












































Petrarch’s “Original” of the Fragmenta 1362-1558: From Boccaccio to Rovillio’s Third Printing


Humanist Studies & the Digital Age, 1.1 (2011) 
ISSN: 2158-3846 (online) 
http://journals.oregondigital.org/hsda/ 
DOI: 10.5399/uo/HSDA.1.1.1231  
 

  28 

 

Petrarch’s “Original” of the Fragmenta 1362-1558: From Boccaccio 
to Rovillio’s Third Printing 

H. Wayne Storey, Editor-in-Chief, Textual Cultures 

Abstract: This essay questions the use of the term original to refer to 
Petrarch’s partial holograph of the Fragmenta (Vaticano Latino 3195) by 
examining the essential scribal change of register, from “fair” to “service” 
copy, that the poet imposed upon the still unsewn quires. Especially for an 
author like Petrarch, keen upon revising minute details of his lyrics and upon 
authorizing an “edition” of his own work, a fair copy produced by a 
professional copyist under his supervision was, as we see in much of Latino 
3195 and in professional copies of other works supervised by the poet, a key 
component of his “original.” Examining four integrated critical and material 
approaches to Petrarch’s work not only in the partial holograph but also in 
early codices and early printed editions, this study analyzes the utility of 
early fair copies in tracing the “original” of the Fragmenta. 

It is appropriate that first we acknowledge a term that can get us into trouble: original. 
The definition might not be as simple as we think. Moreover, how we understand the term 
original has a profound impact on how we consider a literary and cultural icon like 
Petrarch’s Rerum vulgarium fragmenta. Since the early fifteenth century, original and its 
associated terms, among them “ipsa manu,” have been used both with striking historical 
and critical significance and with disconcerting abandonment of philological principles. 
Might how we define original depend as well on the paleographical and codicological status 
of the copy declared to be original? Especially in the context of professional writers, such as 
Francesco da Barberino and Francesco Petrarca, who depended upon professional copyists 
to render their authorial drafts into clean copies for circulation or personal use, can original 
also mean the fair copy sanctioned by the poet but in a professional copyist’s hand? Can the 
original be a draft copy regardless of the status of (authorial) variants? Indeed our 
definitions and uses of original have a profound impact on how we treat even other copies 
of the work. In the case of Vaticano Latino 3195, the manuscript’s status as a partial 
holograph supervised by Petrarch has afforded it a privileged status, especially in 
establishing the definitive text of the Fragmenta.1 The title of Giovanni Mestica’s 1896 
edition pairs both the notion of “authority” of the partial holograph with the problematic 
methodological approach of textual recourse to the early manuscript tradition and early 
printed editions of the work: Le rime di Francesco Petrarca restituite nell’ordine e nella 
lezione del testo originario sugli autografi col sussidio di altri codici e di stampe (“… 
restored to the order and reading of the original text according to the holographs with the 
aid of other manuscripts and printed books”). It will be, in fact, that phrase “col sussidio di 

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1.1 Winter 2011   29 

altri codici e stampe” (“with the aid of other manuscripts and printed books”) that will be—
far too often—ignored by twentieth-century textual scholars. Marco Vattasso’s 1905 
assessment of prominent manuscripts and their possible relationships to Vaticano Latino 
3195 was essential for Wilkins’ early studies in the 1920s.2 But Vattasso’s arrival at the 
notion of “original” is not direct. Vaticano Latino 3195 is, as he explains, “partially in the 
hand of the poet, partly in that of a copyist, and completely revised and corrected by the 
poet” (vii). But, as Vattasso immediately clarifies, the codex is not necessarily the first—or 
original version—of many of the poems, but rather the “the exemplar … in which [Petrarch] 
collected the corrected versions of poems, which he continued to hone until the end of his 
life. Thus the codex contains [the works’] final revisions and constitutes the expression of 
the poet’s final will. Those poems excluded from this version should be considered either 
apocryphal or rejected; individual readings not present [in this codex] are either inauthentic 
or rejected by the author” (vii).3 In truth, authors, like copyists, make mistakes, and there are 
enough made in Latino 3195—both by Malpaghini and Petrarch—that require an editor’s 
departure from the lectiones “approved” by the poet. Moreover, authors, unlike copyists, 
tend to experiment in their draft and service copies, where—especially in the margins—
much communication with copyists (and copies) occurs. Traces of Petrarch’s experiments, 
especially with the reordering of compositions, can be seen on the surface of the codex. But 
not all his experiments can be “final wishes.” 

Recent research on Vaticano Latino 3195 for the 2004 facsimile establishes that the 
manuscript demonstrates significant changes in its status once Petrarch abandons the idea 
of maintaining then still unsewn fascicles as a fair copy.4 Numerous aspects of Vaticano 
Latino 3195 reveal a codex that sometime between 1370-1373 became a service copy in 
which the poet not only erased and emended wholecloth his text but also experimented 
with different orders for the last thirty-one poems (Storey, “All’interno” 146-47). Does then 
the manuscript’s changed status ultimately represent the poet’s definitive wishes? Or is it 
simply the last extant incarnation of the work in the poet’s hand before his death in 1374? 
Would later manuscripts have been made at the poet’s request that are reflected in copies 
produced even after the poet’s death? Do features of Vaticano Latino 3195 that reveal a 
manuscript in fieri tell us that that codex is not “the original” or the only original? Do those 
numbers in the margins of the last thirty-one poems give us the order with which Petrarch 
was content to leave it? If so, why is there not one codex that reflects the changed order laid 
out in that renumbering? Were subsequent readers and copyists oblivious to those numbers? 
And were the three-and-a-half blank but ruled chartae (cc. 49v-52v) designed not only to 
separate perhaps a part 1 from a part 2, as Boccaccio’s early copy (Vaticano Chigiano L V 
176, cc. 72r-73r) seems to suggest, but also to contain additional lyrics? 

In 2003 these and other questions caused Maddalena Signorini to ponder again, after 
Vattasso in 1905, the possibility that an early (fifteenth-century) fair copy of the Fragmenta, 
owned by Coluccio Salutati before its entry into Cosimo De’ Medici’s library, Laurenziano 
41.10, actually reflects “Petrarch’s original” (133-54). But could this beautiful fair copy of 
the work be a “realization of the original”? The antegraph of Laurenziano 41.10 does not 
apparently report, for example, Petrarch’s changes in the ordering of the final thirty-one 



Humanist Studies & the Digital Age  H. Wayne Storey 

1.1 Winter 2011   30 

poems.5 Nor is Laurenziano 41.10 attentive to many of what we presume are Petrarch’s 
erasures and marks to expunge letters for prosodic reasons. Always philologically cautious 
in his assessments, Gino Belloni demonstrates that Laurenziano 41.10 actually reproduces a 
stage in the development of Latino 3195 before Petrarch had completed all the erasures and 
revisions it now contains (“Nota” 82). So its exemplar, or antegraph, might well be 
Petrarch’s famous service copy, but it predates the macrotext’s actual final form in Vaticano 
Latino 3195. 

