An Interpretion of Brunetto Latini’s Tresor in a
Fifteenth-Century Miscellany Manuscript
Dario Dei Puppo
The fantastic is rooted in the mundane and the search for truth ultimately
requires the creative faculty of imagination. So it will come as no
surprise that any non-fictional work, especially one that is not scientific
in the modern sense, relies on fictions, not only in the sphere of explanation,
but also in the discovery phase. This is true in the case of Brunetto
Latini’s Tresor, a popular cultural summa of the mid-to-late thirteenth
century that has come down to us in nearly one h undred manuscripts
(and in many other codices if we include the Tuscan versions).1 Originally
written in French du ring his exile at the hands of the Florentine and
Tuscan Ghibellines, the work was translated into the vernacular, circulating
widely among the different ranks of the merchant and artisanal
classes.z Relying on ancient sources, Brunetto’s Tresor treats the practi-
Brunetto Latini, Tresor, ed. P. G. Beltrami, P. Squillacioti, P. Torri, & S. Vatteroni
(Torino: Einaudi, 2007), xlvii-lv. Brunetto Latini, I/ Tesore di M. Brunetto Latino
Firentino, precettore del Divino Poeta Dante nel qua/ si tratta di tutte le cose ehe a
mortali se apertengono (Venice: Gioan Antonio & Fratelli da Sabbio, ad instanza
di Nicolo Garanta & Francesco da Salo libbrari & compagni, 1528).
As one of the great public intellectuals of Medieval ltaly, Brunetto’s works
enjoyed a wide readership, despite Dante’s fictional condemnation of him.
Whatever the Tres01>s success, Dante’s vivid representation of their encounter
among the sodomites demonstrates his maestro’s moral and, possibly, linguistic
shortcomings. For instance, in speaking about contemporary Florence, Brunetto
uses naturalistic words and metaphors, such as, „lungi fia da! becco J’erba“
(„keep the grass far from the goat’s mouth,“ Inferno XV 72) and „Faccian Je bestie
fiesolane strame/di lor medesime“ („Let the beasts from Fiesoie make forage of
themselves,“ vv. 73-7 4), not to mention, among others, references to „lazzi sorbi“
(„sour sorbs,“ v. 65), „dolce fico“ („sweet fig,“ v. 66), and „letame“ („dunghill,“ v.
75). We would expect a loftier linguistic register from this great rhetorician. In
HRUJ’\ETTO LATil\l’S TRESOR 1 A l 5n1-C. MlSCEl LA:‘-.’Y 241
cal matters and philosophical concerns of men, such as cosmology and
world history in Book One. He also describes thc many wonders both
natural and unnatural in his bestiary. Book Two is essentially a popularization
of Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics; whereas in Book Three Brunetto
reprises Aristotelian rhetoric as a guide for his contemporaries engaged
in civic politics, updating it and contextualizing it for the unstable medieval
ltalian commune. The latter two books have enjoyed critical attention
because oftheir author’s status as a leading civic figure i n his day and as
an instance of how Ari.stotle’s politics and rhetoric were interpreted and
applied in thirteenth-century ltaly. We shall consider Book One and, i n
particular, Brunetto’s bestiary a s a representation o f a collective subjective
understanding of mankind’s relationship with nature. At the same
time, to focus on one section without consideration of the others is to
undermine the integrity of Ser Brunetto’s intellectual project. The different
books and, hence, themes of the Tresor are germane to one another
in a way that is not readily evident to modern readers.
At the time of the Tresors composition, reason and argument were
the preponderant features of intellectual discourse and in representing
the world. However, in commerce and technology, as weil as in painting
and sculpture, the tendency toward a more scientific and secular sensibility
had begun to assert itself. So, why is Brunetto’s bestiary being copied
in the fifteenth century nearly two hundred years after its author’s
death (and fictional condemnation to Hell) and why was his Tresor
printed during the Renaissance? To put it bluntly, why would fifteenth
and sixteenth century audiences wish to read an outdated description of
the world? Was it respect for Brunetto or the power of received
knowledge? Or was there some other reason, such as, perhaps a disconnect
between the natural philosophy of elite intellectuals and popular
beliefs about the world? Beliefs die slowly even in the face of incontrovertible
evidence; but typically they die not because they are proven scientifically
false, but because they no Ionger serve a practical purpose.3
the Convivio (I xi, 1-2) moreover, the poet condemns those writers who „a
perpetuale infamia e depressione de Ii malvagi uomini d’ltalia commendano lo
volgare altrui e lo loro proprio dispregiano“ („to the perpetual infamy and
discredit of the wicked in ltaly commend other vernaculars but despise their
own“), perhaps including among them Brunetto. I am grateful to Prof. Franeo
Masciandaro for his renections about Dante’s Brunetto.
