Original scientific paper

The Manuscript Misfortunes of Ilija Crijević

Irena Bratičević orcid.org/0000-0002-3098-4165 ; Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu

Abstract

The poetry of the greatest Ragusan humanist poet, Ilija Crijević (Aelius Lampridius Cervinus, 1463 – 1520), has been printed only in recent times. This might prompt the conclusion that there was no particular interest in his oeuvre in the past. What is more, the existence of the voluminous autographs of Crijević (the Vatican Library manuscripts Vat. lat. 1678 and Vat. lat. 2939) seems to have resulted in the scholarly neglect of the manuscript tradition of his works that developed in his native city from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. This manuscript tradition is comprehensively studied in this paper with the aim of showing that in this period Crijević’s works were not only copied by various scribes but that the text these scribes created was also critically edited, as shown by the presence of the critical apparatus in some of the surviving manuscripts. Particular attention will be devoted to the efforts of Ivan Marija Matijašević (1714 – 1791), who pioneered the systematic research on Crijević’s texts, as well as to those of Antun Agić (1753 – 1830), who at the beginning of the nineteenth century prepared a manuscript edition of Crijević’s poetry. Once identified and connected, Agić’s scattered manuscript papers provide an invaluable guide to the history of the reception of Crijević’s texts in Dubrovnik and beyond. The paper also identifies the hitherto unknown autograph letter Crijević sent to Prince Ferdinand of Naples (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 9977) and establishes that the manuscript dedicated to Paolo Orsini (Firenze, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Cl. Magl. VII, 203) is similarly the poet’s autograph. The result of the research underpinning the paper is the list printed at the end, providing the most complete account of the surviving manuscripts with Crijević’s works: 6 autographs, 32 scribal copies, and 4 unidentified manuscripts known only from references made to them within the manuscript tradition.

Keywords

Dubrovnik; Ilija Crijević; Antun Agić; Ivan Marija Matijašević; humanism; manuscript; autograph

Hrčak ID:

257744

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/257744

Publication date:

22.5.2021.

Article data in other languages: croatian

Visits: 2.039 *