Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia

This article gathers data about the circulation of the ‘Convivio’ in Florence in the last decades of the 14th century. Evidence relating to Coluccio Salutati and manuscripts in the Biblioteca Laurenziana (Ashb. 842 and plut. 90 sup. 134) is followed by an assessment of the ‘Questio que scientiarum vel artium nobilitate perfulgeat an medicine an legis’ by the doctor Bernardo di ser Pistorio da Firenze, which provoked Salutati’s reply in ‘De nobilitate legum et medicine’. Analysis of a lengthy Latin quotation from the ‘Convivio’ in the ‘Questio’ furnishes a proof that the manuscript used, which is no longer extant, preserved good readings in place of errors that are now features of the archetype of Dante’s work – which is in accord with what is known of the earliest readers of the ‘Convivio’ in the 30s and 40s of the 14th century.