ln their monumental study, Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park [Wonders ond
the Order of Nature (New York: Zone Books, 1998)] examine the evolution of
242 DARJO DEL PUPPO
In this paper therefore, I will discuss the enduring fascination with
Brunetto’s bestiary as an example of the interdependence between science
and philosophy on the one hand and vernacular thinking and beliefs
on the other. I will illustrate this point with a fifteenth-century manuscript,
a miscellany of literary, religious, cosmographic, and mercantile
texts that had aesthetic, philosophical, and also practical value to its
owners and readers. It is worth stating that most works of the l talian
Middle Ages and Renaissance have come down to us in miscellanies, the
general term used by many rare book librarians, cataloguers, and scholars
to denote codices containing heterogeneaus texts. Although miscellanies
themselves are distinct from anthologies (that Feature an editorial
plan) and from ziba/doni (or author-centered notebooks containing a variety
of texts, such as letters, notes, and drafts of works), they are very
complicated material artifacts. Miscellanies typically contain a hodgepodge
of texts that are gathered catch as catch can. Of course, this is not
always the case as we know and, in fact, it is a myth of sorts that manuscript
scholars must debunk. As I will attempt to show, Brunetto’s bestiary
appears alongside other texts (see note 6) that initially seem
unconnected in the manuscript discussed below. Nevertheless, contemporary
readers cannot help but notice the thematic complementarity between
several of the texts and, more importantly, the overall scientific
orientation of the manuscript’s contents. Graphie Features (such as
script, rulings, text Iayout) and also para-texts (such as colophons and
rubrics) also enhance a sense of a book’s structural unity and they also
!end a „feel“ to the book. If miscellanies necessarily contain different
texts and are indeed idiosyncratic collections, they often present underlying
formal or thematic qualities that allow readers to see interconnections
between the contents. In other words, it behooves scholars to
examine what makes a miscellany so idiosyncratic and different from
another miscellany containing the same or similar works. Miscellanies
moreover, like other manuscript genres, are often copied over a time period
that reflects the changing sensibility of scribes and readers. For the
above and for many other reasons, therefore, miscellanies are perhaps
the most interesting of ancient artifacts. They often provide a window on
„wonder“ in its myriad forms as an object of critical inquiry for medieval and
early modern writers and thinkers. This paper deals more with the reasons for
scientific anachronisms about the natural world and how they continued to
circulate widely in the mercantile dass than with the development of wonder as
an intellectual category.
BRUJ\ETTO LATI’\I’s TRESOR IN A LSn‘-c. MISCELLA’\Y 243
the cultural imagination of an earlier period and they allow scholars to
make reasonable assumptions about the scribes‘ and readers‘ beliefs,
attitudes, and taste.
As the Greek Physio/ogus was transformed by Isidore of Seville in the
seventh century and by other medieval thinkers to suit the Christian context,
scholars have considered bestiaries as a mystical zoology that
reflect an allegorical or moralizing vision of reality. Modern scholars
have applied their knowledge of bestiaries to interpret animal imagery
in art and architecture. At least one scholar, however, Ron Baxter, has
criticized the traditional view of bestiaries as a ’system‘ of mystical zoology
that was first set forth in the nineteenth century, arguing that it reflects
more the bias of those scholars than the attitudes of medieval
readers.4 Because much of the information in bestiaries „could not be
based on Observation, since the animals in question do not behave like
this even when they exist,“5 we can assume that the interpretation of
bestiaries varied and likely depended on the different contexts of their
production and consumption. In short, a bestiary means one thing to a
community of monks living in a monastery of central ltaly and something
eise to merchants and craftspeople in Milan. Brunetto himself, a lay intellectual,
would likely have been aware of this fact. Besides the classical
sources of the genre, Pliny’s Natura/is historia, Livy, and the Physiologus,
and Latin versions of Aristotle, he would have been readily familiar with
the French bestiaries that had lang circulated widely, such as the one assembled
by Pierre de Beauvais and the very popular Bestiare d’Amour of
Richard de Fournival.