We must ask ourselves: what did Petrarch’s “original” actually spawn? Thanks to 
previous work by Paolo Sambin and to Gino Belloni’s essay in the 2004 commentary (see 
esp. 73-80) we know that Petrarch’s partial holograph was first in the hands of his son-in-
law, Francescuolo da Brossano, and ultimately bound and in the library of family of 
Tommasina Savonarola and Daniele Santasofia in Padova, where probably the redactor of 
the Valdezoco edition and assuredly Pietro Bembo and Alessandro Vellutello at least had a 
look at the codex before producing their own editions of Petrarch in, respectively, 1472, 
1501, and 1525.6 

Philologically speaking, we are forced to say that especially in terms of the ordering of 
the microtexts in the Fragmenta, it is very possible that the most feasible “original” lies 
somewhere among several codices produced as fair copies, potentially by professional 
copyists, as a composite archetype of a vulgata tradition even if the author’s final and 
definitive wishes for the text are expressed in Vaticano Latino 3195. Until recently, the 
textual authority of that vulgate tradition has been set aside in favor of what we can now 
identify as the service copy (Vaticano Latino 3195) partially in the author’s hand. In fact, as 
we shall see, this claim to authenticity guaranteed by the author’s hand, the “original,” does 
not begin with Aldo Manuzio’s postscript to his readers in 1501 nor with Giovanni 
Mestica’s discovery of Petrarch’s experimental renumbering of compositions 337-365 in the 
margins of 3195’s chartae 66v-71r. We cannot date with any degree of accuracy Petrarch’s 
addition of the insert of the four chartae (or the binion that would become cc. 67-70). The 
use of scribal renumbering to reorder compositions in a subsequent copy was not only 
common before Petrarch but applied even in the case of the best witness of the so-called 
Malatesta copy of the Fragmenta, Laurenziano 41.17, which promised addenda of poems on 
single sheets (“in papyro”) to be inserted to complete the fair copy that accompanied 
Petrarch’s letter Varia 9 to Pandolfo Malatesta.7 What we don’t know is how much Petrarch 
experimented with the final reordering of these poems up until the time of his death nor can 
we assert with absolute certainty that the reordering that we see in the marginal numbers 
from 1 to 31 is final. We take it on faith that this renumbering on the last chartae of the 
manuscript in Petrarch’s hand represents his final intention. It is—I repeat—an intention 
that was never fully realized in any extant copy we have until Mestica’s 1896 edition. The 
large number of fifteenth-century codices that simply replicate the physical order of the 
poems leads me to believe that Petrarch’s final experiment in the last thirty-one poems with 
marginal numbers was relatively late and well after the release of other manuscripts based 
on unrevised addenda. 



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1.1 Winter 2011   31 

Consequently, to trace the late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century manuscript tradition is 
something of an exercise in controlled chaos in as much as the order of some sections of the 
Fragmenta is concerned. Some manuscripts certainly underwent contaminations of diverse 
stages of Petrarch’s emendations and changes. Wilkins’ results in The Making of the 
Canzoniere provide raw evidence of the cross-fertilization of manuscripts in which scribes 
seem to have resorted to multiple copies of the Fragmenta, as well as other poetic 
collections by Petrarch and Trecento poets to assemble their copies.8 However, textual 
variants tell us a different story. The individual microtexts demonstrate remarkably stable 
texts. The problem is Petrarch’s seemingly endless penchant for emendation and 
experimentation. Even before abandoning the idea of a fair copy, the poet often intervened 
to erase (scrape) and revise and revise again, sometimes entire poems. Once Petrarch 
converts the manuscript from a fair to a service copy, this process of scraping and revising 
increases substantially. In light of the large number of copies made of the Fragmenta at 
several of its various stages of evolution, Boccaccio’s being the first (Chigiano L V 176), 
copies—and copies of these copies—were made in which subsequent Petrarchan 
emendations made in Vat. Lat. 3195 were not recorded. 

If this state of textual affairs seems somewhat mind-boggling that’s because it is. 
Perfectly competent paleographers and philologists have made claims that have been 
undone by the revelation of a microscopic detail in the target codex. And sometimes we 
simply never know whether the error rests with Petrarch or the copyist transcribing him. 

* * * * * 
In every case up through the early printed editions, we can, however, rely on several 

features of the target codex or book to help us evaluate the macrotexts and the individual 
microtexts of the Fragmenta. Seldom is one feature determinative in sorting out whether the 
copyist had access to Petrarch’s service copy or a reliable fair copy made from that service 
copy. The first was the basis of Wilkins’ monumental study: the ordering of the individual 
poems. In the last few years the growing philological view of Wilkins’ method based on 
conjecture and probability has been relatively negative, especially with regard to the fact 
that the American scholar never actually studied directly many of the manuscripts he 
discusses in detail, including the colors of ink he interprets to reflect work intervals in the 
preparation of Vaticano Latino 3195.9 To my mind, the most controversial and yet the most 
widely accepted result of his work on the order of the poems has been the division of 
numerous manuscripts into family groups according to the order of the compositions. 
Petrarch’s penchant for experimenting with and altering the order makes this category a 
useful tool when used with other characteristics, especially the problems posed by cross-
fertilization of codices. But the difficult task of dating the periods in which certain orderings 
were definitively effected by the poet limits its use as an effective tool.10 

Probably in mid-1368, Petrarch had the partial holograph Vaticano Latino 3195, still 
destined to be a fair copy, sent to Milano to be rubricated. While I will not speculate here 
about Petrarch’s intentions, I will point out: a) that it was unusual for partially completed 
codices to be rubricated, and b) that the poet’s (and now copyist’s) uncertainty about the 



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1.1 Winter 2011   32 

finality of the manuscript’s texts would become at least partially emblematic of the textual 
condition of the early manuscript tradition. Not even the rubricated poems in Latino 3195, 
such as the previous Rvf 121 (“Donna mi vene spesso ne la mente”) would be secure against 
Petrarch’s revisionist pen-knife (Storey, Transcription 366-77). Consequently, it is easy for 
us to understand the condition of the Fragmenta’s early tradition. Many fourteenth- and 
fifteenth-century manuscripts of the work demonstrate clearly that a first hand had only a 
partial antegraph at his disposal, often—as in the cases of Laurenziano 41.17 and 
Queriniano D II 21—ending with the final canzone “Vergine bella” (Rvf 366) but were 
missing poems added subsequently by copyists both to what we today refer to as parts 1 and 
2. While these addenda were eventually incorporated in various ways, it is useful to 
remember Petrarch’s own formulation in his letter to Pandolfo Malatesta (Varia 9), which 
we have already touched upon. Petrarch’s instruction to his copyist to leave for each of the 
parts “in fine bona spatia” in the copy of the Fragmenta he has sent to Pandolfo signals what 
he might well have considered his best material strategy for adding poems to the fair copy of 
an established corpus of lyrics already in the possession of select readers. This might well 
have meant that Malatesta’s copyist would have had to adopt a system for reordering the 
poems similar to those we see in Latino 3195 or Escorial e.III.23 as he transferred poems 
from the loose sheets of addenda onto the blank chartae at the end of the two parts. As we 
know, Petrarch resorted to the simple insertion of bifolia among the still loose gatherings of 
his service collection to achieve the basis for reordering in poems 337-365 precisely because 
his copy was not bound (Storey, Transcription 380-88). 

