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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Domenico Cavalca's literary activity and his importance in Italian literary history have been questions discussed, at times even hotly, since the dawn of Italian literary historiography. However, it was only in 1905, when Guglielmo Volpi in his “Questione del Cavalca” outlined a program for future study of Cavalca's writings, that these may be said to have become a recognized field for scholarly research. The program then outlined by Volpi has in part been carried out. Alfonso Zacchi did pioneer work over a broad field, clearing the ground and opening up the question of the sources. Continuing Zacchi's work, Carmelina Naselli carried it further into the field of Cavalca's life and circumstances. Neither Zacchi nor Naselli, however, made a thorough study of Cavalca's sources, or of his manner of handling them—an aspect of the Cavalca question which calls for further elucidation, as Volpi did not fail to perceive. Nor did the afore-mentioned writers undertake to decide definitively, as Volpi (p. 318) suggests should be done, “se alcune opère attribuite al Cavalca per congettura possano esser sue.” These are the subjects I have chosen to investigate here.
1 Cavalca was born in Vico-Pisano ca. 1270 and died, a professed Dominican monk, in the monastery of Santa Caterina at Pisa towards the close of 1342. Some ten or eleven works have, at times, been attributed to his pen. His right to the title of either author or translator of these books has been a subject of controversy, treated of in the “Questione.”
2 Archivio storico italiano, ser. v, xxxvi, 302–318.
3 “Di fra Domenico Cavalca e delle sue opere”, Il Rosario, Memorie domenicane (Florence: S. Maria Novella, giugno-luglio, 1920), pp. 272–281; (1° agosto), pp. 308-320; “Il Cavalca volgarizzatore” (nov.-dic), pp. 431–439; “La prosa del Cavalca” (15 maggio 1921), pp. 288–295.
4 Domenico Cavalca (Città di Castello: Il Solco, 1925).
5 Gulielmus Peraldus was born in Dauphiné (date unknown), received the Dominican habit in 1219, and died in Lyons ca, 1275. He was one of the most esteemed writers of his time. MSS of his five works run into the hundreds. See Johann Loserth, “Johann von Wiclif and Gulielmus Peraldus”, Vienna Akademie Sitzungsberichte (Vienna: Alfred Holder, 1916), CLXXX, iii, 1–101. Of his writings, the Summa appears to have been the most popular as a compendium of doctrine and as a book of reference. See, among others, Carmine Di Pierro, “Di alcuni trattati ascetici”, Esercitazioni sulla lelteratura religiosa in Italia (Florence: Alfani e Venturi, 1905), p. 218. There was a copy of this Summa in the library of the Santa Caterina monastery where Cavalca passed his entire religious life. See Camillo Vitelli, “Index codicum latin, qui Pisis in Bibliothecis Conventus S. Catharinae et TJniversita-tis …, ” Studii ilaliani difilologia classica (1900), viii, 401.
6 See Zacchi, “Di fra D. C. . . ., ” pp. 309–311. Also Naselli, p. 83. As late as 1938, Nata-lino Sapegno, Storia Letteraria d'Italia, II Trecento, 3a ediz. (Milan: Fran. Vallardi), IV, 54, sub “Cavalca”, said: “il Pungilingua rifacimento delf ultima parte della Summa virtutum ac viliorum di fra Guglielmo.”
7 In this article references to the Summa of Peraldus allude to a rotograph copy made from a microfilm of the Summa Peraldi listed as 9135 in the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris. It is a 1668 edition brought out by Father Rod. Clutius, O.P., and was prepared “iuxta exemplar charactere Gothico impressum Basileae 1497.”
8 E.g., Guglielmo Volpi, Storia Letteraria d'Italia, II Trecento, 2a ediz. (Milan: Vallardi, 1907), p. 328; Vittorio Rossi, Storia della lelteratura ilaliana (Milan: Vallardi, 1936), i, 212.
9 See Naselli, pp. 83-84; Sapegno, p. 549: “Molti dei suoi scritti son traduzioni…; altri compilazioni, come il… e il Pungilingua.”
