Original scientific paper

Personal Experience and Politics in Venetian Imperial Humanism (1470–1482)

Monique O’Connell orcid.org/0000-0002-2030-033X ; Wake Forest University, Winston Salem, NC USA

Abstract

This paper looks at three humanist authors who used their personal experiences in Adriatic and Mediterranean politics to make their literary works effective on a diplomatic level as well. The Venetian patrician Paolo Morosini (1406–1482) used his experience as an ambassador in the Adriatic to demonstrate Venetian restraint in seeking new territories in his Letter to Cicco Simonetta. The Venetian chancellery secretary Antonio Vinciguerra (1468–1502), Venice’s agent in the acquisition of Krk from its Frankapan count, produced a defense of Venice’s legitimate title to the island. Coriolano Cippico (1425–1493), a noble from Trogir who commanded a warship in the Venetian fleet, composed The Deeds of Commander Mocenigo, including an explanation for Venice military intervention on Cyprus. These authors’ personal involvement in the events they wrote about lent rhetorical weight to their explanations of Venice’s actions and motivations. The paper contributes some of the immediate political context for the young Marko Marulić’s now lost-oration to Doge Nicolò Marcello and, more broadly, to our picture of the intellectual world in which Marulić lived and worked.

Keywords

Venice; humanism; diplomacy; Krk; Cyprus; Paolo Morosini; Antonio Vinciguerra; Coriolano Cippico

Hrčak ID:

339018

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/339018

Publication date:

21.11.2025.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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