L'Amabile di Continentia (Em)
The Italian L'Amabile di Continentia, or Amabel di Continenza, is one of the later I (Versio Italico) redactions, and is closely related to the Erasto narrative. It is critically assumed to be Erasto's source, in fact (Cesari 1896, Wikeley 1983); its siglum, Em, comes from the understanding that is the manuscript precursor to the later printed ('stampata') Erasto texts (which are given the siglum Es).
This relationship is demonstrated by the fact that the prince is named Erasto in both L'Amabile and Erasto, rather than Stefano (as he is called in the other four Versio Italico texts). It is also borne out by the embedded stories, and the names of their storytellers. As in Erasto, the stepmother is named Afrodisia, while the sages are given names designed to sound Greek: Euprosigorus, Dimurgus, Thermus, Enoscopus, Philantropus, Agathus, Leucus (Campbell (1907) and Cesari (1896)). L'Amabile drops several of the expected Version I embedded stories (Vidua, Puteus, Avis), usually told by the sages. In their place, the narrative adds several new tales: Corpus Delicti (a faithful dog reveals his master's murder), Zelus (a husband believes slander about his innocent wife and murders her), and Caepulla (a father learns his son's fatal illness could have cured by a specific food). Additionally, unlike the 'rama italico antico' texts, L'Amabile gives the stepmother a seventh story, a new story titled Puer Adoptatus, bringing the narrative total back to fifteen. Of these four new texts, none are found elsewhere in the Seven Sages tradition, with the exception of Caepulla, which also appears in the Forty Viziers: Ḥikāyet-i Ḳırḳ Vezīr. Another distinguishing element is the fact that, rather than facing public execution, the empress kills herself in prison in at the end of the narrative.
L'Amabile di Continentia was likely composed in Northern Italy, judging by the prose which is a mix of Veneto and Lombardo, sometime in the fifteenth century according to Cesari (1896).
A note on manuscripts: the Parma manuscript, listed below, was edited by Cesari (1896). In his introduction to this edition, Cesari refers to two other manuscripts containing the same narrative. One, a Modenese codex (owned by a Mr. Boni) partially reproduced by Cappelli in his introduction to Il Libro dei Sette Savi (1865) (pp. 58-69), concludes with an explicit that gives the place and date of composition (11th December, 1517, in Brescia), and the name of the scribe, Fr. Hyer. Broyolus. The same scribe, Hieronymus or Jeronimo Broyolus, also signed the Parma manuscript, dating it just a month earlier. The frame portions of the two texts appear very similar, leading Cesari to make the reasonable assumption that this was a second copy of the same original (p. CIII). Cesari also mentions a third manuscript, partially reproduced by Giosuè Carducci in Rivista Italiana (I, 1863, pp. 452-53) and owned by Francesco Zambrini. While Carducci's manuscript was apparently heavily damaged, missing about 15 pages at the beginning and more throughout, the text of Roma that Carducci edited resembled the Parma text closely enough to convince Cesari that this was also a copy of the same work. Thus far, I have been unable to locate either the Modena/Boni manuscript mentioned by Cappelli, or the Zambrini manuscript mentioned by Carducci.
[Added by Jane Bonsall]
| Identification and general Information | |
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| Reference Number | |
| Siglum of the version of the Seven Sages | |
| Version Number | |
| Title | L'Amabile di Continentia |
| Author | |
| Tradition and Lineage | |
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| Branch of the tradition | Seven Sages of Rome |
| Adapted from (version) | |
| Adapted into (version) | |
| Source for composition and adaptation information | |
| Recorded secondary versions |
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| Connected manuscripts |
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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 | |
| Translated into (languages) | |
| Place of composition | Northern Italy |
| Date of composition | 1401 - 1517 |
| Islamic date of composition | |
| Hebrew date of composition | |
| Source for date of composition | Cesari (1896) |
| Modern Scholarship and Editions | |
|---|---|
| Modern research literature | Cappelli (1865), Cesari (1896), Wikeley (1983), D'Agostino (2022), Campbell (1907), Carducci (1863) |
| Modern Editions | Cesari, L'Amabile di Continentia (1896) |
| Notes and Commentary | |
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| Note | |
| Notes on motifs | |
| Notes on the frame | Sages' names are taken from Campbell, and Cesari. |
| Pattern of embedded stories in this version | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Connected prints |
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No connected prints |