Thanks for the reference on Latin elegaic couplets. About them I now know at least that I know nothing, which is at least better than just knowing nothing.

Nathaniel wrote,

suppeditare is actually another bit of non-classical Latin in the quatrains. The first meaning given for this verb in The Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources (DMLBS) is "to trample underfoot": https://logeion.uchicago.edu/suppeditare

So thanks also for giving us your source for the translation. But earlier you said,

Robertet's translation of the quatrains is quite flawed. He makes several errors, no doubt due to the fact that the Latin of the quatrains is almost purely classical, to an impressive degree for the time—their author must have been quite thoroughly steeped in the works of Roman poets such as Virgil—whereas Robertet's own Latin was strictly medieval, as can be seen in his few surviving Latin works. There were several word meanings and phrases that he simply didn't grasp.

If so, in the quatrain the word would, other things being equal, have had its classical meaning of "provided" or "supplied", and Robertet's error would have been to take "suppeditatur" in this medieval sense, as he seems to do, by having Love be "refrenée" (restrained). The latter is not the same as "suppeditatur" - the image could be of Cupid bound and not trampled on - but it is close; it fits the image below it in the manuscript, where Cupid is merely held to the ground under Chastity's feet, uninjured (so not "crushed," as you put it). To do so, Robertet has to add the words "Amour n'est pas lente" to the third line of the quatrain, and "mais" to the fourth, as if understood. So for:

Nec pingui Cipro, nec molli floribus Yda,
In Cerere et Theti suppeditatur amor.

(Neither lush Cyprus, nor the pleasant flowers of Ida,
In Ceres and Thetis suppeditatur love.

he gets:

Car es [les?] delices de Cypre l’opulente,
Ne [ni?] es [les?] fleurs souefves d'Yde Amour n'est pas lente;
Mais par Seres et Tethys refrenée
Est folle Amour et challeur forcenée.

For [neither] the delights of opulent Cyprus,
Nor [?] the pleasant [?] flowers of Ida, is Love slow;
But by Ceres and Tethis restrained
Is crazy Love and frenzied heat.

which also mistakenly substitutes Tethys for Thetis, as though food and drink were what was meant.

This hypothesis is confirmed by Robertet's son Francois's paraphrase:

Mais de Ceres et Thetis les repas
Font refroidir et regler par compas
Effrenée jeunesse l'amoureuse;

But of [by] Ceres and Thetis the meals
Serve to cool and regulate by compass
Frenzied youth, amorous.

"Repas" suggests food and drink, and "refroidir et regler par compass" the action of restraint.

Arsenal BnF 5065 makes a similar interpretation. Its quatrain is the same as the other two.

Arma pudicitie superando cupidinis arcum,
Hic dominum calcant, et sua tela premunt.
Nec pingiu [for pingui?] cipro, nec molli floribus Ida,
In cerere et theti suppeditatur amor.

but the French translation of the last two lines (now five, in bold below) continues the misunderstanding:

Pudicite par ses tresgrandes effors
Surmonte de la chair la poindure
Et la siegneur qui nest pas des plus fortz
Est mys au bas par abstinence dure

Pour biens mondains avoir en abundance
Boire et manger trop opulentement
Amours iamais n'est mis en decadence
Mais par susner et biure sobrement

Moyen par tout fait buire iustement

(Pudicitia by her great efforts
Overcomes the flesh puncture [the arrows of Cupid?]
And the lord who is not stronger
Is put down by hard abstinence

For worldly goods to have in abundance
Drinking and eating too opulently
Love never is put into decline
But by sustaining [eating?] and drinking soberly.)

[The] means by all made to drink correctly.

"Mis en decadence" corresponds to "refrenée" in Robertet. But what is restrained is eating and drinking, i.e. Love in the sense of love of food and drink. So the meaning is "By neither drinking [Cyprus, sea] nor eating [Mt. Ida, land] too opulently is love restrained, but by eating [Ceres] and drinking [Thetys] soberly [i.e. with restraint].

That is far from the meaning of Chastity as expressed by Laura's rejection of Petrarch, but it is approximately how you, Nathaniel, interpret the quatrain, too.

However, it seems to me that the meaning is quite different. Molinet gets part of it, with his phrase "Celebs Ciprigenam" in "Celebs Cipgrenam pessumdat vita dolosam", which I am assuming means "The celibates of Cyprus put to the bottom the deceitful life [i.e. Cupid]". These are the abstinent ladies participating in the rites of Ceres on Cyprus, as Ross has suggested.

Molinet deals with Thetis and Mt. Ida by substituting Venus, who seduced Aeneas there:

Honneste vie a tel auctorité
Dessus Venus qu’elle pert sa beaulté
Et rit, quand voit gens happés d'amours folle.

Honest life [i.e. the celibates of Ceres] has such authority
Above Venus [substituted for Thetis] that she loses her beauty
And laughs when she sees people caught up in crazy love.

It seems to me, on the contrary, that Thetis is in the quatrain because Zeus's lust for her was restrained by his fear of the offspring such a union would produce, due to a prophecy about the son surpassing the father. So, for:

Nec pingui Cipro, nec molli floribus Yda,
In Cerere et Theti suppeditatur amor.

I get:

[Now] neither [the] lush Cyprus [of Venus] nor the soft flowers of Ida [of Venus],
In Ceres [the celibates] and Thetis [Zeus's lust restrained] is love put down

or

{With] neither [the] lush Cyprus [still of Venus] nor the soft flowers of Ida [also of Venus],
In Ceres [the celibates] and Thetis [lusted after by Zeus] is Love supplied.

and the quatrain survives intact. Of the two, I think the first fits the theme of Chastity and the image on Robertet's page better - so yes, the medieval sense of suppeditatur. The theme of food and drink fits the second one better. That could be a secondary meaning, I suppose.

mikeh wrote: 02 Nov 2023, 22:45 Thanks for the reference on Latin elegaic couplets. About them I now know at least that I know nothing, which is at least better than just knowing nothing.

Well, if you read that webpage which I linked as the reference there, you will know quite a lot about them. In fact, you will know virtually everything you need to know—that webpage is aimed at beginners and is very thorough.

It is quite important to refer constantly to the meter when reading Latin poetry, because the meter will often help you to determine whether the vowels are long or short. This has considerable bearing on the meaning.

The webpage says that in some cases, "it is almost impossible to scan the line without also establishing its sense" but the converse is also true: you can't expect to understand the sense of Latin verse with any kind of certainty unless you establish its meter. The sense and the scansion go hand in hand, and the only way you can get either of them right is to approach them in tandem.

Well, I hope that you will continue sharing your expertise with those of us who neither know Latin nor how precisely it is pronounced, in case we lose some of the sense, and the process of "correction," from not being able to scan the meter. That very much affects what we are doing.

