Overview
Merton College
Oxford
United Kingdom
RVF, Triumphi + Fame Ia
Description
238x151 mm; III + 168 + III fols.
parchment; humanistic script; Petrarch’s poems with one verse per line; one architectural frame and decorated initials.
<inc> Triomfi di messer Francesco Petrarca poeta fiorentino laure[—] capitolio romano
fol. Ir: note of possession by an eighteenth-century hand (‘Liber Coll[egi] Mert[on]’) and a note by a later hand on the ms.’s contents (‘Petrarca Triumphi Canzoni e Sonetti’);
fol. Iv-IIv: blank;
fol. IIIr: many scattered words by at least two late-sixteenth/seventeenth-century hands and some strokes of pen;
fol. IIIv: ms. shelfmark;
fols. 1r-35v: Triumphi (‘Triomfi di messer Francesco Petrarca poeta fiorentino laure[—] capitolio romano’, order [see note below]: Amoris I, Amoris III, Amoris IV, Amoris II, Pudicitie, Mortis I, Mortis II, Fame Ia, Fame I, Fame II, Fame III, Temporis, Eternitatis);
fol. 35v: colophon: Finis Patrarce [sic] Triu[m]phis;
fols. 36r-163r: RVF 4-366 and the dispersa ‘Donna mi viene spesso nella mente’ (fol. 79v) (some RVF poems are missing due to the loss of some fols; for a complete list of RVF poems in this ms., see Mann 1975, 480);
fol. 136r: colophon: Finis. Finiscono le canzoni et sonetti di messer Francesco Petrarca poeta fiorentino;
fols. 163v-168v: partial alphabetical index of the first lines of the sonnets of RVF (under each letter of the alphabet [from A to S], poems are listed according to order of appearance).
Material Copy
Merton College
Oxford
United Kingdom
Occasional marginal annotations by a humanistic hand either add a few missing lines or correct some words. A few further annotations by a later hand add a few words within the text either in interlinear space (e.g., at fol. 80v), or over previous words that have been erased (e.g., at fol. 53v). A few other scattered, barely legible marginal annotations by a different cursive hand are written next to the beginning of RVF 211 and 213 (fols. 107v-108r).
Decorated initials in gold for the beginning of each Triumphus (except for Amoris I [this initial was cut away from the fol.] and Fame I [this initial was never decorated]) and each subsequent capitolo; at fol. 1r is an architectural frame.
Ten fols. are missing (i.e. one fol. [with Triumphus Fame III.64-121] after fol. 30; one fol. [with RVF 1-3] after fol. 35; and eight other fols. within the RVF section – for a full list of these missing fols, see Mann 1975, 479-80).
The first four quires (fols. 1-35) of the ms. are bound in the wrong order. The correct order is as follows (the numbers refer to the present position of the fols): 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 7, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 16, 5, 6, 9, 10, 19, 18, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 23, 28, 26, 27, 29, 30, a missing fol., 31, 32, 33, 34, and 35.
The lower part of fols. 1, 88, 107, 136, 157-161, and 168 has been cut away.
For the identification of the copyist of this ms., see Mann 1975, 480. n. 1.
Coxe 1852, I, 3, 129; Mann 1975, 479-81