Per una storia del testo di Virgilio nella prima eta del libro a stampa (1469-1519). .

Matteo Venier. Per una storia del testo di Virgilio nella prima eta del libro a stampa (1469-1519).

Udine: Forum Editrice Universitaria Udinese Sri, 2001. xxi + 158 Pp. index, append. IL 26,000. ISBN: 88-8420-025-3.

In this useful monograph Venier investigates the history of Vergil's text (Bucolics, Georgics, Aeneid) as it was transmitted in the first fifty years of printed editions from Bussi's editio princeps (Rome [1469]) down to the fourth Aldine edition (Venice [1519]). The treatment of editions published between 1469-75 is exhaustive; for editions published between 1476-1500 selective; in the final period, 1501-19, the author is interested mainly in three Aldine editions (1501, 1505, 1514), Egnatius' edition (Venice, 1507), and Riccardini's Giuntine edition (Florence, 1510). The goal of the investigation is twofold: first, to identify the general characteristics of the manuscript sources that lay behind the text of the earliest editions (the manuscripts themselves that were used as printer's copy have not been identified); and second, to establish the filiations among the printed editions by means of collation of selected passages from each of Vergil's works. The primary results of the investigation are embodied in a stemma of thirty printed editions (137) which maps out the lines of descent. In addition to questions of manuscript sources and filiations of printed texts, the author also discusses problems in the reconstruction of editorial method; whether, for example, Bussi, when he was preparing his second edition (Rome, 1471), made effective use of the ancient codex Mediceus (fifth century).

In chapter 1 Venier sketches the fifteenth-century manuscript tradition," the humanistic vulgate," that concatenation of the genuine, the interpolated, the corrupt, and the misguided, which transmitted the text of the Roman poet into the age of the printed book. Since the poor textual quality of the humanistic manuscripts and their receptivity to interpolated material are generally known, it would have helped the overall presentation if the author had said more at the outset about the indirect tradition, i.e. the works of commentators, antiquarians, and grammarians, which provided an abundant source of variant readings and a stimulus to interpolation. Those entrepreneurs of the word who guided Vergil's text into print were like prospectors panning for textual gold in the riverbed of Servius, Tiberius Donatus, Aulus Gellius, and others whose Vergilian discourse gave the glitter of authenticity to readings which were in most cases better left sunk in the sediment where they were found. The early editors may ha ve felt that the venerable age and sheer volume of ancient Vergilian scholarship made it more trustworthy as a source of genuine readings than the interpolated manuscripts they had to work worth. A page of Rubeus' Venetian edition (1475) gives a visual representation of the commanding presence of Vergil's commentators: the first five lines of the Aeneid form a small island in the vast sea of Servius' commentary that fills the folio-sized page.

Chapters 2 and 3 are devoted to the collation and investigation of readings found in the printed editions. The general picture that emerges is that of Bussi's edition as the dominant influence on the formation of the textus receptus, at the same time, however, there was a considerable amount of contamination which resulted from the frequent adoption of uncommon readings found in other printed editions or manuscripts. The most noteworthy item in these chapters is the author's hypothesis that Riccardini's 1510 Giuntine edition, which is recognized as the first Giuntine edition of Vergil's works, was in fact preceded by another Giunta Vergil, also edited by Riccardini, and published ca. 1505; of this edition no trace has survived (102-12). The two pieces of evidence for this hypothesis are doubtful. First, Mariano Tucci's reference, in an afterward, to the 1510 Giuntine edition as "hoc secundo Maronis enchiridio" (this second hand-held book of Maro) cannot be interpreted as confirmation of the existence of an e arlier edition edited by Riccardini because enchiridion, the word used by Aldus Manutius to describe his octavo-sized Vergil of 1501, indicates format and cannot be assumed to be a synonym for the terms commonly used for edition, editio or impressio; the 1504 Giunta anthology of bucolic poetry, an octavo-sized enchiridion also edited by Riccardini, although it contained the Bucolics alone of Vergil's works, may well have been what Tucci had in mind as the predecessor of Riccardini's 1510 Giunta Vergil. The second piece of evidence, readings shared by the 1510 Giunta Vergil and Egnarius' Venetian edition (1507) which are said to demonstrate that Riccardini's text of Vergil must have been available in printed form before 1510, indeed before 1507, is weakened by the fact that many of these readings can be traced to the indirect tradition or to earlier printed editions where Egnatius could have found them.

As a by-product of his labors, Venier is able to correct, in appendix 1 (139-40), information recorded in modern critical texts concerning the attribution of certain conjectures which the author has now traced to their earliest source in either manuscript or print.