From One of the Great Works of the Era of Dantean Literature in Late Medieval Italy and Its Humanist Era

Uberti’s father had been referenced by Dante

The City State of Florence:

In the 1300s, the Italian city-states were embroiled in complex political machinations between each other—chiefly Milan, Florence, Pisa, Siena, Genoa, Ferrara, Mantua, Verona, and Venice— and the overarching powers of the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire. Even within factions that seemed to support the same objectives: the Guelphs, who battled the Ghibellines, split in to the White Guelphs and Black Guelphs and ultimately the Black Guelphs exiled Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) from his beloved city state of Florence in 1302. During this exile, Dante wrote the Commedia, his love-song to Beatrice, to his pagan and Christian poet-idols, to a reimagined theology incorporating courtly love and Greek philosophy, and to the city and people of Florence. He wrote his three canticles in a style called terza rima, rhyming stanzas of three lines, which was frequently imitated by later poets.

The Power and Poetry of Florence:
Despite the political turmoil, Florence rose in power not only in Italy but throughout Europe in part because of the strength of its gold based economy. Florence stepped out of the Middle Ages into the Renaissance with a flourish of distinct and memorable art and poetry, but the mid-1300s offered another tragedy for the dazzling city state. In 1348 the Black Plague ravaged the Italian peninsula. Poets turned their pens towards chronicling this devastation, with perhaps the most-well known being the Decameron of Florentine poet Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375). The Decameron (likely begun shortly after 1348 and completed in 1353) follows ten young people as they leave Florence to flee the plague. On the way, they entertain themselves through a series of stories to take their minds off of the horrors around them.

Fazio degli Uberti and Dante:
Fazio degli Uberti (1305/9- ca.1367) is not as well-known as Dante or Boccaccio, who are two of the “Tre Corone” of Italy (with Petrarch as the third crown). Fazio was born in 1305 or 1309 to a family of some importance who identified politically as Ghibellines, who supported the Holy Roman Emperor rather than the Pope. The family’s Ghibelline alignment accorded Fazio’s ancestor, Farinata degli Uberti, a place in Dante’s Inferno. In Canto 6, Farinata is listed among the Florentines who have done more bad than good for the city. Though in Canto 6, Dante asks where the great Florentines are who had “minds bent towards good,” including Farinata, he is told that in fact, these Florentines are those with the blackest souls and the fact that Dante thinks of them with esteem shows how warped Florence has become. Later, in Canto 10, Dante will meet with Farinata himself among the heretics and in Canto 28 he will understand how Florence suffers because of men such as Farinata, in part because of the schism between the Guelfs and Ghibellines.

Despite this condemnation of his family, in 1345, Fazio wrote his most noted poem, the Dittamondo, an emulation of Dante’s Commedia. The title, Dittamondo, is an vernacularization of the Latin dicta mundi, indicating that it is an encyclopaedic text of what is known and said of the world. Like Dante’s journey under the guidance of Virgil, Statius, and finally Beatrice, Fazio’s narrator meets with the allegorical figure of Virtue, he and the Roman geographer Solinus travelled the whole world (Italy, Greece, Germany, France, Spain, northern Europe, Africa and parts of Asia), with Solinus giving the narrator descriptions of the cities visited. In addition, numerous other snippets of information are added from the works of Pliny the Elder, Isidore of Seville and Pomponius Mela. Even the style of poetry Fazio employed for his didactic poem was modelled after Dante’s own terza rima. However, unlike Dante’s poem, Fazio’s is far more encyclopaedic rather than a tour de force of allegorical and contemporary political satire clothed in Dante’s masterful command of language. Like Dante, Fazio was exiled from Florence and like Dante, Fazio wrote of his exile from the city. The Dittamondo remained incomplete upon Fazio’s death around 1367.

History of the Manuscript Tradition of Dittamondo:
While no comprehensive survey of manuscripts exists, it is clear that the text is rare in manuscript, with the Arlima database listing only BnF., italien 81 and Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale, Marciana, Cl. IX, c. XI. To these should be added Turin, Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria, cod N 1 5; Milan, Biblioteca Nazionale, AC.X.30; and other single volumes in the Biblioteca Riccardiana in Florence, the Biblioteca Angelica in Rome and the university library of Bologna, as well as a fourteenth-century fragment in the Biblioteca Archiginnasio in the same city.

The Schoenberg database lists no copy offered for sale since that from the Joseph Martini library, by Hoepli on 27 August 1934 (lot 177 there), with that previously appearing as Sotheby’s, 10 June 1918, lot 504.

The document:

Bifolium from a large humanist manuscript of Fazio degli Uberti, Dittamondo, in Italian, on parchment [Italy, mid-fifteenth century, within a century of Fazio’s death]. Each leaf approximately 330 by 240mm. Two conjoined leaves, each with single column of 33 lines of an accomplished humanist hand (with parts of chapters X-XI and XIII-XIV of Book 6), one large simple initial in pale blue, the text set within an extensive gloss in Italian in smaller script, recovered from the binding of a seventeenth-century book and hence with scuffs, spots, small holes, one corner torn away with loss to gloss there, scrawls and areas of text on outerside abraded and illegible.

This bifolium would be one of the center leaves in the gathering or quire, sandwiched between other successive leaves, folded, and sewn in the gutter (the crease in the center of the bifolium separating the earlier part of the text from the later), to create the legible, linear text.

The content deals with Old Testament and Hebrew Bible figures.

Chapter X gives a précis of Old Testament stories in terza rima, mentioning Jacob, Laban, Rachel and Lia, Reuben, Gad, Asher, and Potiphar.

Chapter XI continues with the genealogy of the tribe of Levi, which includes and touches on Aaron and Moses, who is the main focus of this section.

The text on the bifolium jumps forward to Chapter XIII where holy lives are described, including that of Mary of Egypt. From the Book of Kings in the Hebrew Bible, Fazio weaves in mention of Elisha’s punishment of Ghazi who stole robes and treasure from his Naaman the Syrian. Elisha transferred Naaman’s leprosy to Ghazi. Fazio, demonstrating his wide knowledge of this material, says that “io non ti canto apertamente qui come Eliseo reuscitò un morto col Santo prego…” [I won’t tell you openly how Elisha resurrected a dead man with holy prater] and follows with another secret: “io non ti canto poi che li fu scorto fuel pargoletto…” [I won’t tell you that a little baby was seen there, that gave light and brightness…].

Beginning with Ahaziah, the sixth King of Judah, Chapter XIV follows this line through Ezechias and castigates Sennacherib, the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, who did not accept God. Fazio finds and points to “Olda d’Ain” a female prophet, heard by the world.

The text of the Dittamondo is surrounded by annotations in a contemporary hand, employing more frequent abbreviations. These notes provide further details about the events described in the poem with a patte-de-mouche flourish at the end of each section.