Epistolae familiares, 1425 - 1475

Written in Florence in the mid fifteenth century. Early provenance unknown. Written in Florence in the mid fifteenth century. Early provenance unknown. According to James Hankins, who describes the text fully in “Bruni Manuscripts in North America: a Handlist,” Nuovi Studi Storici 10 (1991) 55-90, the manuscript has been “attributed to the Florentine scribe Giovanni di Piero da Stia (c. 1406-1474)” by Albinia de la Mare (59). He adds that:

Giovanni, who was probably a pupil of the better-known scribe Antonio di Mario, seems to have had a special connection with Bruni, as is evidenced by the extraordinarily high proportion of his identifiable MSS which are copies of Bruni’s works. His teacher Antonio di Mario wrote the dedication copies of both the works of Bruni dedicated to Cosimo de’ Medici. It seems likely, then, a priori that Giovanni da Stia’s text should be close to the author’s archetype (59-60).

Hankins also notes that the text was “annotated and probably owned by the minor humanist Pietro di Luni who identifies himself in a marginal note” on f. 45v: “Ita est. et testimonium perhibere possum ego P. Lunensis qui tunc temporis ad dictum concilium profectus vidi et miratus sum.”(60) Hankins writes:

Luni was a correspondent of Bruni and is known to have held a variety of posts in the papal curia and the papal states in the early and middle parts of the fifteenth century. . . It may well be. . . that Pietro’s acquaintance with Bruni, documented from 1434, goes back as far as the Council of Constance. Petrus’s other annotations in Gordan 57 and in another manuscript of his preserved in Viterbo show him to be conversant with some of the more esoteric facts of Florentine literary history (60-61).

A two line possessor’s note in upper margin of f. 1r: “Liber Aug[usti]ni [rest erased]. Unidentified inventory number on inside cover may be Phillipps number: 10957. Bought by Howard L. Goodhart from an English dealer in the 1930’s, and given by him to Phyllis Goodhart Gordon (bookplate) and John Dozier Gordan, Jr.