^{page 441 note 1} Luigi Foscolo Benedetto, Il “Roman de la Rose” e la letteratura italiana, Halle, 1910 (Zeitschrift für Rom. Phil. xxi, Beiheft), p. 192.

It will be noted that both Benedetto in this passage and Professor Merlino in the passage cited below read Roumant instead of Romant. The readings I have given are those of the first edition (1525), the only edition in which Equicola himself could have had any hand. Messrs. Benedetto and Merlino both used the later edition of 1554, “… corretto da M. Lodovico Dolce.” I assume the spelling Roumant to be an alteration made either by Dolce or by one of the various other editors of the work between 1525 and 1554.

^{page 441 note 2} Camillo P. Merlino, The French Studies of Mario Equicola, Berkeley, 1929, p. 3. Professor Merlino examined at length the only extant MS of the Libro de Natura … and Watriquet's work rather than the other which Equicola had in mind.

Finally, the assumption (made throughout Professor Merlino's study; e.g. on pp. 20–21, 22) that Equicola must in almost every case have used a printed edition rather than a MS, even when such a supposition forces us to postulate an unknown edition for which we have no other evidence, seems a little rash. Surely, in every case, Equicola is just as likely, a priori, to have used a MS.

^{page 443 note 3} Assuming romez here to be an error, it is not immediately easy to correct it, nor is it of any importance to the present purpose. The correction to rimez, which at first suggests itself, seems here improbable, since the Romanz in question is in prose,—the brief dedication alone being rhymed.

^{page 444 note 4} The twelve works consulted were the following:

Francesco Alunno: Le Osservazioni sopra il Petrarca, Venice, 1539, 1550.

Alberto Acarisio: Vocabolario … de la lingua volgare, Cento, 1543.

F. Alunno: Le Ricchezze della lingua volgare sopra il Boccaccio, Venice, 1543, 1551, 1557.

Francesco Alunno: La Fabrica del Mondo, Venice, 1546?, 1548, 1588.

Girolamo Garimberto: Concetti …, Rome, 1551; Venice, 1596.

Giovanni Mannello: La Copia delle Parole, Venice, 1562.

Francesco Sansovino: Ortografia … o vero Dittionario, Venice, 1562.

Gio. Stefano da Montemerlo: De le Phrase Toscane, Venice, 1566.

Filippo Venuti da Cortona: Dittionario …, Bologna, 1568?, 1578.

Dictionarium sex linguarum, Venice, Sessa, 1582.

Colloquia et Dictionariolum septem linguarum, Antwerp, 1586.

Giacomo Pergamino: Il Memoriale della Lingua Italiana, Venice, 1602?. 1617.

(Dates in italics indicate editions which could not be consulted for the present study.)

Of the last eight of these, Sansovino defines in the normal way Romanzi and Romanzatori; Venuti cites, normally enough, Romanzatore, but he omits Romanzo; Pergamino treats of Romanzi and Romanzieri (not mentioning Romanzatore); Garimbero, Marinello, Montemerlo, and the Colloquia and Dictionarium fail to include either word.

^{page 444 note 5} Here Alunno would appear to have benefited by Acarisio's Vocabolario. The 1557 edition of the Ricchezze slightly expanded the last phrase to read “… [id est] a leggere i libri e cose de' romanzi.”

The 1543 edition of the Ricchezze had not included the word Romanzo in the body of the work; but in an appendix (omitted in the later editions) of foreign words similar to the Italian, among the “voci che usono spagnuoli conformi alla nostra lingua”, had appeared “Romanci—che cantan versi”. In 1543, therefore, Alunno had attributed to the Spanish a use of their word for Romanzo similar to the use he listed later for the Italian: “a reciter of poems.”

^{page 445 note 6} Pigna's surname was strictly Niccolucci, his father being Niccolò Niccolucci. But Niccolò set up a druggist's shop in Ferrara, with a pine-cone as its sign oremblem; and from this sign came to be known as Niccolò of the Pine-cone (pigna), or simply as Il Pigna. As a youth, the son Giovan Battista was often given both names, Giovan Battista Niccolucci Pigna; but he soon dropped the Niccolucci, and in all his works appears simply as Giovan Battista Pigna, or even as Il Pigna only.

There is no need here to discuss the bitter controversy between Pigna and his master Giraldi, in which each accused the other of having stolen his ideas. As far as his treatment of the origin and meaning of the word romanzo is concerned, Giraldi has far less to say than Pigna; he offers us, indeed, no information that is not included in his pupil's far more lengthy disquisition, and the latter will for present purposes be all we need to study here.

