Zeitschriftenartikel zum Thema „Francesco (Church : Oristano, Italy)“

Francesco Ricci (1930–1991) was an Italian priest, canon of the cathedral of Forli, ecclesiastical assistant of the Communion and Liberation, and rector of the church of San Filippo Neri in Forli. He travelled to many countries to promote Communion and Liberation: Yugoslavia, Peru, Poland, Hungary, Japan and Korea, Uganda, Paraguay, Czechoslovakia, and Brazil. Due to his interest in Eastern Europe, which was then under communist rule, he founded the Center for the Study of Eastern Europe (CSEO) in Forlì, which was dedicated to deepening and spreading knowledge about the countries of this area in Italy. The Center published, among others: translations of works by Václav Havel, Józef Tischner, and other authors.

Italy is a high seismic risk country since 1900 more than 30 earthquakes with magnitude greater than Mw=5.8 have occurred, and the last one is the Central Italy seismic sequence. The first shock occurred in the 24 August (Mw=6.2) followed by another stronger quake in the 30th October (Mw=6.5). It hit the regions of Marche, Umbria, and Abruzzo heavily causing many deaths, injuries and extensive damages on the cultural heritage. This paper analyses the church of San Francesco in Amadola, located in the Marche region that has been considered condemned for the severe damages reported after these earthquakes. The church is globally analyzed by the application of nonlinear static analysis on a Finite Element Model where the nonlinearity of masonry is taking into account with a proper constitutive law. The study wants to prove how global analysis combined by the local analysis can reproduce the behavior of this structure during a quake, showing that it can repeat the real damages produced by earthquakes.

In the time of the Renaissance, a major aspect of vision science was understanding how spatial information projected to the viewpoint of the observer, that is, visual perspective, which is one of the primary cues to depth perception. Perspective representation was thus an early form of virtual reality. Although accurate perspective representation was developed earlier in the 15th century, the first analytic perspective scheme was developed by Piero della Francesca, whose chef d’oeuvre is in the Church of San Francesco, Arezzo, in which the present lecture took place. The focus of the lecture was to evaluate some of the contributions of Piero della Francesca and his 15th-century contemporaries to the visual science, art and symbolism of his era, and its significance for the perception of depth structure from two-dimensional images.

AbstractThis essay contends that Donatello’s High Altar at the Santo in Padua represents the Immaculate Virgin, reflecting a controversial doctrine of burgeoning interest in fifteenth-century Italy that she was exempted from original sin prior to the first moment of her conception. It ties the altar and scenes on the surrounding choir screen to a sermon promoting the Virgin’s immaculacy by Francesco della Rovere (later Sixtus IV), spoken in Padua in 1448 while the altar was being erected. It further connects the liturgical ensemble with bulls by Sixtus IV and liturgical offices sponsored by him after he was elected pope.

Cardinal Pietro Boetto, archbishop of Genoa from 1938 until his death in 1946, was an unusual Jesuit priest in several respects. First, although from humble origins, trained in seminaries other than the most prestigious Jesuit institutions, and not given to complex theological writings, he rose through the ranks of the Society’s administration to attract the notice of Pope Pius xi and be elevated to the cardinalate in 1935. The elevation was in itself highly unusual, given standard Jesuit policy and the expressed reluctance of the order’s Superior General Włodzimierz Ledóchowski at the time. Equally unexpected is the fact that the Jesuit Father Pietro Tacchi Venturi, the pope’s liaison with Mussolini, furnished intriguing background testimony about the elevation itself, which provides new insight into the pope’s policies and modes of operation. Finally, Cardinal Boetto was unusual for the clandestine assistance to Jews and anti-Fascists he provided as archbishop during the German occupation, for the broad range of rescue activities he allowed to his heroic secretary don Francesco Repetto and other priests, and for the wide-spread support networks that resulted throughout Northern and Central Italy. This article tells the story of a competent administrator with immense hidden skills and profound humanity. Sources include the memoirs of Boetto’s aide, Brother Giovanni Battista Weidinger; a biography by his associate Father Arnaldo Lanz; testimony by don Francesco Repetto; documents in the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu in Rome and the Archivio Diocesano di Genoa; and secondary studies by historians interested in the Second World War and the rescue of Jews in Genoa.

