Overview
Biblioteca Comunale
Treviso
Italy
RVF 58
Description
193x132 mm; 51 (unnumbered 2-52) fols.
paper; seventeenth-century script; prose text (within which quotations from Petrarch are set in script type).
LA NEPENTE | DISCORSO | DEL | D. P. LASEYNA [sic]
fol. 1: missing;
fol. 2r: title page followed by a quotation from Seneca by a later hand;
fol. 2v: blank;
fols. 3r-4r: list of quoted authors (‘Autori citati et osservati’);
fol. 4v: blank;
fols. 5r-6v: Lasena’s address to readers (‘A chi legge’, <inc> Tolomeo quel famosissimo Re del egitto, cognominato Filadelfo che col gouerno de’ Popoli trattò lo studio delle buone lettere; <exp> se lo stile ti parrà rozzo: ti piacerà la materia. se no[n] loderai la scienza, celebrerai almeno la pietà; uiui lieto);
fol. 7r-7v: blank;
fols. 8r-50v: Lasena’s lecture (‘Discorso intorno alla uera inteligenza della uirtu dell’herba Nepente, descritta da Omero nel 4 del Olisseade, col occasione del Son: del Petrarca la guancia che fu gia. Sopra de qua’ luoghi sono questi poeti osseruati, dichiarati, et illustrati, fuor del opinione de’ particolari Com[m]entatori’, <inc> Quel diuino scrittore e gra[n] miracolo della Grecia Omero da cui come da copioso e limpidissimo fonte derivarono a molti antichi le cognitioni tutte delle scienze e delle storie racconta nel Olisseade che nascesse a quel gran pastor de popoli Menelao un figliuolo; <exp> da buon filosofo appre[n]dei a pratticar questa mirabil ricetta della Nepente, che si come mi uien insegnata da quel gra[n] esculapio d’Omero: così sensa fallo si è in quella la uera, et unica medicina di questi mali. P[ri]mo di 9bre 1616);
fols. 50v-51r: several scattered words by the same hand on the Nepenthes;
fols. 51v-52v: blank.
Material Copy
Biblioteca Comunale
Treviso
Italy
Lasena’s work deals with the herb nepenthes, its virtues and uses, and then lists those authors who referred to it, including its use in literature. Fols. 11r-13r focus on RVF 58 and here Lasena explains, against previous commentators, that the herbal juice that Petrarch invites the addressee of the sonnet to take drink (‘col terzo bevete un suco d’erba’, l. 9) that is made out of the herb nepenthes. Lasena focuses on other content-related aspects of the sonnet, too; and he continues to argue against the views of previous unspecified exegetes who maintained that the three objects mentioned in Petrarch’s sonnet as gifts sent to its dedicatee were a clock, a breviary, and a potion. Lasena believes that Petrarch most likely sent his friend a book of Plato, or Seneca, or even his own book of rhymes.
Reference is made, among others, to Aristotle, Ateneans, Cicero, Diogenes Laertius, Epictetus, Heraclitus, Homer, Macrobius, Philostratus, Pindar, Plato, Pliny, Plutarch, Seneca, Theophrastus, Virgil.
This work might be the Italian version of Homeri nepenthes, seu de abolendo luctu (Naples, 1621).
Scattered marginal annotations by the same hand either add some words (or sentences), or correct the main text, or else refer to a quoted passage, pointing out the source it is drawn from.
Fol. 1 is missing.
Ms.TV, IV, 2806