Per l’edizione critica del "Quadriregio" di Federico Frezzi: la collazione e la classificazione dei manoscritti attraverso la metodologia dei loci critici

This study represents a starting point for the reconstruction of a reliable, philologically sound text of the Quadriregio, a didactic allegorical poem in Dantean tercets, composed between the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries by Federico Frezzi, theologian and bishop of Foligno, who died in 1416. The investigation focuses on the modes of transmission of the poem and the possibility of reconstructing a common archetype, leading primarily the identification of the main manuscript groupings. The first chapter of the dissertation is devoted to the author, Federico Frezzi, and to the poem itself. It addresses the structure, questions concerning the title, the themes of the four realms, the language, literary models, and the poem’s reception. The second chapter contains descriptive entries for the thirty manuscripts transmitting the work, as well as those for the printed editions. This chapter thus gathers and completes the descriptions previously published by Enrico Filippini, Giuseppe Rotondi, and Ida Giovanna Rao. The third chapter focuses on the selection and application of the loci critici method to the manuscript tradition of the Quadriregio. Given the poem’s length – 12,101 hendecasyllabic lines – and the size of the manuscript corpus, it was necessary to adopt the loci critici method first proposed by Michele Barbi for Dante’s Commedia, and subsequently discussed by scholars such as Giorgio Petrocchi, Caterina Brandoli and Eugenio Mecca. The complete collation of six manuscripts – the oldest among those bearing a date – together with the addition of Pal. 343, made it possible to identify six groupings and to demonstrate the existence of the archetype. In the fourth chapter, the main results obtained through the collation and classification of the witnesses are discussed. Although some instances of contamination were detected, the overall reconstruction of the text remains viable. In fact, horizontal transmission, while present, is not as pervasive as in the model work, Dante’s Commedia. Comparative analysis of the witnesses revealed that the manuscript tradition of the Quadriregio is relatively compact, with few significant errors. This feature complicated the identification of loci critici and the full representation of the stemma codicum, to the extent that it became necessary to collate nine chapters of the poem in full to find a substantial number of significant errors. The conclusions offer a synthesis of the findings and future perspectives. It is proposed that research continue through further collations – both selective and complete – to refine the classification of the witnesses and more precisely define the tradition’s stemma. Although the collation work is ongoing, the results obtained thus far provide a solid foundation for a future critical edition, which could enhance our understanding of the literary and cultural value of the Quadriregio. Furthermore, reconstructing the text may offer new insights into the reception of Dante’s Commedia. Future directions include the completion of the collation process and the identification of internal relationships among the established manuscript groups, with the aim of achieving a more accurate and definitive representation of the manuscript tradition of this poem and preparing all necessary materials for the publication of its critical edition.