Razmjene spoznaja o antici u poslanicama hrvatskog humanizma 15. stoljeća

The topic of the paper is a review of the use of Humanist epistles for antiquarian and historical research into Antiquity in Dalmatia in the 15th century. It discusses the development of the epistolary genre as vehicle for antiquarian in-formation and so implicitly of the Humanist project for the revival of ancient culture. Epistles are a literary form that served Humanists of the age of Petrarch as an aid in intimate correspondence with learned contemporaries as well as with the deceased orators, statesmen, historians and poets of Antiquity. In order to give as precise a possible depiction of the antiquarian tradition inherited by Marulić in his research into antiquities, the author recalls the importance of Petrarch as com-poser of epistles in which antique culture was evoked or described. His heirs were authors of large epistolary oeuvres, such as Coluccio Salutati, Pier Paolo Vergerio the Elder, Leonardo Bruni and Poggio Bracciolini. Petrarch started communication with the ancient writers, composing epistles to Varro, Cicero, Livy, Horace, Virgil, Seneca and Quintilian. His epistle to Giovanni Colonna of about 1337 increased antiquarian interest in the Roman ruins, which after that time would gain in critical strength. As shown by the works of Arnaldo Momigliano and Roberto Weiss, Humanist research into the ancient cultural heritage within the genre of the epistle linked two epistemological resources: reading and observation. This helped to create the Humanist epistemology, affirming the importance of historical testimonies. From Humanism, epistles were no longer documents of intimate contemplation, which the writer wished to share with the recipient, but became a place for exchange of ideas and information about new discoveries in libraries and »archaeological« sites. Becoming a tool of Humanist secularisation, epistles at the same time brought news about the discovery of the works of Quintilian and Vitruvius and discoveries of inscriptions and statues. The combination of written and visual culture can be seen in the influence of Petrarch’s evocations of writers of antiquity on the vivification of prosopopoeia in painting of the second half of the 14th and in the early 15th century in Italy. In his epistles Coluccio Salutati explained etymologies and toponomastics, and in his correspondence with Manuel Chrysoloras, on the model of Plutarch, he compared the achievements of the Greeks and the Romans, whom he considered the forebears of the Florentines.