Original scientific paper

Cassandra Fedele and her Dalmatian correspondents

Tomislav Bogdan orcid.org/0000-0003-3353-6509 ; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

Abstract

The paper analyzes the written correspondence between Cassandra Fedele, a renowned Venetian Humanist from the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th century, and three lesser-known Dalmatian Humanists - Benedikt Mišulić from Pag, Ambroz Mihetić from Šibenik and Pavao Paladinić from Hvar. The first two exchanged letters with Fedele; from their correspondence merely one of her letters to Mišulić and Mihetić has been preserved, as well another longer letter Mihetić sent to the Venetian Humanist. The analysis of those letters primarily focuses on the details of their content which allow for the reconstruction of the cultural climate in Dalmatian cities and broadens our understanding of its protagonists and the literary communication between the two Adriatic coasts. The paper also notes that Fedele mentions Mišulić in at least two other letters in which she probably pleads for a position at the Spanish court. On the other hand, Paladinić dedicated a laudatory poem in Latin to Fedele in which he praises her erudition. Apart from widening our knowledge of the three Dalmatian Humanists and their contacts with Fedele, the paper also analyzes specific rhetorical strategies the texts employ. In the conclusion the paper considers the possibility that the addressee of two Fedele’s letters might have been a Humanist from Kotor named Bernard Pima. The assumption is nevertheless dismissed, but Pima is attributed with two overlooked poems from a manuscript in Marciana.

Keywords

Cassandra Fedele; women in European Humanism; Humanism in Dalmatia; Benedikt Mišulić; Ambroz Mihetić; Pavao Paladinić; Bernard Pima; Humanist epistolography

Hrčak ID:

193022

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/193022

Publication date:

1.12.2017.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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