The Dominican Educational and Social Contexts of Riccoldo of Monte Croce’s Pilgrimage Writing

Riccoldo of Monte Croce (ca. 1243–1320), Dominican friar, missionary, and pilgrim, was an accomplished author, but nature of his written corpus has been disputed by scholarship. For some, he is a noted anti-Islamic polemicist. For others, he is a quasi-tolerant traveler in the East. Yet past attempts to understand Riccoldo’s corpus have taken little notice of the priory of Santa Maria Novella, Florence, where he spent most of his life. This article begins to rectify this omission and signals new ways to understand Riccoldo by drawing on the work of historians, philologists, and codicologists. It assesses Riccoldo’s relationship to Santa Maria Novella’s library and its books. It also traces some of Riccoldo’s social relationships, demonstrating how his positions as a lecturer and preacher and his social connections with individuals like Remigio de’ Girolami influenced his writings. Overall, this study reemphasizes the fact that without understanding social contexts we can never properly understand the intentions of pilgrim-authors.

Lettori di Marco Polo a Santa Maria Novella

The aim of this paper is to propose a new and updated description of a manuscript named Conventi soppressi C.VII.1170, which hands down a Latin version of Marco Polo’s Milion made by Francesco Pipino of Bologna OP. The Conventi soppressi manuscript is a significant witness of the text for its antiquity, the elegance of its making, and the authority of its production. The codicological analysis allows to clarify numerous doubts (or to address several open questions) about the manufacture of the manuscript and the meaning of the iconography. Furthermore, it allows to discover new palaeographic elements that identify a rewriting intervention. Therefore, the set of features related to the making of the manuscript suggests an overview about the social and historical context of its production, where the consideration of a book as an object is related to its practical function.

Nicholas Trevet : le théologien anglais qui parlait à l’oreille des Italiens

The commentaries composed by the English theologian Nicholas Trevet at the beginning of the fourteenth century not only bear witness to his connections with Santa Maria Novella. They also testify to the importance of his contribution to the transfer of knowledge about Antiquity and the rebirth of antiquarianism in the Italian peninsula. This essay argues that Trevet’s Scholastic commentaries, presented as an expositio, met the need that Italian intellectuals had of a fuller understanding of classic literature, pagan mythology and Roman history.

L’usura tra Santa Croce e Santa Maria Novella:

Between 1290 and 1310, two Mendicant friars active in Florence dealt with the controversial issue of usury: the Franciscan lector Peter of Trabibus, who until now has been studied primarily for his relationship to Olivi’s teaching, and the Dominican Remigio de’ Girolami. In the mid-nineties of the thirteenth century, in the context of his quodlibetal questions, Peter of Trabibus discusses the social role of merchants and he broaches the question of the restitution of usurious gains. Some years later, Remigio also deals with similar issues in his quodlibetal questions and writes a treatise that bears the title De peccato usurae.

Gli “Ammaestramenti degli Antichi” di Bartolomeo da San Concordio.

Bartholomew of San Concordio translated his Documenta antiquorum into the vernacular presumably around 1297-1302, during his stay at the convent of Santa Maria Novella. Cesare Segre suggested such a date based on the dedication of the translation to Geri Spini, a Florentine banker and politician who was a supporter of the Black Guelfs and a close friend of Corso Donati. However, the relationships between the Dominican Friar and the Commune of Florence, as well as the potential connections between Bartholomew’s self-translation and Florentine political contingencies, are still to be investigated.

Lo “studium” e la biblioteca di Santa Maria Novella nel Duecento e nei primi anni del Trecento (con una postilla sul Boezio di Trevet)

Building on recent scholarship, this article sketches the development of the Florentine studium of Santa Maria Novella in the thirteenth century, before it became a studium generale between 1305 and 1311. The catalogue of Santa Maria Novella’s library and the information regarding works which were conceived there are collected and analysed to outline the core of the ancient library. The first quire of the manuscript Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Conv. soppr. G 3.451 (cc. 1-8) constitutes a notable case study for the learning interests of Dominican friars. Finally, this article discusses the controversial letter written by Nicholas Trevet to the dedicatee of his commentary on Boethius’ Consolatio Philosophiae and re-assesses its disputed connec- tion with the Florentine environment.

Poesia e filosofia a Firenze tra Santa Croce e Santa Maria Novella

This article draws a comparison between the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century library collection of the Dominican convent of Santa Maria Novella and that of the Franciscan convent of Santa Croce. Such an investigation casts new light on the links between philosophy and po- etry which enliven Dante’s literary production. In particular, the author considers Aristotelian works as potential vehicles of literary knowledge about, for instance, Homeric characters.