In truth, in codices such as Laurenziano 41.17 and Queriniano D II 21 the actual order of 
the poems is perhaps less important than the reconstruction of the material forms of the 
addenda themselves and their material relationships with Petrarch’s inserts into his own 
service copy. In Laurenziano 41.17 the copyist resorts to a system of letters and numbers for 
poems transcribed after the concluding canzone “Vergine bella” (c. 64r-65r), which itself 
carries the rubric “In fine libri pon” (Storey and Capelli, “Modalità di ordinamento” 177-
86). The second, third, and fourth hands of the late-fourteenth-century Queriniano D II 21 
relied on the addition of extra bifolia to insert additional poems, mostly before the final 
canzone “Vergina bella” (Rvf 366). Notably, however, in both codices the block of sonnets 
from “Il mal mi preme” to “Arbor victoriosa” (Rvf 244-263) are added by a subsequent hand. 
These same sonnets are contained on cc. 47r- 49r of the partial holograph and must have 
been collected separately on two bifolia. Even more noteworthy in the Queriniano 
manuscript is the sequence of poems and the quality of the readings for the final 
compositions. It is helpful to visualize Petrarch’s holograph before the insertion of the 
binion to remember that c. 66v once faced c. 71r and their sequence of poems was: 

66v: Vidi fra mille donne una gia tale (335) 
 Tornami a mente ançi ue dentro quella (336) 
 Questo nostro caduco et fragil bene (337 [re350]) 
 O tempo o ciel uolubil che fuggendo (338 [re355]) 
71r: Dolci dureçce et placide repulse (362 [re351]) 
 Spirto felice che si dolcemente (363 [re352]) 



Humanist Studies & the Digital Age  H. Wayne Storey 

1.1 Winter 2011   33 

 De porgi mano alaffannato ingegno (364 [re354]) 
 Vago augelletto che cantando vai (365 [re353]) 

Between “Tornami a mente” (Rvf 336) and “Vergine bella” (Rvf 366) are remnants that 
demonstrate one of the few copies of a partially revised numbering that Petrarch wrote in 
the margins of his service copy. Immediately after “Tornami a mente” (336) we find on the 
same charta (46v) not, according to the physical sequence of the manuscript, the sonnet 
“Questo nostro caduco et fragil bene” but the reordered 337 “Quel che d’odore et di color 
vincea” (Rvf 339). The sequence on c. 47 recto and verso suggests that the copyist had at his 
disposal the first page of a slightly reordered form of Petrarch’s final insert (c. 67r-v) plus 
the unrevised contents of c. 71 of Petrarch’s holograph. Petrarch’s experiment of 
redistributing “Questo nostro caduco” (337) and “O tempo o ciel volubil” (338) among the 
poems of the insert is already in place: 

Queriniano D II 21: 
c. 46v Tornami a mente        [c. 66v1] 
 Quel che dodore et di color vincea   [Petrarch’s insert c. 67r1] 
c. 47r Lasciatai morte sença sole il mondo  [Petrarch’s insert c. 67r2] 
 Conobbi quantol ciel li occhi maprese  [Petrarch’s insert c. 67r3] 
 Del cibo ondel signor mio sempre abonda [Petrarch’s insert c. 67v2] 
 Dolce mio caro et pretioso pegno   [Petrarch’s insert c. 67r4] 
 Questo nostro caduco e fragil bene   [c. 66v3] 
 Dolci dureççe et placide repulse   [c. 71r1] 
c. 47v Spirto felice che si dolcemente    [c. 71r2] 
 De porgi mano alaffannato ingegno   [c. 71r3] 
 Vago augelletto che cantando vai   [c. 71r4] 
 O tempo o ciel uolubil che fuggendo  [c. 66r4] 

Nor can we discount a remarkable feature when we consider this process of establishing 
the order of the poems in this early tradition: the editorial skills of the copyist. As we have 
already mentioned in another context, after the final poem of part 1, “Arbor victoriosa 
triumphale” (263) on c. 34r of Queriniano D II 21, the copyist inserts one of Petrarch’s 
sonnets not normally included in the Fragmenta: “Per utile per dilecto e per honore” (14a in 
Paolino, Rime 708-11).11 Wilkins notes only its inclusion but does not consider the scribal 
culture at work in the addendum nor its contents (Making). “Per utile, per dilecto” is not, 
however, a casual insertion on the charta to fill space. It is a sonnet about the nature of 
carnal love and passion (“Carnale amor non tiene in sé drittura” [v. 9]) under whose 
influence Petrarch states he has been not one but twenty-two years (“non dico un sol, ma 
più di ventidui” [v. 15]). The copyist has added an anniversary poem that establishes, now 
as the last poem of part 1, an additional contrast to the content and tone of part 2. 

* * * * * 
The second kind of analytical tool we have at our disposal fuses Petrarch the copyist 

with Petrarch the poet in the consistent transcriptional forms that he used to develop his 



Humanist Studies & the Digital Age  H. Wayne Storey 

1.1 Winter 2011   34 

poetics not only in the partial holograph but for most of his career, that is from the earliest 
extant holograph transcriptions of sonnets such as “Per mirar Policleto a prova fiso” and 
“Quando giunse a Simon l’altro concetto” on c. 7r of Vaticano Latino 3196. Less of a 
professional copyist than Boccaccio, Petrarch was nevertheless a grafomane. Continually 
engaged in writing and copying, for Petrarch the act of writing itself was the foundation of 
an intellectual ideology.12 In his Fragmenta, there is a strict correlation among the poem’s 
meaning, the copyist’s strict transcriptional formulae for its genre, and the poem’s intricate 
role in the macrotext.13 For example, though the sestina is part of the canzone family, 
Petrarch distinguished it definitively as a separate genre with characteristics unique from 
his canzoni. His sonnets were always written on the same seven lines, two verses per line. 
This was not to save parchment; it was an essential part of the genre’s ideological formation 
that contributed to the poem’s significance. In the late fourteenth century the copyist of 
Riccardiano 1088 interrupts his own copy with two maniculae to complain about Petrarch’s 
difficult two-column layout with changing reading strategies (see Fig. 1 [27r]). He 
simultaneously warns his reader of the new copy style he will use and surrenders to his 
culture’s standardizing formulae for poetic genres. Thus when we see a manuscript with 
Petrarch’s transcriptional forms for the five genres in the Fragmenta, we are closer to a 
rigorous copyist who is more attentive to the Petrarchan copy than to the transcriptional 
formulae of his own culture. 

 

Figure 1: Riccardiano 1088, c. 27R (detail) 

Both Laurenziano 41.17 and Queriniano D II 21 reflect our second determinative 



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1.1 Winter 2011   35 

category: Petrarch’s standardized formulae for the transcription of the five poetic genres of 
the Fragmenta. These strict forms are applicable not only to the individual genres of the 
sonnet, the sestina, the subgenres of the canzone, the ballata, and the madrigale, but to the 
actual charta itself, creating two integrated levels of visual poetics within the codex: within 
the individual composition and on the charta as a unit. Historically speaking the fifteenth 
century’s rapid abandonment of this dimension of Petrarch’s transcriptional poetics 
significantly ushers in the final conversion of those original poetics in 1470 and 1472, in the 
princeps printed by Johann de Speyer, and in Valdezoco’s 1472 Paduan edition. With the 
standardization of what I call “Petrarch’s book in the vernacular,” typified by Laurenziano 
41.14, the poetics of the page have been reduced to two sonnets per charta and Petrarch’s 
transcriptional poetics lost. On the other hand, most of the fourteenth-century copies and 
even some early fifteenth-century codices, such as Laurenziano Pluteo 41.10 and 
Laurenziano Segniano 1, attempt to follow carefully Petrarch’s layouts for the genres. But 
Petrarch’s “poetics of the page” were difficult for copyists precisely because it was based on 
a strict 31-line-per-charta writing space that depended on an exact writing style. As we 
know, two of the basic features of Petrarch’s “poetics of the charta” were: a) the grouping of 
four complete sonnets per side of each charta (see Fig. 2), and b) the placement on the same 
charta of a sonnet and a sestina (see Fig. 3), designed especially to draw into sharp contrast 
the different reading strategies of the two genres and their very different relationships of 
content to form (Storey, Transcription 225-60). 

 

Figure 2: Vaticano Latino 3195, c. 1v 



Humanist Studies & the Digital Age  H. Wayne Storey 

1.1 Winter 2011   36 

 

Figure 3: Vaticano Latino 3195, c. 7v 

The dynamic sonnet, read horizontally across the charta from column to column, was 
balanced on seven transcriptional lines; the static sestina, read down the column, was 
always written in two columns of uneven length. Copyists who tried to follow charta-by-
charta Petrarch’s formulae were restricted to the same number of transcriptional lines per 
charta: thirty-one. 

