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.

Pergamena ASVe, SS. Giovanni e Paolo, Atti, b. 36 (B), fasc. VII, pergamene, n° 9

Il documento, conservato nel fondo dei ‘SS. Giovanni e Paolo’ dell’Archivio di Stato di Venezia, è datato al 31 marzo 1323. Con esso, i frati domenicani del convento veneziano dei SS. Giovanni e Paolo accettano un ingente lascito testamentario dal ricco Giovanni dalle Boccole († 1321). Tra i testimoni di questa accettazione compare Marco Polo (alla riga nr. 3), il quale, quindi, era persona di piena fiducia dell’Ordine religioso e di questo suo importante convento. Un altro elemento di fascino di questa pergamena è che nel lungo elenco dei frati vi sono anche Benevenuto e Centorio, i due Domenicani citati dal Viaggiatore nel suo testamento del gennaio 1324.

«Unde narrat dominus Marcus Milio». Eredità poliane nei Sermones di fr. Nicoluccio d’Ascoli OP.

The aim of this work is to examine the references to Marco Polo’s Devisement dou monde within the work of Nicoluccio d’Ascoli OP, and specifically the direct quotations in the sermons. In order to deal with the large amount of studies on Nicoluccio, it was first necessary to reorder the various manuscripts’ catalogues and the notes on Nicoluccio inserted in other studies. The first part of the essay will therefore be dedicated to the revision of the works’ catalogue and to the recognition of the witnesses of the Sermones; the second part will investigate the relationship between Nicoluccio d’Ascoli and Marco Polo, through a careful reading of the texts that have been taken into consideration.

«Accipite hunc librum»

The contribution analyses the scattered but numerous indications of a contribution from the friars belonging to the convent of SS. Giovanni e Paolo in Venice at the first Latin diffusion of Marco Polo’s Devisement dou monde starting both from the possible attribution to this milieu of the Latin version Z, realised in the first thirty years of the fourteenth century, and from the presence of Marco in the document of 1323 which certifies the ratification of the legacy of Giovanni delle Boccole to the convent, and finally from the traces of literary activity of personalities in relationship with it, a network of preaching friars emerges in relationship with other nearby convents (in particular Treviso) and with the first two generations of Paduan humanists (in particular Albertino Mussato). These elements, if developed with wider investigations on the patrimony of the Venetian convent, can provide new insights for the interpretation of the Dominican appropriation of Marco’s text.

La traduzione latina del Devisement dou monde nel Chronicon di Francesco Pipino

The Chronicon written in Latin by Francesco Pipino, a Dominican friar from Bologna (ca 1270-ca 1328), consists of 31 books in Latin prose on universal history from 754 to 1317, with some additions up to 1322. The sole manuscript Modena, Biblioteca Estense, α.X.1.5, transmits the text. This paper analyses Tartars’ history in the Chronicon, and focuses particularly on Pipino’s method in his Latin translation of Marco Polo.

«Gerarchie del riferibile» nella redazione P del Devisement dou monde

This paper presents the results of a comparison between the Latin version P, drawn up by the friar Francesco Pipino OP, and its vernacular model, VA. The analysis, based on chosen samples, discusses the common belief that P is a censored version, showing that the main cuts depend on its model. The negative depictions of Muhammad and Islam and of idolatry are also analysed.

Pipino traduttore del Devisement dou monde (un esercizio di prima approssimazione)

This paper offers a sample of the linguistic strategies used by Francesco Pipino in his Latin translation of the Marco Polo’s Devisement dou monde, by comparing a passage of Pipino’s text with its source (the Italian redaction named VA) and with the Latin redactions Z and L.

Marco Polo e il convento dei SS. Giovanni e Paolo nella ‘roulette veneziana’

This article reports on the discovery of the parchment (ASVe, SS. Giovanni e Paolo, Atti, b. 36 (B), fasc. VII, pergamene, n° 9) and provides its first critical edition. In addition to the text of the new document with the mention of Marco Polo, however, there is the presentation of a first archival investigation on the figures of the cited Dominican. The purpose of this article, therefore, is to help outline the relationship between Marco Polo, the Devisement dou monde and the Dominican friars at SS. Giovanni e Paolo; the document, in fact, gives a new twist on the theory that the friars helped to revise Polo’s book.