10 These bestiaries, in the main, Cavalca has but copied from Peraldus' Summa, itself a tissue of beast similitudes, as Francesco Falco, Domenico Cavalca, moralista (Lucca: tip. del Serchio, 1892), p. 14, had failed to realize.
11 Cavalca, Delia Pazienza, ovvero Medicina del more (Rome: Niccolò e Marco Pagliarini, 1756), p. 2.
12 I chose ch. iv because it is the shortest one, yet serves its purpose. Any other chapter would have been just as suitable.
13 In Opuscoli di S. Giovanni Crisostomo (Rome: Classici Sacri, 1845).
14 “De consideratione libri quinque ad Eugenium Tertium, lib. 1, cap. iii”, in Migne, Patrologia Latino, (1854), CLXXXII, 731 (cited hereafter as P.L.).
15 P. L. (1841), XLI, 22: “De civitate Dei.”
16 P. L. (1849), LXXV, 783: “Moralium.”
17 Cavalca, in order to simplify the scholastic language, uses the expression “umana fragilità” knowing full well that his idioti readers would not understand the distinction between vices which bring delectation and those which do not.
18 P. L. (1841), xxxvi, 250: “Enarrationes.”
19 Peraldus is correct in citing Numbers. In Exodus there are instances of the Israelites having murmured against Moses, but this instance of Mary who became a leper is told in Numbers only.
20 However, Cavalca used the exempla sparingly and with greater discrimination than many of his contemporaries, both in regard to story and manner of presenting it.
21 Novellislica (Milan: Vallardi, 1924), i, 73.
22 As my purpose is merely to trace sources and to show Cavalca's manner of handling them, I have not deemed it necessary to give the stories in loto. I have made only a brief comment by way of identifying the tales which may be read in the Pungilingua itself.
23 See Giovanni Bottari, preface to Pungilingua, s. p.: “La storia di Silvestro II… ”; Angelo Fabroni, Memorie istoriche di più uomini illustri pisani (Pisa: Prosperi, 1791), ii 378, n. 5; Henry Osborn Taylor, The Medieval Mind, 4th Amer. ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1925), i, 282–294.
24 An Alphabet of Tales (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1904). See Angelo Monteverdi, “Gli esempi dello Specchio di vera penitenza, parte prima, GSLI (1913), LX, 336–338, for a brief description of the Alphabetum narrationum. I have been obliged to use an OE translation because, I have been assured by the Library of Congress, there is nowhere on this continent, either a copy of this work in Latin or even a rotograph of it. In confirmation of this see Stith Thompson, ”Motif-Index of Folk Literature“ in F. F. Communications (Bloomington: Univ. of Indiana Press, 1934), no. 108, iii, 317. Clemente Sanchez's El Libro de los enxemplos, in Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, li, thought to be a translation of one of the many Alphabela current in the Middle Ages, was compiled 1400–21, about seventy-five years after Cavalca wrote his Pungilingua. Cf. Romania, VII, 481–484.
25 In Monumenla Germaniae Eistorica, Scriptores (Hanover: Hahniani, 1872), xxii, 432. Giuseppe Mazzatinti, Inventari dei manoscritti idle Biblioteche d'Italia (Florence: Olschki, 1916), xxiv, 70, lists a xivth century MS of this Chronicon in the Biblioteca Cateriniana at Pisa, the library of Cavalca's monastery.
26 It may be that in the MS known to Cavalca these variations were found, for I find that the Harleian MS of the Alphabelum has Archiepiscopus Bononiensis, instead of Ramensis.
27 Why s. Cesario? The Church has never conferred such a title.
28 Caesarius of Heisterbach (Cologne: Haberle, 1851).
29 Leipsig: Th. Graesse, 1850.
30 Verona: Dionigi Ramanzini, 1799, iv.
31 P. L. (1849), lxxiii; (1850), LXXIV; (1848), xxi.
32 P. L. (1849), lxxvii.
33 See Victor Chauvin, Bibliographie des ouvrages arabes ou relatifs aux arabes (Liège: Vaillant-Carmanne, 1904), viii, 168.
