oa Publishing in Laurentian Florence: Jacopo di Poggio Bracciolini’s Edition of Poggio’s Historiae Florentini populi

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Poggio Bracciolini’s (1380-1459) eldest son, Jacopo (1442-1478), was not only an author in Latin and the vernacular but also an accomplished scribe. A staunch republican, he was executed in the aftermath of the failed Pazzi conspiracy against Medici rule in 1478. His most important project was the Latin edition (1472) and vernacular translation (by 1474) of his father’s last, incomplete work, Historiae Florentini populi, an alternative history of Florence. Half of Poggio’s unfinished Latin text is transmitted in a modest paper draft from c. 1500. Jacopo rearranged and completed all of the text in refined Humanist Latin and dedicated it to Frederick of Montefeltro, then count of Urbino. Jacopo’s edition is transmitted in copies of the fifteenth century, the luxurious dedication copy in parchment (Vat. lat. 491), carefully supervised by Jacopo, and another luxury manuscript, both probably produced in the bottega of Vespasiano da Bisticci; and in the sixteenth century by two much more modest paper manuscripts. Jacopo’s publishing project also covered the dissemination of the work in his own vernacular version, in a few luxury manuscripts and in print. While the Latin text was only finally printed in 1715 by G. B. Recanati, the vernacular version, Istoria fiorentina, appeared in 1476, financed by Girolamo di Carlo Strozzi (1441/2-1481/2) and printed at the Venetian printing house of Jacques Le Rouge in 1476. The print ensured the success of the vernacular text well beyond Jacopo’s political disgrace in 1478.