At the end of my previous post, I added a further part of the ellipsis to the third line of the quatrain about death, namely, a "there is".

In this post I want to address further the issue of when Robertet would have written his verse-summaries of the Trionfi, based on what Douglas/Szuppan says in her dissertation and then book, https://repository.royalholloway.ac.uk/ ... 097849.pdf. That it was around 1476 or earlier is based on an examination of Robertet's Complaincte de la mort de Chastelain, completed in April of that year according to a note at the end of its two manuscripts (Douglas p. 183 and 456). His friend and fellow poet Chastelain had died in 1475, and the Complainct is a kind of eulogy. There Robertet shows a sophistication in his classical references incomparison to his 1468 Exclamacion (p. 196). That works mentions Sappho "in connection with her love for Phaon or Faon" but not as a poetess. In the Complaincte, however, we see (p. 438)

Si m'envoyez l'esperit de Saphus
Pour hault louer en langage flory

It is in Boccaccio's On Famous Women that he would have read about Sappho's elegaic style. The change to "Saphus" would have been for the sake of the rhyme, she says in her note, p. 438. She then argues (p. 196):

Since his text of 1468 shows no knowledge of Sappho as a poetess, it is likely that Robertet first read Boccaccio between about 1468-1475, the period when he was probably also reading Petrarch’s Trionfi for the first time.

In relation to Petrarch, there is also what Robertet says later in the poem about Sappho, comparing her with Catullus, as Petrarch does as well (along with Ovid and Propitius). See Douglas p. 400, line 305 and her note: Robertet has "L'exquis stille de Saphos ou Catulle", which compares to Petrarch's:

L'uno era Ovidio, e I'altro era Catullo,
L'altro Propertio, che d'amor cantaro
Pervidamente, e'l altro era Tibullo.
Una giovemgreca a paro a paro
Coi nobili poeti iva cantando,
Ed avea un suo stil soave e rare.

She also gives examples where the Complainct borrows from Petrarch's Trionfi. Sometimes it is just names, but occasionally it is in the surrounding language (p. 199):

The descriptive phrase is translated directly from Petrarch; Robertet has
"Ung Zenocrat comme ung roc solde et dure
S'est demonstre, trop plus ferme q'un mur
De marbre faiet, lyé de fort cyment".1
and Petrarch:
"E Xenocrate più saldo ch'un sasso,
Che nulla força volse ad atto vile".2
Again Robertet has
"Plus curieux que Dicerarque"3
and Petrarch: "il curioso Dicearco"; 4
Robertet has
"Carneades en parler nect et prest",5
where Petrarch has
"Carneade vidi in suc' studi si desto
Che, parlando egli, il vero e'I falso a pena
Si discernea; cosi nel dir fu presto".6
Finally, Robertet writes
"Et Cleantes, portant le ferme arrest
D'opinion veritable et tresseure".7
where Petrarch had [start p. 200]
"E per fermar sua bella intentione
La sua tela gentil pinger Cleante
Che tira al ver la vaga opinione”.1
_____________________
1. lines 308-310. 2. Appel, op.cit. [Die Triumphe Francesco Petrarcas, Halle, Niemeyer, I901, 8 v.,VIII Triumphus Famae III], p.261, l.74-7.
3. line 311. 4. Appel, op.cit., p.262, l.88.
5. line 317. 6. Appel, op.cit., pp.262-3, ll.97-9.
7. lines 318-319. 1. Appel, op.cit, pp.263-3, l.118-120.
The remaining names in this passage of the Complaincte are all taken from the same section of the Trionfi.

Looking at her notes to this part of the poem, I see that she says that not only do the names, when only mentioned, come from Petrarch's Triumph of Fame, but they are mentioned in the same order as Petrarch lists them (p. 450).

Robertet himself refers to Petrarch's Trionfi as a source in this 1476 work (Douglas p. 197. with the lines on p. 452):

J'ay regardé es Triumphes Pétrarque...
Ou j'ay trouvé maint homme de renom (lines 326, 328).

after which follows a list of seven Greek sages, six of whom come from lines 115-17 of this section of Petrarch's Triumph of Fame, according to her note on p. 452.

Finally, there is the wording of his 1476 summary quatrain about Petrarch (p. 457, lines 399-402 of the Complaincte):

La Mort mordant toute chose mortelle
400 Fame triumphe et soubz ses piedz oppresse,
Et les haultz faietz en obscur point ne laisse.
Mais les suscite en mémoire eternelle.

I can't help noticing the similarity to the Latin quatrain for Fame in the illustrated ms.:

Omnia Mors mordet, sed Morte Fama triumphat
Cetera mordentem sub pede Fama premit
Egregium facinus post mortem suscitat ipsa
Nec sit [or scit, if this is a scribal error] Letheos inclita Fama lacus.

(Death devours all things, but Fame triumphs over Death
The rest devoured, Fame presses underfoot
A great deed alone (?) raises after death
Nor should Letheus be [or is, or is known as] the illustrious lake of Fame.

And his lines on the Triumph of Fame following the Latin quatrain:

La Mort mort tout, mais Clere Renommee
Sur Mort triumphe et la tient deprimee
Dessoubz ses piedz. Mais après ces effors
Fame suscite les haulx faitz des gens mors
Qui par vertu ont meritee gloire,
Qu'après leur mort de leur fait soit mémoire.
Inclite Fame n'eust jamais congnoissance
De Letheus, le grant lac d'oubliance.

The language and sentiments are all similar. That Robertet speaks of "congnoissance" in his huitain suggests the likelihood of a scribal error in the quatrain. That he speaks of "Clere Renommee" is reminiscent of "limpida" in the c. 1447 Modena quatrain, there applied to the lake. So it is possible that Robertet changed "limpida" in the Italian ms. he was using - and every other version of it in France - to "inclita" in his transcription, for some reason, perhaps having to do with "clere" and "grant" in his French. That may be a scansion issue.

To be sure, stimulated by quatrains newly arrived in France, or in order to come up with something suitable to put with tapestries or book illustrations, he could have gone back, re-read Petrarch and his old writings, and written verses for the other five triumphs. But by then he was doing other things. And more likely, his 1476 quatrain is already a translation of one of the six Latin ones, and if he had one, he probably had them all. He only uses the one for Fame because of the occasion, a eulogy for someone already dead but whose fame will live on.

Nathaniel brings up the known c. 1500 book illustrations and tapestries as an argument for Robertet's huitaines being written in the 1490s. To explain the former, however, the French incursions are the more likely cause, from which the French nobles brought back illuminated manuscripts, printed works, and Italian playing cards. And by the time the son got around to putting out the illustrated edition, book illustrations, tapestries, and stained glass windows illustrating Petrarch's themes had already been produced (1502-1503). Only one surviving tapestry actually reflects the designs in Francois Robertet's book now called BnF Fr.24461, although others in poorer condition do contain his wording of the Latin at the bottom.

