A note on the Latin texts

by Christopher Francese

Our text of the Syntra was taken initially from Cerdá y Rico (1781, 261–264). The textual history of the Syntra is discussed by Serrano y Sanz (1903, 403–404). The work was first printed after Luisa's death, in Paris in 1566, thanks to the efforts of the French diplomat Juan Nicot, who was the French ambassador to Lisbon and a friend of Diogo Sigeo. There were three later printed editions, of which that of Cerdá y Rico is one. Serrano y Sanz consulted a manuscript of the Syntra in provincial library of Toledo (now subsumed in the Library of Castilla-La Mancha). This manuscript has evidently yet to be digitized and was not available to us. Stevenson (2005, 551) lists its shelf mark as Toledo Biblioteca Pública 3.38. Serrano y Sanz prints the version of the Toledo manuscript. He suggests (p. 404) that the manuscript probably represents Luisa's corrected draft, and that the deviations from that version in the printed editions are emendations by Nicot or one of his humanist friends. Nicot's version is generally more readable, so we have kept that traditional text. In the final line of the poem, however, the Nicot text is arguably less clear than that printed by Serrano y Sanz, and the latter helps to explicate the former. We have discussed that in the notes. The following is a list of all the variations between the texts of Cerdá y Rico and Serrano y Sanz, excluding orthographic variants.

The text of the letters is that of Bourdon and Sauvage (1970). In that case a manuscript has been digitized  (Madrid National Library, MS 18672/98), and we consulted that in cases of doubt. 

In both cases we added macrons and made minor changes in orthography and punctuation as we thought best in the interest of readability.

References

Bourdon, L. and O. Sauvage. 1970. “Recherches sur Luisa Sigea,” Bulletin des études portuguaises 31: 33–176. 

Cerdá y Rico, Francisco. 1781. Clarorum Hispaniorum opuscula selecta et rariora, tum Latina tum Hispana, magna parte nunc primum in luce edita, vol. 1.  Madrid: Antonio de Sancha.

Pérez, Raúl Amores. 2008. “Biografía de Luisa Sigea Toledana. Una taranconera del siglo XVI en la corte portuguesa y española.” In Melchor Cano y Luisa Sigea: Dos figuras del renacimento español, 167–265. Seminario de Estudios Renacentistas Conquenses. Tarancón: Excmo. Ayuntamiento de Tarancón.

Serrano y Sanz, Manuel. 1905. Apuntes para una biblioteca de escritores españolas desde el año 1401 al 1833. Tomo II. Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra. Pp. 394–471. Introduction (pp. 394–403), full Latin texts of the Syntra (pp. 403–405), letters, and Colloquium. 

Stevenson, Jane. 2005. Women Latin Poets: Language, Gender, and Authority from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press.