The copyist of Morgan M 502, probably produced in the Veneto in the early 1380s, is 
one of the best examples of the format at work and, ultimately, in failure because he tends to 
use thirty-two transcriptional lines for each charta. But he has his successes as well, 
especially in his adherence to Petrarch’s mathematical combinations of hendecasyllables 
and settenari per line in diverse categories of canzoni such as “Lasso me, ch’i’ non so in 
qual parte pieghi” (Rvf 70), “S’i’ ’l dissi mai” (Rvf 206), and “Tacer non posso” (Rvf 325) as 
well as in the formulae for the other four genres (Storey, “All’interno” 160-71). The copyist 
of the Morgan codex is so accurate that we have to turn to his copy of canz. 356 [re360], 
“Quel’ antiquo mio dolce empio signore” (cc. 61v-62v), to understand Petrarch’s form, 
compromised in the insert by the limitations of space in the binion.14 

* * * * * 
The third category of distinguishing features is constituted by microscopic variants by 

which we can trace particular readings back to a given moment before Petrarch revised a 
letter or word here or part of a verse there. Many “characteristic readings” reveal those 



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1.1 Winter 2011   37 

places in the partial holograph that can potentially tell us what subsequent copyists have 
and have not seen, especially from what stage of Petrarch’s revisions their antegraphs were 
copied. With careful and usually microscopic analyses they can supply us with readings 
that are either corrupt or no longer visible in the partial holograph. This is an operation that 
has not been foremost among the approaches to Petrarch’s Fragmenta since there has been 
little interest in the collation of individual witnesses in light of the partial holograph’s 
seeming authority in establishing the text of the work. This kind of close study both of 
variants and forms of manuscripts such as Morgan M. 502, Queriniano D II 21, and Segniano 
1, requires as well careful attention to the microscopic details of the partial holograph, the 
minimalia—as I called them elsewhere—or, according to Gino Belloni, the “caratteristiche” 
of Latino 3195 that serve as pivotal guides to tracing in earlier and later fair copies the 
origins of unique readings altered by Petrarch.15 The three categories of Belloni’s and my 
own combined approaches to these unique indicators are: 1) prosody, what Belloni calls the 
“ipometrie grafiche” in some cases corrected by a single expunction point, or period, under 
the extra vowel; 2) errors, defects, or difficult readings in the manuscript; and 3) unique 
material features in the execution of pivotal codices, such as the partial holograph, 
Boccaccio’s Chigiano L v 176, or Petrarch’s holograph Latino 3196. 

Given the multiple levels of manuscript production and subsequent interventions by 
readers and owners of codices, all three categories represent potential areas of codicological 
and paleographic interpretation. Belloni’s first entry in Tavola 2 (103), “Que’ ch’infinita” 
(Rvf 4) is an excellent example of how a material issue of production and the interpretation 
of hands and inks in the partial holograph can be at odds with the tradition. Belloni notes, 
along with Modigliani and Storey, that the l of “QVel” on c. 1r (Rvf 4) is in a different hand 
from that of Malpaghini, the copyist of this section, or Petrarch.16 Upon closer scrutiny, in 
2004 I noted in print that under the canceled l is another l, Malpaghini’s l attached to the 
ascending tick mark typical of Malpaghini’s and Petrarch’s e (“Edizione diplomatica” 388). 
The particular ink, a reddish brown, used to intervene in this case is found in other sections 
of the codex as well (388) and could well represent the hand of a later corrector, who traced 
Malpaghini’s l, attaching an atypical horizontal pes, or foot, that extends to the right. The 
corrector subsequently puts an expunction point under the l. Belloni reads the l and “Quel” 
as a variant, but deems it of little use as a “characteristic” that would link another copy to 
the partial holograph as a antegraph. But the preponderant weight of the manuscript 
tradition favors by far the form Que. Savoca, for example, opts for “Quel” not only against 
the early tradition but also the inherited wisdom of editions from Bembo (1501) to Bettarini 
(2005).17 In 2008, Savoca follows my suggestion (2004) of Malpaghini’s l, but declares it 
“probabilmente aggiunta da Petrarca in sede di revisione, perché poi Malpaghini la mettesse 
al suo posto, come in seguito fece, dimenticando però di eradere il segno in basso (un punto 
che assomiglia a una macchiolina irregolare)” (6-7). Here Savoca embarks upon 
conjectures—telling us, like Wilkins, what Petrarch probably did and what Malpaghini 
forgot—that only obfuscate a true material and textual problem that the partial holograph 
does not seem able to resolve.18 Already in 1896, Mestica, who saw the added l in an 
“inchiostro violaceo” (a color of ink never used by Petrarch in his holographs [74]), 



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1.1 Winter 2011   38 

suggested turning to the early fifteenth-century fair copy Laurenziano 41.10 to solve the 
uncertainty of the holograph. But we also have an earlier copy of the sonnet made by a 
reliable scribe, Giovanni Boccaccio, directly from a Petrarchan copy of the Fragmentorum 
liber (Chigiano L V 176), in which we find the reading “Que ch’infinita prouedença et arte” 
(c. 43v), an incipit that proves to be stable both before the final redaction of the Fragmenta 
and in the Tre- and Quattrocento manuscript traditions. In truth, in the face of the partial 
holograph’s corruption, a dependable textual tradition of fair copies actually reveals the 
complex layers of production instilled in the author’s own fair-turned-service copy that has 
undergone uncertain interventions. 

Obviously one of the problems with this method of analysis rests in the verification of 
authentic hands in the partial holograph. And the truth is that even with my own close 
study, for example, of how erasures were indicated by Petrarch and then executed, we still 
don’t have a fail-proof way of knowing who actually erased letters.19 In most cases in 
Vaticano Latino 3195 we can presume that the erasure is executed by the poet or under the 
poet’s supervision. But some examples leave us in doubt. 

The next sample led to recent criticism of my work, so I am happy to have the occasion 
to reiterate my own findings. On c. 44v of Petrarch’s holograph, v. 5 of “Amor co la man 
dextra il lato mano” (Rvf 228) reads: “Voncer di penna / con sospir del fianco”: the first 
minum after the two of the n is curved top and bottom to the right (see Fig. 4).  

 

Figure 4: Vaticano Latino 3195, c. 44v (detail) 

I confess that I could not see signs of erasure that Modigliani identified in 1904, but there is 
evidence that letters have been retraced. This calls into question also the strike-through of 



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1.1 Winter 2011   39 

the titulus over the e of “pena” that cancels the first n and signals a change from “penna” to 
“pena” in v. 5. The weight of the interpretative tradition (“vomer di penna”) rests on any 
philologist—even the non-Italian philologist—who examines the passage, which Guido 
Bezzola identified as a strained prosecution of the allegory of the “pen as plow” (401). From 
the copyist of Laurenziano 41.17, who serves as witness to one of the earliest releases of the 
poem, the often definitive Morgan M 502, and Bembo’s 1501 edition, to Rovillio (1558), 
Muratori (1711), Carducci-Ferrari (1899), and even Mestica (1896) read “Vomer di penna” in 
v. 7.20 Rosanna Bettarini cites Modigliani and Contini as origins of the revised reading 
“Vomer di pena” based on the poet’s own elimination of the titulus over the e. But there are 
others who report seeing something different in this untidy textual space. It is impossible to 
know who turned “Vomer” into “Voncer”; it is a passage that has clearly been corrupted by 
a later hand. But we can date the change between 1374 and the publication of the Valdezoco 
edition of 1472, which reads from the holograph: “Voncer di penna” (c. 95v; see Fig. 5). 
Trust me; this is no conspiracy between me and the redactor of the 1472 edition. Yet just a 
few years before, in 1463, the copyist of Laurenziano 41.14, who seems to have access to a 
copy privileged by the poet, notes in the margin of c. 114v the variant “pena” to the text’s 
“penna” for v. 5.21 

