A handsome humanist manuscript of this famous tale of the History of Troy, with a fascinating provenance including Abbé Celotti, Henry Drury and Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex.
In the epilogue, the author Guido, a judge in Messina, Sicily, tells us that he wrote the first book at the request of Matteo della Porta, Archbishop of Salerno, who died in 1272, and then resumed the work and completed it from 15 September to 25 November 1287. Although Guido states that he based his History on the Greek of Dares Phrygius and Dictys Cretensis, his Latin prose work is in fact closely based (with some insertions and omissions) on the French Roman de Troie of Benoît de Sainte-Maure (d. 1173); the latter does follow Dictys Cretensis closely in some parts. Made up of 35 books, the last dealing with the death of Ulysses and the first going back to Peleus, father of Achilles, and the search for the Golden Fleece, it is written in an easy Latin style with digressions. Although manuscripts are well represented in libraries, they are rarely seen on the market.
In the introduction to her English translation of the Historia, Meek explains its acceptance as a wholly reliable source and its influence on numerous retellings of the Troy story: “the Historia was immediately accepted for what it purported to be, was widely copied and translated, and did not lose its reputation for authenticity until the eighteenth century, when its supposed sources fell into discredit. There may be as many as one hundred and fifty manuscripts of it, and one of them, in the Saltykov-Shchedrin Library [National Library of Russia] in Leningrad, bears the signatures of the English kings Richard III, James I, and Charles I, as well as the signature of Oliver Cromwell [see: Olga Golubeva, “The Saltykov-Shchedrin Library, Leningrad” in The Book Collector, Summer 1955, pp. 102-7 & pl IV].
Eight printed editions appeared in the last quarter of the fifteenth century. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries it was translated several times into French, German, and English. There are also versions in Spanish, Flemish, and Bohemian; one German version appeared as early as 1392, and an Italian one as late as 1665. A French translation of it was made by Raoul le Fèvre for his Recueil des Histores de Troie, an English version of which was the first English book printed by Caxton and served as a source for Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida. Boccaccio’s Filostrato, while derived principally from the Roman de Troie, also shows use of the Historia; Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, adapted from the Filostrato, is indebted to both the Roman and the Historia, and Lydgate’s Troy Book is a metrical paraphrase of the Historia with occasional use of the Roman.
“The Historia is not only the chief means by which the medieval Troy story was transmitted to later times; it is also the culmination of the development of that story. In medieval Europe, when Greek was no longer read, Homer’s work was known only through the lias Latina, a Latin abridgment of the Iliad attributed to Pindar, but it played no real part in the creation of the medieval concept of Troy. Western Europeans were more interested in the Trojans than the Greeks because they believed that Europe had been colonized by Aeneas and other Trojan refugees. Accordingly, the preferred sources for Troy material were the Aeneid, of which Guido makes appropriate use on several occasions, and, more important, Dictys’ Ephemeris Belli Troiani (despite its Greek bias) and Dares’ De Excidio Troiae Historia, both of which Guido claims to have followed, and upon which his principal source, Benoit’s Roman, was based.”
Provenance:
1. Perhaps written in the university city of Padua, to judge by the high-quality script and decoration, the watermark, and the subsequent provenance.
2. Inscribed in an Italian humanistic hand with an added title: ‘Clarissimi Guidonis de columnis translatio Ditis cretensis e greco in latinum de historia troiana’ (fol. 1r, upper margin).
3. Cornelio Pigna (citizen of Padua), mid-16th century: inscribed ‘Cornelio Pigna Cu’. ils:or p. Bello et Genilli’ (fol. [ii]r).
4. Owned by the Dominican brother Giovanni Battista Cetore(?), of Venice, in Padua in 1669: inscribed, ‘Ad usum f. Jo. Bapt’e Cetorei Veneti ord. Pred: 1669 | Patvij –F(?) i:10’ (fol. 1r, lower margin); presumably given by him to:
5. The library of the Dominican monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Padua (founded in 1498 and suppressed in 1771), shelved as no. 533 on the right-hand side: inscribed, ‘Bibliothece Con(ven)tus S. Marie Gratiarum Patavii ord. Pred. ad Dexteram Num.o 533’ (fol. 1r, lower margin); still at the library at the beginning of the 18th century when recorded by Antonino Mongitore, Bibliotheca Sicula, sive De scriptoribus Siculis, I (Panormi, 1708), p. 266 col. 2 (‘Codex m.s. cartaceus elegantissimus in fol.’).
6. Abbé Luigi Celotti (1759–1843), of Venice, priest, connoisseur, and art dealer, who obtained collections of manuscripts in Venice (including those of Matteo Luigi Canonici) and in the Veneto (including those of Giovanni Saibante, of Verona): probably the manuscript sold by Sotheby, Saibante and Canonici Manuscripts: A Catalogue of a Singularly Rare Collection of Manuscripts on Paper and Vellum […] Brought to this Country by the Abbé Celotti, 26 February 1821 and two following days, lot 207 (‘Guidonis de Columnis Translatio Dictis Cretensis, e Græco, in Latinum, de Hystoria Trojana, MS. on paper’; cf the wording of the title on fol. 1r, quoted above), bought for 7 shillings by:
7. Henry Drury (1778–1841), schoolmaster and bibliophile: inscribed ‘Guido de Columnis | Historia Trojana. | MS on paper’ (fol. [ii]r; beneath which a small triangular area has been excised, probably to remove the owner’s name); probably bound for him; his library was sold by Evans in 1827, but this MS has not been identified in the sale catalogue.
8. Augustus Frederick (1773–1843), Duke of Sussex and 9th child of King George III, reformer, abolitionist, bibliophile, and favourite uncle of Queen Victoria: with his usual armorial bookplate, the blank escutcheon inscribed with the shelfmark ‘VI | S. e. 13’ (not in his published catalogues, which covered only the theological books); sale by Evans, Bibliotheca Sussexiana: The Extensive and Valuable Library of His Royal Highness the Late Duke of Sussex, K.G, &c &c. Part II. – Manuscripts […] July 31, and Three Following Days, 1844, lot 243.
9. Unidentified English owners: inscribed in pencil ‘No 171 £i–’ (fol. [ii]v); the back pastedown with several pencil inscriptions, including a 19th-century English price-code ‘K/b/’, and a modern number ‘24583’.
10. Bernard Quaritch Ltd: with their price-code ‘XL/–/–’ (back pastedown); offered in their Catalogue No. 767: Manuscripts, Including Important Volumes from the Collection of Sir Sydney Cockerell, Litt.D […] (London, 1957), no. 8 (this item is not one of those previously owned by Cockerell).
Reference: Mary E. Meek (tr & ed), Guido delle Colonne, ’Historia destructionis Troiae’ (1974), pp. xi-xii. C. David Benson, The History of Troy in Middle English Literature (1980).
