The Romance translations of Guido delle Colonne’s Historia destructionis Troiae as a tool to establish the original text in Latin

Abstract

Messina’s judge Guido delle Colonne spread all over Europe the Matter of Troy in his own Historia destructionis Troiae, which achieved a rapid dissemination in the form of handwritten copies (over 200), translations into the different European languages and printed editions published in the early years of the printing press. The only modern edition of this work is the one published by Griffi n in 1936, limited because of the selection of manuscripts considered by him. Comparing the Catalan translation of this work with the text edited by Griffi n, with other translations (Italian, French, Aragonese or Spanish) and with other Latin manuscripts not taken into account by the American scholar and with some of the incunabula, shows that certain passages of the Latin text should be reviewed, whether because they were omitted in the 1936 edition or because they should be edited according to the right variant. All this shows that, methodologically, translations of a medieval work are a fundamental instrument for the collatio textus when ascertaining the original text, especially being a work that can be found in hundreds of manuscripts and with such a complex dissemination across Europe.