 

Figure 5: Valdezoco ed. of 1472, c 95v (detail) 

* * * * * 
We must note that our fourth and final classification is the one that is perhaps most tied 

to the general confusion surrounding a “final form” of the Fragmenta even right after 



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1.1 Winter 2011   40 

Petrarch’s death and up through the eighteenth century: the claim of editorial authenticity 
based on the poet’s personal copy, the “original.” It is an odd and somewhat unique 
category into which Petrarch’s Fragmenta and Triumphi often fall. (We seldom see such 
insistence in the case of Antonio Pucci’s manuscripts or even of Boccaccio’s, even though 
both authors left a significant number of holograph copies.) Not only did Aldo Manuzio 
proclaim Bembo’s access to Petrarch’s personal copies as the foundation for his 1501 
edition, in 1525 and 1528 Alessandro Vellutello denied that same authenticity to justify his 
biographical reordering of most of the poems and leaves no doubt that he has seen the 
manuscript that today we know as Vaticano Latino 3195. But the practice began long before 
these two fierce competitors of the Venetian book trade. Among the earliest copies we have 
of the Fragmenta, we find in the very title of the codex the claim that the exemplar has been 
taken from an antegraph that is the poet’s own copy in his own hand. This rubric is a 
double-edged sword. There is little doubt it was to Aldo Manuzio’s economic advantage to 
make such a claim, but the truth is that Bembo’s suspicions were driven by a rapid check of 
the partial holograph after most of his copytext for the 1501 edition (today Vaticano Latino 
3197) had already been completed on the basis of two other manuscripts.22 Some fourteenth- 
and fifteenth-century copyists engaged in similar declarations of authenticity to advance the 
quality of their transcriptions. But about the time we become dismissive of the 
authenticating phrase as a rhetorical device, we discover that there is—as we shall see—a 
significant grain of truth in the phase included in the title “Scripto ipsa manu” (“written by 
his own hand”) in the early fourteenth-century Laurenziano Segniano 1. The copyist of the 
fifteenth-century Vaticano Reginense 1110 states in a rubric on c. 107v, right before the 
beginning of the canzone “I’ vo pensando” (Rvf 264): “Que sequuntur post mortem domine 
Lauree scripta sunt. Ita enim proprio codice domini Francisci annotatum est, et carte 
quatuor pretermisse vacue” (“Those [poems] that follow the death of Laura are written here. 
Thus it is noted in master Francesco’s own copy and he left four blank chartae”). Virtually 
the same eye-witness report of the blank but ruled chartae left in Petrarch’s partial 
holograph, cc. 49v-52v, is found also in Beinecke M 706 (c.107r) and supported by a 
colophon from Verona in 1393 (c. 186r). But, as Dario Del Puppo has noted, the script 
betrays the actual age of the copy (“Shaping Interpretations,” esp. 108-20). Beinecke 706 was 
made in the late fifteenth century, but the colophon and the rubrics are copied from a much 
earlier codex. 

Here again our method turns to minimalia for help in clarifying this important rubric in 
Petrarchan manuscripts. The Laurentian codex Segniano 1 is an unassuming paper codex 
probably produced in the 1420s or ’30s. It had caught Vattasso’s eye in his 1905 
introduction to the photographic edition. But its incomplete state left it of little use to 
Wilkins and others whose interests lay in the wholecloth order of the microtexts to establish 
families of witnesses. The manuscript was known to me as one of the few fifteenth-century 
codices that maintains Petrarch’s transcriptional formulae. Its copyist uses generally a 31-
line transcriptional field, respecting the construction of the single charta in Petrarch’s 
partial holograph. The manuscript’s sole copyist is unusually accurate, even engaging in a 
form of hyper-correction in his transcription of the Fragmenta’s sestine with the same 



Humanist Studies & the Digital Age  H. Wayne Storey 

1.1 Winter 2011   41 

general horizontal layout of the verses that we find in use for the other genres in the partial 
holograph. 

I did not at first realize how accurate the copyist of Segniano 1 actually was. One detail 
to which some paleographers pay little attention is medieval scribes’ use of capital letters, 
majuscules, except at the beginnings of transcriptional lines and verses. Proper names and 
even nomina sacra are hardly ever capitalized in medieval manuscripts. But preparing my 
diplomatic-interpretative edition of the Fragmenta I elected to indicate Malpaghini’s and 
Petrarch’s use of majuscules whether they correspond to modern usage or not. Petrarch and, 
on a few occasions, Malpaghini had the unusual, but erratic, habit of capitalizing the initial 
letter in mid-verse, usually after the verse’s caesura. Precisely because this practice is erratic 
it is unique to Petrarch’s service copy. Segniano 1 maintains all the numerous instances of 
these unique majuscules, a feature that it shares with no other manuscript that I have been 
able to find.23 In vv. 10-12 of the sonnet “Tra quantunque leggiadre donne et belle” (Rvf 218 
[Latino 3195: c. 43r]), Petrarch punctuates the minor pause after venti (.) and then 
capitalizes in midverse the A of “A la terra”: 

A laere i venti. A la terra herbe et fronde. 
Aluomo et lintelecto et le parole. Et Almar ritollesse i pesci et londe. 

In the final quire of the autograph codex, Petrarch punctuates the pause in exactly the 
same way in v. 50 of “Quando il soave mio fido conforto” (Rvf 355; revised as 359, c. 69r) 
and capitalizes the I of “Il” after the medial pause (.) in the verse “Vinsi il mondo et me 
stessa. Il lauro segna”; in Segniano 1 this verse appears as: 

Vinsi il mondo / et me stessa. In lauro segna 

In v. 4 of the ballata “Amor quando fioria” (Rvf 324) on c. 50r of Segniano 1 (c. 43r), we 
find the same majuscule A after the short pause after “morte” that we find in the partial 
holograph: 

Ai dispietata morte / Ai crudel vita. Luna ma posto in doglia 

And in v. 12 of “Quel vago, dolce, caro, honesto sguardo” (Rvf 330) on c. 65r of Latino 
3195 Petrarch adopts the majuscule A after the medial pause (“Il ciel naspetta. A uoi parra 
per tempo”), a graphological nuance taken up by the copyist of Segniano 1: 

 

Figure 6: Laur. Segniano 1, c.48v 

We can determine additionally that Segniano 1’s contact with Petrarch’s service copy 
predated two emendations signaled by Belloni (“Nota”). Malpaghini’s original transcription 



Humanist Studies & the Digital Age  H. Wayne Storey 

1.1 Winter 2011   42 

of v. 44 of “O aspectata in ciel beata e bella” (Rvf 28) reads: “qua figli mai qual donne” (cf. 
Bettarini 142). Petrarch later emends the verse by erasing the l of “qual” to the form we 
know today: “qua’ figli mai, qua’ donne” (cf. Savoca 43). But Segniano 1, c. 6r, like 
Laurenziano 41.10, still has the older form: 

 

Figure 7: Laur. Segniano 1, c. 6r 

“qua figli mai qual donne” (cf., however, Boccaccio’s transcription in Chigiano L v 176, c. 
47v: “quai figli mai quai donne”). And again on c. 16r, Segniano 1 registers the reading of v. 
21 of “Perché la vita è breve” (71): “Non che laguagli altrui parlar, o mio” before the erasure 
of the g and its insertion marker on c. 15v of the poet’s partial holograph. 

 

Figure 8: Laur. Segniano 1, c. 16r 

These and other minimalia seem to confirm that the copyist of Segniano 1 worked either 
directly from the service copy at a stage of its preparation when Petrarch had become its 
sole copyist but before its final emendations or from a very carefully prepared antegraph. 
We have every reason to believe the copyist’s rubric: “Francisci Petrarce laureati poete … 
scripto ipsa manu decti poete” (c. 1r). 