By the early sixteenth century Italy was the richest, most prosperous and advanced country in Europe, the centre of the Catholic world. Yet, it was the scene of wars fought by neighbouring powers for dominance of the peninsula. On the one hand, paradoxically, they contributed to a sharpening of the proto-national consciousness, fuelled also by the historical memory of the former greatness of ancient Rome. On the other hand, the cultural and political situation called for a reflection on the immediate situation and the fate of the country. This problem was most clearly expressed in the writings of the Florentines Niccolò Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini, including their polemics on whether Italy would have benefited from unification under one of its states, what was the role of the Church in its history, and finally whether the Renaissance heyday foreshadowed the tragic events of the early modern period. Both thinkers were supporters of a republican order, yet both were forced by circumstances to collaborate with the Medici family. Machiavelli, in his famous treatise The Prince, expresses hope for the unification of Italy under the Medici; Ghicciardini, in his Maxims and Meditations (Ricordi) and in his commentaries on Machiavelli's History of Rome by Titus Livy, is more sceptical; in his view, the Renaissance prosperity of Italy owes much to her polycentrism. These texts are well known and have been evaluated in various ways and are still controversial to this day.

This paper describes the case study of the damaged church of St. Francesco in the hamlet of Arquata del Tronto (Italy) that was struck by the earthquake in 2016. The municipality commissioned the research to support the preliminary design of the preservation plan. The first digitisation level has been started from the richness of surveying data acquired from static and dynamic terrestrial laser scanning (TLS), and photogrammetry, overcoming challenging constraints due to the scaffolding covering the surfaces. The geometric survey allowed authors to acquire massively geometric and material information supporting the three-dimensional (3D) volume stratigraphic and the creation of the Heritage Building Information Modelling (HBIM). The paper proposes a shift from the Geographic Information System (GIS)-based analysis of the materials toward spatial HBIM management. Building Archaeology is turned into HBIM 3D volume stratigraphy, overcoming the bidimensional (2D) surface mapping, in favour of a 3D understanding of direct and indirect sources. Material mapping is added to HBIM 3D volume stratigraphy, and each stratigraphic unit (SU) has its proprieties. The 3D volume stratigraphic database has been designed to collect the data on the unit detection at three levels (direct sources data collection, indirect data documentation, the relation among the BIM object elements). A common data environment (CDE) has been set up to share the 3D volume informative models that can be accessed, and all the information gathered. The knowledge transfer using the eXtended reality (XR) has been devoted to the citizen and tourist fruition, enhancing the comprehension of difficult concepts like the SUs to support a better critical 3D reconstruction. It includes the phases of construction across time-lapse documentation that validates related information within the building archaeology informative models leaving spaces to the uncertainty and documenting the relationship established so far thanks to the direct and indirect sources. The result obtained is a live digital twin that can be continuously updated, which justifies the costs and time demanding of HBIM despite 2D drawings.Highlights: • 3D survey and scan-to-HBIM process for the creation of a digital twin were oriented to the preliminary design of the preservation plan of the church of St. Francesco in Arquata del Tronto (Italy). • Stratigraphy is investigated and oriented towards a digitisation process to share different levels of knowledge through new forms of digital-sharing such as Common Data Environment (CDE) and cloud-based BIM platform. • eXtended reality (XR) is the final tool to reach new levels of communication and a wider audience characterised by experts in the construction sector and virtual and non-expert tourists.

Was non-residence in benefices necessarily an abuse? It was an old problem, usually linked with pluralities, and even if the Councils of Constance and Basel had done nothing about it, non-residence had been denounced by Gerson, by Panormitanus and by Denys the Carthusian; it remained a live issue in the later fifteenth century. An interesting discussion of the subject emerges from the correspondence of Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga (1444–83) with his father and brother, successive rulers of Mantua. It raises points of wider importance than the particular matters at stake and throws some light upon relations between the Italian powers and the papacy over Church appointments; in Italy there was no Pragmatic Sanction, and appointments would often depend upon official request and more or less informal ways and means of accommodation with the Roman court. It is, however, not only about appointment to, and absenteeism from, major benefices, but also minor ones. In the absence of any general treatment in depth of the subject, these documents contribute some specific and important evidence about practical problems and attitudes in Italian ecclesiastical life. Resentment in the small Lombard principality of Mantua towards non-resident ‘foreigners’ and papal reservations, professions of concern about pastoral standards and the social standing of the local clergy are among other themes which emerge; not least remarkable is that the cardinal's viewpoint as revealed in the correspondence was sometimes distinctly different from that of the lay rulers, in spite of his being their close relative and top-level agent in the papal court.

