About the text

This text contains the first eighteen selections of the Tuebner edition of Pauli Manutii Epistulae Selectae, Martinus Fickelscherer, ed. (Lipsiae, 1892). I've made the following changes to the Tuebner text, in the hope of improving its readability: I capitalized the initial word of every sentence (the Tuebner text follows Manutius' own practice, which is described in the Preface); I didn't write enclitics as separate words (also described in the Preface); and I substituted v for consonantal u.

For me, the most interesting selection is number 18, in which Manutius responds to the arguments of those who disparage the study of Latin.

I've also added a poem by Manutius, copied from the anthology Renaissance Latin Verse, Alessandro Perosa and John Sparrow, eds. (Chapel Hill, 1979). The poem is about the execution of Iacopo Bonfadio, a man of letters who in 1550 was charged in Genoa with the commission of unnatural acts. It is addressed to Giambattista Grimaldi, a leading citizen of Genoa and a friend and patron of Bonfadio.