Il Livro del governamento dei re e dei principi secondo il codice BNCF II.IV.129. Edizione e commento linguistico

The book entitled Livro del governamento dei re e dei principi is the oldest Italian translation of Giles of Rome’s De regimine principum (= DRP), which can be considered one of the most popular treatises of the Late Middle Ages (more than 300 manuscripts of the Latin text survive today). The DRP was composed by Giles of Rome in the years around 1280 and dedicated to the young heir to the French throne, Philip the Fair, son of Philip III. The book was immediately translated into French by Henri de Gauchi (Livre de gouvernement des rois et des princes, 1282), and from French into Italian a few years later: Livro del governamento dei re e dei principi, 1288. Translations into almost all European vernacular languages began to appear in the following decades (Castilian, Catalan, English, Flemish, German, Hebrew, Portuguese), contributing to the unique fortune of this mirror of princes, which has recently aroused a new interest in scholarship from different points of view. I present here the annotated critical edition of the Italian Governamento, based on the most important surviving MS of the text: Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, II.IV.129 (= Na). In particular, my PhD thesis consists of two volumes: Volume 1 is dedicated to the text of the Governamento, and Volume 2 to its commentary.