Georgius Merula


Georgius Merula was an Italian humanist and classical scholar.

Life

Merula was 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. While he was teaching at Venice, he was the subject of a personal polemic by Cornelio Vitelli, directed at his scholarship; and Vitelli replaced him in 1483.

Works

Merula produced the editio princeps of Plautus, of the Scriptores rei rusticae, Cato, Varro, Columella, Palladius and possibly of Martial. He also published commentaries on portions of Cicero, on Ausonius, Juvenal, Curtius Rufus, and other classical authors.
Merula wrote also , an account of the siege of Shkodra by the Turks, and Antiquitates vicecomitum, The history of the Visconti, dukes of Milan, down to the death of Matteo the Great. He violently attacked Politian, whose Miscellanea were declared by Merula to be either plagiarized from his own writings or, when original, to be entirely incorrect.