34 Further, it reveals how rarely he drew upon profane authors.
35 It will be noticed that of the glosses in the Pungilingua only one has been contributed by Cavalca. The others, he simply transcribed as he found them in Peraldus or else he applied the term chiosa to a passage he is translating. Once this is realized, it is unnecessary to search the pages of the Glossa oriinaria of Walafrid Strabo, or the Glossa interlinearia of St. Anselm, believed by Zacchi, “Di fra D. C…, ” p. 316, to have furnished Cavalca with numerous quotations from the Fathers.
36 Falco, p. 17, points out that often when Cavalca attributes a sentence to Seneca, he mistakes the latter for Martin of Braga. It is true that in the Middle Ages the latter's De quatuor virtutibus cardinalibus was erroneously attributed to Seneca; since, however, the above table shows that Cavalca, in the Pungilingua, at least, takes all his Seneca citations directly from Peraldus, Falco's remark now needs modification.
37 He never mentions Peraldus, except once in a general way, as I have already pointed out.
38 It is not to be inferred that these authors were used first-hand by Cavalca. It is quite possible that like many another mediœval writer, he got his texts from one of the florilegia or encyclopediae.
39 By accurate is to be understood not textual accuracy, but a close enough approximation to the original to entitle the rendering of it to be called such.
40 Homiliae XXXII in Epistolam ad Romanes, in Patrologia Graeca (1859), lX, 493. 41 P. L. (1846), li, 443.
42 P. L. (1850), LXXXIII, 858: Synonymorum, Lib. ii.
43 Both in the Decrelumoi Gratian, in P. L. (1855), CLXXXvn, 1141, causa xxii, q. iv, cap. v, and in the Sentenliae of Peter Lombard, in P. L. (1855), cxcii, Lib. iii, Dist. xl, n. 8, this sentence is said to come from St. Isidore. Cavalca could have taken it from either of these sources instead of drawing directly upon St. Isidore.
44 P. L. (1845), xvii, 750.
45 Sermones de Scripturis, Sermo clxxv, cap. 1, in P. L. (1841), xxxviii, 945.
46 Commenlarium in Evangelium Maithaei, lib. ii, cap. xii, in P. L. (1845), xxvi, 82.
47 De Trinttate, lib. i, 14, in P. L. (1845), viii, 38; ibid., 142–143. 48 P. L. (1845), cxxxvi, 1075.
49 P. L. (1841), xxxiv, ii, 23.
50 Paris: Bloud et Barrai, s.d., 15 ed. 2: 2, qu. xcvi, art. 1–4.
51 Strange to say, Jacopo Passavanti in his Specchio di vera penilenza (Florence: Accademici della Crusca, 1723), p. 284, cites these exact words used by Cavalca and attributes them to St. Augustine. However, they do not appear as such in the writings of the latter. This would point to another common source in which the words of St. Augustine were rendered in this manner. Practically all that St. Thomas Aquinas says on this subject is found also in Speculum morale (Strassburg: J. Mentelin, 1476), pars iii, dist. xxviii, s. p. This work was formerly attributed to Vincent of Beauvais. Peraldus, Vincent, and St. Thomas were all contemporaries.
52 P. L. (1849), lxxvii, 54–55.
53 Sermones de Scriptwis, 469.
54 P. L. (1845), xvi, 310.
55 Summa Theologica, pars 2: 2, qu. xxxiii, art. 1–8.
56 E.g., from the Decretum or from the Sentenliae, either of Peter Lombard or St. Isidore, in P. L. (1850), lxxxiii, or from the Speculum morale, or from the Speculum doctrinale of Vincent of Beauvais. The title page of this last work was missing in the only copy available to me, so no indications can be given. It was, however, classed with the incunabula.
57 This tract is found at the end of vol. ii of the Speculum morale, s.p.
58 P. L. (1855), causa xxii, 1122–59.
59 A sample of Cavalca's carelessness: Salome was not Herod's daughter, but the daughter of Herodias.
60 Cf. “Di fra D. C.…, ” p. 309: “Trattò l'opera del suo confratello con una certa libertà, che non si sarebbe presa con altri scrittori più anticbi e più autorevoli.”