If Segniano 1 marks a distinctive height of accuracy in the copying of Petrarch’s 
Fragmenta, the slightly later Laurenziano 41.14 supplies us with two other milestones in the 
history of the diffusion of Petrarch’s service copy. Dated reliably in its colophon to 1463, 
this paper codex supplies the model for what I call the “new vernacular Petrarch edition.” 
Its apparatus begins with a translation into Italian of Aretino’s “Life of Petrarch” and 
Petrarch’s own “Laura propriis virtutibus illustris”—by then a standard in most Petrarch 
manuscripts—followed by its translation into Italian, and an alphabetical table of the 
poems. This introductory apparatus is followed by the Fragmenta and the Triumphi. Gone 
are the graphetic features of Petrarch’s transcriptional poetics, replaced by a system of two 
sonnets per page. We are still thirteen years away from Francesco Filelfo’s partial 



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1.1 Winter 2011   43 

commentary, first printed in Bologna, and twenty-one years away from the first complete 
commentary finished by Girolamo Squarciafico in 1484. Nevertheless we are fully within 
the model of the vernacular edition whose formula dates back to the early Italian 
manuscripts of Occitan verse, especially the early fourteenth-century Tuscan Laurenziano 
41.42 with its vidas and trilingual glossaries. Laurenziano 41.14 represents the apogee of the 
Petrarchan apparatus upon which much of the sixteenth-century printed tradition will be 
constructed. Moreover, it is a manuscript that is famous for its authorial variants of the 
Triumphi listed in the margins and countersigned by the letters “d.ma.d.p.” (and “d.p.”): “di 
mano del poeta.” The title of the Fragmenta does not lay claim to such an authorial 
antegraph, but the text itself does bear witness to both text and marginal corrections that 
suggest at least a collation of either Petrarch’s service copy or an early fair copy. 

Thus by the second half of the fifteenth century, both in manuscript and in print we 
have two models for constructing a book of vernacular Petrarch: 1) the text with sparse or no 
apparatus that boasted its authenticity and connection to the poet, from Valdezoco’s 1472 
Paduan edition to the Aldine editions of 1501 and 1514; and 2) editions which offered the 
user an ever greater interpretative apparatus, from the Bolognese Filelfo commentary 
tradition of the late fifteenth century to the heavily annotated apparatuses of Vellutello in 
1525 and Guglielmo Rovillo’s Lyonese editions of the 1550s. Just two short years after 
Bembo’s 1501 Aldine edition we see an explosion of editions with multiple commentaries 
(Filelfo’s, Antonio da Tempo’s, Girolamo Squarciafico’s) in which the text, especially of 
canzoni, is practically lost under the weight of commentary that isolates stanzas and 
separates with ever greater distance the space between the work’s microtexts. This is 
particularly the case with Angelo Scinzenzeler’s 1507 Milanese edition (Petrarca con doi 
commenti sopra li soneti et canzone, which included Nicolò Peranzone’s commentary to the 
Triumphi, and Bernardo Stagnino’s 1522 Venetian Petrarcha con doi commenti sopra li 
sonetti et canzone). The ideal but imperfect diary of Petrarch’s Fragmenta becomes—
especially in Vellutello and thus for the early French Petrarchists as well—the poet’s 
biography that guides us through interpretation. There is no greater contrast than between, 
on the one hand, Vellutello’s 1525 Venetian Volgari opere del Petrarcha—with its table of 
sonnets and canzoni, its fold-out map, the commentator’s preface, his treatise on the order 
of the poems, his essay on the life and customs of the poet, and his biography of “Madonna 
Laura with a description of Vauclus and of the place where the poet first fell in love with 
her” before the text of his part 1 and extensive commentary begins—and, on the other hand, 
Melchiore Sessa’s 1526 edition of Li sonetti, canzoni et Triomphi di messer Francesco 
Petrarcha historiati, which is essentially a reprinting of Bembo’s unannotated 1514 Aldine 
edition with its significant shift in the beginning of the “Sonetti et canzoni di messer 
Francesco Petrarcha in morte di Madonna Laura” and a concluding table of sonnets and 
canzoni. The brief and anonymous “A gli lettori” does anything other than create a history 
(“historiare”) from the poems. Rather its appeal is to the reader: “he who doesn’t see in 
[Petrarch’s] very lovely verses that he loved so very intensely” (“Chi non vede ne suoi 
leggiadrissimi versi lui tanto caldamente havere amato”) (c. 1v; signature a Iv). 



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1.1 Winter 2011   44 

By the time we reach the 1558 third printing in Lyon of Guglielmo Rovillio’s Petrarca we 
find a fusion of Bembo’s second edition with the extensive realization of a key element in 
Vellutello’s 1528 title: utility. The apparatus of Rovillio’s edition contains annotations for 
each poem from Bembo’s Prose, a short life of Petrarch and a description of the birth of 
Laura, Benedetto Varchi’s sonnet for Petrarch’s tomb, and François I’s epitaph for Laura’s 
tomb. But the utility announced in the title of Rovillio’s edition takes us a step further: tools 
for those who want to write poetry like Petrarch’s. After the Triumphi, Rovillio inserted in 
unnumbered pages a table of rhyme endings in the Fragmenta; he then added with a new 
pagination and a title page for Luc’Antonio Ridolfi’s Table and Guide for centoni, or poetic 
imitations. By 1558 questions of authenticity have given way to issues of imitability, which 
means that Petrarch’s poetry and poetics must in truth conform to late sixteenth- and 
seventeenth-century standards. Alessandro Tassoni will insist that he hears the French 
Loreta, rather than Laureta, among the verses of “Quand’io movo i sospiri a chiamar voi” 
(Rvf 5), and added to the sonnet’s new poetics we find from then until today another 
innovation never contemplated by Petrarch: the capitalization and highlighting of “Lau-re-
ta” in verses 3, 5, and 7 (cf. Petrarch’s version of the poem in Figure 2). But this is a story of 
a new Petrarch that I leave to others. 

 

 
                                                
1 The identification of the codex as belonging to Petrarch’s hand was pivotal to the authority 
of the Aldine edition (Cose volgari di messer Francesco Petrarca [1501]) purportedly based 
on Petrarch’s own manuscript, and to Vellutello’s counterclaims of its “original status” in 
1525 (Le volgari opere del Petrarcha con la esposizione di Alessandro Vellutello da Lucca) 
as a basis for his reordering of the poems. See Storey, “Economies of Authority” and Storey, 
Review of Savoca, Codicologia ed ecdotica and Rerum vulgarium fragmenta. Note that 
throughout this essay abbreviations in diplomatic transcriptions are expanded in italics 
rather than in parentheses. 
2 See Vattasso, “Introduzione,” vii-xxxvii. Ernest Hatch Wilkins’ studies, published as 
individual essays, were assembled and revised in The Making of the Canzoniere and Other 
Petrarchan Studies. Wilkins’ conjectures regarding early versions of Petrarch’s Canzoniere 
posited forms of the macrotext, rather than variants within the microtexts, working 
backwards from the state of the last draft available to us, Vaticano Latino 3195, toward the 
first draft copy, Vaticano Latino 3196. 
3 The draft manuscript Vaticano Latino 3196 contains numerous marginal notations by 
Petrarch himself that Vattasso believed attest to another manuscript in which poems were 
ordered as a macrotext, signaled by the pre-1357 annotations of “transcriptum in ordine” 
(1905, xvi-xvii). 
4 See Zamponi, “Il libro del Canzoniere: Modelli, strutture, funzioni,” 13-72 and Storey, 
“All’interno della poetica grafico-visiva di Petrarca,” 131-71. 
5 The codex follows the physical ordering of the 366 poems rather than the revised order 
renumbered in Vat. Lat. 3195. 



