Original scientific paper
Dinko Zavorović, Faust Vrančić and Toma Suričević in the Light of Epistolary Exchange
Iva Kurelac
orcid.org/0009-0007-2914-0567
; Odsjek za povijesne znanosti HAZU, Zagreb
Abstract
For the purpose of the scholarly analysis of epistolographic communication among the leading Croatian humanists, this paper has analysed three epistles from the beginning of the unpublished work De rebus Dalmaticis of the Šibenik humanist and historian Dinko Zavorović. This refers to Zavorović’s dedication to the celebrated Croatian man of science Faust Vrančić, and to two epistles that he exchanged with his friend the archpresbyter of Šibenik Toma Suričević. The scholarly analysis is based on the transcription of the Latin text of these epistles made from the best MS copy of Zavorović’s work De rebus Dalmaticis, which is kept, under call number Cl. X. Cod. XL-3652, in the Marciana Library in Venice. At a structural level, the paper is divided into three parts. In the first part, the text of Zavorović’s dedication to Vrančić is analysed, and some new discoveries about their friendship are advanced. The second part discusses the two epistles that Zavorović exchanged on the same day with Šibenik archpresbyter Toma Suričević. Using examples from the transcribed Latin text, the relation between Suričević and Zavorović is analysed, and some little known details about the background of the literary scandal during which the original version of the work De rebus Dalmaticis was lost are adduced.
A separate chapter is devoted to parts of the text of the epistles in which Marko Marulić is mentioned. An analysis of them shows that Zavorović, among other things, found his greatest spur to the writing of the history of Dalmatia in Marulić’s Latin translation of the Ljetopis Popa Dukljanin or Chronicle of the Priest of Duclea, which he used several decades before the work was printed. Quotations from Zavorović’s epistle to Suričević are analysed, and a completely unknown fact is discovered: that Marko Marulić perhaps buried his books in the walls of the Church of St Mary on the Island, which Zavorović calls Surium. On the basis of the analysis of the text of Zavorović’s epistle to Suričević, the place name Surium, and the data available today concerning churches called St Mary’s in the waters off Split and Šibenik, some sites where the buried books by Marulić might be found are adduced.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
23916
URI
Publication date:
22.4.2008.
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