However, in a document known for years there is a detail which has
unfortunately remained unnoticed until now and which fully entitles us
to a complete revision of the established opinion on the first appearance
of the word »psychology« in the scientific language of Europe. At least
66 years before Gockel (and also a few years before the publication of
Melanchton’s lectures »on the soul«), the term »psychology« was used by
our great humanist, the poet of »Judita«, Marko Marulic (1450—1524) in
one of his Latin treatises not as yet found but whose title »P s i c h i o-
l o g i a de r a t i o n e a n i m a e h uma n a e « is preserved in a list of
Marulic’s works given by the poet’s fellow-citizen, contemporary, and
friend Bozicevic-Natalis in his »Life of Marko Marulic from Split« (Vita
Marci Maruli Spalatensis).
About Franjo Bozicevic himself there are very few biographic data:
even the years of his birth and death have not as yet been ascertained.
F. Fancev considers him to have been 20—30 years younger than Marulic
(Croatian Encyclopaedia, tome III, p. 200); the chronological analysis of
his poems fixes his death »not before« 1536. In a section of the
biography dealing with Marulic’s friends, Bozicevic describes his personal
relations with the great Split humanist with the following words:
». . . nor I, Franjo, though in mind and by education the youngest, by
any means content to be put in the second place in my love for him.. «
(»... ego itidem Franciscus, licet ingenio et doctrina novissimus, in amore
tamen ipsius secundis honoribus minime contentus...«). Some poetical
epistles exchanged between Marulic and Bozicevic have been preserved;
one of Marulic’s most beautiful poems is addressed to Bozicevic: an
invitation to his friends to come to see him at Necujam. Although in
Bozicevic’s description of Marulic’s life and personality there are some
stereotyped, superlative, and quasi-hagiographic elements typical of the
time, a close, friendly relation between Marulic and his biographer can
make us sure that Bozicevic was very well informed about the details of
Marulic’s literary work. The accuracy of Bozicevic’s information can be
checked by comparing it with the data from other sources, in the first
place with those from Marulic’s will dictated by Marulic himself to his
notary before his death (P. Kolendic, Marulic’s will, Split 1924).
The manuscript of Marulic’s biography is in the City Library at
Split, in a codex also containing Bozicevic’s poems. So far it has been
published several times: in Farlati’s »Illyricum sacrum« (tome 3, Venice,
1765, pp. 433—5), in a jubilee booklet of V. Milic »On the Occasion of the
Quatercentenary of Croatian Art Poetry« (second edition, Split 1902),. in
the work of M. Markovic »Poetae Latini Dalmatiae inediti. 1. Franjo
Bozicevic« (Living antiquity, 2nd year, tome 2, Skopje 1952, pp. 291—296)
etc. The manuscript is written in a humanistic cursive way, typical of the
beginning of the 16th century, so that the hand-writing itself, as well as
all other circumstances, indicate that the manuscript is Bozicevic’s
autograph (it is considered as such, among others, also by the two most
distinguished investigators of Bozicevic’s works, by P. Kolendic and M.
Markovic).
The title of the work containing the term »psychology« (Psichiologia
de ratione animae humanae liber I) appears in the fifth section of the
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