Giorgio Merula

Giorgio Merula , Latin Georgius Merula (* around 1430 in Alessandria , † March 19, 1494 in Milan ) was an Italian humanist .

Life

Giorgio Merula was born in Alessandria in late 1430 or early 1431 as Giorgio Merlani or Giorgio Merlano di Negro . However, the young Giorgio was commonly known under the name Merula, which he had given himself in reference to a family from Roman antiquity and to which he wrongly attributed his ancestry.

At the age of about 14, Merula traveled to Milan , where he studied from 1444 to 1446 with Francesco Filelfo , with whom he would later fall out. It is unclear where Merula stayed in the following years. What is certain, however, is that he traveled to Rome in 1850 for the jubilee year under Pope Nicholas V. There Merula met his future teacher Galeotto Marzio , whom he accompanied to Padua after the festivities . Merula spent the following years in Padua, where he attended Marzio's lectures.

In 1454 Merula returned to Milan, where he gave private lessons and attended Gabriele Paveri Fontana's lectures on poetics and oratory for at least three years . It is possible that Merula made a trip to Bologna from 1457 to 1459, where he came into contact with Andronico Callisto .

In 1460 Merula moved to Mantua, where he attended the lectures of the Hellenist Gregorio da Città di Castello (other sources speak of Gregorio Tifernate ) until 1461 and, after his departure, devoted himself to teaching. From 1462 until the 1470s, Merula taught in Mantua, where the Italian poet Battista Mantovano was one of his students. Around 1464/65 Merula began to commute between Mantua and Venice, where he initially gave private lessons. On November 28, 1468, Merula took up the prestigious post of teacher of grammar and rhetoric at the Scuola Grande di San Marco , which he held until 1482. Merula's pupils included Alessandro Benedetti , an anatomist, Paduan medical professor, medical writer and historiographer, who was born near Verona around 1450 and died in Venice in 1512 .

During his teaching activity, Merula acquired the reputation of a quarrel by engaging in heated discussions with his opponents. One of these was Galeotto Marzio , whom Merula had admired at the time. The Pliny translation by Giovanni Andrea Bussi and Theodorus Gaza , as well as Domizio Calderini's comments on Martial, also met with massive rejection on the part of Merula.

In 1480 Merula was at the height of its fame, not least because of its membership in a sodalitas letteraria , among whose other members were Girolamo Donà , Hermolaus Barbarus , Bernardo Bembo and Galeazzo Pontico Faccino . Nevertheless, in autumn of that year there was a break with Francesco Filelfo , on whose side prominent scientists such as Gabriele Paveri Fontana and Girolamo Squarzafico stood.

In September 1482, Merula accepted Ludovico Sforza's invitation and in 1483 began his work as professor of oratory in Pavia (then part of the Duchy of Milan ), where he stayed for two years. In 1485 Merula moved to the city of Milan , where he also taught for two years and was accepted into the Accademia di Milano . Merula found herself in an unfamiliar atmosphere, as the courtly environment of the Accademia preferred works in the Italian vernacular over Latin and ancient Greek . Historiography also slowly gained in importance, not least as a propaganda tool. Finally, Sforza asked his guest to write a story of the Sforza house . Merula began working in 1844 and named his work Historia Vicecomitum . In parallel with his work on the Historia Vicecomitum , Merula published editions by Marcus Tullius Cicero , Marcus Porcius Cato the Elder and Plautus with comments.

Research for the Historia Vicecomitum in various monasteries and archives of the duchy led Merula's pupil Giorgio Galbiate to the discovery of important classical manuscripts in Greek and Latin in the Abbey of Bobbio , including Sulpicias Carmen and the Hymns of Prudenz . In a letter of December 31, 1493 to Ludovico Sforza , Merula presented the find as his own, which resulted in a revival of his fame as a humanist. This did not last long, however, as Merula died on the night of March 18-19, 1494 from the effects of severe tonsillitis .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x} Alessandro Daneloni: MERLANI, Giorgio (Giorgio Merula). In: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2009, accessed April 9, 2020 (Italian). 
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Remigio Sabbadini: MERULA, Giorgio. In: Enciclopedia Italiana. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1934, accessed April 9, 2020 (Italian). 
3. ↑ ^{a b} Mèrula, Giorgio (propr. Giorgio Merlano di Negro). In: Enciclopedia Treccani. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, accessed April 9, 2020 (Italian). 
4. ^ Heinrich Wilhelm Rotermund: Merula (Georg) . In: Continuation and additions to Christian Gottlieb Jöcher's general lexico of scholars . tape 4 . JG Heyse, Bremen 1813, p. 1524 ( google.at ).
5. ^ Sigrid Oehler-Klein: Benedetti, Alessandro. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 163 f.