Original scientific paper

Ludovik Crijević Tubero: Humanist and Historiographer from Dubrovnik

Vlado Rezar

Abstract

Sixteenth-century Ragusan historiographer Ludovik Crijević Tubero (Aloysius of Ludovicus Cervarius Tubero) wrote the history Commentaria de temporibus suis, a most insightful account of the events that took place in the southeast of Europe during the period from the death of King Matthias Corvinus (1490) to the election of Pope Hadrian VI (1522). Tubero’s history has served as an authoritative source over the centuries, his Commentaries being referred to by numerous authors. The history was reprinted in Frankfurt, Vienna, and Dubrovnik. Curiously, the autograph of Commentaries has been considered lost to this date, although there is every reason to believe that the manuscript kept at the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice is none other than the original draft of Tubero’s work. In support of this claim are a number of interventions in the text concerning style and content, as well as correct readings of specific parts of the text that are corrupted in other manuscripts and printed editions. Tubero’s history is a magnificent achievement of both Croatian and European humanistic Latin idiom. In terms of the work’s content, Commentaria represents a qualitative step forward in the writing of medieval chronicles, annals, and records of similar nature, for it paved the way for critical historiography, whose beginnings in Croatia are marked by the publication in 1666 of Ivan Lučić’s (Johannes Lucius) De regno Dalmatiae et Croatiae. On the other hand, the elegance with which Tubero expresses himself in Latin makes him the ideal humanist: he attained as trustworthy an emulation of classical Latin as possible. This Ragusan Sallust, as he was often called, lent himself easily not only to Sallustian idiomatic reminiscences, but also to those of Livius, Caesar, Tacitus, and Curtius, only to prove that he exploited the classical literary idiom far beyond the epithet attributed to him.

Keywords

Hrčak ID:

11809

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/11809

Publication date:

5.8.1999.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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