The Cocharelli Fragments: Edition of the Text

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The aim of the present paper is to give the first complete critical edition of the text of the Cocharelli codex, the richly illuminated manuscript produced in Genoa for the Cocharelli family in the early fourteenth-century of which only 27 folios survive today. The manuscript transmits a Latin treatise on the vices and virtues written by an unidentified member of the Cocharelli family for the moral instruction of his children. For the description of vices and virtues the author relies on some very popular sources of the time (such as Guido Faba and Paulus Hungarus), while he derives the exempla included in his work (dealing mainly with the near-contemporary history of Genoa and of the Latin East) from the personal recollections of his grandfather Pellegrino Cocharelli. This text is remarkable not only for its original historical accounts and for the stunning illuminations that illustrate it, but also for the valuable information it provides on the Genoese and on the Mediterranean cultural context of the early Trecento. The introduction offers a brief survey on manuscripts, language and orthography, followed by a paragraph with the criteria which have been followed in establishing the text. The edition is completed by critical notes which discuss textual problems, offer comments on difficult passages, identify the sources and provide historical information; it is also accompanied by an appendix with the reproduction of the images of all surviving folios.