Brunetto’s bestiary occupies chapters 130-200 of Book One and it
begins with the description of all manners of ‚fish‘ and ends with that of
the ‚bear‘. Aside from the broad taxonomy of fish, reptiles, fowls, and
mammals, the bestiary considers crocodiles, dolphins, hippopotami, and
sirens as fish; chameleons and ants as mammals; and, includes, of course,
a description of the fiercest of beasts, the unicorn which can only be
tamed by a virgin.
Ron Baxter, Bestiaries and their Users in the Midd/e Ages (London: Sutton, 1998),
6.
lbid., p. 72.
244 DA RIO DEL PUPPO
Figure 26: New Haven, CT, Beinecke Library, 1030, c. S2v.
BRUl‘:ETTO LA TJ:-:1 ‚S TRESOR N A 1 5TH -C. MJSCELLA:’\Y 245
Figure 27: New Haven, CT Beinecke Library, 1030, c. 53r.
Let us briefly consider Brunetto’s description of the ‚basilisk‘ in an
early-fifteenth century manuscript, New Haven, Beinecke Manuscript
and Rare Book Library, 1 0 3 0 (Figure 26 and 27).6
Written in the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth-century:
1. fol. lr-2r. Inscriptions and entries with dates of 1484 and 1501.
2. fol. 2v-18v. Ricordi, 1423 II Domeniello Antonio di domenicho dclmonte
asansovino … ehe tu gli presti cio chio o lasciato.
3. fol. 20r-24r. Sermons. Do(meni)ca dopo Ia penti(coste) I I Multi sunt vochati
pauci vero electi amen … e Ia madre I di gesu xpo vera dovete sapere charisimi
ehe! nostro signore gesu xpo ordino.
4. fol. 25r-48r. Goro Dati, La sfera. Al padre e figlo allo spiritto santo … lasia
mag(i)ore il fiume tanai.
5. fol. 50r-75r. Brunetto Latini, selections from II Tresor (bks. 3, 4, 5, 8, 9), Et
pero Je gentti si amagionano sopra … po I polo a ttutte umanittade ehe avere.
6. fol. 76r-81r: Artte di stolomia (Book about prognostieations and astrology).
Artte di stolomia preneipiatta per giafette figliolo di noe perittrovare il suo
figluolo … E chosi sara anehora delle femine ehe I naseeranno in questi sengni.
7. fol. 81v-108r: Detta eharttigine e buono portto (Portolan). Detta eharttigine e
buono porto e a inannsi unisolla piehola dinansi apunttallungha circha a 1°
miglio … qui finisce ilibro del maestro deportti deo graziase (sie).
246 DARJO DEL PUPPO
Bavalisehio ene una gienerazione di serpentti. Ed ee Jo signore dei serpentti; ea e sigRere ed e Si pJeno di veJeno ehe ne riJucie denttro e di fuori; ed e s]
grado Jo vedere e·llo fiattare atosieha alttrui dipresso o di Jungge perehe gli
choronpe J’aire e guasta gli abori; e ‚1 suo odore ueeide gli uceegli volando e
eho‘ ‚I suo vedere atosieha J’uomo quando lo vede; grasia chosa ehe gli uomini
ansiani ehe diehone eh‘ egli non nuoee(i)ono nientte a quegli ehe ‚I vegono
prima. E lla sua grandezza ene se‘ priedi e lla sua tacha biancha in sul dosso e
eresta chome ghallo; e va diritto sopra terra Ja mettae e J’altra metta vae
chome J’alttro serpentte tutto su. Egli [e] fiero e lle belude J’ucidono e sapiatte
ehe quando Alesandre gli ttrovo, egli fecie fare grande anpolle di vettro e giuvi
Ii uomini enttravano ehe vedeano gli serpenti ma eglino non vedeano gli
uomini e chosi gli ucideano di saette; e per ehottale ingengno ne fue diliberatta
Ja sua oste e questa oste Ia ehonparazione de bavalischi (cc. 52v-53r).
