2023

Puputti, Taneli

This study assesses the role of Pope Paul II (r. 1464-1471) and his library in the circulation of Flavio Biondo’s historiographical work Historiarum ab inclinatione Romanorum imperii decades. The manuscript copies of the Decades, currently among the Vaticani Latini of Vatican City, BAV, will be analyzed and compared to the early catalogues of the BAV (1475-1484), as most of Paul II’s books belong to the oldest parts of the Vaticani Latini section of that library. Through a palaeographical and codicological analysis as well as library history, we shall attempt to establish how the Decades copies arrived at the BAV and what role Pope Paul II had in this process.