Among his successors
were Filippo Villani and Filelfo. Bologna was the first to follow the
example of Florence, Benvenuto da Imola having begun his lectures,
according to Tiraboschi, so early as 1375. Chairs were established also
at Pisa, Venice, Piacenza, and Milan before the close of the century. The
lectures were delivered in the churches and on feast-days, which shows
their popular character. Balbo reckons (but this is guess-work) that the
MS. copies of the _Divina Commedia_ made during the fourteenth century,
and now existing in the libraries of Europe, are more numerous than those
of all other works, ancient and modern, made during the same period.
Between the invention of printing and the year 1500 more than twenty
editions were published in Italy, the earliest in 1472. During the
sixteenth century there were forty editions; during the seventeenth,--a
period, for Italy, of sceptical dilettanteism,--only three; during the
eighteenth, thirty-four; and already, during the first half of the
nineteenth, at least eighty. The first translation was into Spanish, in
1428.[44] M. St. Rene Taillandier says that the _Commedia_ was condemned
by the inquisition in Spain; but this seems too general a statement, for,
according to Foscolo,[45] it was the commentary of Landino and
Vellutello, and a few verses in the _Inferno_ and _Paradiso_, which were
condemned.
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