Nannucci (Florence: G. Piatti, 1845), pp. 260–62. The whole text is available at 'Dartmouth Dante Project' [accessed 19 June 2023]. English translation: this author […] imagines that he finds this Siren in a dream; that is, he contemplated what moved us to the said three vices, which was the said attraction, which deceives us either about avarice, or about gluttony, or about lust. […] This Siren, that is, the aforesaid attraction, in the middle of the sea, that is, in the middle of this world, with her song, that is, with her deceptive delight, makes us drown in the said three vices […] Whence Boethius says about this: if men were to be looked at with lynx eyes […] For like a swallow is a singing and expert bird, the so-called Siren, that is, worldly attraction, which blinds our eyes with dung. Considering this, Boethius, in the person of Philosophy, exclaims, saying: Go away rather, Seirenes, sweet to destruction.19 Pietro Alighieri, Comentum super poema Comedie Dantis: A Critical Edition of the Third and Final Draft of Pietro Alighieri's Commentary on Dante's 'The Divine Comedy', ed. by Massimiliano Chiamenti (Tempe, Arizona: Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2002), pp. 395–97. For the evidence of what is said in this first part of the premium of the 19th chapter, it must be mentioned that, according to the fictions of the poets, the river Achelous is said to have had three daughters from the muse Calliope […] and they were called 'mermaids'. Fulgentius says that this is an integumentum: In truth the sirens were girls who sang very well, and therefore they are imagined to be the daughters of the river Achelous because of his sonority, but because sonority is not worth without artifice, poets also imagine that they were the daughters of Calliope the muse, who sounds like consonance, and because said girls attracted men to themselves with their sweet songs, they were called 'mermaids' from 'syren' which is 'attraction', just because in this world, as if in a certain sea, such earthly and carnal pleasures attract us for the most part and drown us in sins and vices, they are imagined so that the sirens sing in the sea to draw men and boats to themselves […]. From there he imagines that she sang so sweetly, as the text says, in which the author wishes to indicate that even above the aforementioned threefold main attraction is the attraction of song and worldly sound. In vain, he leads Philosophy to say of them: Go, O Sirens, even to destruction, etc. [Cons. 1 p. I.11].20 Gian Carlo Alessio, 'La "Comedìa" nel margine dei classici', in Studi di filologia medievale offerti a D'Arco Silvio Avalle (Milan: Ricciardi, 1996), 3–26, p. 10.21 Ottimo commento alla 'Commedia', ed. by Giovanni Battista Boccardo, Massimiliano Corrado, and Vittorio Celotto, 3 vols (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 2018), ii, 1085–86.22 'Le postille che sono d'intorno a questo libro et allo 'Nferno et al Paradiso di mia mano trassi io d'uno Dante antiquo tanto che dove era alcuno texto dubio et obscuro era legato insieme quello tale texto … .': 'Bartolomeo Nerucci', p. 78; the note is on fol. 172r of Plut. 42.15.23 Black and Pomaro, p. 116.24 Commento di Francesco da Buti sopra la 'Divina Commedia' di Dante Allighieri, ed. by Crescentino Giannini, 3 vols (Pisa: Nistri, 1958–62), ii, 444–45; 447–48. See also: Claudia Tardelli, 'Il Commento alla Commedia di Francesco da Buti. Inferno. Nuova Edizione', 2 vols (unpublished doctoral thesis, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, 2011), and Claudia Tardelli, 'Francesco da Buti's Commentary on Dante's Commedia. New critical edition, based on MS Nap. XIII C 1. Purgatorio, Paradiso' (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Cambridge, 2015).25 See the bibliography at note 4.26 Black notes that it was taught 'at a point in the curriculum corresponding to the intermediate grammar school, between the elementary and university level': Black and Pomaro, p. 132.27 On this, as well as 'A Humanist Reading'; 'Some