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FRANCESCO PETRARCA, 1304-1374
Italian translation of the letter to Niccolò Acciaiuoli
(Rerum famil., XII, 2)
On paper
Florence (?), second half of the 15th century
Marston MS 247, ff. 19v - 20r
Petrarch wrote a letter to Niccolò Acciaiuoli,
Grand Seneschal of the newly crowned King Louis of the
Kingdom of Sicily, advising him on the virtuous conduct
of a leader. The letter, written originally in Latin,
appears with hundreds of others in Petrarch's own collection
of letters, Rerum familiarum libri.
In this manuscript, similar to many others (including
Beinecke MS 329 in this exhibition), the Petrarch letter
to Acciaiuoli is placed in a miscellaneous collection
with numerous other humanistic letters, speeches, and
historical writings on civic life. All the texts are translated
into Italian and were destined for wide dissemination
into the Italian-speaking world. Petrarch’s thoughts
and ideas thus spread throughout Western Europe, and in
Italy, on many different levels of society, animating
the discourse on civil society.
In Marston MS 247, two very elongated fingers (maniculae)
point out Petrarch’s letter to the reader.
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