For the dating of 24461, Douglas observes that it was most likely prepared for Charles of Bourbon, as suggested by the drawing of Charles at the 1509 battle of Agnadello (p. 24), a poem celebrating him there, and various mottos of his (pp. 22-23, referring to ff. 140v-141r of the ms.). She adds:

Although the manuscript is not mentioned in the catalogues of the Bourbon library of I507 or 1523, this would not necessarily exclude it from the library. The I507 catalogue was compiled before the completion of the manuscript, and the 1523 inventory is not as reliable as the first.

She dates it to between 1509 and 1525. This is consistent with Trapp; he gave it to 1509, but it could well have been somewhat later. A complication is that the unknown hand that copied the Robertet Triumph verses is in an earlier style than that of Francois, who copied some of the other texts. But this later hand appears both before and after Francois's hand in the ms. So they must have worked simultaneously, she argues. She does not consider that the different parts may have been assembled after the fact in an order different from their production. But I agree with her conclusion, based on the similarity of the cliff in the Triumph of Chastity to that in the drawing of Hercules, and also the arms of Francois's brother Floremond in that drawing, which appropriately relate to his participation in the French victory in 1509 at Agnadello.

As a follow-up to the preceding, I notice that Franco Simone, in The French Renaissance: medieval tradition and Italian infljuence in shaping the Renaissance in France, 1969, p. 219, suggests Charles d'Orleans as the one who perhaps introduced Roberter to the works of Petrarch. In footnote 37 )p. 313) he says that a copy of the Familiares was in his library (ref.: critical ed. by V. Rossi, p. xxxxii). In 1448 he obtained a copy of De vir illustribus, and Mourard prepared aanother copy for him that same year (refs.: P. Champion, Vie de Charles d'Orleans,1911, pp. 482, 484, and for the first, only Laborde, Les Ducs de Bougogne, III, 1852, p. 362). Also, Jean Moreau prepared illuminated mss. of Petrarch in 1455 (Laborde, n. 677, Champion, p. 485). And his wife once forgot a volume of Petrarch on a trip to Rodez (Champion, p. 269). Charles, who died in 1465, was a poet himself and cultivated a circle of poets at court in Blois, which is near where Robertet was. My only problem is, why would Robertet have waited until after 1468 to read the Trionfi? Another possibility that occurs to me: Jean Fouquet, who painted Robertet in c. 1470; he had spent considerable time in Ferrara (evidenced by his painting of the court fool in the late 1440s) and might have jotted down the verses, stimulating Robertet to read Petrarch's originals.

I finally got around to comparing Ross's transcriptions of the Modena pages to the actual ms. on the Estense site (see his post at viewtopic.php?p=26292#p26292). I have questions about his transcriptions of the punctuation. These in some cases affect the meaning; and in general the punctuation is useful for comparing the Modena to the later French versions, which also have punctuation.

It seems to me that in the quatrain about Love, there is a period after "imponite" in the third line that he omits. Ross:

Ecce Coronati telo sternuntur amoris.
Cum Iove neptunus cum Iove pluto subit.
Lora voluptati reges imponite sceptra
Immoderata ruunt et moderata manent.

In the Chastity quatrain, there is a period at the end of the third line, not a comma. Ross:

Arma pudicicie superando cupidinis arcum,
Hic dominum calcant, et sua tela premunt.
Nec pingui Cipro, nec molli floribus Yda,
In Cerere et Theti suppeditatur amor.

For Death, there is a period and not a comma after "Esse"
Ross:

Celibis abscidunt nervos et fila sorores,
Nec durat fragili vita pudica solo.
Sanior et longa poterit valitudine celebs
Esse, heu tandem singula morte cadunt.

At the end of the third line of Fame, there is a period, which Ross omits. I am not sure what to make of the mark in the first line that Ross makes a comma. Ross:

Omnia mors mordet, sed mortem fama triumphat.
Cetera mordentem, sub pede fama premit,
Egregium facinus post mortem suscitat ipsam
Nec scit Letheos limpida fama lacus.

For time, there is a period after every line except the third, which has an exclamation point (as opposed to a period); Ross has nothing for the first two lines, and a period for the third.
Ross:

Tempore conculcor quantumlibet inclita fama
Me extingunt quamvis tempora sera piam
Quid prodest vixisse diu, cum fortiter evo.
Abdidit in latebris, iam mea tempus edax.

For "Judicum", the first line ends with an exclamation point. Ross has a comma. Ross:

Ipsa triumphali prestans regina tropheo,
De veteri palmam tempore leta gero.
Rex, Amor, atque pudor, mors, fama, et tempus abibunt.
Felices animas Regia nostra tenent.

These are the points of difference that I see. Am I imagining things? Or are these unimportant.

As far as I can tell, the meaning is affected in only one case, Chastity. We have been taking the third and the fourth lines as comprising one sentence, separated by a comma. A period would count against that. Since there is no verb in the third line, we have to imagine one. I would think a "There is" would be appropriate. In that case, the "nec/nec" construction also would make perfect sense.

In some of the French mss., there is no punctuation here, but one has a period, one has a comma.

One other small question. In the "Judicam" quatrain, there seems to be a "z" at the end of the word that Ross renders as "atque", making it more "atqz". Is there a convention that "z" = "ue"? I ask because the Barcelona tapestry of that quatrain seems to say "atoz", a word that as far as I know doesn't exist but may be someone's effort to make sense of a similar construction in some document that is reproducing the Modena document.
Added later: after posting, I decided to put both a scan of the original and Ross's transcription. For our purposes both seem important, and indeed Ross gave us a link to the Estense scans. He has done an excellent job with the wording, which is what I have the most problem reading. Besides wondering what the conventions are about transcribing punctuation, I am mostly trying to give us easy reference to both.

I have been trying to track down more versions of the Latin quatrains, including other ms. editions of Robertet, to see how different they are. Douglas in her critical edition dissertation (https://www.proquest.com/openview/965da ... 366&diss=y) lists a few we have not yet considered. Unfortunately, in her quotations of the Latin quatrains in her footnotes, she does not indicate the variations but treats them all as if they said the same, which we know they did not, at least in small details, many not explainable as scribal errors. Not only that, her version of them in 1961 is not precisely the same as another recently published version, at the end of a 1989 article by Guy Delmarcel ("Text and lmage: Some Notes on the Tituli of Flemish 'Triumphs of Petrarch", in JStor): he has "sulcor" where she has "fulcor" in the quatrain about Time - both are attested in various mss., as well as, in some mss., a completely different word, "conculcor". I will give specifics later in the post.

