Una o trina? Le epistole di Raimbaut de Vaqueiras al marchese Bonifacio

This article intends to reopen the debate about the structure of Raimbaut de Vaqueiras’ epistles to Marques Boniface I, in order to establish whether they are actually three autonomous texts concerning the poet’s friendship with his patron, composed at different times, or whether the text was composed at one specific time in the Orient. The first hypothesis, put forward by Schulz-Gora, would appear to be confirmed by the fact that each text refers to events that occurred at different times and in different places. The second hypothesis, supported by Crescini, claims that the tradition of a single poem in antichronological order as found in the manuscripts is the correct structure and that the poem was composed at Thessalonica or Constantinople in the spring of 1205. This paper will reconsider Schulz-Gora’s interpretation and argue that the theory of a single text is inadequate because it does not give proper consideration to the different setting of each text, nor to the difficulty of placing their composition just before the disastrous defeat at Adrianopoli