Joannes Baptista Novosoliensis, the second philologist in Hungary

Horváth Ivánnak, 70. születésnapjára

Abstract

This study presents the editorial work of a hitherto little known 16th century philologist from the Kingdom of Hungary, Joannes Baptista Novosoliensis of (Neuzohl) Banská Bystrica, Slovakia. After having earned the bachelor’s degree in Cracow (1499) and further studies in Bologna (1523) under Giovan Battista Pio and Lazzaro Bonamico, he moved back to Cracow in 1527, where he published four editions for the sake of his students. Although there is sufficient information about all four, only two of them survive, an edition of Cicero’s Pro Marco Marcello (1528), and the Ad Quintum fratrem 1, 1. He added marginal notes and a detailed commentary to his edition of the Ad Quintum fratrem 1, 1, which include references to textual criticism and to a now lost manuscript of Cicero’s letter in the San Domenico convent of Bologna. An analysis of the variant readings in the edition has shown, that Novosoliensis was using Andreas Cratander’s 1528 Basel edition of Cicero as a starting point in establishing the text.