A New View of the Humanism of Nikola Petrović of Korčula: On The 450th Anniversary of His Death (April 16, 1568)

Književni rad Korčulanina Nikole Petrovića opsežnom je studijom 1983. prikazao Šime Jurić, nakon čega se u hrvatskoj filologiji njegov opus nije dodatno proučavao. Članak upozorava na u nas manje poznate detalje vezane uz Petrovićev boravak u Italiji, odnosno njegovo obrazovanje i humanističku aktivnost, napose onu grčkog izraza. Pritom u prvi plan dolazi figura salentinskog humanista Sergija Stisa, koji je tek posljednjih desetljeća apostrofiran kao središnja pojava dosad slabo poznatog intelektualnog kruga, u kojem se na prijelazu stoljeća na obodu talijanskoga zahuktalog latinskog humanizma s velikim oduševljenjem njegovao onaj grčki. Petrović u svojem rukopisnom zborniku višekratno ističe činjenicu da je i sam bio Stisovim đakom, a dodatne informacije o njihovu odnosu pruža u nas dosad potpuno nepoznato Stisovo grčko pismo Petroviću (MS Vat. gr. 1019, fol. 3), koje je 1982. objavio André Jacob. Novi detalji na koje u pismu nailazimo ne samo da nadopunjuju Petrovićevu biografiju nego i olakšavaju kontekstualizaciju sadržaja pojedinih tekstova iz njegova rukopisnog zbornika.The literary legacy of the Korčula humanist Nikola Petrović (1486-1568) is bound in an autograph codex of 102 quarto format sheets held in Perugia (Biblioteca Augusta di Perugia, MS G 99). The attention of the Croatian cultural public was drawn to this previously unknown manuscript by an extensive study by the distinguished philologist Šime Jurić. Although since then almost nothing about this long-occluded cultural treasure has been published, it would be a mistake to conclude thereby that this is material that does not repay attention. The picture that is provided by Jurić’s review of the contents of the manuscript shows completely the opposite. Jurić presented every one of the sixty or so literary works found in it – Latin poems, occasional verses, speeches, sermons and prose and metrical tantalisations from the Greek – individually, often with unconcealed enthusiasm. He also ascertained the identity of the almost fifty correspondents of Petrović, as well as the circumstances that connected them, thus to a considerable extent supplementing the compendium of knowledge available to Croatian literary history today related to Petrović’s wide-ranging humanist activities and contacts, particularly in the period of his life that is most interesting to us, when he was as a teacher running the high school in Dubrovnik, between 1538 and 1550. It is interesting that the pronounced Greek component of Petrović’s humanist activity was concurrently the subject of interest of foreign philologists, whose works have during the last few decades nevertheless been imperceptible to our scholarly public. The article draws attention to the details little known to us about Petrović’s stay in Italy, his education and his humanist activity, particularly that expressed in Greek. Especially prominent here is the figure of the Salento humanist Sergio Stiso (Sergius Stissus), who has only in the last few decades been hailed as the central figure of the little known intellectual circle in which at the turn of the century, on the edge of the Latin humanism in Italy that was then forging ahead, cultivated the Greek version with huge enthusiasm. In his manuscript collection Petrović several times gave prominence to the fact that he was himself a pupil of Stiso. Additional information about their relationship is given us by a previously completely unknown letter by Stiso in Greek to Petrović (MS Vat. gr. 1019, fol. 3) which was published in 1892 by André Jacob. The new details that we light upon in the letter not only supplement Petrović’s biography but also facilitate the contextualisation of the contents of individual letters from his manuscript miscellany