Il Libro dei Sette Savi de Roma (C)
The Libro dei Sette Savi de Roma, found in the fourteenth-century Modena manuscript (below), was edited by Antonio Cappelli in 1865 and thus takes the siglum 'C' in scholarship. Because the Modena codex is damaged at the start of the Sette Savi narrative, Cappelli replaced the opening of the text with an insertion from the edition of Storia d'una Crudele Matrigna (M), as published by Della Lucia (1832).
Il Libro dei Sette Savi (C) is one of the three texts that forms the closely related 'ramo italico antico', the old branch of the Italian Seven Sages texts, alongside the Latin Versio Italica historiae septem sapientum (L), and Italian Storia d'una Crudele Matrigna (M). Like both of these redactions, Libro (C) has fourteen, rather than the expected fifteen, stories. The storytelling contest begins with the sages' first story, Canis, rather than a story told by the empress; her story Senescalcus is omitted entirely, and she tells six rather than seven stories. Some scholarship (Rajna) suggests this omission may have been made out of prudishness (as Senescalcus is the most explicit of the tales usually found in the Version A pattern); whatever the reason, the change necessitated a reordering of the narrative components of the text (see story order, below).
D'Agostino (2022) explores the complex relationship between the three 'ramo antico' redactions at length. Through close analysis of the textual variations across all manuscript witness of the three redactions, D'Agostino suggests that the Latin Versio Italica (or some specific manuscript witnesses of that version) may have been the source for the Storia d'una Crudele Matrigna, as many scholars have suggested (Paris (1876), Rajna (1880), etc.). However, D'Agostino does not concur with Gaston Paris' insistance that the extant Latin text was the source for the Libro (C) as well, instead suggesting that C and L both derived from a shared (lost) source, with intervening textual variation, cross-contamination, and mediation (p. 271-75).
| Identification and general Information | |
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| Reference Number | |
| Siglum of the version of the Seven Sages | |
| Version Number | |
| Title | Il Libro dei Sette Savi |
| Author | |
| Tradition and Lineage | |
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| Branch of the tradition | Seven Sages of Rome |
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| Language and Composition | |
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| Original language of version | Italian |
| Language of text | Italian |
| Regional or specific language of version | Toscano |
| Translated into (languages) | |
| Place of composition | Tuscany, Italy |
| Date of composition | 1301 - 1400 |
| Islamic date of composition | |
| Hebrew date of composition | |
| Source for date of composition | |
| Modern Scholarship and Editions | |
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| Modern research literature | Rajna (1880), D'Agostino (2022), Bianchi (2014-2015), Lusiani (2019), Lasagni (2012), Ricci (1982), Marucci (1987), Cappelli (1865) |
| Modern Editions | Lasagni, Il Libro dei Sette Savi di Roma (2012), Cappelli, Il Libro dei Sette Savi (1865), Bianchi, Libro dei sette savi di Roma (2014-2015) |
| Notes and Commentary | |
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