Epistolario I. La tradizione manoscritta e a stampa.

Following hard in the same series on Helene Harth's edition of three volumes of Poggio's epistles and Sebastiano Gentile's edition of the first volume of Ficino's Lettere, this volume may herald a second "heroic age" in the editing of the correspondence of the Italian humanists, comparable in its achievements to the first "age" of the mid-eighteenth century, which saw the publication of Giuseppe Rigacci's edition of the letters of Salutati, Lorenzo Mehus' of Bruni, Pietro Canneti's of Traversari, and Angelo Maria Quirini's of Francesco Barbaro. Needless to say, technological change over the past two centuries has revolutionized the editing of the humanists' letters. And in undertaking this edition, Claudio Griggio has taken advantage of such innovations as photography, rail and air travel, electronic communication, and the near completion of Paul Oskar Kristeller's attempt at a global union list of humanistic manuscripts, to mention only the most important.

Embarking on this new critical edition of Francesco Barbaro's letters at the behest of Vittore Branca in 1976, Griggio gradually came to realize that he would have to issue a volume on the manuscript tradition preliminary to an edition of the texts themselves. The reason is not far to seek. Francesco Barbaro was one of the most prolific letter writers of his age, and his correspondence is widely scattered in hundreds of manuscripts. Thus, though almost all of Barbaro's letters are available in print in Quirini's volumes (1741-43), supplemented by Remigio Sabbadini's Centotrenta lettere inedite (1884), with recent editions of new discoveries by Branca, Pier Luigi Calabrese and Griggio himself, still a complete census is required for any integral, critical edition of Barbaro's correspondence.

The heart of the book lies in very full descriptions of some 240 manuscripts containing letters to and from Francesco Barbaro, giving prominence (103-61 and 257-81) to the two canonical collections: Vat. lat. 5911 which contains letters from 1413 to 1451, organized and corrected by Barbaro, supplemented by Guarner. 28, in Biblioteca Guarneriana, San Daniele del Friuli, containing Barbaro's late letters (1454-1460), copied in the scriptorium of Guarnerio d'Artegna. The two canonical collections contain 522 letters (416 by Barbaro and 106 sent to him) while the "extravaganti" comprise 268 additional letters (109 by Barbaro and 159 to him) for a total of 790 letters (525 by and 265 to Barbaro). To facilitate reference, sigla have been assigned to all manuscripts and an alphabetical list of incipits created. The incipit of each letter is preceded by a number assigned to that letter and followed by sigla of manuscripts containing that letter and of printed versions. Griggio's catalogue of the manuscript tradition is nearly exhaustive, though the publication of the index to volumes V and VI of Kristeller's Iter Italicum may well yield a few more witnesses, especially of the more famous letters. At present I can add only one new manuscript version. A copy of letter [546.sup.*] (43) with incipit: Cum amorem tuum, Guarino to Barbaro, is to be found in New Haven, Beinecke Library, Yale University, Marston MS 94, fol. 199rv, on which see B. Shailor, Catalogue of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (Bing-hamton, New York, 1992) 3:181.

An indispensable preliminary to the task of editing Francesco Barbaro's correspondence, this detailed catalogue also yields invaluable data on the creation of manuscripts, both before and after the advent of printing, and will help to document humanist habits of anthologizing and canon formation. Most of all, it whets our appetite for the edition itself, which will transform our understanding of the cultural and political world of north and central Italy in the early Renaissance. We impatiently await these riches. VASSAR COLLEGE