61 See Arrigo Levasti, Mistici del ‘200 e del ‘300 (Milan-Rome: Rizzolo, 1935), pp. 11–12.
62 Migne, Patrologia Graeca (1858), XLVII, 394–410; (1859), LII, 459–480; (1858), XLVII, 277–309, 411–423.
63 Trallati due di S. Gio. Grisoslomo (Rome: Nella Stamperia de Romanis, 1817), p. ix.
64 Opuscoli …, p. 5.
65 “Di fra D. C. . . ., ” p. 316: “Al Peraldo dovremo aggiungere come fonti… forse il De compunctione cordis di s. Gio. Crisostomo.”
66 Besides the references cited below see also Esposizione del Simbolo (Rome: Marco Pagliarini, 1763), part i, p. 213; ibid., part ii, pp. 52–53; Della Pazienza, pp. 102–105 passim; Pungilingua, pp. 39–40, 173; Disciplina degli Spirituali (Rome: Niccolò e Marco Pagliarini, 1757), pp. 10–11.
67 4th ed., pp. 31–32. Henceforth all italics in this article will be mine.
68 This ed. has perfettti, but I find that three MSS and the 2nd ed. haveferventi instead.
69 In the prologue to his Vite de' Santi Padri, p. 2 : “imperciocchè i libri bene distinti e capitolati più volontieri si leggono, e meglio s'intendono, ho recato a capitoli quelle leg-gende, chemiparvechefossero troppo grandi, acciocchè la prolissità non generi fastidio.… Chi vuole dunque trovare alcuna cosa leggermente in questo libro, ragguardi nel numéro de' capitoli.” Cavalca observes this rule in all his books, and in his translations it is his custom to make chapter headings, when he passes from one subject to another, whether he finds them in the originals or not. Cf. his translations of St. Jerome's Epistola ad Eustochium (Rome: Marco Pagliarini, 1764), and his Vite de' Santi Padri.
70 Rome: Niccolò e Marco Pagliarini, 1757.
71 Zacchi, “Di fra D. C. …, ” p. 319, says: “Sue sono le critiche contro la venalità dei soldati ‘che non han rispetto se non al soldo’; è lui che dice ‘mirabile cosa, anzi orribile, trovarsi uomini venderecci che son si vile che per soldo si mettono a guerreggiare le guerre che non son loro’.” It is evident now that here, too, contrary to the opinion held by Zacchi, “nelle rampogne la voce è del Cavalca, le parole son d'altri”, as Zacchi himself says, p. 318, of other passages. Here the words of St. John Chrysostom were Cavalca's inspiration, as is clearly demonstrated.
72 Is the word studio here suggested to Cavalca by the word studium in the tract Quod nemo …, p. 453?
73 Rome : Antonio de' Rossi, 1754.
74 There are many other evidences in Cavalca's works that he both knew and drew upon this tract. The sentence: “Come niuno può essere oSeso se non da se medesimo” recurs over and over again, woven into his texts. See Frutti della lingua, pp. 16 and 91; Della Pazienza, p. 34; Trenta stoltizia, p. 233. Sometimes St. John is cited; at other times, he is not. It will be noted that this sentence is the title of, as well as a chapter heading, in the Italian translation. As I consider the argument I advanced much more convincing, I did not use this one.
75 In Opuscoli di S. Giov. Crisoslomo, pp. 95–117.
76 There is no need to discuss here the apparent discrepancy in the title of the Italian version of this tract. See Migne, Palrologia Gratca, xxvii, 271–276, and Opuscoli …, pp. 5, 16–17 passim.
77 See Frutti delta lingua, pp. 11, 112, 305–312 passim; … Simbolo, pp. 256–260 passim, 265–267 passim; 33, chapters x, xxvm, xxx passim; Delia Pazienza, pp. 113–114 passim, 280–286 passim; Specchio de' peccati (Florence: All'Insegna di Dante, 1828), pp. 98–100 passim.
78 Rome: Antonio de' Rossi, 1738.