Aspects of Boethius'; and 'The Consolation', see Black and Pomaro, pp. 30–32.28 Only five of the fifteenth–century Florentine manuscripts analysed by Black and Pomaro contain extensive glosses: BML Plut. 78.16; BML Plut. 78.20; BML Plut. 78.21; BML. Plut. 23 dxt. 11; BNCF II IX 142.29 'A f. 3 r […] si trova un breve argomento […] proveniente dalla più lunga e forse organica explanatio, o Divisiones libri Boetii rilevabile […] in altri due testimoni. Da questa stessa explanatio sono stati estrapolati gli argomenti aggiunti in margine ad apertura di ogni libro': Black and Pomaro, p. 116.30 See in particular fol. 33r.31 For Trevet's commentary see: Nicholas Trevet, Exposicio Fratris Nicolai Trevethi Angelici Ordinis Predi – catorum super Boecio De Consolacione, ed. by Edmund Silk, available online in his unpublished format [accessed 19 June 2023].32 Alessio, p. 5. A long Dante quotation has also been found on the volgarizzamento of the Consolation by Andrea Lancia: Leonardo Lenzi, 'Una riflessione sul metro dantesco nelle chiose di Boezio in volgare. Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Pluteo 76.65', in 'Onorevole e antico cittadino di Firenze'. Il Bargello per Dante, ed. by Luca Azzetta, Sonia Chiodo, and Teresa De Robertis (Florence: Mandragora, 2021), pp. 276–77. The large number of volgarizzamenti of the Consolation are clearly a mark of his popularity. At the same time, there is no doubt that the 'translation' of Boethius allowed the comparison with modern poets like Dante. There is a growing literature on the volgarizzamenti of the Consolation; see at least Silvia Albesano, 'Consolatio Philosophiae' volgare. Volgarizzamenti e tradizioni discorsive nel Trecento italiano (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag, 2006) which also contains a catalogue, now revised by Serena Lunardi, '"La victuoria de la terra dona lo cielo": l'intepretazione del metro IV, VII in un volgarizzamento inedito della Consolatio Philosophiae', La parola del testo, 12 (2008), 117–63, (pp. 157–63).33 On the authority of Boethius as a Christian author see the studies collected in Boethius Christianus?, and in particular for the 'Italian' reception the contribution to this volume by Anna Maria Babbi, 'Boezio "Cristiano" nel volgarizzamento di Bonaventura da Demena', pp. 19–34.34 For Valla's criticism see W. Scott Blanchard, 'The Negative Dialectic of Lorenzo Valla: A Study in the Pathology of Opposition', Renaissance Studies, 14.2 (2000), 149–89.35 William Bark, 'The Legend of Boethius' Martyrdom', Speculum, 21.3 (1946), 312–17.36 Ralph McInerny, Boethius and Aquinas (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1990); Peter King, 'Boethius: First of the Scholastics', in Vernacular Traditions of Boethius's De consolatione philosophiae, ed. by Noel Harold Kaylor and Philip Edward Phillips (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2016), pp. 23–46.37 Black and Pomaro, p. 204 (fol. 2r); [That wisdom shines not only in this work but in the defence of the Catholic faith. He composed a number of pamphlets: for example, a book on the trinity […] different pamphlets, of course, on the way of preaching which we employ in the distinction of Persons and unity of essence. Likewise, concerning the process of good creatures by the good God, which he entitled De hebdomadibus. Also to the same concerning the Christian faith. Also concerning the two natures in one person of Christ, where he most elegantly confounds the error of both Nestorius and Eleutica, and the rest]. It seems clear to me that this interpolation derives from Thomas Aquinas, Expositio Super Librum Boethii de Trinitate, ed. by Bruno Decker, (Leiden: Brill, 1955), p. 47.38 Ibid., p. 206 (fol. 2r).39 On Boethius' Fortuna see Jerold C. Frakes, The Fate of Fortune in the Early Middle Ages: The Boethian Tradition, Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters (Leiden: Brill, 1988).40 MS Plut. 78.20, fol. 14r; the reference is to Inf. vii, 91–93.41 Black and Pomaro, pp. 121–23, 230–34.42 On the margins