A Fifteenth-Century Warmian Reworking of Petrarch’s "Liber sine nomine"

This article examines a reworking of Francesco Petrarca’s "Liber sine nomine" transmitted in a group of three mid-fifteenth-century manuscripts of German provenance—namely, Gdańsk, Biblioteka Gdańska Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 1947; Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, 1260; and Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 5354. The article brings to light the mechanisms of this rewriting—in which Italy and the principal Italian cities mentioned in Petrarch’s epistles Sine nomine are replaced by Prussia and the town of Olsztyn in Warmia—as well as its likely ideological aims. The study also considers the possible origin of this textual reworking and the historical and cultural context in which it may be situated.