Miscellaneous Humanistic and School Texts

The ms. 228 of the ‘Biblioteca Guarneriana’ of San Daniele is a composite manuscript that joins paper gatherings belonging to different codicological units that all share a modest manufacturing, the same paper support and script, as well a similar content: as a matter of fact these are prevailingly texts of the humanistic age which were thought, or however used, for school education and erudition purposes. Among them, the large number of texts that contain epistles, or epistle examples or orations evidence their use in grammar and rhetoric schools. On f. 184r, there is a colophon that precisely brings back to the schools of Udine, where since the first half of the fifteenth century Giovanni da Spilimbergo, a schoolmaster and prominent representative of Friulian humanistic culture (1380 circa-1455), had been in service: «Millesimo CCCC° L ego Aloysius, filius egregii ac famosissimi decretorum doctoris domini Antonii de Belgrado, perfeci hec omnia bona opera dum cepi studere arti oratorie sub magistro Iohanne Spignimbergensi rehetore (!) scolarum Utini. Laus Deo». What is known on Luigi of Antonio Belgrado is not so much than what he himself reveals in this latter, as well as in another colophon of his, which can be read in the ms. 100-23 of the ‘Biblioteca Capitular’ of Toledo. The manuscript belonged to Giusto Fontanini (1666-1736). Many of the texts contained in this codex are present in various other manuscripts of Guarnerio d'Artegna’s library: among other things, the last section of the present manuscript has been ascribed to the hand of Leonardo Pittiani, one of the notaries active in the chancellery of the patriarch of Aquileia, whose vicar was Guarnerio himself.