La «verace ystoria». Avviamento allo studio del volgarizzamento troiano di Mazzeo Bellebuoni

The essay focuses on Mazzeo Bellebuoni, a Pistojese notary who lived between the 13th and 14th centuries, and his written production. First of all, some information is shared about his life and his professional activity (§1); then, the paper discusses his «auto-translation» from Latin of the Statuto dell’Opera di San Jacopo, related today by the ms. Pistoia, Archivio di Stato, Opera di San Jacopo, 237 (§2). Mazzeo Bellebuoni, however, is especially known for his 1333 translation into Pistojese of Guido delle Colonne’s 'Historia destructionis Troiae', a text originally written in Latin that came to be considered a historical source during the Middle Ages: §§3.1–3.2 are dedicated to placing Mazzeo Bellebuoni in the context of the other vernacular translations developing the Trojan legend in Italy. This unreleased 'volgarizzamento', only reported by two manuscripts stored in the Biblioteca Riccardiana of Florence (1095 and 2268), is useful for extracting the mid-14th century literary grammar of a Tuscan dialect which influences the Florentine variety. My research is an introduction to the first critical edition – which I am preparing – of this ancient Bellebuoni’s text: it includes a survey of the manuscript witnesses (§4.1), a review of previous incomplete editions (§4.3) and, above all, the first analytical description of the codex Riccardiano 2268 (signed R2; §4.1.1), which I selected as the textual base for the future edition of what I named 'Troiano Riccardiano' (§4.2).