Niccolò Sagundino, Naufragii sui ad Bessarionem Cardinalem Relatio, and other texts, including records of a sculptor in Venice and an incunable printer in Vicenza, mostly in Latin, manuscript on paper

provenance

The consistent references to Antonio Hyarotto, both in Padua, where he was rector of the school of law, and later in Venice, where he worked for the Serenissima, suggest very strongly that this manuscript belonged to Hyarotto himself.  He was a native of Capodistria (then a Venetian colony, now Koper in Slovenia), and many of the letters at the end were written from there.  In old age, c.1502, Capodistria returned from Italy to his home town, doubtless bringing the book with him.  Some of the entries may well be autograph, including the account of making his tomb and plans for his own funeral in Capodistria (fol.56v, see below).  Other letters connected with Hyarotto are now in Padua and there is an epigram about him in Cod. Vat.lat. 3145 (Kristeller, Iter Italicum, VI, 192, p.130, and II, 1967, p.359).

This is almost certainly, therefore, the lost manuscript of Sagundino’s Naufragii Relatio seen by the poet Apostolo Zeno (1669-1750) in Capodistria in the library of the Dominican convent, in which the text was apparently dated 1460, as it is here (fol.18r) but not in all manuscripts of the text; cf. A. Zeno, Dissertazioni vossiane, Venice, 1753, pp.333-39.

text

This is an extraordinary collection of texts relating to Greek and Istrian humanism in Italy, including accounts of travel and shipwreck, and the making of manuscripts and of early printing in Vicenza.  The principal text here is the account by Niccolò Sagundino of his shipwreck between Venice and Crete in 1460.  He came originally from Euboea and was one of the Byzantine scholars who first visited Italy in 1438 for the Council of Ferrara.  Sagundino returned to Italy again before the fall of Constantinople and succeeded in bringing his wife and large family to Venice.  Lack of money obliged him to accept the position of chancellor of the Venetian island of Crete but, while sailing out to his new post with all his wordly possessions on board, he was shipwrecked and his wife and three of his children were drowned.  The present account of the disaster is addressed to his fellow Greek humanist and book collector, Cardinal Bessarion (c.1403-1472).  It contains much biographical information about himself and is filled with classical references.  Where he quotes Euripides, however (and the passage is Orestes, lines 1-3), the present scribe was unable to write in Greek and left the lines blank (fol.9r).  The text was first printed by A. Lazzaroni, Miscellanea di varie Oprette, II, 1740, pp.5-42.  Three other manuscripts of the text are recorded by L. Bertalot, Initia Humanistica, II, i, 1990, p.274, no.5038, and a fourth was Phillipps MS. 8309, sold in these rooms, 29 November 1966, lot 77.  The text opens here on fol.1r, “Distuli ad hanc diem calamitatis …”, ending on fol.18r, “… virium sit ignorare, Ex Venetiis xii kl. Sept. M^o.cccc^o.lx^o”.

Folio 18v, “Petrus paraleo Salutem dicit Proclarissimo viro Nicolao Sagundino … Naufragium tuum iam urbe tota …” (Pietro Perleo, of Rimini, letter to Sagundino about the shipwreck, also printed by Lazzaroni, op.cit., 1740, p.86, recorded by Kristeller, Iter Italicum, II, 1967, p.550, apparently in only a single manuscript, in Padua), ending on fol.50r, “… virtutem laboris nudendum, Finis”.

Folio 55v, “P.P. Vergerius Iustinopolitanus ad belegnum de Ianua, Dedisti epistolam gravem …”, the letter of Paulo Vergerio, of Capodistria, to Belegno of Genua, dated from Padua, 1395 (cf. L. Smith, Epistolario di Pier Paolo Vergerio, 1934, pp.157-8).

Folio 56v, A note, perhaps autograph, by Antonio Hyarotto, lawyer to the Serenissima in Venice, dated from Capodistria, 1502, recording that he has commissioned a tomb of red stone which was brought from the mountains in the Veneto and carved by Rodius son of Thomasius the mason and was then transported to Capodistria to be placed in his chapel there, and giving instructions for his eventual funeral and burial.

Folio 57r, letters from Vergerio, and others, beginning, “Induxisti mihi litteris tuis memoriam demostenis…”, Paulo Vergerio to Bernardo de Imola, Bologna, 1398 (Smith, op.cit., 1934, pp.202-5), and other short letters dated from Bologna, Padua and especially Capodistria, 1419, 1392, 1390, 1401, etc., “Plutarcus in describendo Anthonii vita …” (fol.66r), including Vergerio’s letters to Coluccio Salutati about copying a manuscript, the first undated, “Iussus sum ad libellum tuum rescribere quem summo pontifico nostro Innocento vii, initio suo pontificatus [he was pope 1404-6], transmisisti …”, explaining why the book is not ready (fol.68v, Smith, op.cit., p.283), and a further letter written from Capodistria in 1403, “… tam tardum, tamque difficile in scribendo exhibes”; and other letters.

Folio 75v, a memorandum, in Italian, dated 2 September 1482, about sending a text to the Italian incunable printer, Leonardo Achates, of Basel, written by Antonio Hyarotto recording that “Lunardo de baxilia, stampador di libri”, has received from Hyarotto on behalf of Messer Ambrosio Contarini a little book consigned to him as rector, which Contarini had compiled and written himself about the voyage which he made as ambassador to the Serenissima, which little book consists of 2 quaterni and which the said Lunardo agrees to print as a permanent record, agreeing (apparently) to do so for the sum of 6 gold ducats.

The whole memorandum has then been crossed through twice, and marked “Restitutus” when the manuscript was returned, unprinted.

This is an extraordinary record and a significant addition to the very few contemporary documents on the process of printing and publishing in the fifteenth century.  The book’s author was the Venetian traveller, Ambrosio Contarini, who journeyed to Persia and Muscovy in 1473-76, the first westerner to visit Moscow.  He evidently submitted his text to the rector of the law schools in Padua.  Hyarotto, in turn, brought it to Leonardo Achates, who is recorded as a printer in Padua in 1472-3, perhaps (not certainly) the first printer in Padua, where they may have first met each other.  In 1474 Leonardo moved his press to Sant’Orso.  From 1474 to at least 1497 he was working in Vicenza, the earliest printer in that city too. He printed at least two books there in 1482 but not, as far as is known, the present text, which was eventually printed for the first time by Hannibal Foxius, Venice, 1487, as Viaggio ad Usun Hassan re di Persia (GKW. 7443), now one of the classics of early travel literature (cf. L. Lockhart, R. Morozzo della Rocco and M.F. Tiepolo, I viaggi in Persia degli ambasciatori veneti Barbaro e Contarini, 1973).  The record here includes the price proposed for printing the book (some sale prices are known for incunabula but the costs charged to authors are almost unknown) but clearly something went wrong and the book was returned unprinted.  This may, quite simply, be the earliest publisher’s rejection slip in the history of book production.