of Cons. II, p. ii (fol. 16r), Valentino writes: 'Dantes. Questa è che llei ch'è tanto posta in croce / Puro da chi llei che li deveriano dare loro / Blasmendose de llei a torta voce' (Inf. vii, 91–93). On Cons. II, m. ii: 'Dantes. Questa natura è sì malvasa e rea/ Che mai non impii la brammosa vollia, / Et da po' d < e > l pasto à pià fame che pria. / Molti so' li animali a cui s < e > à vollia' (Inf. i, 97–100). See Black and Pomaro, p. 232.43 Black and Pomaro, p. 101. For this manuscript see Ibid., pp. 100–01, 191–95.44 Alessio, pp. 12–13.45 For Inf. v see for example Guido da Pisa's, Boccaccio's and Buti's commentaries, and for Inf. vii see L'Ottimo commento, Boccaccio's, and Buti's. Available at 'Dartmouth Dante Project' [accessed 19 June 2023].46 On Dante in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as well as the studies cited at n. 13, see also Luca Fiorentini, Petrarch and Boccaccio in the first commentaries on Dante's Commedia (London: Routledge 2020); Raffaele Morabito, Dante e dopo. L'idea della scrittura tra Medioevo e Umanesimo (Rome: Carocci, 2018).47 Alessio, pp. 8–9. Alessio also notes 'l'exemplum dantesco interviene a sottolineare una lettura "morale" del testo classico, piu che a corroborarne il racconto mitico', p. 10.48 Graham N. Drake, 'The Muses in the "Consolation": Responses from Late–Medieval Mythographers, 1150–1500', Carmina Philosophiae, 4 (1995), 1–75, pp. 15–16, 42–43. On Badius Ascensius, see Courcelle, pp. 331–32, Nauta, p. 11.49 Drake, p. 5.50 Ibid.51 Trevet, p. 36.52 Ibid., p. 37, quoted in Plut. 78.20, fol. 4v; [He reproaches the Muses themselves for the fact that a learned man such as Boethus was deceived by them.]53 Trevet, p. 25; [It is known that Boethius grieving and Philosphia consoling are nothing else than the mind aching from the aggravation of sensuality and reason consoling from the vigour of wisdom].54 Anthony Grafton, 'Epilogue: Boethius in the Renaissance', in Boethius: His Life, Thought, and Influence, ed. by Margaret Gibson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981), pp. 410–415.55 Nauta. On the defences of Boethius by Mussato, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Salutati see Letizia Panizza, 'Italian Humanists and Boethius: Was Philosophy for or against Poetry?', in New Perspectives on Renaissance Thought. Essays in the History of Science and Philosophy in Memory of Charles B. Schmitt, ed. by John Henry and Sarah Hutton (London: Duckworth, 1990), pp. 48–67.56 See Panizza.57 Francesco Petrarca, Invective contra medicum. Invectiva contra quendam magni status hominem sed nullius scientie aut virtutis, ed. by Francesco Bausi (Florence: Le Lettere, 2005), p. 106.58 Giovanni Boccaccio, Genealogie deorum gentilium libri, ed. by Vincenzo Romano, 2 vols (Bari: Laterza, 1951), ii, p. 745; [not by the consolation of virtues, not by salutary antidotes, not even by sacred remedies does he soothe or heal the ailments of the languishing, but by complaints and groans he amplifies that pleasure with which the afflicted are delighted]. On Boccaccio's defence of poetry as well as 'Dante, Mussato e le Muse'; see Guido Martellotti, 'La difesa della poesia nel Boccaccio e un giudizio su Lucano', Studi sul Boccaccio, 4 (1967), 265–79.59 Giovanni Boccaccio, Esposizioni sopra la 'Comedia' di Dante, ed. by Giorgio Padoan (Milan: Mondadori, 1965), p. 34.60 Boccaccio, Esposizioni, pp. 42–43.61 Filippo Villani, Expositio seu comentum super Comedia Dantis Allegherii, ed. by Saverio Bellomo (Florence: Le Lettere, 1989), p.147; [a species of comic poets who, in order to hunt riches from the folly of the people and their favour, composed comedies about the adulteries of the gods of the Gentiles, which they recited on the stage]. For a commentary on this passage, see 'Dante, Mussato, Le Muse', pp. 250–51.62 Pietro Alighieri, Comentum, p. 478. Dante's son had made a similar comment about this passage also in the first version of his commentary, but here there is no mention of 'divinam scripturam', see Super Dantis, p. 151.