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A Commedia with a Lyric Collection (MS Can. Ital. 111)

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A Commedia with a Lyric Collection (MS Can. Ital. 111)
Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Can. Ital. 111
Italy, Venice; 14th century exeunte – 15th century ineunte; Giovanni de’ Garzoni; Biagio da Ragusa.

Parchment, palimpsest (the earlier text is an unidentified Latin work); mm 345x230; ff. 158. Written by two principal hands: Giovanni de’ Garzoni, in a merchant cursive script (ff. 1-141r; 152-155, 156v); Biagio da Ragusa, cursive humanistic script (ff. 141v-151v). Different layouts mirroring the different phases of copy. Some rubrics in red.
Binding in parchment and cardboard.

   Italy, Venice and Veneto, 15th century; Matteo Luigi Canonici, 1727–1805; Giuseppe Canonici, -1807; purchased by the Bodleian in 1817.
   The volume contains a lyric anthology with poems by Zianin de’ Garzoni (?), Giovanni Quirini, Antonio da Ferrara, Petrarch, Dante (?), Ventura Monachi, Giovanni Frescobaldi, Guglielmotto d’Otranto, Domenico da Montecchiello, and anonymous (fols. 1-19); Dante’s Commedia (ending at Par. 31.123, fols. 20-151); Graziolo Bambaglioli’s Trattato delle virtù morali (fols. 152-155).
   Various ownership notes: fol. 1v “Zianin de Garzoni”  and “de Nichollo T(re)vixan de mis(er) ioachi(n) d(e) sanlucha. Cho(m)pra in piaza a i(n)chanto da s(er) Andrea d(e) ma[risc]cha[...]ch[.]o a di vi zener 1411 [the last two numbers written on 02] per ducati 9, d., 15, s. 27», a signature Zuane grigo; fol. 141r, at the end of Purgatorio: «Mccccxxxxv die septima noue(m)br(is). Explicit purgatorius liber p(er) blasium raguxe(um) qui stetit in domo d(omi)ni pauli lauredano adlaude(m) dej scriptor scripsisset 7 mellius si ualuisset: certe»; fol. 158v: «Jachob de zudio scripsisset» «De padova [...] 1456 xd 10 maxi» (this note suggests that the manuscripts arrived in Padua).

This incomplete copy of the Commedia is preceded by a poetic anthology, with poems attributed spuriously to Dante. Copied in Venice in the late fourteenth century by Giovanni de’ Garzoni, possibly a member of a naturalized Florentine family, it was later completed by Biagio da Ragusa in the house of the Loredan family. The poetic anthology has been compiled in five different phases, and the poems have been written with varying layouts, according to what space was left. Three poems are attributed to Dante: “Tolete via le vostre porte omai” (fol. 16v, «da(n)tte | Amo(r) Cogitaciones Spes Virttus et Racio», sonnet by Quirini), and two of the correspondence sonnets between Dante and the Venetian poet Giovanni Quirini: “Se 'l primo huomo se fosse difeso” (c. 10rb, «r° dantis»); “Con plu sospiri avanti costei vegno” (c. 10vb, «r° dantis»); the third, “Nulla mi parve mai più crudel cosa” (fol. 19rb) here is anonymous. By portraying Dante as a friend of Quirini, as in Giovanni Girolamo Nadal’s Leandreride, this manuscript establishes a connection between the poet of the Commedia and the city of Venice.