Frontispiece,
I
Fatti e le Prodezze di Manoli Blessi, Strathioto
by Antonio Molino,
1561.
Having
seen two blogs in the past month that went on at some length about
Manoli Blessi, stratiote and poet/song-writer, I find it
necessary to say that Manoli Blessi never existed.
This
Manoli Blessi is a character invented by Antonio "Burchiella"
da Molino who wrote a very long account in verse of Blessi's life and
writings (Sathas 8: 78 pages of 8-line stanzas in double columns, and
who also created an extremely long marching-song by him (Sathas 9: 82
pages of 6-line stanzas in double columns.)
These
are written in greghesco, a 16th-century stage
impression of the Greek-Venetian dialect. We cannot know how closely
this represents the normal expression of second- or third- or
fourth-generation Greek-Venetians, but it is great fun.
Unde
è thora el gran Clemende,
capettagno
del Strathia,
e
chel Gerbessi valende
chie
tremar feva ’l Turchia,
con
chel Gigni del Fraschia
pien
de inzegno, e del secretti?
O
Strathiotti puveretti.
Dovè
e1 Stigni, e chel Canacchi,
Mexsa,
Lopossi, et Berbatti,
con
Andruzzo dal mustacchi,
Petro
Bua, com Stamatti,
chie
andama como ’l gatti
al
buscade andavan stretti?
O
Strathiotti puveretti.
What
is particularly striking to me here, is that these are all names of
individuals (and villages) from the Nauplion area (and mostly from
the period of Bartolomeo
Minio), and it is fascinating to find a work by a Venetian in
1561 that remembers Petro
Bua who died about 70 years earlier. These names certainly suggest something about Molino's informants.
What
is also striking is that Sathas (8: 471-2) prints the dedication of
Molino’s book which makes it very clear that Manoli Blessi is his
creation. Very few have noticed that. Sathas didn't notice it (4: lvii-lix; 7: liv-lxiii, which includes the image above). The
Ελληνική Βιβλιογραφία
(Athens, Grafeio dimosievmato tis
akadimias Athenon, 1984-86) didn’t notice it.
The dedication of Molino's book seems to have been written by a Lodovico Dolce. It assures the Magnifico e Valorosissimo Signore Giacomo Contarino, who probably paid for the printing, that Molino is a most honored citizen of Venice, ornamented with many virtures, and that since boyhood he has endeavored to master all the abilities of a civilized man. Molino has spent much of his life as a merchant, and while in Corfu and Candia he became interested in comedy. On his return to Venice, he started an academy of music, and to finance the academy, he took up writing comedies. There is more, about art purifying the soul, and the importance of Petrarch, Virgil, and Homer, and such, but that really has nothing to do with the life and works of Manoli Blessi.
This
entry has made use of Marc D. Lauxtermann,
"Linguistic Encounters: The Presence of Spoken Greek in
Sixteenth-Century Venice," in Renaissance Encounters: Greek
East and Latin West, edited by Marina S. Brownlee & Dimitri
H. Gondicas.
The
volumes of Sathas are downloadable here.