Fonti e tradizioni culturali nella corrispondenza di Francesco Filelfo. Nuove indagini e percorsi metodologici, II. Schedografia medica

This paper investigates the role that medical sources play within Francesco Filelfo\u2019s epistolary collection, by focusing, in particular, on the letter V 1, sent to Catone Sacco, whose text is provided in Appendix. The in-depth historical and cultural analysis carried out, allows us to acquire important elements on the environment the epistle is referred to (specifically: the University of Pavia in mid Quattrocento); the detailed identification of precise quotations from Plutarch\u2019 Quaestiones convivales and from Aristotle\u2019s Problemata, makes it possible, for the first time, to recognize in the recovery of that classical tradition (answers per quaesita), a turning point in the tradition of Renaissance epistolography, to which Filelfo gave a decisive contribution and which would have found enormous fortune in the sixteenth century. The essay also dwells on a particular physiological interpretation of the last swan song discussed by Filelfo, later recalled by Erasmus of Rotterdam in his Adagia