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English Pages [241] Year 2018
Neven Jovanović · Johanna Luggin Luka Špoljarić · Lav Šubarić (eds.)
Neo-Latin contexts in Croatia and Tyrol Challenges, Prospects, Case Studies
Böhlau Verlag Wien Köln Weimar | 2018
The publication is supported by the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Zagreb.
Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Cataloging-in-publication data: http://dnb.d-nb.de
Cover: Photo by Jasenko Rasol
© 2018 by Böhlau Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Wien Kölblgasse 8–10, A-1030 Wien, www.boehlau-verlag.com All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any other information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Proofreading: Aleksander Ignjatović, Tom Szerecz Cover design: Michael Haderer, Vienna Typesetting: Michael Rauscher, Vienna ISBN 978-3-205-20470-1
Table of Contents
Notes on Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Neven Jovanović Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
I. DEFINING THE CORPORA Lav Šubarić Universal, National, Regional: Concepts of the Neo-Latin Literary History . . . 21 Response by Luka Špoljarić . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Gorana Stepanić Rethinking the Unity of Croatian Neo-Latin Literature: Zones of Cultural Influence and Generic Repertoire in Poetry (1650–1720) . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Response by Simon Wirthensohn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Martin Korenjak Regional Latinity: A Worm’s-Eye View on Neo-Latin Literature . . . . . . . . . 51 Response by Bratislav Lučin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
II CASE STUDIES Vladimir Rezar Humanists of Dubrovnik . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Response by Martin Korenjak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Luka Špoljarić Power and Subversion in the Ducal Palace: Dalmatian Patrician Humanists and Congratulatory Orations to Newly Elected Doges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Response by Johanna Luggin.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
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Johanna Luggin Macrohistory or Microhistory? The Tyrolean Menippean Satire as a Regional Literary Genre . . . . . . . . . . 107 Response by Irena Bratičević. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Simon Wirthensohn The Impact of the Jesuit Stage on Other Theatre Forms in Tyrol.. . . . . . . . 123 Response by Gorana Stepanić . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Irena Bratičević Latin Poets in Late Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Dubrovnik . . . . . . 139 Response by Isabella Walser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 Bratislav Lučin Antiquarianism in Croatia: An Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 Response by Lav Šubarić. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
III COMPARING THE CORPORA Florian Schaffenrath A Comparison of Neo-Latin Epic Poetry in Tyrol and Croatia: A Case Study of Eighteenth-Century Marian Epic Poetry . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 Response by Neven Jovanović . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206 Neven Jovanović Quadrata rotundis? Lexical Comparison of Two Sets of Neo-Latin Texts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
Response by Florian Schaffenrath . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
Notes on Contributors
Irena Bratičević is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Classical Philology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb. She is the co-editor (with Teo Radić) of Classical Heritage from the Epigraphic to the Digital : Academia Ragusina 2009 & 2011 (2014) and author of the book Via virtutis / Put vrline : Epigramatski opus Rajmunda Kunića [Via virtutis / The path of virtue : The epigrammatic oeuvre of Rajmund Kunić] (2015), the second volume (2016) containing her critical edition of Rajmund Kunić’s epigrams. Her research interests include Croatian Neo-Latin literature, especially the eighteenth and nineteenth century, Ragusan literature and manuscript culture of early modern Dubrovnik. She is currently a collaborator on the project Manuscript Networks of the Ragusan Republic (1358–1808) led by Ivan Lupić. Her edition of poems of Marin Zlatarić for the Textual networks of early modern Croatia project (led by Lahorka Plejić Poje) is forthcoming. Neven Jovanović is a philologist and an Associate Professor at the Department of Classical philology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb. He earned his PhD from University of Zagreb, 2006, with a study on Neo-Latin stylistics and Marko Marulić. Besides Croatian Neo-Latin literature (especially during the Renaissance and the eighteenth century), his main field of interest is digital philology. He is the chief editor of the Croatiae auctores Latini digital collection (CroALa, croala. ffzg.unizg.hr, published as Open Access and Open Data), comprising over five million Latin words written by authors connected with Croatia. Currently he is preparing (with Luka Špoljarić) a critical edition of writings by Nicholas bishop of Modruš. Jovanović also leads a team which at the moment researches place references in Croatian Latin texts (CroALa index locorum). Martin Korenjak is a professor of Classical Philology at the University of Innsbruck. He studied Classical Philology and Linguistics in Innsbruck and Heidelberg (1990–1996), worked as a research assistant in Innsbruck (1997–2003), and was a professor of Classical Philology in Bern (2003–2009), before returning to Innsbruck in 2009. Since 2011, he divides his time between the University and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Neo-Latin Studies. His research areas include Greek and Latin poetry, rhetoric, the reception of classical antiquity and Neo-Latin literature. He has
