Concerning Three Manuscripts of the Divine Comedy in Private Collections in New York and Milan, Part 2 of 3

This note is the second element in a series of three contributions dedicated to the (re-)discovery, by a research group (including myself) under the direction of Prof. P. Trovato in Ferrara (Italy), of three manuscripts of the Commedia in private collections. (Introductory remarks on the project may be found in the previous note).

Kraus 2

The manuscript under exam is a codex that has never been catalogued before, except for an appearance in the catalogue of an exhibition in London[1] and belongs to the same Private Collection of MS Kraus 1, within H.P. Kraus, New York.

Kraus 2 is a codex on vellum and is composed of 202 folios.[2] It has a blind-stamped binding of goatskin over wooden boards. The cover shows stamped metal fittings. It contains only the Commedia, written in single columns (30 lines) from the first sheet to the last one; the text breaks off at Paradiso, XVIII 18.

The initial letters at the beginning of each cantica and canto are decorated. The decoration of the cantica initials takes 6-8 lines: in Inferno in red and blue and purple penwork, infilled with yellow wash and flowers; in Purgatorio in gold and purple penwork; in Paradiso in white, blue and gold with leaf design; the decoration of the initials for the cantos extends from 3 to 4 lines. Initial letters of every tercet are also touched in blue and red with long flourishes. One can see two different types of decoration for the initials of the cantos. At the beginning (the first quires) decorations are in red or purple with penwork in filling and long extensions with foliate and flower design in purple and red and liquid gold infilling; from quire 8 in red or blue with penwork in purple and sometimes also in red and long extensions. At the end there are some decorations around initials left blank. This could indicate a progressive abandoning of commitment, a hypothesis which is compatible with the interruption of the text of the poem at Pd XVIII 18.

The text is written in littera textualis by a single copyist and it appears free of erasures, corrections or marginalia. The scribe initially writes in a tidy and clear way, but as the text progresses the bookhand gets larger and more angular. The copyist, despite previous critical  pronouncements which affirm that the MS is a Florentine product, seems to come from Perugia. There are many dialectal peculiarities confirming this provenience.[3]

Regarding genealogical filiations, the MS could belong to the Vatican Family but it appears to be strongly contaminated.

Innovations vatbocc in Kraus 2

There is actually a large number of innovations typical of other areas in the genealogical tree; namely the so called parm group[4] and bol group[5] or cento.[6] (I remind readers that these sigla indicate families that have been established and re-classified by our team, subsequent to the collation of all the MSS witnesses).

Moreover, one can report a number of lectiones singulares.

Lectiones singulares in Kraus 2

Both the evident linguistic patina superimposed throughout the text, and the number of lectiones singulares marking it indicate that the copyist was not particularly well-read and strongly altered the text, on account of distraction and carelessness. This attitude toward the text clashes considerably with the accurate handwriting and the elegance of the script and the mise en page.

Thanks to the inclusion of Kraus 2, the stemma codicum acquires a new element.

It is a perhaps not insignificant acquisition, especially because it reminds us of the distinction between the tradition and the stemma –that is, between the actual genealogy of all manuscripts that ever existed and the diagram of the genealogical relations of only those that are still extant. It is a dualism that invites to consider the stemma as always incomplete and thus provisional.