On Famous Women

VIII

...human [life] is a trifle (1) and that the saying of the poet A reference to Ovid or Solon: "No man should be called happy until his death and funeral are over" is true: that we must wait for the final day to praise any man, and that no one should be called blessed before he dies and is buried.

Letter of the magnificent lord Astorre Manfredi Astorre Manfredi: Likely Astorre IV Manfredi (1485–1502), the young ruler of Faenza who was imprisoned and later killed; though the text specifies "Florentine prisons," he is most famously associated with the prisons of Rome sent to a splendid woman whom he loved most highly, from the Florentine prisons. To F. Branca (2) at his request. Most noble and courageous lady. It ends: From the darkness of the Florentine public prisons. Finis. Praise be to God.

In the present edition, this miscellaneous codex is always cited with the abbreviation Cod. B.

(1) Frivolous, undoubtedly an adjective, implies a noun which, in this place, could be thing original: "cosa" or something similar. However, when I had the Turin codex in my hands, I read it as fable original: "favola", and so it stands in the other codex that follows, and in the Florentine one mentioned further on; thus the word frivolous here is a creation of Vernazza Giuseppe Vernazza (1745–1822), an Italian diplomat and scholar known for his work on manuscripts.

(2) I took a copy of this letter and gave it as a gift to Cavalier Giovanni Ghinassi of Faenza, who published it in the Acts and Memoirs of the Royal Deputation of National History for the provinces of Romagna. Seventh Year (1868) p. 179 et seq. That orthographic sign which in Vernazza's manuscript can only be read as a capital F was, at that time, read and interpreted by me as an abbreviation for Sere or Messere Traditional Italian honorifics for a gentleman or master, and with such an interpretation Ghinassi published it, and the most illustrious Commendatore Zambrini also reproduced it in 1876.