Mantuan and Religious Pastoral: Unprinted Versions of His Ninth and Tenth Eclogues

Abstract

In the dedicatory letter to the first printed edition of his Adulescentia, Baptista Mantuanus (“Mantuan” in England since the Renaissance) asks all readers holding manuscript copies of the earlier, unprinted version of his collection to destroy them—a request in effect so discouraging that, despite publication in the twentieth century of several important works by Mantuan, no manuscript copies of early versions of his eclogues have ever come to light. We are therefore indebted to Paul Oskar Kristeller for recording six manuscripts—five in Italian libraries and one at the Bodleian Library, Oxford—containing copies of what I have discovered to be early versions of Mantuan's ninth and tenth eclogues. Examination of these manuscript copies reveals new information as to the date and circumstances of composition and initial publication of the two eclogues.