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1.1 Winter 2011   45 

 
6 The reference is, of course, to the landmark editions of Bortolamio Valdezoco, Francesco 
Petrarca in 1472; Pietro Bembo, Cose volgari in 1501; and Alessandro Vellutello, Volgari 
opere in 1525. Vellutello’s discussion of the “codex bound in white leather” in his 
introductory remarks, “Trattato de l’ordine de son. et canz. del Pet. Mutato,” to the 1525 and 
1528 editions makes it clear that he saw and discussed the manuscript with Pietro Bembo, 
but arrived at conclusions that are very different from those of the publisher of Bembo’s 
1501 edition, Aldo il Romano (see Storey, “Economies of Authority”). 
7 On the scribal use of marginal markers to reorder compositions in a manuscript, see Storey 
and Capelli, “Modalità,” 169-86; and in specific reference to the workshop copy MS Escorial 
e.III.23, that contains two orderings of Stilnovist poems produced by an elaborate system of 
markers, see Capelli, “Nuove indagini sulla raccolta di rime italiane del MS. Escorial 
e.III.23,” 73-113. On the origins of the “Malatesta” family of copies of the Fragmenta and 
Petrarch’s letter, see Petrarch’s Varia 9, later redacted by Petrarch as Senilis XIII 11, to 
Pandolfo Malatesta (dated 4 January 1372). Petrarch regrets the poor quality of the binding 
of the copy of his vernacular poems (“[n]ugellas meas vulgares”) that has been sent to 
Pandolfo. It is the postscriptum of Varia 9 (“Sunt apud me … nihilominus in papyro”) that 
describes how Petrarch has had the copyist leave a good amount of blank space at the end of 
the two parts so that poems that he sends later, as he sorts through them, can be added: 
“ideoque mandavi quod utriusque in fine bona spatia linquerentur: et si quidquam occurret, 
mittam tibi reclusum nihilominus in papyro” (cited from Fracassetti, Francisci Petrarcae, 
vol. 3, 323). See also Storey, “Petrarch’s Concepts of Text and Textual Reform,” 201-24. 
8 Two brief examples will have to suffice. The first comes from the multiple placements of 
the madrigal “Or vedi Amor” that replaces the ballata “Donna mi vene spesso ne la mente” 
at position 121 in many manuscripts, yet is also found in otherwise authoritative codices, 
such as Morgan M. 502, in positions relatively near to 121. The other examples come from 
the fifteenth-century codices Queriniano D II 21 and Riccardiano 1088. In the first 
manuscript, a second copyist selects a sonnet from Petrarch’s disperse, or unordered 
sonnets, “Per utile, per dilecto, e per honore” (c. 36r), to complete part 1 (= 263bis). But in 
the Riccardiano manuscript, the primary copyist transcribes the popular sonnet “Alessandro 
lasciò la signoria” immediately after “Arbor victoriosa tiumphale” (Rvf 263) to fill the 
charta’s right column and to conclude part 1. Notably the same copyist will recycle the same 
sonnet, but with distinct variants later in the same codex, and attribute it to Dante (see 
Storey, “Il codice Pierpont Morgan M. 502,” 487-504 and Storey, “The Illusion of Authentic 
Philology.”  
9 See Del Puppo and Storey, 495-512; Zamponi, 13-16; Barolini, 21-44; and, most recently, 
Pulsoni, 257-68. 
10 Certainly Wilkins’ tendency to “narrativize” a history of production was informed by his 
profound knowledge of the poet’s works. But his reliance on probability, conjecture, an 
indirect knowledge of the material tradition, and what we might call a cultural inclination 
to impose artificial scientific systems, such as his creation of three categories of intervals 
between the periods of work Petrarch devoted to the assembly of Vaticano Latino 3195, 
render his results in some cases unreliable. 
11 On Queriniano D II 21 and this sonnet, see Gaffuri, 75-91. 
12 See Armando Petrucci’s pages on Petrarch’s philosophical orientation to writing in La 
scrittura di Francesco Petrarca, 58-70, expanded upon in Storey, “Petrarch’s Concepts.” 



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1.1 Winter 2011   46 

 
13 Much of what follows on Petrarch’s visual poetics is taken generally from Storey, 
Transcription and Visual Poetics, 225-419. For specifics on the five individual genres in the 
Fragmenta, see Storey, “All’interno.” For an excursus on the development of the 
transcription of Italian lyrics in the Due- and the Trecento and the implications of that 
development in Petrarch’s Fragmenta, see Brugnolo, 105-29. 
14 See Storey, “Il codice Pierpont Morgan,” 501. By my calculations, if Petrarch had not 
reverted to this singular departure from his transcriptional formula for the canzone, he 
would have needed to use an additional bifolium, one folded sheet, adding two chartae to 
the insert, something that would have drastically changed his material plan for the two 
loose bifolia that would become cc. 67-70 in Vaticano Latino 3195. This plan for an altered 
transcriptional formula that will fit the material support of the two bifolia signals 
additionally, I believe, his transformation of the codex into a service copy not for 
circulation. In the construction of a new fair copy, Petrarch’s insert would have been 
“unpacked” into a more readable form and the renumbered compositions repositioned. 
15 See the appendix of Belloni, “Storia,” 102-04, entitled “Caratteristiche del Vat. Lat. 3195: 
Guida agli indicatori per codici da esso trascritti,” and, for the codex’s “minimalia,” see 
Storey, “L’edizione diplomatica di Ettore Modigliani,” in Belloni, et al., 385-92. 
16 Modigliani, Il canzoniere di Francesco Petrarca, now reproduced in Belloni, et al., 181-
384, from which all citations are taken in this essay. 
17 Savoca, 6-7; Bettarini, 18.  
18 For additional discussion of the manuscript and early-print tradition, especially the case 
of Valdezoco’s reading of “Quel” in Rvf 4, v. 1, see Storey, review of Savoca in Textual 
Cultures. 
19 On the remnants of the process of erasure left on the parchment of Vaticano Latino 3195, 
see Storey, “All’interno,” 142-43, and Transcription, 353-77. 
20 Rovillio, 301; Muratori, 446; Carducci and Ferrari, 322. 
21 For my proposed restoration of Petrarch’s intended reading of v. 9 of “Geri, quando talor 
meco s’adira” (on c. 37r of the holograph) from the modern conjecture of “E.ccio non fusse 
and non altramente” to “Se ciò non fusse” (guaranteed by the tradition against the 
holograph’s reading altered by a later hand) and other problematic readings, see Storey, 
“Doubting Petrarca’s Last Words,” esp. 81-83 for an extended excursus on this reading. 
22 See Sandra Giarin’s detailed study of Bembo’s actual use of Petrarch’s partial holograph 
“Petrarca e Bembo.” 
23 See Storey, “All’interno” 148-50 for a more extensive discussion of Segniano 1’s 
replication of Petrarch’s use of the mid-verse majuscule, a topic upon which I am preparing 
a more detailed study. 

Works Cited 
Barolini, Teodolinda. “Petrarch at the Crossroads of Hermeneutics and Philology: Editorial 

Lapses, Narrative Impositions, and Wilkins’ Doctrine of the Nine Forms of the Rerum 
vulgarium fragmenta.” Barolini and Storey 21-44. 



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1.1 Winter 2011   47 

Barolini, Teodolinda and H. Wayne Storey, eds. Petrarch and the Textual Origins of 
Interpretation. Boston; Leiden: Brill, 2007. Print. 

Belloni, Gino. “Nota sulla storia del Vat. Lat. 3195.” Belloni, et al. 73-104. 

