The Lombard Cities, Empire, and Papacy in a Cleveland Manuscript

When Muratori undertook the task of editing the Rerum Italicarum Scriptores for the Società Palatina at Milan, the members of the society lent their help in searching out and purchasing manuscripts of needed works. Boncompagno's famous Liber de obsidione Anconae was long sought in vain. When it was at last discovered, ‘incolumis,’ Filippo Argelati, one of the chief sponsors of the society, and collector of a notable library, bought the manuscript, ‘nulli parcens pretio,’ and loaned it at once to Muratori for his edition. Muratori describes it thus in his preface: ‘Vetustus plane Codex est, nempe circiter Ann. 1340 scriptus, aliaque insuper non parvi momenti Historica complectitur, de quibus sermo fortasse recurret.’ The promise of further detail about the codex was not fulfilled in this preface, but two other works from it are edited in Muratori's Antiquitates Italicae. These are the Oculus pastoralis, which Muratori thinks Boncompagno may have written ‘adadulescentem quempiam nobilem erudiendum,’ and a collection of the letters exchanged by the podestà and communes of Brescia, Mantua, and other cities in the war against Eccelino in 1251. No mention is made of the contents of the manuscript, aside from these three items. Muratori described the mutilated condition of the Oculus pastoralis: ‘multa exciderunt, et quae pauca etiam supersunt, ab imperito Librario tam male habita sunt, ut aut erroribus, aut tenebris non raro deturpentur.’