Ambr. G 32 sup. (gr. 390) [diktyon 42807]
Physical Description. Ambr. G 32 sup. is a quarto-size manuscript on paper, with folios 1-107 on Oriental paper (unidentifiable watermark) and folios 108-123 on Western paper. It is currently bound in a modern binding that imitates the original, with wooden boards and a leather spine. The volume, which has been restored, now includes three front and back flyleaves, and 123 folios numbered 1-123 in pencil in the upper outer corner. The current dimensions of the manuscript are 184 × 128 mm.
This is a composite copy (so-called “organized”), composed of three distinct codicological units differing in date, material structure, and content. Although the units initially circulated separately, they were brought together under a single binding relatively early, during the humanist period, according to a content-based principle aimed at collecting in one volume poetic texts of related genres and authors.
Content. The first unit, covering folios 1r-56r, dates to the late 13th or early 14th century. It preserves the first eighteen Idylls of Theocritus (Vaticana family), with a scholiastic apparatus and interlinear glosses, followed by a brief selection of epigrams of various kinds. The second unit, contemporary with the first (according to part of the bibliography), comprises folios 57-108 and contains Hesiod’s Opera et Dies, followed by two poems attributed to Gregory of Nazianzus. The third and final unit, marked by a clear break after folio 116, occupies folios 109-123 and can be dated to the 15th century; it transmits a single text: Hesiod’s Scutum.
History of the Manuscript. The manuscript is composed of three distinct codicological units. The first two units were likely already joined together by the mid-14th century, when they were probably acquired in Constantinople by the Greek scholar Leonzio Pilato (d. 1365), a friend of Petrarch and Boccaccio. Evidence of his ownership survives on folio 107r – left blank by the main scribe – in the form of several «esercizi estemporanei di versificazione» in Latin (Rollo 2005, 318), written in Pilato’s characteristic Gothic chancery hand. It is plausible that he brought these two units with him to Italy at the end of his stay in Constantinople; however, as is known, he died in the Adriatic Sea during the return journey. His books, nonetheless, survived, according to Petrarch, and once they reached Venice they were likely purchased by a collector or merchant, remaining in the Veneto-Lombard region.
From there, the manuscript passed into the hands of Greek scholars active in Milan during the second half of the 15th century, including Filippo Feruffini (d. 1490), a jurist and diplomat connected to the Sforza family; Giovanni Crastone (fl. 15th c.), a Carmelite monk from Piacenza and friend of Francesco Filelfo (1398-1481), active in Milan between 1475 and 1495 alongside Bonaccorso Pisano, and later with Giorgio Merula and Giorgio Galbiati, within the flourishing Greek printing activity of the period; and Kostantinos Laskaris (1434-1501), a Greek grammarian and humanist in the service of the Sforza family from 1476 to 1491. The presence of these three hands, all associated with the Milanese milieu, suggests that it may have been in Milan, during the 15th century, that the three units were bound together under a single cover, giving the manuscript its present form.
Several ownership notes survive in the codex: Φίλιππος ὁ Φερουφίνος φιλέλλην καὶ φιλολογος ἰδία χειρὶ ἔγραψεν (f. 107v); est Benedicti καὶ τὄν φίλὄν (f. 117r); ἀδελφὸς Ἰωάννης ὁ πλακεντῖνος καρμελίτης, φίλτατος τοῦ κυρίου Φιλίππου τοῦ Φερουφίνου (f. 123v). These notes suggest that the codex may have been donated by Feruffini to Crastone, who copied the third unit. Laskaris, in turn, wrote folio 118r in the second unit, transcribing the first seventeen lines of Hesiod’s Scutum.
The reunification of the three units thus seems to have been brought together on thematic grounds: all transmit poetic texts and share certain affinities in the selection and presentation of their contents.
Bibliography: Martini ― Bassi 1906, 464-466 (description of the codex); Schultz 1910, 12-13 (analysis on Scutum’s scholia); Wendel 1914, X (edition of scholia vetera); Sinclair 1932, L; Gow 1950, XXXVII (description of the codex); Pérez Martín 1992, 81 n. 60 (for the hypothesis that the codex served as a source for the Theocritean florilegium in Par. gr. 2298, recopied by Patriarch Gregory II of Cyprus and some of his collaborators); Westerink 1992, XXV (on Poema 30, In maledicum insensatum by Michael Psellos); Gallavotti 19933, 300 (short description of the manuscript; edition of Idylli); Hicks 1993, 4; Corrales Pérez 1994, 43 (for a philological study of the codex in relation to Hesiod’s Scutum); Pérez Martín 1996, 84 (short description of the manuscript, and about one of its owners, Filippo Feruffini); Martínez Manzano 1998, 38, 40, 78 (about Konstantinos Laskaris, owner of the manuscript); Rollo 2005, passim (concerning the relationship of the codex with Leonzio Pilato and his arrival in Italy from Constantinople); Martano 2008, 563 n. 72 (on the so-called Parafrasi Anonima handed down by the iii unit); De Groote 2012, XXXVI; Hernández Oñate 2019, 116 n. 28 (about epigram Anth. Pal. 9.205, attributed to Artemidoros of Tarsus, which appears in the prolegomena of the codex); Giacomelli 2021, 341 n. 111 (about the textual transmission of scholium in Theocritum IV 7a [136, 13-20 Wendel]); Meliadò 2021, 63, 66 et passim (concerning the tradition of the Theocritean scholia).