Bavalisehio (Basilisk) is a kind of serpent. And it is the king of serpents. And it
is king, and it is so full of venom that it shines inside and out. And it is so
pleasant to behold, and its breath poisons anyone who is near or far beeause it
corrupts the air and lays waste to the trees, and its odor kills birds that fly by
and with its stare poisons man when he sees it; despite this, elderly men say
that it does not hurt the first person that sees it at all. And it is six feet long
and has a white spot on its back and a crest Jike a rooster. And it moves with
half of its body erect on the ground and the other half Jike other serpents with
its head raised. lt is fierce, and weasels kill it. And know that when Alexander
found one, he had great jars of glass made and he had several of his men hide
within them who could see the serpents, but the serpents could not see them;
and so they killed the creatures with arrows. And with that ingenious idea,
Alexander’s host was delivered and freed from chance encounters with the
basilisks.
8. Three unattributed sonnets (Cara vetoria e de virtu omata, Com’animal c(h)’e
in cac(i)a ad altrui e g(i)oco, Ricordati ora mai c(h)e cener set) on a small loose
Jeaf (219mm x 114) inserted inside front eover.
Paper (watermark very similar to Briquet Tour 15864 doeumented i n Lucca,
1419 and Florenee, 1422-27), 110 ee. (109 and 110 are blank), modern foliation
in Iead in the top right corner of recto and ancient numbering to e. 19 i n brown
ink. the same used for texts, 295 x 220. Vertieal lines ruled in Iead, except for
Tesor and Artte di Sto/omia written in double eolumns.
J8(-3a, -6b), 1!8 (-Sa, -7a), IJJS (-7b), JVS (-la), V-VII8
Written in a simple, unadorned mercantesca by one hand, with the exception of
the ricordi at the beginning of the book that is written in another, more cursive,
mercantile script.
There are painted initials and illustrations in the seetion of the Sfera, as weil as
running headers in the ricordi section with the dates 1422-24.
BRI.-:’\: ETTO LATI:->I’S TRESOR l:\ A 15n1-C. MISCELLAYY 247
In lsidore’s Etymologiae/ basi/iscus, or „little king,“ is a reptile that is
about six inches long and has a whitc spot shaped like a „diadem.“s l t is
similar to scorpions in that it seeks dry places and bites its enemies after
coming to water, making its victims hydrophobic and lymphatic. lt has a
crest, like a rooster, with a snake’s tail and typically extends the front
part of its body upward as i n the description. We shall return to this description
shortly and have more to say about the manuscript. Our purpese
here is simply to offer one example of the wondrous beasts
described in bestiaries.9
At the end of Book One the author states his reason for the partial
and idiosyncratic structure of his work to this point, claiming that
Perehe se il Maestro l’avesse voluta mettere piu estesamente per iscritto e
mostrare di ciascuna cosa il come e il perche, il libro sarebbe stato tanto
grande da non finire piu, perehe a questo scopo sarebbero state necessarie
tutte l e arti e tntta Ia filosofia. 2. Per questo dice il Maestro ehe Ia prima parte
del suo tesoro e in denari contanti. E come gli uomini non potrebbero venire a
capo dei propri bisogni e delle loro attivita senza soldi, allo stesso modo non
potrebbero riconoscere Ia verita delle cose umane se non conoscessero questa
prima parte del trattato (Latini, Tresor, I 200, i-ii).lO
Isidore of Seville, lsidori Hispalensis. De natura rerum liber, ed. Gustavus Becker
(Amsterdam: Verlag Adolf M. Hakkert, 1967), xii, 4, 6-9.
Pliny the Eider, Natural History, trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1935-63), viii, 21, 33, and xxix, 4, 19.
Paula Findlen, in her essay, „Inventing Nature: Commerce, Art, and Science in the
Early Modern Cabinet of Curiosities,“ in Merchants and Marve/s: Commerce,
Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe, ed. Paula FindJen and P. H. Smith (New
York: Routledge, 2002), 297-323, analyzes the Renaissance’s Faselnation with
dragon-like figures, such as the hydra and the basilisk, and in particular the
creation and collecting of real and fake animals. She offers a brief history of the
representation of the basilisk from the late sixteenth through the seventeenth
centuries, stating that: „The Iongevity of the basilisk, weil beyond the period in
which there was any doubt about its authenticity, suggests the importance of
understandlog the relations between science and art in the early modern period.