The frescoes on the subjects of the life of St. Francis in the choir of the main Franciscan church in Montefalco were painted by Benozzo Gozzoli in 1452. For a long time they remained poorly studied, and the program of the cycle was unclear. Studies of the end of the XX century indicate a steadily increasing interest in the artist's work, including his monumental paintings in Montefalco. The subject of this article is to clarify the program design of the chapel, which probably belonged to Fra Jacopo of Montefalco, a Franciscan theologian and rector of the church. The appearance of rare plots, atypical for earlier and later Franciscan cycles in Italy, and a careful analysis of each composition in connection with the literary tradition of the Franciscan order, allowed us to more fully substantiate that the idea of "Francis as another Christ" (Franciscus alter Christus) was consistently carried out in the chapel program. The cycle executed by Gozzoli includes twelve fresco compositions and a stained glass window. All of them represent twenty episodes from the life of St. Francis from his birth to his ascension to heaven, which are accompanied by explanatory comments in Latin. Many of the scenes are multi-episode, reflecting the passion for storytelling in the middle of the XV century and the desire to bring all the details and details necessary to explain the plot. The analysis of the compositions in comparison with hagiographic literature allows us to conclude that the compilers of the program mainly relied on three main texts about the life of the saint: the first and second lives of Thomas by Chelan, as well as the Great Legend by St. Bonaventure. The choice of subjects and the overall design of the chapel emphasize the living ministry of the saint, and also reflect another, more important by this time, Franciscan idea – the glorification of Francis as another Christ. The depictions of scenes telling about the birth, childhood and about the early years of Francis' life, appearing in the pictorial tradition for the first and last time, make this painting cycle truly unique.

In Naples (Italy), the passage from Renaissance to Baroque architectonic language could be identified between 1580 and 1612. During this era, one of the most significant topics of the architectonic research on the sacred space was the right compromise among the Counter-Reformation patterns, the central space and the oval plan. Giovanni Antonio Dosio and Dionisio di Bartolomeo were the most representative architects of this passage. They provide the access to new experimental varieties. So, when the architect Cosimo Fanzago arrived in Naples in 1612, the city was almost ready to use the emblematic ellipse plan of the Baroque, such as the churches Santa Maria della Sanita` and San Giovanni dei Fiorentini by Fra’ Nuvolo prove. Fanzago’s architectonic research was followed by the studies by Bartolomeo and Francesco Antonio Picchiatti, father and son, up to Domenico Antonio Vaccaro that was the most representative director of the Baroque sacred space scene. Moving from the analysis and comparison of the most representative churches of Neapolitans Baroque era, the paper proposes an unedited studio about the evolution of sacred space’s idea related to decoration, symbology and allegory, with a focus on Domenico Antonio Vaccaro’s works, such as the churches of Santa Maria della Concezione in Montecalvario neighbourhood, San Michele Arcangelo in Naples’ Piazza Dante, San Michele in Anacapri (on Capri Island), the Palazzo Abbaziale di Loreto and Saviour Church in San Guglielmo al Goleto Monastery, both near Avellino.

ITALIAN NATIONALISM: BETWEEN NATIONALITARIANISM AND NATIONAL-FASCISMThe subject of this article is the doctrine of Italian nationalism considered using the approach of the Polish italianist Joanna Sondel-Cedarmas. This doctrine found its most complete expression in the activity and journalism of Italian Nationalist Association Associazione Nazionalista Italiana; ANI, of which the main theorists and leaders were Enrico Corradini, Luigi Federzoni, Alfredo Rocco and Francesco Coppola. Although the organization was active relatively briefly, that is, for 13 years from 1910 to 1923, it played a key role in the transitional period between the parliamentary system and the fascist dictatorship. The historical role of ANI consisted in breaking with the nationalitarian ideology dominating in nineteenth-century Italy and related to the Risorgimento Rising Again movement, which was liberal, democratic and anti-clerical. Instead, ANI adopted integral nationalism, connected with right-wing, conservative, monarchist, anti-liberal and authoritarian ideology and favourable to the Catholic religion. However, in contrast to countries like France, Spain, Portugal or Poland, nationalism of this kind failed to retain its autonomous political position and organisational separation, because after World War I it encountered a strong competitor in the anti-liberal camp — fascism, which as a plebeian and revolutionary movement found a broader support base in the pauperised and anarchy-affected society. Nationalists, forced to cooperate with the National Fascist Party after the March on Rome and the coming to power of Benito Mussolini, modified their doctrine in the spirit of the national-fascist ideology. In spite of that, the nationalists active within the fascist system were preventing that system from evolving towards totalitarianism and defended the monarchy, as well as the independence of the Roman-Catholic Church.

