3 6 Henry’s description: some issues and remarks

In this section I shall discuss some aspects of Henry’s description and interpretation of the manuscript’s structure. In spite of some inaccuracies, his description has provided the foundations for my own analysis.

As far as the quire structure and numbering are concerned, Henry states that, with the exception of the first and the last, Ficino himself numbered the quires.54 Furthermore, he argues that, besides quires 5-8, quires 2-4 (fols 17-57) and 9-10 (fols 114-137), which do not bear any traces of signatures, were also numbered in the bottom right-handed margin. Thus he advances the hypothesis that there was a set of quires (now quires 2-10) numbered from 1 to 9.55 _Following the description, he eventually raises the doubt that quire 11 was never provided with a signature (fols 138-148).56 On the basis of these data, Henry argues that the manuscript was in origin made up of 16 quires and that what now are quires 2 e 17 were respectively the first and the last quire of the book. Quire 1 and 18 were added just at a later stage.

Concerning the ink used to transcribe the texts in the manuscript, Henry detected a persistent dichromy in the ink used by Ficino. First of all, he states that the second part of the manuscript was written with a light red ink, but without clarifying which part of the manuscript he is actually referring to. Secondly, he argues that the variant readings and corrections recorded by Ficino in the manuscript were written by using a red ink.

54 _{See Henry, Études Plotiniennes II, 1948, p. 37: ʽSauf le premier et le dernier, les 18 cahiers du}

manuscript ont été numérotés par le copiste, mais à diverses reprises et à divers endroitsʼ.

55 _{See Henry, Études Plotiniennes II, pag. 37: ʽDu 2}e _{au 10}e_{(fols 17-137), ils furent numérotés de}

<I> à <9>, en bas et à droite du premier folioʼ.

56 _{See Henry, Études Plotiniennes II, p. 38: ʽLe 11}e _{cahier (fols 138-148), qui dans cette}

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A direct inspection of the manuscript enabled me to complement some of Henry’s remarks. Through my analysis, I actually detected some differences in the shades of the ink used by Ficino. In the flyleaves and in quires 1 and 18 the ink has a very dark blackish cast. In quires 2-17 it initially has a lighter blackish cast: from fol. 122v till fol. 228v (which is the last folio of quire 17), the script becomes less thick and the ink acquires a lighter cast, fading to a red-brown.

However, the differences detected in this section of the manuscript do not seem to depend on the use of different types of ink, but rather on the paper’s different kind of reactivity to the ink. On the other hand, concerning both cast and consistency, the ink used for transcribing the texts in quires 1-18 and in the flyleaves appears to be different from the one used for the rest of the manuscript.

Additionally, we actually find in the manuscript numerous variant readings, but these are noted in black ink: the shade of the ink and the thickness of the script make it sometimes possible to determine whether the variant readings were noted at the time of the transcription of the texts they refer to, or were added at a later stage. The annotations written with an ink having a cast that is lighter than the one used for transcribing the text, seem to be posterior to the transcription. Therefore, they likely refer to a later stage of reading, revision and study of the set of texts.

On the basis of his own analysis of the quire structure, quire signature and type of ink used by Ficino, Henry sets up a chronology, including three stages in the making up of the manuscript:57

1. Ficino transcribes the text at fols 16 bis, ter, q.ter, 17-228.

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2. Ficino removes fols 16 bis, ter, quater (and maybe transcribes the same texts at fols 1, 2, 3) and then fills fols 1-16, 229-236 by using a very dark ink. The manuscript is bound and provided with four flyleaves.

3. Ficino fills the flyleaves with excerpts and notes.

Henry also detects what he sees as an evidence of a previous binding, i.e. the Arabic numeral 12 in the top right-hand corner at fol. 26r (Figure 19). According to his interpretation, what is now fol. 26 must have been in origin the twelfth folio of the codex. The rest of the original foliation arguably disappeared at the time of the second binding.

Figure 19. Detail of fol. 26r: number 12 situated next to the numeration

In order to confirm his hypothesis, Henry refers to what he believes to be further evidence: if the content of quire 18 had been transcribed straight after quire 17, Ficino would have not needed to add a supplementary bifolium to quire 17.58

Henry’s description is important in that he detected the existence of an original codicological nucleus −quires 2-17−, to which quires 1 and 18 were added at a later stage. My direct inspection of the manuscript seems to confirm his

58 _{See Henry, Études Plotiniennes II, p. 43: ʽEnfin, si le dernier cahier avait été copié tout de suite}

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hypothesis. However, Henry’s remarks on the quire signature are questionable: regarding the quires that do not bear any signature, it is not clear on what basis Henry distinguished the following quires:

-quires which were numbered but not by Ficino (1 and 18); -quires which were not numbered at all (11);

-quires included in a sequence (2-10) bearing a signature in the bottom right-hand margin.

