ABSTRACT
This chapter explores that reality by inviting (re)consideration of Nicolo Massa, a doctor positively sweating to prove himself a man of letters and thus worthy of respect. It presents Nicolo Massa as representative of a predicament faced by humanistic aspirants. Massa’s case ultimately leads to contemplate others like him in the Venetian Republic. Massa labored to strengthen the links between practical medicine and the “Renaissance of Letters.” The chapter describes Venetian health workers’ encounters with literature in the aggregate, following their material and archival trails beyond correspondence, and concluding with some reflections on what letters and learning did for a range of historical actors. Massa’s Epistolarum medicinalium leads us into one of the borderlands within the humanistic respublica litterarum. In his monuments of words, Massa aimed at a similar image of himself as a man of humanistic breadth and grace.