In 2005, during the composing of the Inventory of the Moveable Cultural Heritage of the Church and Monastery of St Francis of Assisi at Krk, three wooden statues were found in the attic. These had once belonged to a lavish Renaissance triptych at the centre of which was a figure of the Virgin (107 x 45 x 27 cm), flanked by the figures of St John the Baptist (c. 105 x 28 x 30 cm), an apostle with a book (c. 93 x 32 x 22 cm), and, in all likelihood, St James the Apostle. A trace of a small left foot in the Virgin’s lap indicates that the original composition was that of the Virgin and Child. It is highly likely that these statues originally belonged to the altar of St James which mentioned by Augustino Valier during his visitation of the Church of St Francis of Assisi in 1579 as having a pala honorifica . Harmonious proportions, fine modelling of the heads, beautifully and confidently carved drapery of the fabrics, together with almost classical gestures, all point to a good master carver who, in this case, sought inspiration in Venetian painting of the 1520s and 1530s. When attempting to find close parallels in the production of Venetian wood-carving workshops from the first half of the sixteenth century, without a doubt the best candidates are two signed statues from the workshop of Paolo Campsa de Boboti: the statue of the Risen Christ from the parish church of St Lawrence at Soave in Italy, dated to 1533, and the statue of the Virgin and Child in a private collection in Italy, dated to 1534. To these one can add a statue from the Gianfranco Luzzetti collection at Florence, which has been attributed to Campsa’s workshop. Judging from all the above, the statues from St Francis’ might be dated to the 1540s. In the parish church of Holy Trinity at Baška is a wooden triptych which, according to a nineteenth-century record, was inscribed with Campsa’s signature and the year 1514. When Bishop Stefanus David visited the Chapel of St Michael at Baška in 1685, he described in detail this wooden and carved palla on the main altar dedicated to St Michael, noting that the altar is under the patronage of the Papić family who had founded it and made considerable donations to it. The high altar in the Church of St Mary Magdalene at Porat, also on the island of Krk, has a polyptych attributed to Girolamo and Francesco da Santa Croce. Until now, it has been dated to 1556 - the year of the dedication of the altar and the church. However, more frequently than not, a number of years could pass between the furnishing of an altar and its dedication. With this in mind and having re-analyzed the paintings, the polyptych can be dated as early as the previous decade. Until now, the Renaissance statue of St Mary Magdalene (105 x 25 x 13 cm), originally part of an altar predella but today housed in the Monastery’s collection, was not discussed in the scholarly literature save for its iconography. Based on the morphological similarities between the statue of St Mary Magdalene and the three statues at Krk, it can be concluded that they were carved by the same master carver. Written sources inform us that after 1541 Paolo Campsa was no longer alive. Great differences between the works signed by Campsa have already been the subject of scholarly debate and it is known that due to high demand, his workshop included a number of highly skilled wood carvers. In the case of Krk, perhaps the master carver was an employee at Campsa’s workshop who outlived him and who, after its closure, went his own way and was considered good enough to be hired by fellow painters from the Santa Croce workshop. Installing a statue in a predella was a rare occurrence in sixteenth-century Croatia and Venice alike. Even in the case of Campsa. Reliefs were used more frequently. However, this arrangement was customary on contemporary flügelaltaren in the trans-Alpine north. It ought to be considered whether this northern altar design might provide a trail which would lead to a more specific location of a possible master carver.

The seventeenth-century Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania, embracing the lands of the Polish Crown (together with the territory of present-day Ukraine) and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, belonged geographically to both Central and Eastern Europe. It was a multiethnic and multiconfessional state, in which the Latin and Greek cultures were mutually interactive. With regard to the musical culture of the royal court, however, itwas the close ties with Italy that were of the greatest significance. The Polish kings of the Vasa dynasty (above ali Zygmunt III and Władysław IV) maintained music chapels consisting to a considerable extent of Italian musicians, among whom were Luca Marenzio, Giulio Cesare Gabussi, Asprilio Pacelli, Giovanni Francesco Anerio and Tarquinio Merula. Thanks to the Polish patronage, they not only composed newworks, but also trained musicians of various nations belonging to the royal ensembles. Among the composers trained at the Polish court was the Italian Marco Scacchi (d. 1662), chapel-master to Władysław IV, the composer of operas staged in the royal theatre, and also a music theorist – the author of a classification of musical genres which was produced during Scacchi's dispute over music theory with the Gdansk organist Paul Siefert. This dispute contributed to the popularisation across Europe of the works of Scacchi and also of other musicians associated with the court of the Polish Vasas. Extant handwritten sources of Silesian provenance (belonging to the Emil Bohn collection, currently held in the Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin) testify the considerable interest in this region (now within the Polish borders, but in the seventeenth century constituting a dominion of the Empire) in the religious compositions of Marcin Mielczewski (d. 1651), musician to Władysław IV (until 1644) and subsequently, until his death, chapel-master to Karol Ferdinand Vasa, Bishop of Płock and Wrocław. Of Mielczewski's compositional output for the needs of the Roman Catholic Church, copyists from Lutheran circles in Wrocław chose primarily psalms that were universal to the Christian repertory, furnishing those works whose texts chimed with the doctrine of the Augsburg confession with more appropriate texts of German-language contrafacta. However, this method was not always successful in eliminating traces of Catholicism, which remained, for example, in the melodies of works based on pre-compositional material drawn by Mielczewski from Marian songs that were popular in Poland (e.g. the church concerto Audite gentes et exsultate, also preserved in a version with the text of a German-language contrafactum entitled Nun höret alle, based on the song O gloriosa Domina, which in the former Commonwealth was treated as a chivalrous hymn).

