Marinus Becichemus and the Dubrovnik manuscripts of the Heroides

Abstract

The humanist Marinus Becichemus (born in Shkoder, probably in 1468, and died in Padua in 1526) was a pupil of Giovanni Calfurnio and Cristofor Barzizza in Brescia in about 1484, and from 1500 was a teacher in Venice, Padua, Brescia. Before that, from 1492 to 1496 (and afterwards, from 1508 to 1510), Becichemus was a teacher at the Dubrovnik humanist school. On May 1495, he dedicated to the Dubrovnik Senate the philological treatise Ovidianae annotationes, published three decades later in P. Ouidii Nasonis Heroides, ed. Nicolaus Scoelsius, Venetiis: Ioannis Tacuini de Tridino, 1525. In this treatise he notes in some twenty-five places lectiones variantes of the text of Ovid’s Heroides, which are provided (so he says) by “ancient” manuscripts (antiquissimi codices) in the possession of “the poet Ivan Gučetić”, “the poet Ilija Crijević” and a certain “Menčetić”. Becichemus compares the readings provided by codices Ragusini with readings of the codices owned by a colleague of Brescia (qui Brixiae profitentur). These philological notes witness to the manuscript culture of humanist Dubrovnik, confirming that at least three Dubrovnik patricians in about 1495 possessed rather old codices of Ovid’s Heroides, and enable the consideration of the place of these codices in the transmission of the text of the Heroides.