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recently published Geschichte der neulateinischen Literatur : Vom Humanismus bis zur Gegenwart (C.H. Beck 2016). Bratislav Lučin is a philologist (PhD University of Zagreb, 2011, on Latin epigraphy and Marko Marulić) and the head of the Marulianum, centre for studies on Marko Marulić and his humanist circle in Split, Croatia. His main fields of interest are the oeuvre of Marko Marulić (1450–1524), literature of the Croatian Renaissance humanism (especially in Latin), reception of Classics and reception of Erasmus of Rotterdam in Croatia. His most recent publications include articles on Marko Marulić (in collaboration with Franz Posset) and Šimun Kožičić Benja, in Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History. Volume 7. Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa and South America (1500–1600) (Brill 2015) ; and ‘Petronius Arbiter. Addenda and Corrigenda’, in Catalogus Translationum et commentariorum. Mediaeval and Renaissance Latin Translations and Commentaries : Annotated Lists and Guides. Volume XI (PIMS 2016). Johanna Luggin is a post-doctoral researcher at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Neo-Latin Studies in Innsbruck and Freiburg im Breisgau, currently working on Latin literature and early modern mentalities. As her PhD dissertation, she edited the journey poem De mirabilibus Pecci (The Wonders of the Peak District ; 1627) by the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes. Apart from her work for the Boltzmann Institute, she has also been part of the Croatica et Tyrolensia project, in which she was responsible for the digitization of Tyrolean Neo-Latin texts. Vladimir Rezar (PhD University of Zagreb, 2005, with a dissertation ‘De morte Christi by Damjan Beneša : Genre, critical edition, and commentary’) is an Associate Professor at the Department of Classical Philology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb. He teaches history of Latin language. His main research interest is the Croatian Neo-Latin literature, especially in the early sixteenth-century Dubrovnik. Florian Schaffenrath is an Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Innsbruck and the Director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Neo-Latin Studies. He studied Classics at the universities of Heidelberg, Innsbruck and Siena and worked as a research assistant at the Classics department of the University of Innsbruck. In 2006, he completed his PhD thesis on the Neo-Latin epic poem Columbus (Rome 1715) by Ubertino Carrara SJ. As a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation he went to Freiburg im Breisgau and completed his Habilitation on Cicero’s Philippics in 2014.
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Gorana Stepanić (PhD University of Zagreb, 2006) divides her time between Madrid and Croatia, where she is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Classics and Romance Philology ( Juraj Dobrila University of Pula). She teaches courses on classical Latin literature and Classics in popular culture. Her main research interests are Neo-Latin literature, Early Modern literature and culture, textual criticism, classical receptions. She has authored a number of articles about Neo-Latin writers and genres, cultural contacts and identities, and has published several translations from Latin into Croatian (Cicero, De oratore ; Thomas More, Utopia ; Leon Battista Alberti, De pictura). Currently she is working on a monograph on the seventeenth-century Neo-Latin poetry in Croatia. Together with Violeta Moretti, she has just finished preparing an edition of the Latin epistolary poems of Pavao Ritter Vitezović (1652–1713). She has collaborated on several international research projects in the field of Neo-Latin literature, textual criticism and classical reception studies, and is a member of the research group ‘Historiografía de la literatura grecolatina en España’ (Complutense University of Madrid). Luka Špoljarić (PhD 2013, Central European University, Budapest) is an intellectual historian who teaches at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, having spent the previous years as a postdoctoral fellow on the Croatica et Tyrolensia project and the Francesco De Dombrowski Fellow at Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. His research explores intellectual and political dynamics in the world of the Renaissance Adriatic. He is currently finishing a biography of Nicholas of Modruš, an ambitious humanist bishop and diplomat, and one of the leading figures of the Illyrian-Croatian national community in Rome during the 1460s and 1470s. He is also preparing an edition and English translation of Nicholas’s capital work, De bellis Gothorum, for The I Tatti Renaissance Library series (published by Harvard University Press), and (together with Neven Jovanović) an edition of his orations in the service of Pope Sixtus IV. Lav Šubarić is the Vice-Director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Neo-Latin Studies in Innsbruck. He studied Classical Philology in Innsbruck and London and holds a PhD from the University of Innsbruck. His scholarly interests include manuscript studies, literary history, history of education and the role of Latin in the formation of national identities. Recently he has co-edited the volume Latin at the Crossroads of Identity : The Evolution of Linguistic Nationalism in the Kingdom of Hungary (Brill 2015). Isabella Walser is a Key Researcher at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for NeoLatin Studies in Innsbruck. She studied Neo-Latin Literature in Innsbruck and Freiburg
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im Breisgau, earning her PhD in 2014 with a substantial edition of Anton Wilhelm Ertl’s Austriana regina Arabiae (1687) (De Gruyter, 2016). Her research interests include Latin didactic poetry, the Neo-Latin novel, and early modern history and politics. She is currently working on a project investigating the concepts and constructions of Europe and European identity in Neo-Latin literature. Simon Wirthensohn studied Latin, Italian and German philology at the University of Innsbruck. From 2013 to 2016, as a fellow of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Neo-Latin Studies, he wrote his PhD thesis on the dramatic oeuvre of the German Jesuit Anton Claus. Since 2016 he is working at the Department of Classics of the University of Innsbruck on a project concerning the Latin school plays by the eighteenth-century playwright Joseph Resch. His recent publications include commented editions of Anton Claus’s play Cornelius Publius Scipio sui victor (2015) and of the poem Sanctus Severinus Boetius (2016).
