The Correspondence of the First Dalmatian Humanists: Juraj Benja of Zadar

Sa？etak As the writing of private letters gained popularity among the Italian humanists during the first decades of the fifteenth century, the first Dalmatian humanists also began to exchange letters with their peers across the Adriatic. We have a number of letters composed by Dalmatian humanists, such as Juraj Jurjevi？ and Juraj Benja of Zadar or Ivan Sobota of Trogir. This article offers the first study, edition and Croatian translation of the correspondence of Juraj Benja of Zadar (ca. 1395–1437), which comprises altogether seven letters, one written by him and six to him. Although Juraj Benja is regularly celebrated as one of the pioneers of the humanist movement in Renaissance Dalmatia, and his scribal and epigraphic activities have been analyzed, he is still largely an unknown figure. The first section of the paper therefore offers a detailed reconstruction of his life. Juraj was born around 1395 and was thus still fairly young when in 1411, soon after the Venetian conquest of Zadar, his father Damjan Kr？evanov Benja was deported to Venice for his loyalty to the Hungarian crown. Juraj mother was Klara Jurjevi？, whose cousin, Pavao Jurjevi？ and Pavao’s son Juraj, suffered the same fate in 1411. It is suggested that Juraj Jurjevi？, a doctor of law from the University of Padua, may have been the one who in Venice inspired the young Juraj Benja to pursue humanist interests and taught him Latin. After presumably spending the large part of the 1410s with his father in Venice, Benja eventually returned to Zadar to take care of family affairs. He first appears in Zadar documents in 1417–18, but he seems to have become particularly active during the early 1420s, especially after his father’s death in 1423. In the spring of 1424 Benja married Katarina Cedulin and soon left Zadar spending the following four years away from home. He seems to have spent these years as a merchant in Italy, in Florence, the Marche and perhaps Venice. Indeed, Benja enjoyed a close relationship with the most prominent cloth merchants of Zadar, most notably Lovro Dra？mili？, who was not only his business partner but also one of his closest friends. Benja returned home at the end of 1428 and, since his first wife Katarina had died in the meantime, married Darija Grisogono. His stay in Zadar proved to be brief. By the end of 1429 Darija also died soon after giving birth, while the outbreak of plague forced Benja to leave Zadar with his newborn daughter and travel to Venice. After a longer sojourn in Venice, and perhaps even trips to Santiago de Compostela and Ancona, Benja returned to