Mutilus praeterea est in fine, ubi non multa quidem
sed tamen aliqua desiderantur." Muratori's text breaks off in the middle
of a sentence at the end of the nineteenth (i.e. the last full) quire of
our MS., and accordingly lacks only the seventeen lines contained on the
next leaf, which is the last. If, as seems quite possible, the quiring
of the two MSS. is the same, the loss of the single unprotected leaf at
the end is the more readily explained.
In 1591 there was published at Bergamo an abridged Italian version, made
from an illuminated MS. which had once belonged to the famous library of
Matthias Corvinus, but was then in the possession of Caterino Zeno,
governor of Bergamo. It had been among the spoils carried to
Constantinople after the capture of Buda by the Turks in 1526. There,
seven years later, it had been bought and carried back to Italy by
Caterino's father, the younger Nicolo, who, in 1558, first gave to the
world the narrative of his ancestors' voyages. For no better reasons
than that the Paduan MS. also was illuminated in gold and colors, and
that it had been bought twenty-five years before (c.
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