Certainly the decision to make basilisks a prominent part of the iconography of
natural history was a contributing factor. Each image created a prototype of an
object that could be made by looking at its engraving, and remade by copying
these images into new natural histories.“ (p. 313). The general fascination with
the fictitious animal in the Renaissance was based on a long tradition of verbal
descriptions and Illustration in bestiaries and other works from antiquity
through the Middle Ages and reflected the coexistence of empirical and folkloric
views ofnature.
10 The French version reads: „Car se le maistre le vosist plus largement metre en
248 DARJO DEL PUPPO
Because if the Master (i.e. Brunetto) had wanted to lay it out in writing further
and show the how and the why of each thing, the book would have been infinitely
great, and all of the arts and all of philosophy would have been necessary
to this end. For this reason, the Master says that the first part of his
treasure is hard currency. And just as men would not be able to satisfy their
needs and conduct their business without money, in the same way they could
not u nderstand the truths that concern mankind if they did not know the first
part of this treatise.
Cosmology, world and natural history have been epitomized for editorial
reasons, with clearly an eye to the practical needs of Brunetto’s public,
rather than to the subject matter that requires a more exhaustive treatment.
The second part of his statement is particularly intriguing because
his comparison between commerce and the structure of his work reveals
an awareness about his primary audience’s pragmatic sensibility („And
just as men could not satisfy their needs and conclude their business
without money, they could not understand the truths that concern mankind
if they did not know the first part of this treatise.“).
For Brunetto, the topics of Book One belong to the realm of theory
that comprises the first body of philosophy. Thus, he is less concerned
with confirming or dispelling the received science of his time, as he is
with providing the necessary background for the more practical and
logical truths of his treasure, that is, his treatment of Aristotelian ethics,
political principles, and rhetoric. At the same time, his acceptance of this
received body of knowledge contained in the first book, including the
bestiary, also legitimates what is the subtext of Books Two and Three,
the critique of Florentine politics, by linking it to traditional beliefs about
the world, defusing any potential controversy about his text. Given the
overall context of the Tresor therefore, Brunetto’s bestiary is clearly not
a guide to religious allegory, at least in the conventional sense of contemporary
art history and literary criticism, and it can be read for its political
symbolism (similar to the political interpretation of the beasts at
escrit et mostrer de chascune chose por quoi et coment, le Iivre seroit grant sens
fin, car a ce besoingneroient toutes les ars et toute philosophie. Et por ce dit Ii
maistres que Ia premiere partie de son tresor est en deniers contanz. Et si come
I es genz ne porroient pas chevir lor beseignes et lor mercheandises sens monoie,
tout autresi ne porroient il savoir Ia certeinete des humanes choses se il ne seussent
ceste premiere partie dou conte“ (Brunetto Latini, Tresor, ed. P. G. Beltrami
et al., 326).
BRI..-:’\ETTO LATil\l’S TRESOR l’\ A } S’H-C. MISC’ELLA:“Y 249
the beginning of Dante’s lnferno),U or even as a repertoire that blends
empirical and fantastic descriptions.
Merchants and politicians probably interpreted bestiaries differently
from priests, as we have already mentioned. What matters is not that the
descriptions correspond to real life, but that they reflect an understanding
about the interrelation between the real and the fantastic in a socially
and culturally acceptable way, different from, but also analogaus to, our
own ability to suspend our disbelief i n reading fiction and viewing film.
And like Baxter, I am not keen to interpret bestiaries, especially Brunetto’s,
as an instance of natural history (unless we mean ’stories about
nature,‘ rather than as an empirical, early scientific account of the animal
world) because of the danger of anachronism. I do believe, however, that
Brunetto’s bestiary illustrates a secular sensibility about the interplay
between rational and creative faculties at a time when both were considered
distinct, but not separate, intellectual functions and when both
were beginning to be interpreted as being integral to each other. This
will be evident later on in Dante’s Commedia in which imagination even
trumps reason as the necessary cause of the poet’s vision and salvation.
Brunetto is, therefore, an anti-Scholastic thinker despite being heavily
influenced by the Scholastics.
