The Cronaca Di Partenope the Medieval Mediterranean
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The Cronaca di Partenope The Medieval Mediterranean Peoples, Economies and Cultures, 400–1500 Managing Editor Hugh Kennedy SOAS, London Editors Paul Magdalino,St.Andrews David Abulafia,Cambridge Benjamin Arbel,TelAviv Larry J. Simon, Western Michigan University Olivia Remie Constable,NotreDame Frances Andrews,St.Andrews VOLUME 89 The Cronaca di Partenope An Introduction to and Critical Edition of the First Vernacular History of Naples (c. 1350) By Samantha Kelly LEIDEN • BOSTON 2011 On the Cover: (Detail of) manuscript It. 281 (= alfa.H.8.14; formerly VIII.B.4) of the Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, Modena, Italy. With permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Caracciolo, Bartolomeo, d. 1362. The cronaca di Partenope : an introduction to and critical edition of the first vernacular history of Naples (c. 1350) / by Samantha Kelly. p. cm. – (The medieval Mediterranean peoples, economies and cultures, 400-1500, ISSN 0928-5520 ; v. 89) Attributed to Bartolomeo Caracciolo. Text in Italian; study in English. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-19489-2 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Naples (Kingdom)–History–Early works to 1800. I. Kelly, Samantha, 1968- II. Title. III. Series. D847.A2C37 2011 945'.7–dc22 2011000254 ISSN 0928-5520 ISBN 978 90 04 19489 2 Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. CONTENTS Acknowledgments..................................................... vii AbbreviationsandStylisticConventions.............................. ix preliminary matter I.Introduction....................................................... 3 II.OriginalText,Author,andDate................................... 11 III. Historical Context . ........................................... 27 IV.SourcesandAdaptations.......................................... 55 V. Diffusion and Influence, – . ........................ 79 VI.Manuscripts........................................................ 103 the cronaca di partenope a critical edition PrefacetotheEdition.................................................. 151 Edition ................................................................. 165 appendices I.HistoricalNotesandSources...................................... 285 II.VariantTextofManuscriptV ..................................... 333 III. Chapter Titles Added by Other Manuscript Witnesses . .... 341 Bibliography ........................................................... 347 Index................................................................... 355 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Research for this project began at Villa I Tatti in –, where it became clear that the larger study of Neapolitan civic identity I had hoped to undertake would be impossible without more sustained attention to the Cronaca di Partenope. I am grateful for the time afforded by that year to explore and change directions, and to the wonderful staff and friends who made the time enjoyable. Only further investigation would reveal how much revision to those early suppositions about the Cronaca di Partenope was necessary. That investigation began in earnest during a sabbatical year offered by Rutgers University in –, when I was able to collect, transcribe, and collate most of the manuscript witnesses. A month at the American Academy in Rome in July gave me a chance to revisit some of the physical manuscripts directly, and the peace and quiet to work on the front matter. Even so, new discoveries, adjustments, and revisions occupied the interstices of my teaching schedule for fully two more years, a delay whose principal benefit was the opportunity to visit and impose again upon friends in France and Italy: Etienne Anheim, Catherine Brice, Rachel Donadio, Elizabeth Geoghegan, Pablo Vasquez. Throughout my work on the Cronaca, I have relied on the staff of many libraries who gave me access to their collections and made reproductions of manuscripts for me: the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, the Biblio- thèque nationale de France, the Biblioteche nazionali of Florence and Naples, the Società napoletana di storia patria, the Archivio di Stato of Naples, the Biblioteca Estense in Modena, the Biblioteca della regione siciliana in Palermo, the Morgan Library of New York, the Beineke Library at Yale, and the Bancroft Library of the University of Califor- nia at Berkeley. The Interlibrary Loan Department of Rutgers Library not only obtained for me several rare works, but mediated the compli- cated financial transaction necessary for me to acquire a microfilm of one of the manuscript copies. Martina Saltamacchia provided similar assis- tance in acquiring a microfilm of another Italian manuscript. The edito- rial board and staff of Brill Academic Publishers have been, as ever, cour- teous, knowledgeable, efficient, and professional, and I am delighted to be part of their Mediterranean series. Though much of the work on this study took place in solitude, it could not have been accomplished without the aid of numerous colleagues viii acknowledgments and friends who offered their expertise and volunteered their aid. Jean d’Amato Thomas shared with me both her knowledge of the literature on the ancient thermal baths of Campania, and printouts of manuscripts containing both her texts and mine. Fabio Troncarelli and Roberto Pesce generously offered their paleographical expertise where previous schol- arly opinions had differed. Elizabeth A.R. Brown offered a physical de- scription of a codex in the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris before I was able to travel and view it myself. Andrea Berto offered encouragement out of his own editorial experience during a particularly vexing phase of manuscript collation. T. Corey Brennan helped me identify a mislead- ing textual reference within the Cronaca, while Robert Lerner and David Abulafia both offered valuable bibliographical references (on the “poison legend” and the Aragonese library respectively) and comments on textual drafts. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Temma Kaplan, who allowed me to use her second home as an “office away from the office.” Theper- fect quiet there made the writing of this book possible, and I will not soon forget the happy hours spent on her screened porch accompanied by my canine “assistant” Poni and the sound of rustling leaves. Stephen Pemberton has shouldered common burdens and lifted my spirits in bleak moments from the beginning of this project to its end, across five homes on two continents and through some transformative events. The greatest of those events was the arrival in March of Hugh William Kelly Pemberton, who delayed progress on this book to teach me about bugs, superheroes, and a joy I had not known possible. The seven years of this book’s gestation are the seven years in which my life became joined to theirs, and as one small piece in that shared life, the book is dedicated to them. ABBREVIATIONS AND STYLISTIC CONVENTIONS ASPN Archivio storico per le province napoletane DBI Dizionario biografico degli italiani MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica RIS Rerum italicarum scriptores To avoid confusion, I refer to chapters of the present study with a capital- ized “Chapter” and the number rendered as a word, e.g. “Chapter Four.”I refer to chapters of the Cronaca di Partenope and of other texts found in these manuscripts with a lower-case “chapter” and arabic numerals, e.g. “chapter .” For classical texts, and for Giovanni Villani’s Nuova Cronica, I utilize the standard convention of denoting the book in Roman numer- als and the chapter in arabic numerals, separated by a colon, e.g. “VII: .” PRELIMINARY MATTER chapter one INTRODUCTION The Cronaca di Partenope is a history of Naples composed in the mid- dle of the fourteenth century by a lay Neapolitan patrician named Bar- tolomeo Caracciolo-Carafa. It was the first history of Naples to be writ- teninoverfourhundredyears,sincetheGesta episcoporum neapolitano- rum of the late ninth and early tenth centuries.1 Indeed, it can be consid- ered the first comprehensive history of Naples ever written, since unlike the Gesta, which began with Naples’ first Christian bishop, the Cronaca beganitsnarrationinearliestantiquityandcontinuedtotheauthor’sown present. It was, furthermore, one of the first works of any genre composed in the local Neapolitan vernacular: only two short poems of the late thir- teenth century and two vernacular translations of Latin works, dated to circa , precede it.2 The simultaneous revival of local historical writing and emergence of Neapolitan as a literary language attest to the major changes afoot in Naples and the surrounding region in the decades around . The most important of these, and a stimulus for others, was the decision of south- ern Italy’s new Angevin dynasty (–) to make Naples their royal capital. The heightened stature of the city, the influx