The Making and the Dating of the Gaffurius Codices: Archival Evidence and Research Perspectives

The Archive of the Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo di Milano, the vestry board of the cathedral, is home to a wealth of documents regarding the administrative history of the institution virtually since its foundation in the fourteenth century. Thanks to the efforts of previous scholars, significant documents regarding Franchinus Gaffurius’s Libroni emerged from the archive, but nobody has ever seriously tried to sift the Veneranda Fabbrica records in order to properly reconstruct the genesis of the four books. Even though scholars of the Libroni have dealt to some extent with their origins, the literature is still fraught with data and interpretations that need substantial revision. In the present chapter I will present many new documents directly or indirectly related to the genesis, making, and dating of the Libroni, as well as several improvements on the reading of documents published by previous scholars. As the crop of new data does not answer, alas, all the questions regarding the Libroni, I will also try to give the reader an idea of where the documentary evidence leaves us, and which paths look more promising for future research.