Original scientific paper
The Book and Reading in Ilija Crijević’s Letters to Marin Bunić
Irena Bratičević
orcid.org/0000-0002-3098-4165
; Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu
Abstract
Three letters sent by Dubrovnik Latinist Ilija Crijević (Aelius Lampridius Cervinus, 1463-1520) to his friend Marin Bunić (Marinus Bona, ?-1540) serve in this paper as a source for the study of the culture of books and reading in early modern Dubrovnik. In order to sketch out the circumstances in which they were written, the historical context is briefly depicted and previously unknown biographical details concerning Crijević’s addressee are provided. The first letter (Dubrovnik State Archives, Miscellanea saec. XVI., Litterae privatae, f. CCLXXXI) is extant in autograph, but because of damage to the paper is not legible in its entirety. It is not dated, but was probably written either in 1504 or in 1512, when Bunić was undertaking the duties of castellan in Ston. The author’s jocular and parodic contrasting of the unenviable duties of a soldier on the one hand and the natural riches offered by the privileged country life of a senior official on the other is much in evidence. Here there are reminiscences of readings from antiquity, telling of Crijević’s learning and his Humanist education. The other two letters, preserved only in a copy by Ivan Marija Matijašević (MS 433, Archives of the Friars Minor in Dubrovnik), were sent to Bunić when he was in Venice. One from 1506, at the beginning of which the author also makes use of a quotation from a classical text, Ovid’s Heroides, documents a Humanist friendship, in which the book, as common property, plays an important role. The third and shortest letter shows the routes taken by texts exchanged by the Humanists. It is not dated, but if it is about the borrowing of a printed and not a manuscript version of the book by Italian poet Pier Francesco Giustolo can be assumed not to have been written before 1510. In the appendix, Crijević’s letters to Bunić are published for the first time.
Keywords
Ilija Crijević (Aelius Lampridius Cervinus); Marin Bunić (Marinus Bona); Humanist epistolography; private letters; Humanist reading; history of the book
Hrčak ID:
80174
URI
Publication date:
5.4.2012.
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