Historia Apollonii regis Tyri: A Fourteenth-Century Version of a Late Antique Romance. Ed. from Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vaticanus Latinus 1961, by William Robins. Toronto Medieval Latin Texts. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2019, xi, 123 pp., 1 b/w ill.

Abstract

One of the great medieval bestsellers, actually since the second or third century C.E., was the Historia Apollonii regis Tyri, extant not only in countless Latin manuscripts and then early modern prints, but also in numerous vernaculars. The present edition of Ms. Vaticanus Latinus 1961 makes available a highly trustworthy version from the middle of the fourteenth century copied in northern or central Italy, which contains part of a world chronicle, the Historie by Riccobaldo of Ferrara, into which the Historia Apollonii is embedded. Marginal notes indicate that this manuscript was in the possession of Giacomo di Giovanni Orsini in 1397, a good dating instrument, the terminus ad quem for our text. The language is mostly in classical or late antique Latin, but there are inferences from medieval Italian.