Basinio da Parma´s Hesperis - A digital Critical Edition

No tourist who visits the city of Rimini today can miss visiting the famous Tempio Malatestiano, the cathedral of Rimini. In the fifteenth century, Sigismondo Malatesta (14171468) embellished the church on a grand scale and made it a memorial to his own honour. One of the earliest descriptions of the Tempio is contained in the first large-scale epic poem of the Italian renaissance, Basinio da Parmas Hesperis, a poem whihc follows in the footsteps of Virgils Aeneid. In its thirteen books, the poem describes the battles of Sigismondo against his enemies from Naples, Alfonso and Ferdinand of Aragon. During the conflicts Sigismondo became a unifying figure for the whole of Italy. Besides dramatic battle descriptions, numerous elements of fantasy also appear in the piece, including, for instance, the remarkable scene in which Sigismondo is told him his own future after being brought to the Island of the Blessed. Although the Hesperis is one of the most important poems of the Italian quattrocento, there is no modern edition of the text and no translation exists. We still have to rely on the edition published by Lorenzo Drudi in 1794 (!), which was completed on the basis of one single manuscript. In the preliminary research for this application we have discovered twelve manuscripts of the Hesperis, some of them with exquisite illustrations. It is the aim of this project to produce a modern critical edition of the Hesperis by collating all the manuscripts known today. As the result will not be a typical printed book, but rather a digital edition, it will be possible for the user to switch directly from the critical text to digitized and transcribed manuscripts, to the translation, or to the commentary section where the historical background especially, literary sources, and parallels to other passages in Basinios oeuvre can be explained in detail. We will present and discuss our approach to digital philology at an international conference and we will hopefully be able to establish new standards for online editions of Neo-Latin texts.

Basinio da Parma (1425-1457) had a special significance for Neo-Latin literature: he was the first humanist to succeed in writing an epic poem that also approached its great models Homer and Virgil in macrostyle. In the 13 books of his Hesperis, he describes the battles that Sigismondo Malatesta (1417-1468) had to fight at the head of united Italian troops against the King of Naples Alfonso of Aragon (1396-1458) and his son Ferrante (1423-1494). The project Basinio da Parma's Hesperis - A Digital Critical Edition set itself the task of replacing the old edition of this epic poem presented by Lorenzo Drudi in 1794 as part of the opera praestantiora edition and making a new critical text also available digitally. An English translation of the text should contribute to its wider reception. In addition, the significance of Basinio's poetry for the history of literature should be highlighted and his Hesperis should be more firmly anchored in Neo-Latin research. Due to various external factors, not all the goals of the project could be fully achieved: Only Book 1 of the Hesperis is available in digital form, and the critical text has not yet been completed. However, the English translation with a newly revised Latin text penned by Simon Smets is ready. Likewise, a German translation (prepared by Christian Peters) was co-supervised for publication. Numerous lectures on Basinio and his Hesperis have been given, and a number of articles are available. A conference on Basinio held in Rimini in May 2022 was a great success and met with great interest, not only locally. The proceedings of this conference are currently being prepared for publication. All staff members who worked on the project (one PostDoc, two PreDocs) were able to further their academic careers. Two people left during the project because they got better or long-term job offers. There will continue to be a collaboration between PI Florian Schaffenrath and Anna Chisena for the completion of the critical text.