Enea Silvio Piccolomini's Commentarius to Antonio Beccadelli's De dictis et factis Alfonsi regis Aragonum. Critical edition and commentary.

• Applicant: Dr. Giuseppe Marcellino, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Medieval History ; Greek and Latin Philology
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 530130350

The so-called Commentarius in quatuor libros De dictis et factis Alfonsi regis Aragonum Antonii Panormitae (1456; henceforth Commentarius) is the only work of Eneas Silvius Piccolomini which has never been published in a modern edition. The project aims at the edition and a detailed study of this work. The first objective of research consists in a critical, historical and philological examination of the manuscript tradition as well as printed editions, in order to determine the critical text and also reconstruct the history of its diffusion. The autoptic inspection of manuscripts will constitute an essential element for both the codicological description as well as for the analysis and identification of the intervening correctors. During this phase of research accurate tables of collations will be written, in order to effectuate a study of rapport of manuscript affinity. The determination of a stemma and the consequent eliminatio codicum descriptorum will be the basis for the constitutio textus. The text, finally, will be furnished with a critical apparatus in which the errors of the scribes are indicated, while in a second band a genetic apparatus will register the eventual redactional variants of the author. Moreover, I will provide both an apparatus fontium as well as a philological-historical commentary, in order to identify historical personalities mentioned in the work (mainly from the German-speaking area). The work of determination and exegesis of the text will be accompanied by a complete investigation of the historical context in which the Commentarius was written and of the cultural and political intentions by the author. In particular, the second objective consists in the preparation of a critical, historical, exegetic and linguistic/stylistic commentary, in which I will try to illustrate the value of the Commentarius not only as a literary work, but also as a prime source for the history of Renaissance culture. For the critical first edition of Piccolomini's Commentarius, a publication in hybrid form is planned. While the book edition, which is to be published as a monograph in one of the series of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, offers Becadelli's original text and Piccolomini's Commentarius in printed synopsis, the digital version will be made available on the server of the MGH as an HTML document. It is freely accessible and permanently accessible under a permanent link. Piccolomini's Commentarius shows a clear connection to German scientific interests. Indeed, lots of the anecdotes and facts cited by Piccolomini largely refer to the territory of present-day Germany/Austria and some of them are clearly from German sources.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants