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Georgius Merula

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GEORGIUS MERULA (the Latinized name of Giorgio Mirlani; c. 1 43 0 - 1 494), Italian humanist and classical scholar, was born at Alessandria in Piedmont. The greater part of his life was spent at Venice and Milan, where he held a professorship and continued to teach until his death. To Merula we are indebted for the editio princeps of Plautus (1472), of the Scriptores rei rusticae, Cato, Varro, Columella, Palladius (1472) and possibly of Martial (1471). He also published commentaries on portions of Cicero (especially the De finibus ), on Ausonius, Juvenal, Curtius Rufus, and other classical authors. He wrote also Bellum scodrense (1474), on account of the siege of Scodra (Scutari) by the Turks, and Antiquitates vicecomitum, the history of the Visconti, dukes of Milan, down to the death of Matteo the Great (1322). He violently attacked Politian (Poliziano), whose Miscellanea (a collection of notes on classical authors) were declared by Merula to be either plagiarized from his own writings or, when original, to be entirely incorrect.

See monograph by F. Gabotto and Badini-Gonfalonieri (1894) with bibliography; for the quarrel with Politian see also C. Meiners Lebensbeschreibungen der beruhmten Manner (1796), ii. 158.