Unnoticed Fragments of Dante’s “Monarchia” with the Commentary Attributed to Cola di Rienzo

This note draws attention to and briefly describes fragments in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, which preserve a previously unknown copy of Dante’s Monarchia with the commentary on that text attributed to Cola di Rienzo. The fragments survive in fifteenth-century bindings from Erfurt but seem to have been written in Central Europe around the middle of the fourteenth century by a combination of Central European and Italian scribes. In their layout, decoration, text, corrections and annotations the fragments provide significant new evidence for the circulation both of the Monarchia and of the commentary. They are also important for the possibility that they originated in the milieu of mid-fourteenth-century Bohemia where Rienzo’s commentary is believed to have been composed.

Keywords: Dante, Monarchia, Cola di Rienzo