Transmission of knowledge in Venetian fourteenth-century chronicles

Abstract

The doctoral thesis analyzes eight Venetian chronicles written c. 1340–1390. It looks into the transmission of these texts by examining their mutual relationships and by reconstructing the textual tradition of individual works. The research was conducted by using the book historical method in which an individual volume is examined from the perspective of textual history, its physical features and ownership history to give a global view of its genesis and functions. The method combines textual criticism and comparative textual analysis with codicological and palaeographical research. The results show that Venetian fourteenth-century chronicles generally had a limited early circulation. This is indicated by the significant impact of the structure and contents of their earliest manuscripts on the textual tradition of these chronicles during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The key finding of the present thesis is that several of the examined texts derive from the Chronica brevis, a brief Latin chronicle of Venice written by the doge and prehumanist Andrea Dandolo (1306–1354). The interpretation challenges the prevalent theory linking these texts to twelfth- and thirteenth-century chronicles that are not preserved. The new model significantly clarifies the picture of Venetian history writing and provides a new research orientation for scholarship on the history of medieval and early modern Venice.