Subject of my doctoral thesis

Hopefully, this is going to be my longest blog post. I intend to keep the rest of my posts short for the purpose of not using too much time on the blog alone. Below I try to lay down the subject of my doctoral thesis. I try to be as clear as I can and to avoid using too confusing language. Obviously, I cannot write about my topic conclusively, that is reserved for my actual thesis. However, I find it helpful to write my thought process in a more relaxed manner. This might help me organize my thoughts and bring up new ideas regarding my research. 

But now to the topic!

In my doctoral thesis I aim to identify, compile and analyze the surviving copies of Flavio Biondo’s Decades. Flavio Biondo (1392-1463), one of the most important humanists of the time, wrote a history from the decline of the Roman empire. Historiarum ab inclinatione Romanorum imperii decades depicts the events of medieval Italy and other European regions. It starts from the Sack of Rome in 410 and continues to Biondo's own time to 1440s. The work is divided into three decades, each containing ten books. There are also two books of the fourth decade, but it was never finished due to the authors death. These 32 books, according to Biondo himself, served as a continuation of classical histories, which after Orosius were seized to be written. It filled the gap of 1030 years of history, which no one had yet compiled into single volume. By doing so, he inadvertently came to write about the period, which his contemporaries like Poggio Bracciolini and Leonardo Bruni dubbed as Middle Ages. The Decades, finished sometime before 1453, started to circulate already before its completion around Europe and it consequently spread wide during the following century. Thus I intend to find answers to the following questions:

1. Who read and owned the copies of Decades in the period between c. 1440 and c. 1600?
2. In which textual forms did Decades spread during the aforementioned time period?
3. What was the geographical circulation of Decades during the time period?
4. Why did the people of the era want to read and own Decades?

The study is conducted using book historical and philological methodology. This includes using paleography to analyze the handwriting of the manuscripts as well as codicology to analyze the physical book, its measures, material, collation etc. The owners of the copies are identified using ex libris -markings and other data. If and when there are marginalia in the copies, they need to be analyzed and identified.

The corpus of my research consists of the surviving manuscript copies of Decades as well as its fifteenth-century printed copies. There are 30 surviving manuscript copies and several printed copies. The first printed edition was made in 1483 in Venice by printer Ottaviano Scoto. The second edition came the following year, also printed in Venice, but this time by Thomas de Blavis. These copies form the main corpus of my study. Alongside the copies of Decades, I intend to also study the abbreviated versions of the work. Humanist pope Pius II wrote his Abbreviatio supra Decades Blondi in the 1460s and it immediately was widely read. It was first printed in Rome and it encompassed the abbreviated versions of the first 20 books of Decades.

Previous scholarship has maintained that Decades, supposedly considered linguistically and rhetorically weak by fifteenth-century readers, would only have gained popularity in the second quarter of the sixteenth century. In the light of surviving manuscripts and incunables, this claim needs to be reviewed. The purpose of Decades is multi-layered. It was at the same time a critical historiographical work written in humanistic Latin, a propagandistic  text legitimizing papal power and a pedagogical guide teaching secular rulers in right decision-making. Because of these multiple layers, it is important to uncover who read and wanted to own Decades.