The secular and pre-scientific attitude that I am referring to can be
illustrated in Beinecke 1030 and in a handbook of popular science, Girolama
Manfredi’s Liber de homine, better known as I/ libro del perche.12
Beinecke 1 0 3 0 is a Florentine merchant miscellany manuscript of 1 1 0
paper chartae written i n a modest, rapidly executed mercantile cursive.
Dating to the 1420’s, it contains business accounts, religious homilies, an
illustrated version of Goro Dati’s cosmological poem in ottave, the Sfera,
excerpts from Brunetto Latini’s Tresor, an astrological treatise (Artte di
stolomia), and a portolan, that is, a guidebook to ports in and around the
Mediterranean Sea. There are also three sonnets written in another hand
likely that of one of the manuscript’s owners on a smaller sheet that has
been tucked into the front of the volume. Copied almost entirely by one
scribe, this early fifteenth century compilation of vernacular texts clearly
has a literary, religious, scientific, and practical character. The particular
11 Dante Alighieri, La Commediu. Nuovo testo critico secondo i piu antichi manoscritti
fiorentini, ed. A. Lanza (Roma: DeRubeis, 1995).
12 Girolamo Manfredi, Liber de homine (Bologna: Ugo Ruggerius & Doninus
Bertochus, 1474).
250 DA RIO DFL PUPPO
versions themselves are interesting, if not fascinating, not in the usual
genealogical sense of text critics, but as documents of the writing and
linguistic practices of the scribe and the book’s readers and for what it
reveals about its owners‘ understanding and attitudes about the world.
In one of the colophons, Domenico di Neri di Miniato del Sera recounts
how he inherited this manuscript from his deceased father because
(Domenico, and probably Neri) (Figure 28):
Figure 28: New Haven, CT Beinecke Libraty, 1 0 3 0 , c. 2r.
BRU};ETTO LAT!l’I’S TRESOR lN A I 5n1-C. MISCELLA:SY 251
… si diletava di navichare e voleva sapere piu chosse del mondo, e ciercho asai
paesi di tere di mare e vide d’ognie chose per lo mondo. E chosl vole ehe chi
vedra detto libro voglia vedere le beleze dell mondo per aqua e diventera
praticho e buono merchatante di tuta Je merchatantia ehe vole toscha e di Ievante
o di ponentte; e sara persona praticha se seghua detto libro a volere sapere
e‘ buoni paesi da merchatanti; si seghua questi mari ehe sono da fare
uomini industri e navichanti e di buona merchatantia e lasciera buona fine di
se. M480 marzo (c. 2r) .
… he enjoyed traveling by sea and wanted to know many things about the
world. And he traveled many countries by land and by sea, and he saw all
types of things in the world; and so he wanted that, whoever will read this
book, will also want to see the beauties ofthe world by sea and will become an
expert and good merchant of all kinds of goods, be they from Tuscany, the
East, or the West. And that person will become expert if he follows this book
in order to know which are the good cour.tries to do business with. He must
travel these seas that make men industr.ous and seafaring and good merchants
and he will have made something ofhimself. March 1480.
Domenico is writing for his son, Neri, and he, too, leaves his mark in the
book in 1 5 0 1 . The Dei Seras were active in the wine trade in Florence
and were probably prominent members of a lower guild.t3 Although they
were not exactly among the city’s riebest and most powerful families,
they certainly had high expectations for themselves as merchants. Three
generations cherished the volume for the information it conveyed. But
from Domenico’s inscription it is also clear that the book was a talisman
of their mercantile identity, as „uomini industri e navichanti e di buona
merchatantia.“
The section of Brunetto’s Tresor occupies 25 chartae in the middle
part of the codex. The work has clearly been anthologized. Dispensing
entirely with the author’s prolegomena, the sections about ancient and
modern world history and with Latini’s cosmography, the scribe of
Beinecke 1030 cuts to the chase and begins with the sound advice about
how to pick out a good piece of real estate for home building. Without
any significant interruption in the text, he copies ample sections of Bru-
1 3 In documents concerning the Florentine Tratte of Office Holders (David Herlihy,
R. Surr Litchfield, A. Molho, and R. Barducci, eds., Florentine Renaissance Resources,
Online Tratte of Office Holders, 1282-1532, machine readable data file,
Florentine Renaissance Resources/STG, ßrown University (Providence, R. 1.,
2002]). Neri di Miniato del Sera was selected as a consul of the Arte dei Vinattieri
on 25 August 1468, but is also listed as having recently died at the time of his
election.
