Petrarca e le Philippicae: le postille del Par. lat. 5802

Monica Berté’s article presents an edition, with commentary, of all Petrarch’s marginalia on the Philippics transmitted in Par. lat. 5802, a large collection of ancient historiography and other prose (Suetonius, Florus, Frontinus, Eutropius, Cicero, Phil. 1-4 and Tusculan disputations), compiled probably at Chartres in the middle of the twelfth century for Philippe d’Harcourt, bishop of Bayeux. It is the only manuscript of the Philippics known to have belonged to Petrarch, but it contains just the first four speeches, even though he knew the full text. the manuscript was in his hands around the middle of the fourteenth century; he made little use of it and left very few notes in it except on the leaves containing Phil. 1-4. His autograph annotation consists of signs that draw attention to precepts or memorable events, textual emendations or marginal variants, and to a lesser extent exegetical notes. after a brief survey of references to the Philippics in Petrarch’s writings, the introduction to the edition analyses the character of the textual contributions and shows that they did not come from collation of another witness but were made ope ingenii. In his writings, however, there are very few quotations from the Philippics, and this lack of correspondence suggests that his thorough reading of a text was not always subservient to his creative role.