Georgius Merula

Georgius Merula (c. 1430 – 1494) was an Italian humanist and classical scholar born in Alessandria in Piedmont. The greater part of his life was spent in 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), an 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.

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