Using the search term "latin" in her OCR-d text, I find the following, for mss. with the Latin quatrains

(1) Her J2 (p. 12), which she says was copied by "Ja. Robertet" (p. 14), probably the grandson Jean-Jacques, son of Francois. This is BnF Fr. 1717, 85r-87v. These pages are available on Gallica, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b ... 20Robertet. (As can readily be verified, this is not 12148.) I also found them in color on Gallica, but I can't manage to retrace my steps. She says (p. 12) that the latest poems in this collection are "Clément Marot's Dixain de mai, dated 1527, ”le roy estant au bois de Vincennes**, and his Deploration of Florimond Robertet which cannot be earlier than 1527."

(2) Her F, BnF Fr. 12490, 118r, and on 66r the quatrain for Love in the hand of Francois, who died around 1530. She thinks it was done in 1514, the time of the last datable poem (p. 16). This, too, is in Gallica, at https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b ... m.r=VILLON.

(3) Her G, BnF A 10262, 61r-63v (p. 19), 16th century, which for the Trionfi poems there is the notation "Autres dietz pour mectre en paincture ou tapisserie" (Others said for putting in painting or tapestry). I can't locate this online. She says it has poems dating from 1530 and late 1531 (p. 18), and that it is similar in content and writing to her J mss. (BnF 1717 and two others).

(4) Her H, BnF Fr. 24461, the main ms. that we know, and her preferred source, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8426260f/f6.item. She says that it is very difficult to date this ms.:

The earliest date of any value is indicated on f°. 141r°. Charles de Bourbon is here represented in a drawing and in a poem, at the Battle of Agnadel, 1509. (p. 24).

And no later than 1525, she adds. A complication is that there is a tapestry much like its Triumph of Death which Marillier and Digby (Victoria and Albert Museum: The Tapestry Collection: Medieval and Renaissance, London 1980, pp. 39-40, n. 1) date to around 1490. I do not know if they justify this; my source is Thomas P. Campbell, "New evidence on 'Triumphs of Petrarch' tapestries in the early sixteenth century," Part I, 2004, p. 379, in Jstor), who merely cites it as though with approval. She allows that the ms. may be a copy of an earlier one. Also, it is a collection of several smaller mss. all bound together, according to the description on Gallica. Some are in the hand of Francois Robertet, but not the Trionfi poems, which are in an earlier style. However this does not mean this section is earlier, because the same hand appears later in the ms. than some of Francois's. As I have said before, it seems to me that the cliff on the Triumph of Death drawing is enough like that on the drawing of Hercules, which has Florimond Robertet's coat of arms on a tree next to Hercules, to suggest that they were contemporaneous. A comparison of Florimond to Hercules would not be apt before 1509, at that battle of Agnadello.

(5) Her H1, Arsenal ms. 5066, 1v-8r, at https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b ... 0fr%205066. This is a copy of H - but not to be neglected on that account, because there are minor changes. For example, for the second word in the quatrain for Time, the original, 24461 (at left), has "fulcor" (I think there is a very faint horizontal line bisecting the vertical) and the copy, 5066 (at right), has "sulcor" (as "s" was written then). It appears the copyist didn't notice the horizontal line.


And in later mss., the copyist of 12490 (Francois Robertet?) has "fulcor", while that for 1717 (Jean-Jacques Robertet) has "sulcor."


In addition, in the fourth line of the quatrain for Fame, "sit" is crossed out and replaced with "scit" (24461 on left, 5066, with the correction, on right):


Similarly, "abidunt" in the original of the quatrain for Eternity (last word of the third line) was reproduced faithfully in the copy, but then someone crossed out the "d" and wrote the correct letter "b" below it:


(6) Her T1 and T2, Arsenal Fr. 5065 and BnF Fr. 12424, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b ... 8s/f6.item (2r, 80r, and 130r) and https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9063616t/f2.item (3r, 137r but hard to read). She says (p. 52):

The two manuscripts, which date from the reign of Louis XII, (1) are the two volumes of an anonymous French prose translation of Petrarch’s Trionfi, (2) and contain both Latin and french texts.
___________
1. See V. Massena and B. Muntz, Petrarque, ses etudes d ’art, son influence sur les artistes, p .236.
2. See G. Bertoni, Per la Fortuna dei Trionfi del Petrarca in Francia, Modena, 1904, pp. 51, 55.

Louis XII reigned from 1498 to 1515. Both of her references are online in archive.org. On the next page she adds:

The first volume, T1, has on f.° A v°. the arms of Jean de Daillon, Count of Lude,(1) for whom the two manuscripts must have been executed.
________________
1. Cf. Martin, Catalogue des Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque de l ’Arsenal, no. 5065.

The Jean de Daillon she is referring to died in 1557 and became count in 1545, she says. He was born sometime after 1491, when his parents married, I learn on the internet. He would have been the eldest boy. About the Trionfi verses she says:

Tl contains the first three Triumphs, T2 the last three; the Triumphs are preceded in each case by the four-lined latin verse used by Jean Robertet as a basis for his Triumphes and by a French rondeau, all anonymous in the manuscripts. Of these [start 53] the first and last are by François Robertet.

I have verified that the two rondeux, for the triumphs of Love and Eternity, are written by Francois: the words in 5065/12424 correspond almost precisely to those given to Francois by Douglas for these two triumphs. I am not sure that the corresponding French poems for the other triumphs count as rondeux: they are all huitains plus a concluding line separated from the others.

Bertoni (p. 20) says that the translation of Petrarch found in that ms is that by Georges de la Forge, first "published" in 1514. Franco Simone (The French Renaissance: medieval tradition and Italian Influence in shaping the Renaissance in France,1969, p. 236) makes it clear that this was the printed edition, not in manuscript - so likely a date before then for the ms.

(7) The versions by Molinet, which Douglas mentions only briefly, noting their similarity to Robertet's. They are in the edition of Noel Dupire, https://archive.org/details/LesFaictzEt ... 1/mode/2up, with the ms. containing only Love and Chastity at https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b ... 9/f39.item (references from Ross). She says:

Jean Molinet used them [Robertet's Latin verses and French translations] for his adaptation of the Trionfi in verses of six lines; a comparison of the text of Jean Robertet's first verses in latin and French, with that of Molinet will amply illustrate the use of an identical sequence.

She then cites Robertet's Latin and French with Molinet's French for Love. She does not quote Molinet's Latin, which in fact differs from Robertet's in two words - "neptunis" rather than "nettunis" and "manent" at the end rather than "durant." In both regards Molinet conforms to the Modena text rather than Robertet (I have already quoted them together). Other quatrains have more differences.