Belloni, Gino, Furio Brugnolo, H. Wayne Storey, and Stefano Zamponi, eds. Rerum 
vulgarium fragmenta, codice Vat. Lat. 3195. Commentario all’edizione in fac-simile, By 
Francesco Petrarca. Roma; Padova: Antenore, 2004. Print. 

Bettarini, Rosanna, ed. Francesco Petrarca, Canzoniere / Rerum vulgarium fragmenta. 
Torino: Einaudi, 2005. Print. 

Bezzola, Guido, ed. Francesco Petrarca, Rime, 2d ed. Milano: Rizzoli, 1985. Print. 

Brugnolo, Furio. “Libro d’autore e forma-canzoniere: implicazioni grafico-visive 
nell’originale dei Rerum vulgarium fragmenta.” Belloni, et al. 105-29. Print. 

Capelli, Roberta. “Nuove indagini sulla raccolta di rime italiane del MS. Escorial e.III.23.” 
Medioevo letterario d’Italia 1 (2004): 73-113. Print. 

Carducci, Giosuè and Severino Ferrari, eds. Le rime di Francesco Petrarca di su gli originali. 
Firenze: Sansoni, 1949. Print. 

Contini, Gianfranco. Canzoniere. By Francesco Petrarca. Torino: Einaudi, 1964. Print. 

Del Puppo, Dario. “Shaping Interpretation: Scribal Practices and Book Formats in Three 
‘Descripti’ Manuscripts of Petrarca’s Vernacular Poems.” Barolini and Storey 93-129. 

Del Puppo, Dario and H. Wayne Storey. “Wilkins nella formazione del canzoniere di 
Petrarca.” Italica 80 (2003): 495-512. Print. 

Fracassetti, Giuseppe, ed. Francisci Petrarcae, Epistolae de rebus familiaribus et variae. Vol. 
3. By Francesco Petrarca. Firenze: Le Monnier, 1863. Print. 

Gaffuri, Renato. “Nuove indagini sul codice petrarchesco D II 21 della Biblioteca Queriniana 
di Brescia.” Studi petrarcheschi 8 (1976): 75-91. Print. 

Giarin, Sandra. “Petrarca e Bembo: l’edizione aldina del Canzoniere.” Studi di filologia 
italiana 62 (2004): 161-93. Print. 

Mestica, Giovanni, ed. Le rime di Francesco Petrarca restituite nell’ordine e nella lezione del 
testo originario sugli autografi col sussidio di altri codici e di stampe. Firenze: Barbèra, 
1896. Print. 

Modigliani, Ettore, ed. Il canzoniere di Francesco Petrarca riprodotto letteralmente dal Cod. 
Vat. Lat. 3195, con tre fotoincisioni. Roma: Società Filologica Romana, 1904. Rpt. In 
Belloni, et al 181-384. Print. 

Muratori, Lodovico Antonio, ed., Le rime di Francesco Petrarca. Modena: Bartolomeo 
Soliani Stampatore Ducale, 1711. Print. 

Paolino, Laura, ed. “Rime estravaganti.” Francesco Petrarca, Trionfi, Rime estravaganti, 
codice degli abbozzi. Eds. Vinicio Pacca and Laura Paolino. Milano: Mondadori, 1996. 
708-11. Print. 



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1.1 Winter 2011   48 

Petrucci, Armando. La scrittura di Francesco Petrarca. Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca 
Apostolica Vaticana, 1967. Print. 

Pulsoni, Carlo. “Il metodo di lavoro di Wilkins e la tradizione manoscritta dei Rerum 
vulgarium fragmenta.” Giornale italiano di filologia 61 (2009): 257-68. Print. 

Rovillio, Guglielmo, ed. Il Petrarca con dichiarazioni non più stampate …. Lyon: Rovillio, 
1558. Print. 

Sambin, Paolo. “Libri del Petrarca presso i suoi discendenti.” Italia Medievale e Umanistica 
1 (1958): 359-69. Rpt. and updated in “Libri del Petrarca pervenuti ai Santasofia di 
Padova.” Studi petrarcheschi 7 (1990): 1-29. Print. 

Savoca, Giuseppe, ed. Francesco Petrarca, Rerum vulgarium fragmenta. Firenze: Olschki, 
2008. Print. 

Sessa, Melchiore, ed. Li sonetti, canzoni et triomphi di messer Francesco Petrarcha 
historiati. By Francesco Petrarca. Vinegia: Melchiore Sessa, 1526. Print. 

Signorini, Maddalena. “Fortuna del ‘modello-libro’ Canzoniere.” Critica del Testo 6.1 
(2003): 133-54. Print. 

Storey, H. Wayne. “All’interno della poetica grafico-visiva di Petrarca.” Belloni, et al. 131-
71. 

---. “Il codice Pierpont Morgan M. 502 e suoi rapporti con lo scrittoio padovano di Petrarca.” 
La cultura volgare padovana nell’età di Petrarca. Eds. Furio Brugnolo and Zeno Lorenzo 
Verlato. Padova: Il Poligrafo, 2006. 487-504. Print. 

---. “Doubting Petrarca’s Last Words,” in Barolini and Storey, 67-91. Print. 

---. “The Economies of Authority: Bembo, Vellutello and the Reconstruction of Authentic 
Petrarch.” Accessus ad Auctores: Studies in Honor of Christopher Kleinhenz. Eds. 
Fabian Alfie and Andrea Dini. Tempe: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 
forthcoming. Print. 

---. “L’edizione diplomatica di Ettore Modigliani.” Belloni, et al. 385-92. 

---. “The Illusion of Authentic Philology: Method and History.” Neo-Latin Philology: Old 
Tradition, New Approaches. Ed. Marc van der Poole. Leiden: Brill, forthcoming. Print. 

---. “Petrarch’s Concepts of Text and Textual Reform.” Storey. Transcription and Visual 
Poetics in the Early Italian Lyric. 201-24. Print. 

---. Rev. of Canzoniere di Petrarca tra codicologia ed ecdotica and Francesco Petrarca, 
Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, edizione critica, by Giuseppe Savoca. Textual Cultures 5.2 
(2010). Print. 

---.Transcription and Visual Poetics in the Early Italian Lyric. New York; London: 
Garland,1993. Print. 

Storey, H. Wayne and Roberta Capelli. “Modalità di ordinamento materiale tra Guittone e 
Petrarca.” “Liber,” “Fragmenta,” “Libellus” prima e dopo Petrarca, in ricordo di D’Arco 



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1.1 Winter 2011   49 

Silvio Avalle (Seminario internazionale di Studi, Bergamo, 23-25 ottobre 2003). Eds. 
Francesco Lo Monaco, Luca Carlo Rossi and Niccolò Scaffai. Firenze: SISMEL, Edizioni 
del Galluzzo, 2006. 169-86. Print. 

Valdezoco, Bortolamio, ed. Francesco Petrarca, Canzoniere, Trionfi, Memorabilia de Laura. 
Padova: Valdezoco e Martinius de Septem Arboribus, 1472. Print. 

Vattasso, Marco, ed. L’originale del Canzoniere di Francesco Petrarca, Codice Vaticano 
latino 3195, riprodotto in fototipia. Milano: Hoepli, 1905. Print. 

Wilkins, Ernest Hatch. The Making of the Canzoniere and Other Petrarchan Studies. Roma: 
Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1951. Print. 

Zamponi, Stefano. “Il libro del Canzoniere: Modelli, strutture, funzioni.” Belloni, et al. 13-
72. 


	Petrarch’s “Original” of the Fragmenta 1362-1558: From Boccaccio to Rovillio’s Third Printing
	H. Wayne Storey, Editor-in-Chief, Textual Cultures
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	Works Cited


