{{Short description|Commonplace book}} A '''''zibaldone''''' (plural ''zibaldoni'') is an Italian vernacular commonplace book or notebook containing a wide variety of vernacular texts, copied into a small or medium-format paper codex<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-to-keep-a-zibaldone-a-13thcentury-answer-to-tumblr|title=How to Keep a Zibaldone, the 14th Century's Answer to Tumblr|last=Giaimo|first=Cara|date=2016-08-29|work=Atlas Obscura|access-date=2017-07-22|language=en}}</ref> by citizens in late-medieval and Renaissance Italian city-states.
==Origins and definition of "''zibaldone''"== First appearing during the mid-fourteenth century, the word ''zibaldone'' originally meant "a heap of things" or "miscellany" and was used in a poetic work by Franco Sacchetti, in the latter half of the fourteenth century.<ref>''Grande Dizionario della lingua italiana'', ed. Salvatore Battaglia, s.v. “zibaldone.” https://www.gdli.it/sala-lettura/vol/21?seq=1080</ref> By the second half of the Quattrocento, the word ''zibaldone'' was specifically used to describe “a notebook that could contain a blend of literature, elemental science, (such as astrology, cosmography etc), prayers, and above all, personal memoirs.”<ref>Murano, Giovanna. “Zibaldoni,” ''Scriptorium'', 67, 2013, 406.</ref>
Like memoirs, ''zibaldoni'' are also family books, inasmuch as they were also created within a domestic environment and intended for limited private circulation.<ref>De Rosa, Gabriele. Cicchetti and Mordenti ''I Libri di famiglia in Italia'' Vol. 1 of ''La Memoria familiare'' Rome, 1985, p. ix.</ref> They diverge, however, from the more well-known Italian memoirs from this period, which are known as ''ricordanze'', ''ricordi'', or ''libri segreti'', in significant way. Unlike the author of a memoir or diary, the compiler of a ''zibaldone'' was not primarily focused on recording biographical or historical documentation, but on collecting the most meaningful texts for their own edification and that of members of their family: “Though not private memoirs, and not quite public histories, ''zibaldoni'' were considered important containers of culture. Florentines took the transmission of their written culture as seriously as they did the transmission of the family name from one generation to the next.”<ref>Kaborycha, Lisa. “Copying Culture: Fifteenth-Century Florentines and Their Zibaldoni.” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2006, 103.</ref>
==Renaissance Florentine ''zibaldoni''== By far, the majority of ''zibaldoni'' were copied by Florentines, although other Italians were also compiling them, notably Venetian merchants, beginning in the fourteenth century. Venetian examples include the ''Zibaldone da Canal'' and ''The Book of Michael of Rhodes''.<ref>Pollick, Brian. “Copy That! The Cultural and Social Role of Late-Medieval Venetian Zibaldoni,” ARTiculate, Vol. 3, Fall 2019, University of Victoria, 5–31. https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/articulate/article/view/19318</ref> Due to the extremely high literacy rate in Florence of “at least 69.3% of the adult male population” in the fifteenth century, copying manuscripts was a very popular pastime there.<ref>Black, Robert. ''Education and Society in Florentine Tuscany: Teachers, Pupils and Schools c.1250-1500'' Brill, 2007, 42.</ref> Literary critic Vittore Branca has characterized these Florentines, who were not professional copyists, as “''copisti per passione'',” driven by a passion to compile and share the texts they considered valuable. Branca estimates that of the vast number of manuscripts they produced, more than 2,000 are still extant.<ref>Branca, Vittore. “''Copisti per passione, tradizione caratterizzante, tradizione di memoria,” in Studi e problemi di critica testuale. Convegno di Studi di Filologia italiana nel Centenario della Commissione per I Testi di Lingua (7-9 Aprile 1960)'', Bologna, 1961, p.70.</ref>
Though the majority of ''zibaldoni'' are anonymous, several compiled by well-known Florentine individuals have been the subject of scholarly studies, for instance Giovanni Boccaccio's three ''zibaldoni''.<ref>{{cite book |first=Claude |last=Cazalé Bérard |chapter=Boccaccio's Working Notebooks (''Zibaldone Laurenziano'', ''Miscellanea Laurenziana'', ''Zibaldone Magliabechiano'') |title=Boccaccio: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works |pages=307–318 |year=2013 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |editor1=Victoria Kirkham |editor2=Michael Sherberg |editor3=Janet Levarie Smarr}}</ref> and Giovanni di Paolo Rucellai’s ''Zibaldone quaresimale''<ref>Giovanni di Pagolo Rucellai Zibaldone; a cura di Gabriella Battista; prefazione di Anthony Molho. Firenze : SISMEL - Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2013.