Original scientific paper

The Correspondence of Archbishop Maffeo Vallaresso as Source for the History of Croatian Humanism

Darko Novaković ; Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu

Abstract

Venetian patrician Maffeo Vallaresso became archbishop of Zadar in 1450, remaining in office until the end of his life in 1494. As well as having this half-century-long role in the life of the church in Zadar, Vallaresso was witness to and participant in the expansion of the Humanist movement on the eastern shores of the Adriatic. We meet Vallaresso’s name in the manuscript catalogues of the libraries in Bologna, Venice, San Daniele de Friuli and the Vatican. The biggest and without doubt the most important codex with his writings lies in the Apostolic Library (Barb. lat. 1809/XXIX 153/). Attention was drawn to this manuscript, which contains the archbishop’s extensive correspondence during his time in Croatia, more than a century ago by distinguished ecclesiastical historian and archaeologist Msgr Luka Jelić (»Regestum litterarum zadarskoga nadbiskupa Mafeja Vallaressa /1449-1496 god./«, Starine JAZU XXIX, Zagreb, 1898, pp. 33-94). In this paper Jelić, partially integrally and partially with considerable abridgements, published more than a fifth of the letters, mainly from the first two hundred pages. He was convinced that Vallaresso’s letterbook was »a mirror of public and private life in Dalmatia during the second half of the 15th century«, and intended to publish it whole. Although he lived almost another quarter of a century, for reasons we can only guess at, he did not succeed in this. giuseppe Zippel published three letters to Vallaresso by Šimun Dubrovčanin, chaplain of Cardinal Pietro Barbo, from the days immediately preceding Barbo’s election as pope, when he took the name Paul II. Two Vallaresso’s letters related to the liberation of Bishop of Modruš Nikola were published by giovanni Mercati, subsequently also by Mislav Elvis Lukšić. We find in Vallaresso’s correspondence letters addressed to very well known persons such as – for illustration only, and restricting the list to the first four letters of the alphabet -Ermolao Barbaro the Elder (1410-1471), Francesco Barbaro (1390-1454), Marco (1420-1491), Niccolò (1420-1462), Paolo (1416-1462) and Pietro Barbo (the future Pope Paul II, 1417-1471), Candiano Bollani (1413-1478),Fantino Dandolo (1379-1459), Domenico de’ Domenichi (1416-1478). This paper investigates Vallaresso’s correspondence with two Italian (Venetian) Humanists: with Lauro Quirini (about 1420 – beween 1475 and 1479) and Lorenzo Zane (1429-1484) and the only Croatian Humanist, Ivan Sobota (? – 1467). The correspondence with Quirini belongs to the very beginning of the arch-bishop’s period of office (1451-1453) and shows Vallaresso to be a philologically well-versed prelate and an impassioned collector of manuscripts. The two Humanists exchanged commentaries on authors of Antiquity: of Pseudo-Acron on Horace, Pseudo-Cornutus on Persius, Donatus’ commentaries on Terence, Victorinus’ commentaries on Cicero’s De inventione (Ars vetus), of Asconius Pedianus on Cicero, and an anonymous commentary on Juvenal. Vallaresso was also interested in contemporary philological work, and asked Quirini to find out if it was true that Lorenzo Valla had written a commentary on Cicero’s speeches and Quintilian’s declamations. Lorenzo Zane, archbishop of Split, 1452-1473, appears as recipient or sender on 34 letters in the Vallaresso collection, covering the period from the beginning of 1456 to the middle of 1467. Both correspondents show that they are impressively well-read in the writers of Antiquity, with allusions to, paraphrases and quotations from, Cicero, Persius, Seneca, Suetonius, Livy, Juvenal, Plautus, Horace and Pliny the Younger. Reference to an ancient authority had no mere ornamental function but was often a concluding proof. It can also be seen from the letters that these two writers exchanged manuscripts. It was Franjo Rački in 1867 who first drew attention to Ivan Sobota (or Sabota), publishing five of his letters to the Venetian patrician Pietro Morosini. In his transcript of the Barberini codex, Luka Jelić included one of the six letters in which Sobota is expressly mentioned as sender. Independently of Jelić, Arnaldo Segarizzi published in 1905 all six letters, clearly convinced that this was all that in Vallaresso’s letterbook derived from the hand of Sobota. Although he did not embark on any precise dating, the Italian researcher did say that this was a friendship that predated Vallaresso’s advancement in 1450: in five of the six letters, the recipient is only Maffeo Vallaresso, without any mention of his office. More attentive analysis of the contents shows that one letter certainly derived from the end of the 1430s, for Sobota figures as mediator between Maffeo and his father, Zorzi, rector of Trogir, in 1438. One of the letters was written after January 1443, for it refers to the death of the well-known condottiere gattamelata. But apart from Ivan Sobota (Iohannes Sobotae), »Ivan of Trogir« (Io. Tra. or Io. Trag.) also appears several times in the codex as either sender or recipient. Segarizzi does not have a word to say of this, while Jelić at the end of his work, in the list of letters that should be dated, mentioned three titles in which the Trogir man was mentioned. In fact, there are twice as many of these: the Trogir man was the author of four, and the addressee of two. The position of the letters in the codex, the stylistic features and above all the complementarity of the contents with some of the letters published by Segarizzi lead us to identify Ivan of Trogir with Ivan Sobota. Vallaresso’s correspondence is an important source for the understanding of the history of the studia humanitatis on the Croatian coast of the Adriatic. Irrespective of differences in their estates, home ground or ethnicity, in Vallaresso’s correspondents it is easy to see the typically Humanist concern for the shaping of the linguistic message. In Zadar, important texts of ancient Latin writers were copied out at the order of the archbishop; on the threshold of the gutenberg era, manuscripts were regularly exchanged with the letters, and commercium litterarum and commercium codicum can often not easily be distinguished from each other.

Keywords

Maffeo Vallaresso; epistolography; studia humanitatis; Croatian Humanism; Lauro Quirini; Lorenzo Zane; Ivan Sobota

Hrčak ID:

79573

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/79573

Publication date:

5.4.2012.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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