Benedetto Cotrugli, Merchant Writer

In this study the auctor presents the little known figure of Benedetto Cotrugli, born on Raguse (Croatia), a merchant who, in his latest years in Naples, became a writer, both in Latin and in the vernacular. The first text he wrote, De uxore ducenda (that is dealing with the taking of a wife), is missing, but we can reconstruct its structure and content. The other two texts are treatises in the vernacular describing a profession, that of the merchant in the Book of the Art of Trade (Libro de l’arte de la mercatura), of the sailor in the De navigatione (or the Art of Navigation). By writing these two texts Benedetto Cotrugli presents himself as “a man of letters”, whose personality is non common, because he is able to lie theoretical and practical culture and to make counter-current choices in the Naples of the middle of the XV century.