Colloquia Maruliana ..., Vol. 3 , 1994.
Original scientific paper
Marko Marulić in German Libraries
Franz Leschinkohl
Abstract
Encouraged by his earlier discovery of two copies of Marulić‚s book Bene vivendi instituta... (Basel 1513; See Fig.4 in the text) in the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, the author of the present article decided to investigate thoroughly German libraries, in order to identify all Marulić‚s works kept there. He printed a leaflet (Fig. 1-2) and addressed it, with the enclosed letter, to 170 libraries across Germany. The success was beyond expectation: it came out that as much as 437 copies of Marulić‚s books are kept in 67 Ger-man libraries. All the data of the investigation are represented in tabular form in Fig. 3.
The most numerous are the copies of the Evangelistarium printed in Köln, where this work was printed three times by two printers in the same year, 1529: once in the printing-works of Eucharius Cervicornus (Fig. 6), twice in those belonging to Franz Birchmann (Fig. 7). In 1532, the work ran through two more editions in the same town (Peter Quentel -Fig. 14 - and Hero Allopecius -Fig. 15). No surprise, since judging from the number of printing-works, Köln was not behind Venice: in the period between 1466 and 1730 it had 150 registered printing-works.
One of the most important printers of Marulić‚s works was Adam Petrus from Basel.The first Marulić‚s book printed in his works was De institutione bene vivendi (Basel 1513) for the editors Lucas and Leonhard Alantsee from Vienna (Fig. 4). In 1519 Petrus printed the Evangelistarium (Fig. 5), this time for Johann Koberger from Nurnberg, the brother of the “the king of printers” Anton Koberger. The colophon of the mentioned edition commends J. Koberger who “constantly enriches our fatherland Germany by important books”. In the afterword to the same edition, the famous theologian and cosmographer Sebastian Münster is full of praise for Marulić‚s book in which “...there is no in-temperate stimulating, no confusion of thought, no instability in the rendering of human tradition” and in which “you can hear only the words of Gospel, the words of Our Divine Savior Jesus Christ, his Apostles and prophets, the words of pure truth...”
Gottfried Hittorp from Köln, one of the most renowned 16 C German editors, de-serves greatest credit for the publication of Marulić‚s works. It was for this editor that Cervicornus printed the mentioned Evangelistarium in 1529, followed by the edition of the De institutione in 1530 (Fig. 9). The second edition of the De institutione (Fig. 10) appeared as early as 1531; unfortunately, there is not sufficient evidence to identify the printer.
The first German translation of the De institutione was produced by Christian Kemmer von Cronberg. The book was printed by Maternus Cholinus in 1568, under the title of Der Katolische Christen Spiegel (Fig. 18).
The laudatory words of the German polyhistor Wilhelm Eysengrein, with which he spoke about the Croatian writer in his Catalogus testium veritatis (Dillingen 1565) wit-ness to the interest which Marulić roused in the 16th century Germany. These words may have spurred Hermann Baumgarten from Augsburg to translate the De institutione into German (Sechs Bucher..., Dillingen 1582). This was the second German translation of the work (Fig. 29).
It seems that a plausible answer may be offered to the question how the English king Henry VIII came into possession of Marulić‚s Evangelistarium of 1529, into which he even entered annotations in his own hand. The book might have been brought to London by Hans Holbein jr., who, from 1515 on was producing frontispieces and illustrations for books in Basel. In 1526, with a letter of recommendation from Erasmus of Rotterdam, he went to London, where he stayed till 1528, in the service of Henry VIII. Between 1528 and 1532 he was in Basel again, only to return to London. The other explanation would be that the book was bought in the book-shop of Franz Birckmann in London.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
9837
URI
Publication date:
22.4.1994.
Visits: 2.098 *