One poem often attributed to Molinet, En regardant la beaulté de Venus..., a long poem incorporating numerous Greco/Roman mythological figures, she thinks is actually by Robertet, because the style is more like his and the references, some found only in Petrarch or Boccaccio, are more typical of him. In one manuscript the last five lines of the poem are missing. These, she suggests, might in fact have been written by Molinet (p. 100):

In view of Molinet’s habit of re-writing existing works (notably the Roman de la Rose ) with the addition of a moral, it is perhaps possible that he in fact did this in the present case, and that the last verse, which contains the moral, is his.

This point about re-writing existing works might explain a couple of his quatrains, a few of whose lines vary widely from the corresponding lines elsewhere. Molinet lived 1435-1507 in Brussels, compared to Jean Robertet, who died in 1502-3 and lived primarily in central France.

(8) Another poet who used the Latin quatrains and composed his own verses on them, she says (p. 260-1), was Simon Bourgoyn, BnF ms. fr. 12423, Arsenal ms.fr. 6480 I find this ms at https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b ... x/f11.item. The verses are on 2r, 30r, 38r, 51v, 73r, and 80r. The accompanying illustrations are the page before, or can be found separately at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cate ... ais_12423). Simone dates the ms. to around 1530 (the year on p. 218, the ms. on p. 244).

To these eight I add (9) the quatrains that appear on extant tapestries. I have found examples for all except Love online, with enough detail to read the Latin quatrains. Four are at either Hampton Court or the Victoria and Albert, both in London, and one, for Eternity, in Barcelona. Essling and Munz say that the ones in London are based on BnF 5066 (p. 207, n. 4). That contention is dubious. The problem is that the Latin quatrain for Death in the tapestry doesn't matach that of 5066. The tapestry (and their transcription of it) has "Esse" as the first word of the last line (below, in the middle of the second line).
But BnF 5066 has "Ecce" (below left, start of third line). Of all the manuscript versions, allowing for minor scribal errors, only one has the same wording for the Latin quatrains on the tapestries, and that is BnF Fr. 1717 (below right.

1717 is the ms. that Douglas thinks was done by the grandson and dates to c. 1528. Meanwhile, the tapestries have the years 1507 and either 1510 or 1520 woven into their fabric. Trapp says the year is 1510; Campbell ("New evidence," Part II, pp. 506-7, In JStor) appeals to circumstantial evidence in favor of 1520. The 1507 would be the date of the cartoon. For the evidence (having to do with figures in the Triumph of Fame being Wolsey and Henry VIII), see his article. If the ms. was from 1528, then of course it couldn't be the source for the tapestry: they would have had a common source, as yet undiscovered.

Massena (aka Essling) and Munz helpfully transcribe the inscriptions on pp. 207-210 of the book cited, although they are readable enough in the online photos. Curiously, on p. 210 they read "fulcor" in the Time quatrain for what looks like, in the photos, "sulcor" (first line, second word below). Perhaps I just don't understand medieval script conventions.

Of course there are more tapestries in other museums, but I can't find any with intact Latin inscriptions.

It is now a matter of noting the differences among them. My hope was that it would be possible to draw some conclusions about the ultimate source or at least how many Italian sources were used, since we know of one already, in Modena, with the date 1447 on one of its pages. I do not know if either of these goals is possible.

So I will go through them one by one, first giving the Modena quatrain as transcribed by Ross and then the variations on it seen in the various French sources.

Amor quatuor capitula [i.e., Love, one chapter]

Ecce Coronati telo sternuntur amoris.
Cum Iove neptunus cum Iove pluto subit.
Lora voluptati reges imponite sceptra
Immoderata ruunt et moderata manent.

manent (stay): Molinet, 1717.
durant (endure) in place of manent: 24461, 14290, 5066
vigant (prosper) in place of manent: 5065/12424, 12423.
neptunus is nettunus in 24461, the first t possibly made into a c in 5066.

Pudicita capitulum unum [i.e., Chastity one chapter]

Arma pudicicie superando cupidinis arcum,
Hic dominum calcant, et sua tela premunt.
Nec pingui Cipro, nec molli floribus Yda,
In Cerere et Theti suppeditatur amor.

tela (weapons): Molinet, 5065/12424, and 12423.
membra (limbs) instead of tela: 24461, 5066, 14290, 1717, and the tapestry.
Molinet's last two lines are not like anyone else's, although they do have the word ciprigenam, which is related to Cipro (Cyprus).

Mors tria capitula

Celibis abscidunt nervos et fila sorores,
Nec durat fragili vita pudica solo.
Sanior et longa poterit valitudine celebs
Esse, heu tandem singula morte cadunt.

Esse sed heu (To be but alas]: 12490, tapestry (although Essing and Munz report a comma after sed)
Esse, sed heu (To be, but alas): Molinet, 1717
Ecce sed heu (Behold but alas): 24461, 5066, 12423
Ecce heu (Behold alas): 5065/12424

[Note added Nov. 20: I had left out Molinet from the list; I now have added him, plus the "heu" that I had left out in three of the lines.]

Fama tria capitula

Omnia mors mordet, sed mortem fama triumphat.
Cetera mordentem, sub pede fama premit,
Egregium facinus post mortem suscitat ipsam
Nec scit Letheos limpida fama lacus.

limpida (clear): Molinet, 5065/12424
inclita (illustrious) instead of limpida: 24461, 5066, 12490, 1717, 12423, tapestry
sit instead of scit: 24461 and original of 5066, corrected to scit in a non-scribal hand

Tempus capitulum unum

Tempore conculcor quantumlibet inclita fama
Me extingunt quamvis tempora sera piam
Quid prodest vixisse diu, cum fortiter evo.
Abdidit in latebris, iam mea tempus edax.

conculcor: 5065/12424, 12423
fulcor instead of conculcor: 24461, 12490
sulcor instead of conculcor': 5066, 1717, tapestry
cum fortiter evo (with strongly (strength?) for a long time): 1717, tapestry
cum fortiter (no evo after): 12490
dum fortiter evo (although strongly for a long time): 5065/12424, 12423
confortiter evo (? for a long time) instead of cum fortiter evo: 12461; confortitur evo (made stronger for a long time): 5066
widely different in all four lines: Molinet (although he has the words inclita fama in the first line, extinguant in the 2nd line, prodest in the 3rd, and he ends the 4th with tempus edax).