AbstractThe church of San Francesco del Prato in Parma (Italy) is a masterpiece of the Gothic style, dated back to the 13th century. However, its historical and monumental value could not be appreciated for a long time, especially due to the transformation of the building into a city jail. The recent restoration works brought back to light valuable frescos and wall paintings belonging to different periods. An in situ campaign was performed on the 15th-century wall paintings adorning the vault and the walls in the church apse, by using mobile Raman and X-ray fluorescence equipment. The characterization of the art pieces was further carried out with micro-Raman spectroscopy and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry analyses. Overall, a quick and thorough identification of the colours palette of the wall paintings was successfully obtained through the in situ measurements. Laboratory analyses corroborated the understanding of the techniques through the identification of pigments and binders. In addition, micro-Raman analyses highlighted the presence of degradation products. Interestingly, a pigment hierarchy has been noted in relation to the painted contents, enhancing the preciousness of holy figures and their distinctive details.

Abstract Among the legends disseminated by the friars of San Francesco in Assisi was an enduring tale that surfaced at the dawn of the sixteenth century, according to which a thirteenth-century queen of Cyprus was buried inside an exuberant Gothic canopied tomb in the convent’s Lower Church. This study examines the queen’s supposed funerary monument, explores the varying permutations of the legend, reveals the presumed gifts she donated to the friars, and unravels the conundrum surrounding her identity and the position of her tomb. In considering the convent-specific and wider contexts of Italy and Cyprus, the paper deconstructs the myth by uncovering new archival sources and offers fresh insights into the identity and activity of the Cypriot queen in Assisi. More importantly, it argues that the legend distorted historical facts as a means to enhance the connection between the Franciscan Order, the convent, and the Holy Land.

PurposeThis article sets out to show how principles and questions about method that underlie a way of interpreting the discipline of conservation and restoration can find results in research and studies, aiming at achieving even conscious reuse process. The occasion is the very recent research performed on the former Church of Saints Gerolamo and Francesco Saverio in Genoa, Italy, the Jesuit church annexed to the 17th-century College of the order. It is a small Baroque jewel in the heart of the ancient city, former University Library and actually abandoned, forgotten for years, inaccessible and awaiting a new use.Design/methodology/approachThe two-year work carried out on the monumental building was conducted according to a study and research methodology developed and refined over the years within the activities of the School of Specialisation in Architectural Heritage and Landscape of the University of Genoa. It is a multidisciplinary and rigorous approach, which aims to train high-level professionals, up-to-date and aware of the multiple problems that interventions on existing buildings, especially of a monumental nature, involve.FindingsThe biennal study has been carried out within the activities of the Post-Graduate Programme in Architectural Heritage and Landscape of the University of Genoa. The work methodology faces the challenges of the contemporary complexity, raised by the progressive broadening of the concept of cultural “heritage” and by the problems of its conservation, its active safeguard and its reuse: safety in respect of seismic risk, fire and hydro geological instability, universal accessibility – cognitive, physical and alternative – resource efficiency, comfort and savings in energy consumption, sustainability, communication and involvement of local communities and stakeholders.Originality/valueThe goals of the work were the following: understanding of the architectural heritage, through the correlated study of its geometries, elements and construction materials, surfaces, structures, spaces and functions; understanding of the transformations that the building has undergone over time, relating the results of historical reconstructions from indirect sources and those of direct archaeological analysis; assessment of the state of conservation of the building recognising phenomena of deterioration, damage, faults and deficits that affect materials, construction elements, systems and structures; identification of the causes and extent of damage, faults and deficits, assessing the vulnerability and level of exposure of the asset to the aggression of environmental factors and related risks; evaluation of the compatibility between the characteristics of the available spaces, the primary needs of conservation, the instance of regeneration and possible new uses; the definition of criteria and guidelines for establishing the planning of conservation, restoration and redevelopment interventions.