Furthermore, Henry’s argument regarding the Arabic numerals 12 at fol. 26r, as a trace of a previous binding, seems to contradict the reconstruction of the quire structure. If the original quire 1, now quire 2, had been a senion, fol. 12 should have been the last folio of quire 1 and not the first folio of quire 2. As far as the making up of the codex is concerned, those that Henry defines as stage 2 and stage 3, actually correspond to two moments of the same stage of ‛growth’ of the manuscript due to the addition of codicological units. The data at our disposal seem to confirm this hypothesis: as mentioned above, the texts transcribed in the flyleaves are written by using the same black ink.

Given these assumptions, in the course of my study, I will refer to two stages of the composition of the manuscript, corresponding to its first and second binding. In sum, when referring to the codicological units forming the codex, I will call the original core composed by quires 2-17, sectio prior, whilst quire 1-8 and the flyleaves, sectio recentior.

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I. 4. 1 MS Borgianus graecus 22

The Vatican manuscript to which I shall now turn (Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Borg. gr. 22), belongs to the last period of Ficino’s life and activity.59 _{MS Borg. gr. 22 is miscellaneous in terms of both} textuality and materiality. The manuscript is made of both parchment and paper and the set of texts that it contains is the result of the work of two scribes: Ficino himself and Johannes Scoutariotes, a professional scribe who is known to have transcribed various Greek texts on behalf of the Florentine scholar.60

The codex is small in format (165x110 mm), dating from the end of the fifteenth century, and is formed by the following folios:

fols I-II-III (flyleaves): paper fols 1-154: parchment; fol. 155: parchment fol. 156-167: paper fol. 168: parchment.

The folios were numbered manually. The state of preservation of the writing material is good. As far as the mise en page is concerned, the writing space measures as follows: parchment folios, 105x65mm (18 lines per folio);

59 _{For a description of the manuscript, see Pio Franchi de’ Cavalieri, Codices Graeci Chisiani et}

Borgiani (Rome: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1927), pp. 137-58; Henry, Études Plotiniennes, II, p.

44; Martin Sicherl, ʽZwei Autographen Marsilio Ficinos: Borg. Gr. 22 und Paris. Gr. 1256ʼ, in

Marsilio Ficino e il Ritorno di Platone. Studi e Documenti, I, pp. 220-22; Dionysius Areopagite,

De mystica theologia. De divinis nominibus Marsilio Ficino interprete, ed. by Pietro Podolak

(Naples: D’Auria, 2011), pp. LI-LIV

60 _{For a detailed account of Scoutariotes’activity and for a complete list of the manuscripts}

transcribed by the scribe for Ficino, see Stefano Martinelli Tempesta, ʽIl codice Milano, Biblioteca Ambrosiana B 75 sup. (Gr. 104) e l’evoluzione della scrittura di Giovanni Scutariotaʼ, in The legacy of Bernard de Montfaucon. Three hundred years of studies on Greek handwriting, Proceedings of the Seventh International Colloquium of Greek Palaeography (Madrid -

Salamanca, 15-20 September 2008), ed. Antonio Bravo García, Inmaculada Pérez Martín, Juan

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paper folios, 120x85mm (21/26 lines per folio). The binding consists of wooden boards covered with leather and a leather spine.

Fols I-II are blank and did not contain any text. Fol. IIIr is blank too. At fol. IIIv, we read a Latin description of the manuscript, which was written by a modern hand (XVIII-XIX cent.) and reads as follows:

Continet hic codex opus S. Dio|nysii Areopagitae de divinis no|minibus, eleganter,

ac correcte scri| ptum Accedit in fine Platonis Epi|5nomis id est Philosophus eadem

| manu conscriptus. Hunc codi | cem ad Marsilium Ficinum | spectasse, [[non]] ex

epigrammate | ipsius Ficini nomine insignito, | 10 quod in fine Codicis habetur,

infer|ri potest.

At fol. 168, we find Ficino’s note of possession, which is almost erased, which reads Marsilii Ficini.

•Watermarks

I have analysed all the paper folios forming the codex by using a watermark reader. By using the device I was able to detect two watermark types, which I shall now describe:

-Ladder, exclusively Italian typology. Two rungs are visible (15x30 mm). Although there are numerous examples of this form, there is no exact counterpart in the repertoires (fols 160, 163).

-Traces of a watermark which is not clearly detectable (fols 157, 159, 164, 166)

•Quire structure

As far as the codicological features are concerned, the material structure of the manuscript looks quite complex: the book is the result of two different stages, which reflect both Scoutariotes’s and Ficino’s activity. More specifically,

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the codicological structure consists of 16 quires, numbered with Greek numerals and provided with reclamantes. The quires are preceded by a parchment bifolium (fols 1-2). Quires 1-14 are quinions, quire 15 is a senion and quire 16 is formed by a parchment bifolium (fols 155, 168) into which a paper senion was inserted (fols 156-167). The paper flyleaves (fols I-III) were inserted at a later stage, at the time of a more recent binding.