Original scientific paper
The Correspondence of the First Dalmatian Humanists: Juraj Benja of Zadar
Luka Špoljarić
; Filozofski fakultet, Zagreb
Abstract
As the writing of private letters gained popularity among the Italian humanists during the first decades of the fifteenth century, the first Dalmatian humanists also began to exchange letters with their peers across the Adriatic. We have a number of letters composed by Dalmatian humanists, such as Juraj Jurjević and Juraj Benja of Zadar or Ivan Sobota of Trogir. This article offers the first study, edition and Croatian translation of the correspondence of Juraj Benja of Zadar (ca. 1395–1437), which comprises altogether seven letters, one written by him and six to him.
Although Juraj Benja is regularly celebrated as one of the pioneers of the humanist movement in Renaissance Dalmatia, and his scribal and epigraphic activities have been analyzed, he is still largely an unknown figure. The first section of the paper therefore offers a detailed reconstruction of his life. Juraj was born around 1395 and was thus still fairly young when in 1411, soon after the Venetian conquest of Zadar, his father Damjan Krševanov Benja was deported to Venice for his loyalty to the Hungarian crown. Juraj mother was Klara Jurjević, whose cousin, Pavao Jurjević and Pavao’s son Juraj, suffered the same fate in 1411. It is suggested that Juraj Jurjević, a doctor of law from the University of Padua, may have been the one who in Venice inspired the young Juraj Benja to pursue humanist interests and taught him Latin. After presumably spending the large part of the 1410s with his father in Venice, Benja eventually returned to Zadar to take care of family affairs. He first appears in Zadar documents in 1417–18, but he seems to have become particularly active during the early 1420s, especially after his father’s death in 1423. In the spring of 1424 Benja married Katarina Cedulin and soon left Zadar spending the following four years away from home. He seems to have spent these years as a merchant in Italy, in Florence, the Marche and perhaps Venice. Indeed, Benja enjoyed a close relationship with the most prominent cloth merchants of Zadar, most notably Lovro Dražmilić, who was not only his business partner but also one of his closest friends. Benja returned home at the end of 1428 and, since his first wife Katarina had died in the meantime, married Darija Grisogono. His stay in Zadar proved to be brief. By the end of 1429 Darija also died soon after giving birth, while the outbreak of plague forced Benja to leave Zadar with his newborn daughter and travel to Venice. After a longer sojourn in Venice, and perhaps even trips to Santiago de Compostela and Ancona, Benja returned to Zadar in 1431 and married his third wife, Fantina Soppe. During the following years Benja worked on establishing his presence in Zadar’s public life and expanding his collection of classical works. Benja died in August 1437, presumably of the plague that ravaged the city that summer. Since he left no children behind him, he named his sister Katarina his heir, who soon divided his property with his widow Fantina.
The paper uses the letters and other documentary evidence to reconstruct Juraj Benja’s relationship with his correspondents: Nicolò Zancani, Giovanni Tinto Vicini and Ciriaco Pizzicolli. Nicolò Zancani was a Venetian priest who pursued a career both in the church and Venetian state administration. Zancani met Benja either during Benja’s sojourns in Venice or after Zancani arrived in Zadar in 1425 to become the scribe of the communal treasury. After failing to become the archbishop of Split in 1427 and bishop of Skradin in 1431, Zancani finally left Zadar in 1432 when the Frankapani, the powerful Croatian lords, elected him bishop of Senj — though Pope Eugenius IV never confirmed him and after years of pressure finally managed to remove him from this office in 1435. Zancani exchanged letters with Benja (Prilog 1, Letters 3 and 4) in 1430 during Benja’s sojourn in Venice and they seem to have remained in contact even after Zancani’s departure from the city.
As far as Giovanni Tinto Vicini is concerned, it is argued that Benja met him in the Marche, presumably in Ancona, during his period of travels in Italy in 1424–1428. Drawing on information about Benja’s life, as well as new documentary evidence about Tinto’s career, the paper rejects the dating of their correspondence to the period immediately before and after 1435, which was proposed by Pasquale Smiraglia, the editor of Tinto’s only work De institutione regiminis dignitatum. While the first letter sent by Tinto to Benja (Letter 1) was presumably written during Benja’s travels in Italy, the other two (Letters 2 and 5) concern Benja’s brief marriage to Darija Grisogono and her untimely death. The relationship between Ciriaco Pizzicolli and Benja, as well as their letters (Letters 6 and 7), have long been known to scholars and do not pose such chronological problems. It is proposed that, in addition to Tinto, Benja also met Ciriaco in Ancona during his travels in 1424–1428.
The concluding section of the paper shows how the correspondence contributes to the understanding of Juraj Benja as a humanist. First, the letters give a glimpse into his studiolo: it is demonstrated that Benja’s correspondence with Zancani and Tinto was preserved by Benja himself. Second, we gain more information about Benja’s social network. Aside from the three correspondents, the letters offer references to a number of his other friends and contacts, both non-humanists and humanists alike. Finally, the only letter written by Benja shows that, presumably owing to his cousin Juraj Jurjević, he was fairly proficient in writing classicizing, i.e. humanistic, prose. This made him somewhat unique within a larger group of Dalmatian enthusiasts of his generation who took an interest in the humanist movement. Juraj Benja is thus compared to his friend Petar Cipiko of Trogir, who was not able to write such prose, but, unlike Benja, did manage to leave behind sons and heirs, establishing a dynasty whose members long nurtured humanist activities as part of their family heritage.
The first appendix (Prilog 1) includes the first edition and a Croatian translation of the letters. Letter 6, in fact an excerpt from what was obviously a longer letter, is a somewhat special case here. This excerpt has been transmitted through Francesco Scalamonti’s Life of Cyriac of Ancona, where it is indicated that Ciriaco sent the letter to a number of addressees including Benja and Scalamonti himself. Since it is not sure whether Benja received a letter containing these words exactly, the excerpt is published in cursive. The second appendix (Prilog 2) includes the transcription of Juraj Benja’s testament.
Keywords
Renaissance humanism; epistolography; Juraj Benja; Nicolò Zancani; Giovanni Tinto Vicini; Ciriaco Pizzicolli
Hrčak ID:
219698
URI
Publication date:
22.4.2019.
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