Anders Toftgaard: “Perhaps even this distress it will some day be a joy to recall”. On Giacomo Castelvetro’s manuscripts in The Royal Library, Copenhagen. In exile from his beloved Modena, Giacomo Castelvetro (1546–1616) travelled in a Europe marked by Reformation, counter-Reformation and wars of religion. He transmitted the best of Italian Renaissance culture to the court of James VI and Queen Anna of Denmark in Edinburgh, to the court of Christian IV in Copenhagen and to Shakespeare’s London, while he incessantly collected manuscripts on Italian literature and European contemporary history. Giacomo Castelvetro lived in Denmark from August 1594 to 11 October 1595. Various manuscripts and books which belonged to Giacomo Castelvetro in his lifetime, are now kept in the Royal Library in Copenhagen. Some of them might have been in Denmark ever since Castelvetro left Denmark in 1595. Nevertheless, Giacomo Castelvetro has never been noticed by Danish scholars studying the cultural context in which he lived. The purpose of this article is to point to Castelvetro’s presence in Denmark in the period around Christian IV’s accession and to describe two of his unique manuscripts in the collection of the Royal Library. The Royal Library in Copenhagen holds a copy of the first printed Italian translation of the Quran, L’Alcorano di Macometto, nel qual si contiene la dottrina, la vita, i costumi et le leggi sue published by Andrea Arrivabene in Venice in 1547. The title page bears the name of the owner: Giacº Castelvetri. The copy was already in the library’s collections at the time of the Danish King Frederic III, in the 1660’s. The three manuscripts from the Old Royal collection (GKS), GKS 2052 4º, GKS 2053 4º and GKS 2057 4º are written partly or entirely in the hand of Giacomo Castelvetro. Moreover, a number of letters written to Giacomo Castelvetro while he was still in Edinburgh are kept among letters addressed to Jonas Charisius, the learned secretary in the Foreign Chancellery and son in law of Petrus Severinus (shelf mark NKS (New Royal Collection) 1305 2º). These letters have been dealt with by Giuseppe Migliorato who also transcribed two of them. GKS 2052 4º The manuscript GKS 2052 4º (which is now accessible in a digital facsimile on the Royal Library’s website), contains a collection of Italian proverbs explained by Giacomo Castelvetro. It is dedicated to Niels Krag, who was ambassador of the Danish King to the Scottish court, and it is dated 6 August 1593. The title page shows the following beautifully written text: Il Significato D’Alquanti belli & vari proverbi dell’Italica Favella, gia fatto da G. C. M. & hoggi riscritto, & donato,in segno di perpetua amicitia, all ecc.te.D. di legge, Il S.r. Nicolò Crachio Ambas.re. del Ser.mo Re di Dania a questa Corona, & Sig.r mio sempre osser.mo Forsan & haec olim meminisse iuvabit Nella Citta d’Edimborgo A VI d’Agosto 1593 The manuscript consists of 96 leaves. On the last page of the manuscript the title is repeated with a little variation in the colophon: Qui finisce il Significato D’alquanti proverbi italiani, hoggi rescritto a requisitione del S.r. Nicolo Crachio eccelente Dottore delle civili leggi &c. Since the author was concealed under the initials G.C.M., the manuscript has never before been described and never attributed to Giacomo Castelvetro. However, in the margin of the title page, a 16th century hand has added: ”Giacomo Castelvetri modonese”, and the entire manuscript is written in Giacomo Castelvetro’s characteristic hand. The motto ”Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit” is from Vergil’s Aeneid (I, 203); and in the Loeb edition it is rendered “Perhaps even this distress it will some day be a joy to recall”. The motto appears on all of the manuscripts that Giacomo Castelvetro copied in Copenhagen. The manuscript was evidently offered to Professor Niels Krag (ca. 1550–1602), who was in Edinburgh in 1593, from May to August, as an ambassador of the Danish King. On the 1st of August, he was knighted by James VI for his brave behaviour when Bothwell entered the King’s chamber in the end of July. The Danish Public Record Office holds Niels Krag’s official diary from the journey, signed by Sten Bilde and Niels Krag. It clearly states that they left Edinburgh on August 6th, the day in which Niels Krag was given the manuscript. Evidently, Castelvetro was one of the many persons celebrating the ambassadors at their departure. The manuscript is bound in parchment with gilded edges, and a gilded frame and central arabesque on both front cover and end cover. There are 417 entries in the collection of proverbs, and in the explanations Giacomo Castelvetro often uses other proverbs and phrases. The explanations are most vivid, when Castelvetro explains the use of a proverb by a tale in the tradition of the Italian