Resumen

GUALDO, Irene. «Galeotto was the book»: Searching Dante’s Library. Hist. graf [online]. 2024, n.63, pp.105-146.  Epub 21-Jun-2024. ISSN 1405-0927.  https://doi.org/10.48102/hyg.vi63.526.

What and how did the writers of the first centuries of the Italian language read? Thanks to the influence of what readings did you compose your works?

In the case of Boccaccio and Petrarch, the answer to this question was found in the books they owned and in which in many cases they made notes. Of Dante, on the other hand, we do not possess either the books or a single word written in his handwriting: we can only imagine the appearance of his handwriting thanks to the description that Leonardi Bruni left of it, probably based on a Dantesque autograph, now lost.

Given this lack of data, Dante’s sole mention of his own training is of great importance, that is, the passage from the Convivio in which he narrates that he undertook philosophical studies immediately after the death of Beatrix, prompted by the reading of the Consolatio Philosophiae of Boethius to go for thirty months “to the schools of the religious and to the disputes of the philosophers” (Conv. II, XII, 1-7). The schools frequented by the Poet can be identified with the conventual Studia of Florence, that is, the Franciscan of Santa Croce, the Dominican of Santa Maria Novella and the Augustinian of Santo Spirito, unique places of conservation of books and education, in addition to the teaching by isolated private teachers like Brunetto Latini.

Among these institutions, home to lively cultural activity, philosophical disputes and study, the historical data attributable to Dante favors Santa Croce, whose books (today preserved mainly in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenciana and in the National Central Library of Florence) document the physiognomy in which the texts he read were offered to his eyes and were models of his works.

This contribution traces a journey through the precious bibliographic heritage of the Franciscan Studium, with the aim of reconstructing and documenting the circulation of Dante’s works in his homeland and the Florentine context in which the poet’s extraordinary cultural formation took place.

Palabras llave : Dante Alighieri; library; Saint Croce; Saint Maria Novella; conventual studies.