^{page 446 note 7} Of these various “derivations,” Giraldi in his Discorsi (pp. 5–6) lists only (d) and (g), accepting (d) and rejecting (g). Both of these, it is significant to note, explain the original romanzo as a man; (d) regarding him as a hero of romances, (g) as a composer.

Pigna's actual words are as follows:

Romanzi secondo la commune opinione in Francese detti erano gli annali; e perciò le guerre di parte in parte notate sotto questo nome uscivano. Poscia, alcuni dalla verità partendosi, quantunque favoleggiassero, così appunto chiamarono li scritti loro. Ma perchè più antica origine ha questa poesia così nominata, bisogna più altamente l'etimologia ritrovare. … Più tosto si può credere che i Romanzi sieno i Remensi, i quali dopo Remanzi si dissero; perciochè (essendo costoro popoli secondo Cesare più fedeli e più valorosi che tutti gli altri di Francia) hanno potuto dar occasione a' Provenzali popoli. … che, poeticamente del valore e della bontà della Francesca gente trattando, da essi come da i principali cavaglieri il poema delle battaglie chiamassero … Lontana troppo mi par essere quella formatione che da Romulo, per conto della presa delle Sabine, i deduce; e parimente quella che venire i fa da Romi, che robustezza denota, perciochè forti huomini sieno quei ch' a questa poesia han dato nome, come heroi all' heroica. Ma se dal Greco ritrarre i vogliamo, e da tenere che Romanci fossero, cioè romei e pellegrini; essendo che simili componimenti d' altro non parlano che di paladini erranti, e senza la z alla propria voce appressandosi Romance dicono li Spagnuoli. Dir tuttavia si può che Romanci sieno, cioè pellegrini, essi scrittori di tal materia; essendo che dalla Grecia in Ponente questo uso passò di gire di città in città su per le piazze a cantar versi alla brigata in un raccolta.… Ma ritornando alla voce Francese… è da dire che la ragione tratta da Cesare non è cattiva; ma che la vera sarà che i Remensi sieno stati essi che i loro fatti e quelli degli altri delle lor terre da prima scrivessero … E … Turpino, che Remense fu …, tra' scrittori Romanzi fu il principale … Chi dicesse Romanzi quasi Rimanzi, e Rimanzi dalla rima ritrar volesse …, più sottigliezza mostrerebbe che verità. Meglio direbbe chi l'opinione di coloro seguitasse, che tengono che Romanze tanto vaglia in ciascuna regione di Ponente quanto Volgare; ma più a proposito ci torna la nostra formatione … [Op. cit., pp. 11–14.]

^{page 447 note 8} The two other theories that interpret the early romanzo as a man—(e), which Pigna considers to be quite plausible, and (b), which he regards as somewhat less so—suppose the original word (Romanzi=romanci=wanderer -knights, or Romanzi=Remensi, the bravest of the French) to have meant a hero, not a composer of romances. This supposition would give an almost equally good meaning to Equicola's two phrases; “Jean de Meung, called the Knight [or Pilgrim] of the Rose,” and “The Hero [or Pilgrim] falls in love with one in the garden” would do very nearly as well as “… the Romancer of the Rose” and “The Romancer falls in love …” When we consider the rest of the evidence, however, it is obvious that the other idea carried far more weight; and so it is the Romancer meaning on which the present paper lays all its essential emphasis.

^{page 448 note 9} A final note should perhaps be added on the development in the Cinquecento of a sounder theory for the origin of romanzo. Pigna's brief remark that some men were of opinion that Romanze had once been in all the Western countries the equivalent of “Vernacular” suggests the idea later developed by (e.g.) A. Minturno (L'Arte Poetica, Venice, 1563, p. 26) and by Torquato Tasso; viz. that Romance was the name originally given to all the neo-Latin languages except Italian. Francesco Patrizio (in 1585–6) was the first Cinquecento theorist, as far as the present writer has noted, to maintain in unequivocal detail that all the neo-Latin languages, including the Italian, were Romance. The following passages are those most pertinent.

(a) Patrizio: “… diciam noi che il nome di Romanzo sia venuto dal verbo Romanzare; e questo, accorciata sola la i, da questo Romanizare, il quale nacque tra' Galli allora quando, soggiogati da' Romani, tra corrotto e buono cominciarono a parlare e a scrivere Romano.