Library › Latin: Letters › Epistola ad Petrum M. (20 May 1453)
Johannes Sobota (Ivan Sobota) of Trogir in Dalmatia wrote this short letter on 20 May 1453 to a Venetian patrician named Petrus M., whom he congratulates on returning safely from the land of the Allobroges, that is Savoy or the region around Geneva. Knowing his friend’s eagerness for great things, Sobota asks to share any remarkable traces of ancient literature he may have found, and he asks in particular to be sent Caesar and the Philippics of Cicero. He adds business about a debt owed to Carolus Mauroceno and greets a mutual friend.
The letter is a small document of the humanist book trade between Venice and Dalmatia in the mid-fifteenth century. It shows a Trogir humanist seeking classical texts through Venetian friends who travelled in northern Europe, at the moment when the recovery of ancient manuscripts was at its height. Together with Sobota’s other letters to the same correspondent it gives a picture of the literary and practical concerns of an educated Dalmatian citizen under Venetian rule.
About this edition. The Latin text comes from Croatiae auctores Latini (CroALa), University of Zagreb (edition: Franjo Rački, Prosinca 2010), through Corpus Corporum (University of Zurich), licensed CC BY 4.0. Every word has been analyzed with LatinCy, a neural language model for Latin — click or tap any word for its dictionary form, part of speech, and complete morphology, together with the full entry from Lewis & Short’s A Latin Dictionary.