Original scientific paper
he Earliest Testimonies of Frane Petrić: Christian Gottlieb Jocher, His Sources and Other Biographical Lexicons from the Beginning of the Seventheenth to the Middle of the Eighteenth Century
Davor Balić
orcid.org/0000-0002-4656-6750
; Odsjek za filozofiju, Filozofski fakultet, Sveučilište Josipa Jurja Strossmayera u Osijeku, Lorenza Jägera 9, HR-31000 Osijek
Abstract
Influential Allgemeines Gelehrten-Lexicon (1750-1751) compiled by German lexicographer Christian Gottlieb Jocher (1694-1758) in its third volume contains an entry on the Cres Renaissance philosopher Frane Petrić (Franciscus Patricius, 1529-1597). In the endeavour to establish which information had been available to Jocher and in the attempt to determine which information he used in so doing, I studied the sources of his entry on Petrić. Out of the nine sources listed at the end of his entry, the German lexicographer consulted only the work Les Eloges des hommes savans of Antoine Teissier from 1683 and the second edition of the work Dictionaire historique et critique of Pierre Bayle from 1702. I hereby note that information on Petrić is not included in the oldest and most recent of Jocher’s sources: neither in the work Elogia illustrium Belgii scriptorum of Aubert Le Mire from 1602, nor in any of the 43 volumes of the work Memoires of Jean-Pierre Niceron published in the period from 1727 to 1745. The remaining five sources contain valuable information on Petrić, but Jocher failed to consult them. For instance, in his work Pinacotheca from 1645, Gian Vittorio Rossi considered Paralleli militari to be the best work of Petrić, whereat he mediated the sentence in which Joseph Juste Scaliger praised Petrić as military theoretician. In the second volume of the work De scriptoribus from 1649, Iacopo Gaddi informed us on the content of Petrić’s works Della historia diece dialoghi and Della Poetica, whereas Lorenzo Crasso in his work Elogii d’huomini letterati from 1666 concluded that Petrić, due to the fact that in the work Discussiones peripateticae he attempted to disprove the peripatetic philosophy, paved the way for Pierre Gassendi and Rene Descartes. English biographer Thomas-Pope Blount in his work Censura celebriorum authorum from 1690 bibliographically edited five German editions of Petrić’s work Magia philosophica, and Niccolo Comneno Papadopoli in his work Historia gymnasii patavini from 1726 established information about two professors of Petrić from his study of philosophy (Lazzaro Bonamico from Bassana and Marco Antonio Passeri from Genova), but he also noted the information that Petrić was twice listed in the register of Dalmatians as their Consiliarius. Insight into Jocher’s sources not only sheds light on his lexicographical work, but also reveals paths through which information on life and work of Frane Petrić found its way through biographical lexicons and related editions. Besides the sources of Jocher’s entry on Petrić, in this paper I elaborated on some other biographical lexicons and related editions that also contained information on Petrić, and which were published in the periods from the beginning of the seventheenth to the middle of the eighteenth century. Unfortunately, none of the five former bibliographies on Petrić covering the units from Petrić’s time to the moment of their publishing includes information about some twenty biographical lexicons and related editions published in that period. However, the new, i.e. the sixth bibliography of Petrić should not be drafted solely for this matter, but also because of the fact that all five former bibliographies abound in incomplete and incorrect bibliographical units, as well as because methodological uniformity in recording the units is completely neglected. Therefore, it is necessary to use information from the five former bibliographies of Petrić in possible elaboration of the new bibliography: to serve us as a remainder on how a demanding task like composing someone’s bibliography should not and may not be done.
Keywords
Frane Petrić; Christian Gottlieb Jocher; Allgemeines Gelehrten-Lexicon; Jacques August de Thou; Louis Moreri; Antoine Teissier; Pierre Bayle; bibliographical lexicons
Hrčak ID:
79793
URI
Publication date:
9.4.2012.
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