252 DA RIO DEL PUPPO
netto’s bestiary. As we stated above, many of the names of animals are
distorted and reflect popular spellings (such as chorcorello for coccodrillo
and inpotaine for ippopotamo). The bestiary is followed by
abridged versions of Books Two and Three. The sections are all unnumbered
and untitled in the codex. Excerpts aside, a collation of the text
with a Renaissance edition published in Venice (Latini 1528) and Pietro
Beltrami’s recent edition of the Tresor reveals substantial differences i n
form a n d content between them. The abridged version i n the Beinecke
manuscript reflects a different editorial plan and purpose of copy. It is
and is not Brunetto’s text because it reflects a very different context of
production from Brunetto’s original and it also reveals the scribe’s and
owners‘ use value. Latini composed his work for the cadre of civic intellectuals
during the Florentine commune, whereas the Dei Seras (who
were also involved in local guild politics) are interpreting their abridged
version of the Tresor at the time of segneurial rule. The immediate purpose
of their manuscript copy is to make them better merchants, not
necessarily better citizens. It is safe to say that whatever meaning the
Tresors bestiary had for its author and his contemporaries therefore is
different in Beinecke 1030. If Latini’s bestiary teils ’stories about nature‘
that mix popular myth with a hint of empiricism and much imagination
in order to confirm a democratic and civic ideology, the Beinecke codex
underscores the integrity (integralness) of an early scientific view that
blends instrumental reasoning (pragmatism) and an irrational view of
the world. Although technically a miscellany, the Beneicke codex verges
on being an anthology of popular and applied science because of the
complementarity of the texts without, however, having an ostensible,
unified plan. Had Beinecke 1 0 3 0 been copied in the mid-thirteenth century
instead of the early fifteenth century, we would be less surprised
perhaps. But the world view expressed in the Quattrocento codex underscores
how belief systems were slow to change despite advances in science,
technology, and philosophy.
Brunetto’s bestiary in Beinecke 1030 is on the same textual level as
the accepted truths in Dati’s Ptolemaic cosmography, the A rtte di stolomia
and the cursory portolan that was more useful to adventure-seeking
merchants than it was to mariners and ship pilots (who required much
more precise information). The thematic congruence of Beinecke 1 030 is
also reflected in the popular linguistic features of the description of the
basilisk we cited above. Whether or not Neri di Miniato, Domenico, and
Neri di Domenico del Sera (the three successive owners of the manuscript)
believed in this and other mythological creatures in Brunetto’s
BRUJ\ETTO LATI:-:I’S TRESOR l:-.1 A 1 5TH -C. MtSCELLA>:Y 253
bestiary is a little like asking whether Dante’s audience believed that the
poet actually travelled to the beyond and back. To understand the cultural
mindset of the Dei Seras living on the cusp of important developments
in science and in world exploration is to appreciate the
complexities and contradictions in their world view and to appreciate
that they were as influenced by potential realities as they were by their
immediate environment. lt would be mistaken to attribute a naive world
view to them for the same reason that considering the thirteenthcentury
bestiary as an instance of natural history is anachronistic. Far
from being ingenuous, the Dei Seras copied Brunetto’s Tresor because it
affered empirical information and a way of thinking about the world.
A far more curious and telling instance of the intersection between
science and popular belief about natural phenomena is evident in Girolama
Manfredi’s Liber de homine (more widely known as the Libro del
perche). Manfredi was a renowned physician in Bologna during the latter
half of the fifteenth century, having published his popular tract in 1474.
