Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.31724/rihjj.52.1.9
Butar in Stampa – Marulić’s Letters to Venice as a Way to Publication
Neven Jovanović
orcid.org/0000-0002-9119-399X
; Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu
Abstract
In 1992 Miloš Milošević published seven unknown autograph letters by Marko Marulić, written in 1501–1515 and addressed to Jerolim Cipci, the archdeacon of the Split chapter, and to Jacopo Grasolari, the curate of the Venetian church of Sant’Aponal; the letters are preserved in the State Archives of Venice. The three letters to Cipci are in Italian, all were written in 1501; the remaining four (1502–1515) are all to Grasolari. The connecting theme of the letters are Marulić’s literary works and his attempts to publish some of them. In the first letter to Cipci (19 July 1501) Marulić mentions his epic poem in Croatian, the Judith, written in the „Slavic” language which is the lengua nostra materna for both Cipci and Marulić, and the achievement enables Marulić to compare himself to Dante (direte che anchora la lengua schiava ha el suo Dante) – but Marulić does so, ironically, in a letter written in Italian (more precisely, in its veneziano coloniale variant, used in the territories ruled by the Republic of Venice). Marulić and Cipci (who died in 1502) were longtime friends. According to the 1501 letter, Cipci was already trying to get Marulić’s De institutione bene uiuendi per exempla sanctorum printed (it will be published only in 1507, after a permission for its publication was granted on 25 February 1503 by the Venetian senate to the priest Francesco Consorti from Lucca). Marulić addressed to Cipci the dedicatory letter (in Latin) with which De institutione opens, in which the author explains the intention of the work, and extols his friend’s enthusiasm for literature; Marulić claims that Cipci’s talents make his friend an ideal sponsor of the book. With the letter of 19 July 1501 Marulić introduces another of his works, a newly written short treatise on sufferings of Christians at the hands of the infidels (the treatise was not preserved), and asks Cipci to help get it published quickly (butar in stampa). Jacopo Grasolari (after 1450–1534), considered a minor Venetian humanist by Margaret L. King, was, together with Francesco Consorti, involved in publishing Marulić’s books. The first edition of the De institutione has at the end a short Grasolari’s letter to the reader; the letter praises Marulić, as the author and a perfect Christian, and introduces a list of Errata in the book, prepared by Consorti. But Grasolari was not mentioned in the colophon of the edition (there are only names of Consorti and the printer Bernardino Vitali). Expressions and ideas used by Grasolari in the letter seem to be inspired by the correspondence with Marulić; Marulić describes Grasolari’s engagement as cura and opera. When Marulić asks Grasolari to send him copies of the Euangelistarium, another of Marulić’s works printed by Consorti, this suggests that Grasolari controlled the distribution of the printed books. Cipci was instrumental in connecting Marulić with Grasolari. From the first Marulić’s letter to Grasolari, dated 10 March 1502, we conclude not only that Cipci spoke to Grasolari about Marulić, but that Grasolari then himself wrote to Marulić, referring in the letter to Cipci’s favourable words; Marulić’s preserved letter is actually a response to Grasolari (responding also to the question about the impending coming of the Antichrist, which was posed, I think, as a kind of test for Marulić). The main question of this paper is: why were Marulić’s letters to Cipci preserved together with Marulić’s letters to Grasolari, among Grasolari’s correspondence? I claim that it was not an accident. that Cipci gave Grasolari Marulić’s private letters to read. Circulating a private letter was a common practice in Renaissance and early modern epistolography, and Cipci wanted to show what kind of man Marulić is. Specifically, in the letters Marulić himself attests to how he coped with successive losses of his two brothers and mother to plague over a period of several months, how he received disturbing news of Ottoman raids and Hungarian-Croatian defeats in the neighboring region, how he endured wrongdoings by a relative and by a Venetian official – at the same time writing longer and shorter religious works in prose and in verse. So Cipci might have left the letters with Grasolari, and they must have (for an unknown reason) remained in the Venetian priest’s archive, filed together with Marulić’s letter to Grasolari himself. Marulić, an outsider who in 1501–1502 has not published anything yet, necessarily chose a different approach than, for example, Erasmus of Rotterdam, who just a couple of years later (in 1507, with letter 207 in Allen’s collection of Erasmus’s correspondence) sent his translations of Euripides to be printed by Aldus Manutius. In his letter Erasmus was explicit and businessmanlike, courteous but with concrete demands and conditions. Possible circulation of the letters to Cipci, together with the fact that the first letter introduces a trattadello written in Italian and the third one some sonetti, could have influenced Marulić’s choice of language as well (until now, the only reason considered was the customary use of Italian among the educated Dalmatian elite). Marulić’s letters to Grasolari, on the other hand, could have been in Latin because Grasolari had first chosen Latin to write to Marulić (as Erasmus wrote in Latin to Manuzio), thus acknowledging the humanist from Split as a fellow intellectual.
Keywords
Marko Marulić; humanistic letter-writing; publication; language use in epistolography; Renaissance humanism
Hrčak ID:
348006
URI
Publication date:
1.4.2026.
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