Original scientific paper
Cicero, Plutarch And Francesco Barbaro in Zadar 1417-1419
Neven Jovanović
orcid.org/0000-0002-9119-399X
; Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, Zagreb, Hrvatska
Abstract
Ludwig Bertalot’s monumental Initia humanistica Latina (1985-2004) records several letters sent from Zadar to Venice and vice versa in the period from the spring of 1417 to summer 1419. These letters, preserved in two manuscript codices (München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cod. lat. 5350; Salzburg, Stiftsbibliothek der Erzabtei St. Peter, Cod. b. ix 8), are remains of an exchange of correspondence between the Venetian humanist Francesco Barbaro (1390-1454) and two Venetian administrators of Zadar (over which Venice obtained control in 1409), the capitano Sante Venier, and his vice-capitano (military commander) Giovanni Battista Bevilacqua. Bevilacqua was also in epistolary contact with a nobleman from Zadar, Juraj Jurjević (Georgius de Georgiis Iadrensis, Zorzi di Zorzi or Giorgio Giorgi). An important theme in these letters is the reading and sharing of texts: by Barbaro himself, by Plutarch (as translated by Barbaro), and Cicero. At the beginning of 15th century, all these texts could have been read in manuscript only; we must therefore infer that codices of these texts travelled into and out of Renaissance Zadar.
Francesco Barbaro, as a Venetian humanist of the first rank, needs no special introduction. Giovanni Battista Bevilacqua from Verona (d. about 1434) was in fact a condottiere, serving in Zadar 1417-1425; later he was to be engaged in Venice’s war against Milan (1426), and to describe, in October 1427, the battle of Maclodio to Guarino Veronese. Sante Venier, to whom Barbaro wrote in 1417, later had a brilliant career as administrator and ambassador of the Serenissima; in 1423 he was provveditore generale in Thessalonica. Juraj Jurjević, son of Pavao (Paolo), was born around 1370, and studied in Padua in 1386-1393; there he acquired a doctorate of civil law in May 1397. Together with his father and other noble supporters of Sigismund of Luxemburg, King of Hungary and Croatia, Juraj Jurjević was interned in Venice from 1411 onwards; in autumn 1418 Bevilacqua tried unsuccessfully to introduce Jurjević to Francesco Barbaro. There are five letters sent to Jurjević by Bevilacqua during the second half of 1418, and one letter sent to Bevilacqua by Jurjević. To this day the letters remain in manuscript; the one by Jurjević to Bevilacqua is published here from Munich manuscript Clm 5350.
Literary texts mentioned in the Barbaro – Bevilacqua – Venier – Jurjevićcorrespondence are, first, three works by Barbaro himself. The De re uxoria (1416)was sent to Bevilacqua in Zadar to be read and transcribed in autumn of 1418. Later, in February 1419, Bevilacqua got to read Barbaro’s letter to Poggio Bracciolini (from July 1417). Finally, in summer of 1419, Barbaro’s translation of Plutarch’s »Life of Aristides and Cato the Elder« (Barbaro translated it in 1415), for which Bevilacqua had to ask several times, arrived in Zadar.
Sante Venier in May 1417 received Cicero’s letter to his brother Quintus (ad Q. fr. 1, 1-2), enthusiastically recommended by Barbaro as a guide for the effective management of a city-state.
Letters to Jurjević suggest that in Zadar Bevilacqua read Valerius Maximus or Pseudo-Pliny’s (Pseudo-Aurelius Victor’s) De viris illustribus (the soldier from Verona speaks about conditissimorum dogmata illustriumque gesta uirorum and eorum gesta atque instituta).
Juraj Jurjević himself tried his hand at literary studies while still a student in Padua. In 1794 Gottfried Ernst Groddeck described a manuscript of Seneca’s tragedies which was completed by Jurjević on October 16, 1396; this MS is today lost, but the list of variant readings in it was published by Groddeck, as well as an important Jurjević’s statement from the colophon (habui exemplaria). This implies that Jurjević can be regarded as the first humanist from Croatia with philological interests; thirty years, almost a generation, were to pass before Juraj Benja from Zadar and Petar Cipiko from Trogir start copying Caesar, Frontinus, Vegetius and other ancient authors (in 1425-1438).
The results of our research open a question. How much influence did the humanist activities of Bevilacqua, Venier, and Jurjević (not to mention Barbaro) have on Renaissance culture in Zadar? Were the »colonial administrators« isolated from the »local population«, as one could perhaps conclude from a letter of the Doge issued in 1458, which forbids citizens of Zadar to enter the city’s citadel and to perform military duties there, and from the fact that Bevilacqua mentions no local humanists (unlike e. g. Cyriacus of Ancona in 1436) and has no local correspondents (unlike Maffeo Vallaresso in 1450-1494)? Though the question remains open, the correspondence shows that Bevilacqua supported a candidate for a teaching post in Zadar. Moreover, the works mentioned in Bevilacqua’s correspondence – De re uxoria, De viris illustribus, Cicero’s letter to Quintus, Plutarch’s Parallel lives,Seneca’s tragedies -surface frequently in texts and readings of humanists from Dalmatia and Dubrovnik (e. g. Marko Marulić, Nikola Resti, Benedikt Kotruljević, Juraj Benja, Petar Cipiko, Jakov Bunić).
Keywords
Renaissance humanism; reception of antiquity; epistolography; manuscripts; Zadar; Venice; Giovanni Battista Bevilacqua; Juraj Pavlov Jurjević
Hrčak ID:
100996
URI
Publication date:
22.4.2013.
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