Iudicium capitulum unum

Ipsa triumphali prestans regina tropheo,
De veteri palmam tempore leta gero.
Rex, Amor, atque [written atqz: MH, for which see previous post] pudor, mors, fama, et tempus abibunt.
Felices animas Regia nostra tenent.

felices animas (happy souls): 12423
celestes patram (heavenly father): 24461; celestem patrum (heavenly father), tapestry
celeste patriam (heavenly country): 5066; celestem patriam (heavenly country) 5066, 12490, 1717
atoz instead of atque: tapestry; Molinet has something like atqz.
omits abibunt: Molinet, tapestry; Molinet has abnui" in one ms., according to his editor.
abidunt instead of abibunt: 24461, 5066, but corrected in the latter to abibunt in a non-scribal hand.
The quatrain is missing from ms.: 5065/12424 (?)


I suppose I should say something about the "vincits", etc. All the mss. except Modena have these "vincits" with one or more of the quatrains, before or after,

24461, below the quatrains: Amor vincit mundum, Pudicicia vincit amorem, Mors vincit pudiciciam, Fama vincit mortem, Tempus vincit famam, Eternitas omnia vincit omnia Superat
5066: same as 24461
5065/12424, above the quatrains: Pudicicia vincit amorem, Le triumphe de la mort, Fama vincit mortem, Tempus vincit famam. At the beginning and end of the ms: "Amor. vincit mundum, Pudicicia. vincit amorem, Mors. vincit pudiciciam, Fame. vincit mortem. Tempus. vincit. famam, Eternitas seu Divinitas. omnia. vincit.
1717, below the quatrains: Omnia vincit amor, Pudicicia vincit amorem, Mors vincit pudiciciam, Fama vincit mortem, Tempus vincit famam, Eternitas omnia vincit.
12490, in block letters above the quatrains: Primus de amor, de pudicicia Triumphus II, de morte triumphus III, triumphus IV de fama, tempus omnia vincit, triumphus VIimas (Ultimas?) de aeternite.
12423, in block letters on the page before the illustration, along with other phrases,(the quatrains are then after the illustrations): Donec optata veniat, Pudicitia vincit amorem, Mors vincit pudicitiam, Le Triumphe de Renommee, Le Triumphe Du Temps, Le Triumphe de le Divinite / Divinitas omnia vincit. On the page before the illustration of Amor: Amor vincit Mundum, Pudicicia vincit Amorem, Mors vincit Pudiciciam, Fama vincit Mortem, Tempus vincit Famam, Diuinitas seu Eternitas omnia vincit.
Tapestries: I could not find any "vincits" on the tapestries. On all the London ones except Fame, the top center words are too faded to read. That for Fame is mostly legible, and it isn't a vincit. I doubt if the others are either.

What is also of interest is how the Modena ms. states before each quatrain the name of the triumph plus how many chapters there are. This procedure is followed by BnF Fr. 12423 in French, with much the same wording as Modena's Latin: for example, for Love we read "Premier triumphe. Qui est Damour. Et contient quatre chappitres." Then in block letters the motto "DONEC OPTATA VENIET." There is nothing like this practice in any of the other mss. I have looked at.

So did Robertet have the Modena text before him, but change a word or two in each quatrain? Did the editors of 5065/12424 and/or 12423 have a different Italian version that was nearer to that of Modena, or was Robertet being creative? We can ask the same about Molinet, who diverges greatly from the rest: did he have a different manuscript, or was he being more creative? I incline toward the latter in both cases, but it is not certain and I would like to hear what others think.

Thank you very much Mike! That comparison is extermely helpful. You missed a few things here and there, like variations in the second line of the Time quatrain, but on the whole it's wonderful work.

And I'm glad you finally looked at mss. 5065/12424! I had already pointed them out twice, and provided a link to Gallica each time, yet you seem to have never noticed or at least never bothered to look through them. But you finally got there in the end, and you found a lot of other manuscripts on the way. Excellent.

mikeh wrote: 11 Nov 2023, 12:11 So did Robertet have the Modena text before him, but change a word or two in each quatrain? Did the editors of 5065/12424 and/or 12423 have a different Italian version that was nearer to that of Modena, or was Robertet being creative? We can ask the same about Molinet, who diverges greatly from the rest: did he have a different manuscript, or was he being more creative? I incline toward the latter in both cases, but it is not certain and I would like to hear what others think.

I think it's clear that an Italian manuscript was taken to France, possibly by Robertet himself, which contained the six images and the accompanying Latin quatrains in a wording which was exactly the same as in the Modena manuscript. We can be fairly certain of this because all of the wording in the Modena manuscript appears somewhere in the French manuscripts that are closest to it: mss. 5065/12424, ms. 12423, and Molinet. The only thing that doesn't appear exactly verbatim as in the Modena text, somewhere at least, is "Esse heu", but we do find both "Ecce heu" (ms. 5065) and "Esse, sed heu" (Molinet), so I think we can safely assume that the original manuscript from which both versions were derived must have had "Esse heu" (probably with a punctuation mark between those two words).

This degree of identity in the wording is extraordinary—Robertet's Italian manuscript must have been the same word for word as the Modena text, even in the parts that look like obvious mistakes, like "Esse heu", "Nec .. nec", and "cum fortiter evo". It is very unlikely that such extremely faithful copying would occur more than once in succession, so we can safely conclude that the Modena text was copied from that same Italian manuscript that later made its way into the hands of Robertet and others in France.

mikeh wrote: 07 Nov 2023, 02:24 Finally, there is the wording of his 1476 summary quatrain about Petrarch (p. 457, lines 399-402 of the Complaincte):

La Mort mordant toute chose mortelle
400 Fame triumphe et soubz ses piedz oppresse,
Et les haultz faietz en obscur point ne laisse.
Mais les suscite en mémoire eternelle.

I can't help noticing the similarity to the Latin quatrain for Fame in the illustrated ms.:

Omnia Mors mordet, sed Morte Fama triumphat
Cetera mordentem sub pede Fama premit
Egregium facinus post mortem suscitat ipsa
Nec sit [or scit, if this is a scribal error] Letheos inclita Fama lacus.

This is interesting, as it does indeed mean that Robertet must have seen the Latin quatrains at that time. I had forgotten about that.

But there is still no real evidence that he had written any of the six huitains at that time; indeed, the fact that he wrote and published a French quatrain translation for Fame actually suggests the contrary, if anything. He probably wrote only that one French quatrain at that time (Fame seems to have always interested him rather more than the other five Triumphs, which was fairly typical for people in the Renaissance: it got the most attention in Italy too) and then he wrote his six huitains at some later stage, quite possibly sometime around 1490. The Italian source ms may have remained in his possession the entire time and possibly very few if any other people saw it, until he wrote and circulated his huitains and people started making tapestries based on them and the accompanying images. And that does not appear to have happened before 1490.

There is a lot more evidence that relates to the timing of the tapestries and also to when various parts of ms. 24461 were created, but I don't have time to go into that now, and in any case the whole question of exactly when ms. 24461 was written seems rather unimportant to me. It has no bearing on the date of the Latin quatrains and their accompanying images.