novella or by an experience from his own life. The historical persons mentioned are the main characters of the sixteenth century’s religious drama, such as Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, Elizabeth, James VI, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, and his son, Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, Gaspard de Coligny and the Guise family, Mary Stuart, Don Antonio, King of Portugal, the Earl of Bothwell and Cosimo de’ Medici. The Catholic Church is referred to as “Setta papesca”, and Luther is referred to as “il grande, e pio Lutero” (f. 49v). Giovanni Boccaccio and Francesco Petrarca are referred to various times, along with Antonio Cornazzano (ca. 1430–1483/84), the author of Proverbi in facetie, while Brunetto Latini, Giovanni Villani, Ovid and Vergil each are mentioned once. Many of the explanations are frivolous, and quite a few of them involve priests and monks. The origin of the phrase “Meglio è tardi, che non mai” (52v, “better late than never”) is explained by a story about a monk who experienced sex for the first time at the age of 44. In contrast to some of the texts to be found in the manuscript GKS 2057 4º the texts in GKS 2052 4º, are not misogynist, rather the opposite. Castelvetro’s collection of proverbs is a hitherto unknown work. It contains only a tenth of the number of proverbs listed in Gardine of recreation (1591) by John Florio (1553?–1625), but by contrast these explanations can be used, on the one hand, as a means to an anthropological investigation of the past and on the other hand they give us precious information about the life of Giacomo Castelvetro. For instance he cites a work of his, “Il ragionamento del Viandante” (f. 82r), which he hopes to see printed one day. It most probably never was printed. GKS 2057 4º The manuscript GKS 2057 4º gathers a number of quires in very different sizes. The 458 folios in modern foliation plus end sheets are bound in blue marbled paper (covering a previous binding in parchment) which would seem to be from the 17th century. The content spans from notes to readyforprint-manuscripts. The manuscript contains text by poets from Ludovico Castelvetro’s generation, poems by poets from Modena, texts tied to the reformation and a lot of satirical and polemical material. Just like some of Giacomo Castelvetro’s manuscripts which are now in the possession of Trinity College Library and the British Library it has “been bound up in the greatest disorder” (cf. Butler 1950, p. 23, n. 75). Far from everything is written in the hand of Giacomo Castelvetro, but everything is tied to him apart from one quire (ff. 184–192) written in French in (or after) 1639. The first part contains ”Annotationi sopra i sonetti del Bembo” by Ludovico Castelvetro, (which has already been studied by Alberto Roncaccia), a didactic poem in terza rima about rhetoric, “de’ precetti delle partitioni oratorie” by “Filippo Valentino Modonese” , “rescritto in Basilea a XI di Febraio 1580 per Giacº Castelvetri” and the Ars poetica by Horace translated in Italian. These texts are followed by satirical letters by Nicolò Franco (“alle puttane” and “alla lucerna” with their responses), by La Zaffetta, a sadistic, satirical poem about a Venetian courtisane who is punished by her lover by means of a gang rape by thirty one men, and by Il Manganello (f. 123–148r), an anonymous, misogynistic work. The manuscript also contains a dialogue which would seem to have been written by Giacomo Castelvetro, “Un’amichevole ragionamento di due veri amici, che sentono il contrario d’uno terzo loro amico”, some religious considerations written shortly after Ludovico’s death, ”essempio d’uno pio sermone et d’una Christiana lettera” and an Italian translation of parts of Erasmus’ Colloquia (the dedication to Frobenius and the two dialogues ”De votis temere susceptis” and ”De captandis sacerdotiis” under the title Dimestichi ragionamenti di Desiderio Erasmo Roterodamo, ff. 377r–380r), and an Italian translation of the psalms number 1, 19, 30, 51, 91. The dominating part is, however, Italian poetry. There is encomiastic poetry dedicated to Trifon Gabriele and Sperone Speroni and poetry written by poets such as Torquato Tasso, Bernardo Tasso, Giulio Coccapani, Ridolfo Arlotti, Francesco Ambrosio/ Ambrogio, Gabriele Falloppia, Alessandro Melani and Gasparo Bernuzzi Parmigiano. Some of the quires are part of a planned edition of poets from Castelvetro’s home town, Modena. On the covers of the quires we find the following handwritten notes: f. 276r: Volume secondo delle poesie de poeti modonesi f. 335v: VII vol. Delle opere de poeti modonesi f. 336v; 3º vol. Dell’opere de poeti modonesi f. 353: X volume dell’opre de poeti modonesi In the last part of the manuscript there is a long discourse by Sperone Speroni, “Oratione del Sr. Sperone, fatta