Though sixty years old, Mario Roques’ discussion of the French versions of Albertano has not yet been bettered: M[ario] R[oques], ‘Traductions françaises des traités moraux d’Albertano de Brescia. Le livre de Melibee et de Prudence par Renaut de Louhans,’ in Histoire littéraire de la France, etc., 37, Paris, 1938, pp. 488-506. The vernacular ‘census’ adds source material and more recent bibliography but does not improve on his fine discussion.
Among the French versions we have a rhymed Ars loquendi from around 1400 (one of the three manuscripts has the date 1407). Basing their text on Robinet Macé’s Rouen print of about 1500-1501, we have an edition of this short work prepared by Anatole [de Courde] de Montaiglon & James de Rothschild, in their Recueil de poésies françoises des XVe et XVIe siècles, etc., X, Paris, 1875, pp. 351-363. This edition now being out of copyright, their text (15k *.zip file) is available here.
A recent work attempting to link Albertano and Christine de Pizan is available only on CD-ROM: Christina Schimmer, Wie Christine de Pizan die Werke ihrer Kollegen der schreibenden Zunft, allen voran Albertano von Brescias "Melibeus", rezipierte. 77 sides on CD-ROM, Marburg, Tectum-Verlag, 2000 (ISBN 3-8288-5064-2, price DM 68,00). Schimmer’s work appears, unfortunately, to be a masters thesis (and not a good one at that) released on CD-ROM and described as a ‘book’ perhaps for vanity. While the topic is a very valid one and is certainly worth exploring, Schimmer reaches no useful conclusions and is in any case looking in the wrong place. For a possible link between Christine and Albertano we still only have the brief mentions in my own paper given at the Brescia conference of 1994 and mentioned above at the main Albertano page.
Angus Graham.
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