I finally got around to comparing Ross's transcriptions of the Modena pages to the actual ms. on the Estense site (see his post at viewtopic.php?p=26292#p26292). I have questions about his transcriptions of the punctuation.

The punctuation in medieval and Renaissance manuscripts isn't really the same as modern punctuation, even when it looks like it is. There is a very good guide to it here:

https://sites.ualberta.ca/~sreimer/ms-c ... e/punc.htm

As you will see there, the thing you are reading as an exclamation point is called a "Punctus elevatus" on that website, and it functioned more or less like a semicolon.

One other small question. In the "Judicam" quatrain, there seems to be a "z" at the end of the word that Ross renders as "atque", making it more "atqz". Is there a convention that "z" = "ue"? I ask because the Barcelona tapestry of that quatrain seems to say "atoz", a word that as far as I know doesn't exist but may be someone's effort to make sense of a similar construction in some document that is reproducing the Modena document.

Yes, the thing that looks like a z is read as -ue, at least in this context. It's one of those annoying abbreviations that are everywhere in medieval and Renaissance Latin writing. If you look at the Eternity page in ms. 24461, you will find this "atqz" there as well, and one of the many copies of that manuscript was probably the source for the "atoz" on that tapestry, which must have been made by someone with limited knowledge of Latin. It's quite incredible that a mistake like that made it into a finished tapestry; one can only wonder what the client thought! I hope they got a discount, at least...

As far as I can tell, the meaning is affected in only one case, Chastity. We have been taking the third and the fourth lines as comprising one sentence, separated by a comma. A period would count against that. Since there is no verb in the third line, we have to imagine one. I would think a "There is" would be appropriate. In that case, the "nec/nec" construction also would make perfect sense.

No, I'm afraid it would not "make perfect sense", even in that case. There is absolutely no way of punctuating or construing those two lines which would cause them to "make perfect sense" with the wording as it is. Any attempt to make sense of it will always be awkward and contrived—you are always forced, at the very least, to imagine some word that is not present on the page and which is not obviously implied by what is present on the page. This is surely why Molinet replaced those two lines completely, which was a wise move; he seems to have been a man who knew what he was doing.
I remain quite convinced that the original text would have had "Et ... et" here, which does make "perfect sense" if suppeditatur was intended to mean "is trampled underfoot", as it definitely must have been, given the various other references to the vanquished being trampled underfoot throughout the rest of the Latin quatrains. If it didn't have "Et ... et", it must have had some other construction. "Nec ... nec" must be a miscorrection, as I explained earlier. There is simply no other explanation that "makes perfect sense."

Nathaniel wrote: 11 Nov 2023, 17:10 I think it's clear that an Italian manuscript was taken to France, possibly by Robertet himself, which contained the six images and the accompanying Latin quatrains in a wording which was exactly the same as in the Modena manuscript. We can be fairly certain of this because all of the wording in the Modena manuscript appears somewhere in the French manuscripts that are closest to it: mss. 5065/12424, ms. 12423, and Molinet. The only thing that doesn't appear exactly verbatim as in the Modena text, somewhere at least, is "Esse heu", but we do find both "Ecce heu" (ms. 5065) and "Esse, sed heu" (Molinet), so I think we can safely assume that the original manuscript from which both versions were derived must have had "Esse heu" (probably with a punctuation mark between those two words).

This degree of identity in the wording is extraordinary—Robertet's Italian manuscript must have been the same word for word as the Modena text, even in the parts that look like obvious mistakes, like "Esse heu", "Nec .. nec", and "cum fortiter evo". It is very unlikely that such extremely faithful copying would occur more than once in succession, so we can safely conclude that the Modena text was copied from that same Italian manuscript that later made its way into the hands of Robertet and others in France.

I spoke too soon—a little double-checking has revealed that there must, in fact, have been at least a couple of differences between the Modena text and the text of Robertet's Italian manuscript. I haven't yet checked through everything in all of the manuscripts that Mike found, but I have so far discovered at least one important thing that Mike doesn't mention: tenent, the last word of Modena's Eternity quatrain, does not appear in any of the French manuscripts that I have seen, not even ms. 12423, which is the one that is closest to the Modena quatrain. So it is highly likely that Robertet's manuscript had tenet there, and not tenent.

I also found one other discrepancy: Ross's transcription of the Modena manuscript contains one error in the wording. This is the only lexical inaccuracy in his transcription, but it is an important one, because the incorrect word is one that likewise appears in none of the French manuscripts: the third-last word in the third line of the Time quatrain is actually tum, not cum as Ross transcribed it. The copyist of Robertet's Italian manuscript appears to have made exactly the same mistake that Ross did, because cum appears more frequently in the French manuscripts than any other rendering (and was no doubt also the basis for Robertet's con- in confortiter, which looks like an unsuccessful emendation). The only rendering of this in any of the French manuscripts that really makes sense, in classical Latin at least, is the dum in 5065/12424 and 12423, but even though they are among the most faithful copies of the text, I nevertheless think it must have been cum in Robertet's Italian manuscript—partly because (as Ross has demonstrated) it is very easy to imagine how tum could have been turned into cum, and rather more difficult to imagine it accidentally becoming dum, but also because if dum had been in the source text, it would surely appear more often in the manuscripts, as it makes more sense than cum. In other words, it seems unimaginable that anyone would have changed the dum to cum, so the cum must have been in Robertet's Italian manuscript to begin with. (Arguably tum makes even more sense there than dum does, so it's a little surprising that no one in France thought of emending it to that.)
(The reason cum doesn't make sense in this line is because the verb Abdidit should be in the subjunctive, in classical Latin at any rate.)

tenent makes just as much sense in the last line of Eternity as tenet; indeed, it makes little difference to the meaning, because in medieval Latin at least, both regia (singular feminine) and regium (singular neuter, plural form regia) could be used to mean (royal) palace. But tum seems better than cum. So the Modena text looks like it is closer to the original wording than Robertet's Italian manuscript was, and that would mean that the Modena text cannot have been copied from Robertet's Italian manuscript, and that both must therefore have been copied from a third manuscript. And because of the "Nec... nec" error and the "Esse heu" error, even that third manuscript cannot have been the ur-text; there must have been at least one manuscript earlier than that.

Nathaniel wrote: 11 Nov 2023, 19:24 (The reason cum doesn't make sense in this line is because the verb Abdidit should be in the subjunctive, in classical Latin at any rate.)