in morte della S.ra Giulia Varana Duchessa d’Urbino”, followed by a discourse on the soul by Paulus Manutius. Finally, among the satirical texts we find quotes (in Latin) from the Psalms used as lines by different members of the French court in a humoristic dialogue, and a selection of graffiti from the walls of Padua during the conflict between the city council and the students in 1580. On fol. 383v there is a ”Memoriale d’alcuni epitafi ridiculosi”, and in the very last part of the manuscript there is a certain number of pasquinate. When Castelvetro was arrested in Venice in 1611, the ambassador Dudley Carleton described Castelvetro’s utter luck in a letter to Sir Robert Cecil, stating that if he, Carleton, had not been able to remove the most compromising texts from his dwelling, Giacomo Castelvetro would inevitably have lost his life: “It was my good fortune to recover his books and papers a little before the Officers of the Inquisition went to his lodging to seize them, for I caused them to be brought unto me upon the first news of his apprehension, under cover of some writings of mine which he had in his hands. And this indeed was the poore man’s safetie, for if they had made themselves masters of that Magazine, wherein was store and provision of all sorts of pasquins, libels, relations, layde up for many years together against their master the Pope, nothing could have saved him” Parts of GKS 2057 4º fit well into this description of Castelvetro’s papers. A proper and detailed description of the manuscript can now be found in Fund og Forskning Online. Provenance GKS 2052 4ºon the one side, and on the other side, GKS 2053 4º and GKS 2057 4º have entered The Royal Library by two different routes. None of the three manuscripts are found in the oldest list of manuscripts in the Royal Library, called Schumacher’s list, dating from 1665. All three of them are included in Jon Erichsen’s “View over the old Manuscript Collection” published in 1786, so they must have entered the collections between 1660 and 1786. Both GKS 2053 4º and GKS 2057 4º have entered The Royal Library from Christian Reitzer’s library in 1721. In the handwritten catalogue of Reitzer’s library (The Royal Library’s archive, E 15, vol. 1, a catalogue with very detailed entries), they bear the numbers 5744 and 5748. If one were to proceed, one would have to identify the library from which these two manuscripts have entered Reitzer’s library. On the spine of GKS 2053 4º there is a label saying “Castelvetro / sopra Dante vol 326” and on f. 2r the same number is repeated: “v. 326”. On the spine of GKS 2057 4º, there is a label saying “Poesie italiane, vol. 241”, and on the end sheet the same number is repeated: “v. 241”. These two manuscripts would thus seem to have belonged to the same former library. Many of the Royal Library’s manuscripts with relazioni derive from Christian Reitzer’s library, and a wide range of Italian manuscripts which have entered the Royal Library through Reitzer’s library have a similar numbering on spine and title page. Comparing these numbers with library catalogues from the 17th century, one might be able to identify the library from which these manuscripts entered Reitzer’s library, and I hope to be able to proceed in this direction. Conclusion Giacomo Castelvetro was not a major Italian Renaissance writer, but a nephew of one of the lesser-known writers in Italian literature, Ludovico Castelvetro. He delivered yet another Italian contribution to the history of Christian IV, and his presence could be seen as a sign of a budding Italianism in Denmark in the era of Christian IV. The collection of Italian proverbs that he offered to Niels Krag, makes him a predecessor of the Frenchman Daniel Matras (1598–1689), who as a teacher of French and Italian at the Academy in Sorø in 1633 published a parallel edition of French, Danish, Italian and German proverbs. The two manuscripts that are being dealt with in this article are two very different manuscripts. GKS 2052 4º is a perfectly completed work that was hitherto unknown and now joins the short list of known completed works by Giacomo Castelvetro. GKS 2057 4º is a collection of variegated texts that have attracted Giacomo Castelvetro for many different reasons. Together the two manuscripts testify to the varied use of manuscripts in Renaissance Italy and Europe. A typical formulation of Giacomo Castelvetro’s is “Riscritto”. He copies texts in order to give them a new life in a new context. Giacomo Castelvetro is in the word’s finest sense a disseminator of Italian humanism and European Renaissance culture. He disseminated it in a geographical sense, by his teaching in Northern Europe, and in a temporal sense through his preservation of texts for posterity under the motto: “Perhaps even this distress it will some day be a joy to recall”.