Il Livro del governamento dei re e dei principi secondo il codice BNCF II.IV.129. Vol. I. Introduzione e testo critico.

De regimine principum, one the most widely read treatises of the late Middle Ages, was composed by Giles of Rome in the years around 1280, and dedicated to the young heir to the French throne, future king Philip IV “the Fair”. The book—one of the first Western specula principis to draw on Aristotle’s moral and political philosophy—was immediately translated into French by Henri de Gauchy (Livre dou gouvernement des rois et des princes, 1282), and from French into Italian a few years later (Livro del governamento dei re e dei principi, 1288); translations into almost all European vernacular languages began to appear in the following decades (Castilian, Catalan, Portuguese, English, Flemish, German, Swedish, and Hebrew). I present here the critical edition of the Italian Governamento, probably composed in Siena by 1288; the edition is based on the most important surviving MS of the text: Fi BNC II.IV.129 (= Na), which is dated 1288 in the explicit, and which is characterised by a prevailing presence of Sienese linguistic traits within it.