I think I spoke too soon again! After re-examining the grammar of Latin cum, I think I was quite wrong here: I think the indicative verb Abdidit does indeed make sense after cum, because the verb in the main clause, prodest, is in the present tense. So Robertet's manuscript could have been the one that the Modena text was copied from. Unless we find some more words in the Modena text that don't appear anywhere in the French copies, it might come down to whether you think it is likely that tenet and cum could have been changed to tenent and tum by the Modena copyist. Or could one actually argue that cum makes better sense here than tum, and is therefore likely to be the original wording for that reason?? I'm not sure.

I've found what appears to be another difference between the Modena wording and the wording in Robertet's Italian manuscript: longa in the 3rd line of the Death quatrain. This is longua in the mss. 5065, 12423, Molinet, and 1717. Only 24461, its copy 5066, and 12490 have longa. Longua is very unusual, and mss. 5065 and 12423 and Molinet are the three sources that were most faithful to the Italian text (apart from Molinet's wholesale replacements of entire lines). So I think it's safe to conclude that Robertet's Italian manuscript had longua here.

It also seems quite likely that Robertet's Italian manuscript had Ecce instead of Esse in the 4th line of the Death quatrain, as that is the wording in mss. 5065 and 12423, two of the most faithful sources (and the former also omits sed, just as the Modena ms. does). The Esse in the Modena ms. looks a lot like Ecce, so it's easy to imagine an Italian copyist of the time accidentally changing it to the one or the other.

Neither of those help us to decide whether or not the Modena ms. was copied from Robertet's Italian source manuscript, however.

I am increasingly thinking that cum is definitely the best of all the variants in the third line of Time, because it allows the last two lines to be translated as "What good is it to have lived a long time, seeing as Time the devourer has forcefully hidden away what is mine in the endlessness of time" ("in the endlessness of time" is my rendering of evo, although it is not ideal as it sounds a bit too much like eternity, and evum was actually quite distinct from timeless eternity, according to DMLBS).
Therefore cum might well have been in Robertet's Italian manuscript. On the other hand, mss. 5065 and 12423 have dum, so that must be considered a possibility too; but the tum of the Modena manuscript seems unlikely.

But this doesn't really help us either, as the Modena copyist could easily have changed cum to tum by mistake (and probably did, in fact, regardless of whether the source manuscript in that case was Robertet's or some other copy that had cum in that position).

Ultimately, the only thing that really suggests that the Modena manuscript was not copied from Robertet's is the tenent/tenet difference. Is that enough for us to be reasonably certain that both manuscripts were copied from a common predecessor? Yes, on the whole, I think it is. Regia as a neuter plural rather than a feminine singular seems to have been relatively unusual, so it seems very unlikely that someone would change regia ... tenet to regia ... tenent. It's not something that could be attributed to misreading the letters. So I think we must assume that tenent was in the Modena copyist's source text, and therefore that source text was not Robertet's manuscript but another, which (as I said before) must itself have been copied from at least one earlier manuscript. In other words, the ur-text appears to have been at least two stages of copying before the 1447 text. And because it looks like the images used were based on other images that did not have the calcatio layout, we must assume that those original images were from a date earlier still.

Thanks for your reflections, Nathaniel. The link to punctuation was just what I needed. I still don't understand how someone can miscopy or "correct" "Et/et" as "Nec/nec". Were copyists that confused? Your observations about "tenet" vs. "tenent" in the Eternity quatrain and "longa" vs. "longua" are helpful. You're in an area about which I know very little. But it seems to me that a copyist is more likely to omit a letter or even a word than insert one, other things being equal.

There are more variations in spelling. I don't know if they are important. I wasn't trying to capture all of them. I mostly wanted to get the big picture, with differences that couldn't be scribal errors, and also to show differences between 14461 and 5066, which look identical at first. But I didn't always stick to that.

If and when you're willing, perhaps you can find some significance to the other variations, once I upload the ms. scans together. I have time now for Death and Eternity. First Death. For Molinet, I've included his note on the variant in one of the two mss., the one that was destroyed in WWII). (I don't know if there's any other for him). It seems to me that a copyist would naturally see "longa" in the Modena document. But there is a little dot between the g and the a. Perhaps that means "longua". There is also the difference that 5065 has "dura" and the others "durat." Then 5066 and 2241 have the spellings "abcindunt" and "fragille". Well, I suppose it is easy to add a letter if it is the same as the one before it. I don't know if any of these are important. Then there is Eternity. 5065 doesn't have a quatrain, at least that I could find, so I'll put 12423 first, by itself.
So they're all "tenet" except Modena. And otherwise pretty much as I previously indicated, if Modena's abbreviation of "Tempus" is accepted, and unless I've still missed something. Added later: well, looking again, I see the "p" missing from "Ipsa" on the Roberter-derived quatrains, and in 12490 the odd "fero" instead of "gero."

I will put up comparison scans for the other four quatrains when I get a chance, for more fine tuning.

I have been looking at Italian mss. taken to France during the Italian wars, to make sure our quatrains haven't been missed in any of them. According to the BnF's notes, Charles VIII took at least four mss. of the Trionfi from Naples and one from Florence back with him, depositing them at Blois. From Naples are BnF It. 1016, 1019, 552, and 553. 548 is from Florence (https://gallica.bnf.fr/services/engine/ ... ultat-id-8). At least two others might have gone to France sometime during the Italian wars, 549 and 2126 (according to Franco Simone in The French Renaissance, pp. 225 and 229). Then there is 1382, in Gallica but without much information, other than ca. 1501-1600. I looked in all of them, and no sign of our quatrains. There are two that apparently are in too bad condition to put on Gallica, 1017 and 1018. All that Gallica gives us are note cards by Avril, and I can't make out much on them, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10000511d/f1669, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10000511d/f1670 (from https://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cc101123 and similarly for the other). Perhaps someone has more information.

Added Nov. 17: checking in Pellegrin (Manuscrits de Pétrarque dans les bibliothèques de France, 1966), she says that 549's script and decorations are in the style of Lombardy in the first half of the 15th c. There are notes in it written by someone who indicates that he knew Donato Albanzani, friend and translator of Petrarch, who died in 1411. The writer knows Petrarch's life and sources well and is probably himself Florentine, based on a reference in one of the notes.

Also, she says that 1024, 1026, and possibly 1025 were taken from Naples by Charles VIII. There is also 1769, last known in Naples 1464 but in France by the 18th century, and 551 and 1021, unknown when they got to France. None of these have illustrations. But another ms. that might have got to France by then is 1471, which has pages ripped out right where illuminations would be (perhaps those done in 1440 by de' Pasti? A gold diamond ring device appears several times on f. 1r). No one knows how it ended up in the Abbey St. Victoire. Another 15th c. Trionfi ms. with illuminations that came to France at an unknown date is Musée Jacquemart-André 17. I haven't tried to look at these yet.