ABSTRACT
This article consists of a modest series of addenda/corrigenda to Paul Jonathan Fedwick’s magisterial Bibliotheca Basiliana Vniversalis. 1 We can start with Gaspare Zacchi of Volterra (1425–1474), one time secretary to Cardinal Bessarion and bishop of Osimo from 1460 on. In the preface to his younger brother Mario for his translation of the works of St. Basil the Great, published in Rome in 1515, Raffaele Maffei of Volterra (1451–1522) explained that he had translated each work ex novo save for the sermon on the martyr Gordius, in which case he had revised a version originally done by his fellow volterrano Zacchi. 2 Fedwick took no notice of Zacchi’s lost translation, 3 but I once thought that I had discovered it in MS Theol. lat. oct. 163 of the Staatsbibliothek, Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz, in Berlin. A more attentive reading of its preface to Pope Nicholas V, however, revealed a different person. The translator described himself as an exilis episcopus 4 working at the papal court as a client of the pope 5 and offering to the pope what would be his first published translation. 6 Anonymus Episcopus explained that during Lent 7 he showed the translation to one of the pope’s translators, «Theodorus», who could only be Theodore Gaza, when Theodorus visited him in his cellula, 8 presumably at the Vatican (a rather modest residence for a bishop, which suggests that his bishopric had no real income; hence the qualifier exilis episcopus). Since Nicholas V died on 24 March 1455 and since Gaza first arrived in Rome in early 1450, 9 but would have needed a bit of time to establish himself at the papal court, the preface needs to be dated between 1451 and 1455. Who was this curial bishop? He, in fact, may have been Greek. He did not say that he was a novice in Greek; rather he said he was a beginner in translating into Latin. 10 Why would the pope patronize someone just learning Greek, whose Latin was also notably awkward? In any case, I have not been able to identify the anonymous translator. 11 Perhaps a more knowledgeable and insightful scholar will be able to do so on the basis of the preface edited below.
