«Copia d’una pistola mandata a uno amico sanato d’una gravissima infirmità»: per l’attribuzione a Piero Bonaccorsi di una lettera anonima nelle miscellanee di prose fiorentine

The article proposes the attribution to the Florentine notary Piero Bonaccorsi (1410-1477) of Copia d’una pistola mandata a uno amico sanato d’una gravissima infirmità (Copy of an epistle sent to a friend cured of a serious illness), a letter preserved in anonymous form in sixteen Florentine manuscripts of the 15th century, which collected together rhetorical-civil texts. Starting from the discovery of the untraceable private codex Kraus lot 491, in which the notary’s name appears at the end of the epistle, the essay examines the sources (mainly biblical and patristic) mentioned in the letter. Most of them coincide in fact with texts transcribed, quoted or certainly known by Piero Bonaccorsi. A stylistic comparison is then carried out between the anonymous epistle and Bonaccorsi’s other writings. Finally, the essay presents the recensio of the manuscripts transmitting the letter, to which two new acquisitions are added, and provides the first complete edition of the text, based on the codex Kraus.