244

Pia Carolla

4. On the track to the lost antigraphon of S
None of Bessarion’s codices is likely to have been the model of S, as far as we know
from the inventories;18 no trace of Excerpta Constantiniana is to be found in Domenico
Grimani’s library,19 in Pico’s,20 or in S. Michele of Murano.21
On the other hand, also some research in Florentine libraries remains unsuccessful:
the lists of the Medicea privata show no trace of Excerpta Constantiniana, nor does
the unpublished inventory of Janus Lascaris. The Florentine path has been worth to
be explored, because Arlenius and some of Mendoza’s scribes moved to Florence in
October 1544; also the lost archetypus of Jamblichus, to Porphyrias, should have
been in the Medicea privata until the end of the latter.22
The isolation of S remains unexplained, while there are five copies of Jamblichus
directly derived from C, including Vat. gr. 1444.23
As a rule, Mauromates and his colleagues either produced several copies of each
text, or were part of wide scribal activities around the same texts. Sometimes Hurtado’s
library prompted dissemination, as for his Themistius, a codex once owned by Deme-
trios Trivolis in Corfu, later in possession of Mendoza in Venice (ca. 1538-1542): no less
than 11 (direct or indirect) copies of it are preserved, and some of them are made by
the same “Mendoza’s scribes”.24
As for S, also some other sections are likely to be located in Venice: Polyaenus
(Ila, see above par. 2) was copied from the lost Grimani 308, and in 1540 the same
manuscript must have been the model for the scribe Valeriano Albini, at S. Antonio
in Venice.25
The Historical miscellany of Aelian in S comes from Vat. gr. 998, a codex which
Cardinal Cervini bought in Venice for the Vatican Library from Antonio Eparchos
in I551·26
18 See Labowsky, Bessarion’s Library. A lost manuscript which looks close to our Collectanea de rebus bellicis
(i.e., El, see above) in Bessarion’s possessions is inv. B n. 631: ’’Historica collectio omnium illustrium
virorum et operum rarorum, in papiro”; but this is reasonably to be identified with Cedrenus’work, see
C 281 (Labowsky, p. 259): “Historica quaedam a mundi creatione collecta ex variis libris a Georgio
Cedreno, liber corrosus et sine tabulis et absque fine”. The manuscript, already dispersed in 1543 (inv. D),
is probably the same as Vat. gr. 1903, see Maisano, “codice Vaticano”, especially p. 15.
19 Diller/Saffrey/Westerink, Bibliotheca Dominici Grimani.
20 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 3436, ff. 263-296.
21 Merolla, S. Michele di Murano.
22 No item in Vigili’s inventories seems suitable for El. About the unpublished catalogues of the Medicea
privat a, I wish to thank David Speranzi for the identification of codices in Vigili’s Barb. lat. 3185 and
Giacomo Cardinali for Vat. lat. 3960. The “notebook”of Lascaris which I have consulted is Vat. lat. 1412;
a forthcoming edition is announced by Speranzi, Andata e ritorno, p. 46.
About Arlenius and Mendoza’s scribes in Florence see Cataldi Palau, loannes Mauromates, p. 345; for the
lost archetypus of Jamblichus see Saffrey, “La tradition manuscrite”, p. LXXX and n. 1, with bibliography).
23 Sicherl, lamblichos, p. 42.
24 Pascale, “Tradizione Temistio”, pp. 179-187.
25 Sicherl, “Valeriano Albini”, p. 341.
26 Dilts, Aelians Varia Historia, p. 63.