</ref><ref>''Giovanni Rucellai. ed il suo Zibaldone'', II, 2 vols., Studies by F.W. Kent, Alessandro Perosa, Brenda Preyer, Piero Sanpaolesi and Roberto Salvini. With an introduction by Nicolai Rubinstein. London: The Warburg Institute, University of London, 1960-1981.</ref> Similarly, the ''Rustici Codex'', a ''zibaldone'' notable for the detailed illustrations by its copyist, the goldsmith Marco di Bartolomeo has been the subject of academic scrutiny.<ref>''Codice Rustici: dimostrazione dell'andata o viaggio al Santo Sepolcro e al monte Sinai di Marco di Bartolomeo Rustici: facsimile del manoscritto della Biblioteca del Seminario arcivescovile maggiore di Firenze''. Olschki, 2015.</ref> Among Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks there are also writings that resemble ''zibaldoni''.<ref>Vecce, Carlo. “Word and image in Leonardo's writings” in ''Leonardo da Vinci, master draftsman'', edited by Carmen C. Bambach; with contributions by Carmen C. Bambach [and others]; with the assistance of Rachel Stern and Alison Manges. Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. https://books.google.it/books?id=QwQxDJMKRE4C&printsec=frontcover&redir_esc=y&hl=it#v=onepage&q&f=false</ref> Compiling these manuscripts was not limited to social elites like Rucellai, literary figures such as Boccaccio, or artists like Leonardo. As historian Dale Kent has shown, ''zibaldoni'' were copied by Florentines “in every rung of the social ladder of literate citizens, from Cosimo and Piero de’ Medici to soapmakers and saddlewrights.” And the texts they copied were as diverse as the copyists themselves: “Drawing on an extensive repertoire of devotional, antique, and civic literature, these informal personal books preserved the poetry, prose, songs, and snippets of valued information that comprised popular culture.”<ref>Kent, Dale. ''Cosimo de’ Medici and the Florentine Renaissance: The Patron’s Oeuvre'', Yale Univ. Press, 2000, 69.</ref>
==Texts that appear in ''zibaldoni''== The following partial list is representative of the variety of vernacular texts copied in ''zibaldoni'':<ref>Kaborycha, Lisa. “Copying Culture: Fifteenth-Century Florentines and Their Zibaldoni.” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2006, pp. ii-iii.</ref>
Pseudo-St. Bernard ''Epistle to Raymond''; ''The Rule of the Ancients'' - Theophrastus On marriage; ''Instructions on Taking a Wife and The Twelve Instructions for a Bride''; ''The Rosebush of Life''; Schiavo di Bari ''Doctrine''; Antonio Pucci ''The Annoyances''; Aesop ''Three Fables''; Seneca and Pseudo-Quintilian ''Declamations''; Albertano da Brescia ''The Doctrine of Speaking and Remaining Silent''; Two Treatises on Rhetoric; Stefano Porcari ''Speech to the Signoria of Florence''; Giovanni Boccaccio ''Epistle to Pino de’ Rossi''; Brigida Baldinotti ''Epistle to the Sisters of Santa Maria Nuova''; Ovid ''Heroides''; ''A Love Letter''; ''The Virtues of Rosemary''; Pope Innocent III’s Eye Remedy; On the Care of Women’s Bodies; “Sator arepo” and Book of Dreams; ''The Flowers of Virtue''; Pseudo-Aristotle ''The Secret of Secrets''; Aldobrandino of Siena ''On the Health of the Body''; Leonardo Bruni ''Antiochus and Stratonica''; ''Cantare of Pyramus and Thisbe''; Andreas Cappellanus ''The Rules of Love''; ''The Dialogues of Gregory the Great'' Three Tales; Domenico Cavalca ''Lives of the Holy Fathers'' “Saint Eustachius”; ''Flowers of the Philosophers'' “Secundus the Silent Philosopher”; ''The Story of the Woman Who Was Too Devoted to the Virgin Mary''; ''The Legend of Saint Albano''; Simone Forrestani da Siena (Saviozzo) ''The Girl Betrayed by Her Lover''.
==Later uses of the term ''zibaldone''== The word may also refer specifically to the book of philosophical reflections by the nineteenth-century Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi, the ''Zibaldone di pensieri'' often called simply ''The Zibaldone''.
Furthermore, there is a twice-yearly German-language journal entitled ''Zibaldone. Zeitschrift für italienische Kultur der Gegenwart'' (Journal for Italian Culture of the Present Day).<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.stauffenburg.de/asp/books.asp?id=863|title=Zibaldone - Zeitschrift fr italienische Kultur der Gegenwart|website=www.stauffenburg.de|language=de|access-date=2017-07-22}}</ref>
==References== {{Reflist}}
{{Authority control}}
Category:History of books Category:Notebooks Category:Diaries Category:Memoirs Category:Italian-language manuscripts Category:Miscellanies