As Paolo Cherchi has explained,14 the Libro del perehe belongs to the
same genre as Aristotle’s Problemata, yet it is structurally and thematically
a very different kind of work. A physician, Manfrech addresses a
lang series of questions concerning everything from health to the causes
of passion in the nine chapters of his book. Each entry begins with the
disarmingly simple question „Perche?“ and is followed by a concise, if not
always convincing, explanation. The most interesting feature of this popular
work of medicine is its treatment of everyday phenomena that are
curious and mysterious. Why is it that one gets more drunk on watered
down wine than on wine alone, asks the author (cap. XXV), voicing a
common concern. His answer: Because water, being „thinner“ than wine,
penetrates more fully into our argans and, therefore, enhances the inebriating
effect of the wine. In another curiosity, why is it that an
individual that has a thin nose loves to argue? (“ … ha Je extremita del naso
sottile e huomo ehe ama le lite?“) to which Manfredi replies:
Signo e ehe tal huomo e di eomplexione eolleriea per ehe Ia subtilita e Ia magreza
proeede el piu dele volte da abundancia de collera: & anche tal huomini
ehe hanno sottile Ia extremita del naso hanno Ii busi del naso strecti: de ehe
non si puo tirare pur aiere a refrigerare il cuore: lmpero rimane il euore quasi sempre caldo: ehe e casione de aecendere collera e di mover e‘ lite (cap. XL).
H Paolo Cherehi, „La Cazzaria di Vignali e II libro del perehe di Manfredi,“ Annali
Online di Ferrara – Lettere I (2007): 106-16.
254 DA RIO DEL PUPPO
The symptom that a man has a choleric temperament is that his sharpness and
gauntness most of the time comes from a surplus of choler, and also such men
having thin noses with narrow nostrils draw less air to refresh their heart, so
that the heart almost always remaines overheated which is the reason why
these men are prone to anger and to argument.
Like all doctors, Manfredi relies on the Galenic theory of the humors,
which is the basis for understanding the physiological causes of human
behavior and health.
Manfredi’s tract reveals that his fifteenth-century public was intrigued
by everyday unexplained phenomena. Seemingly simple, logical,
unproblematic questions about health, physiology, the passions, and our
environment are fraught with mystery and wonder. lt is in this context
that everyday life can be interpreted as being fantastic. lf the public was
satisfied with such unscientific answers, then interpreting bestiaries as
potentially naturalistic and accurate descriptions is not so far-fetched. At
the same time however, as science (mostly in the form of a greater sense
of the measurability of things than in its more modern, experimental
form) circulated among different social classes and throughout institutions
during the Quattrocento, there developed an even deeper sensibility
for the fantastic than in previous centuries. Science and technology
were indeed a catalyst for the imagination in the usual sense, that is, encouraging
visions of possible worlds. But it is also that in expanding
knowledge of the workings of natural phenomena and, thereby, demythologizing
Nature, science paradoxically underscores the psychological
need for the fantastic and, more generally, for myth.
Brunetto’s and Manfredi’s fifteenth-century readers were certainly
not afflicted with the sense of alienation from nature expressed by modern
philosophers and writers. But it would be inaccurate not to state that
Brunetto’s and Manfredi’s lay readers were unaware of the tension between
a traditional, Scholastic natural history and cosmography on the
one hand and the developments in science and technology that challenged
Catholic orthodoxy on the other. lt is difficult to gauge the Ievel of
sophistication of readers, like the previously mentioned Dei Seras. Whatever
their Ievel of intellectual engagement with the debates and ideas of
their day, they probably welcomed scientific innovation because it had
practical applications, something they could relate to more readily.
Nevertheless, bestiaries, these repertoires of animal imagery, were considered
a curious mix of fact and fiction.
During the following century, bestiaries were no Ionger as prominent
a zoological genre, having been replaced with more naturalistic tracts.
BRU:\ETTO LATil\I’S TRESOR 1 A 1 51″-c. MTSCELL\)!Y 255
Consider, for example, the impact of Spanish, French, Italian, and British
adventurers to the New World who brought back even stranger tales
about peoples, animals, and plants. As scientific awareness became more
widespread among the literate, the bestiaries gradually ceased to be of
primary importance. Nonetheless, Brunetto’s Tresor continued to be
published, perhaps because of its emphasis on rhetoric and ethics. We
cannot help but imagine however that his readers during the Renaissance
would have been amused by the quaint descriptions of Sirens and
other improbable beings. Although maybe, just maybe, the equally marvelous
reports about wild men and animals from distant Iands hitherto
unknown to Europeans only confirmed in the minds of many that bestiaries
were indeed fact and not fiction.
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Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture Online