Neven Jovanović
Introduction
The recent growth of the study of Neo-Latin literature, dramatically exemplified by the almost simultaneous appearance of a number of reference works, has been perceived as a sign of maturity of the field. In the same breath, however, a warning has been issued about the challenges the field is facing. One of these challenges is seen in the declining number of scholars who are ‘really comfortable’ working with Latin.1 Therefore, the field seems to be in a somewhat paradoxical situation : though more scholars are more interested in integrating Neo-Latin sources and texts into their research, and though more Neo-Latin texts are more easily accessible than ever before (thanks to various large-scale digitizing initiatives), the main advantage of Neo-Latin studies – the fact that, whether from Iceland or from Goa, whether from 1250 or from 1912, the texts we study are all in the same language – remains underused. The scholars of Neo-Latin often seem to stay inside the borders of a nationality or a period, and the much-vaunted universality of Latin rarely becomes the basis of research. Starting off with an intentionally naive hypothesis – that bodies of writings in the same language could be compared even when there have been no obvious direct influences between the cultures that have produced them – a mixed team of scholars from Tyrol and from Croatia set out to compare our two Neo-Latin literatures over a period of two years (2013–2015). The present volume is just one result of that undertaking ; others include a core collection of digital scholarly editions of Latin texts from Tyrol (Latinitas Tyrolensis, LatTy) and a digital prosopography and bibliography of Croatian Neo-Latin (Croatiae auctorum Latinorum bibliographia, CroALaBib). The undertaking itself, the research project Croatica et Tyrolensia – A Digital Comparison of Croatian and Tyrolean Neo-Latin Literature, was a result of a constellation of happy and complementary coincidences. In 2011, the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Neo-Latin Studies was established in Innsbruck with the mission to focus on the aspects of Neo-Latin culture ‘which have made a significant contribution to the emergence of Europe as we know it today’ ; the next year saw publication of two volumes of Tyrolis Latina : Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur in Tirol, ‘a courageous but overwhelmingly successful attempt to survey the whole range of Latin writing – literary, scholarly and
1 C. Kallendorf, ‘Recent Trends in Neo-Latin Studies’, Renaissance Quarterly 69:2 (2016), 617–629.
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utilitarian – of an entire region’.2 Almost simultaneously, in Croatia, starting in 2009, and under the auspices of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb there appeared the first version of the Croatiae auctores Latini (CroALa), a digital collection of Croatian Latin texts. At the University of Zagreb’s Department of Classical Philology, the chair of Croatian Latin has existed since 1987, and the research programme Neolatina Croatica has been active since 1995 (while at the Centre for Croatian Studies of the same university, there has been an entire department and a study programme dedicated to Croatian Latinity since 2006). Thus, on the Croatian side there was a collection of texts but no comprehensive survey of the literary system, while the Tyrolean side had a survey but no textual collection. The convenience of adding the missing components was unquestionable, and testing the completed research corpora by putting them side by side seemed reasonable too. Modern Croatia is an independent state, and Tyrol is a Euroregion formed by the eponymous Austrian federal state and two Italian autonomous provinces, South Tyrol and Trentino. In terms of area and population, Croatia is more than twice as large as Tyrol. The majority of modern Croatian population is Slavic, while most of Tyroleans speak German. Historically, however, the independence of the medieval Croatian Kingdom ended in 1102 (when the nobles accepted the rule of the Hungarian king Coloman) at about the same time as the independence of the County of Tyrol began (from around 1138, after the duke Henry X of Bavaria had been deposed). The further history of Croatia was closely connected with the Venetian Republic in the south, and with the Hungarian constituent of the Habsburg Empire in the north. Tyrol belonged to the Habsburgs as well, but it was one of their Austrian Erblande. On the whole, the development of Croatia was characterized by traumatic discontinuities and changes – political and administrative, populational, territorial, military, economic, cultural – while Tyrol remained in all these regards comparatively stable, and much more peaceful, until the end of World War I, when its southern parts were annexed by the Kingdom of Italy. Croatia was politically divided for most of the Early Modern period. Its coastal cities in Istria and Dalmatia were part of the Venetian Stato da Màr, except for the tiny Republic of Dubrovnik (which retained independence until its conquest by Napoleon’s army in 1806–1808, and was incorporated afterwards into Austria-Hungary) ; the inland part, so-called Croatia proper, or, from the mid-sixteenth century, Croatia-Slavonia, enjoyed a certain autonomy, but under the Hungarian Crown ; from the sixteenth century, on the eastern borders of this Croatia proper a separate military zone (Militärgrenze) was established, funded and governed by Inner Austria, to serve as a bulwark against the 2 J. L. Flood, ‘Review of M. Korenjak, F. Schaffenrath, L. Šubarić, and K. Töchterle, eds., Tyrolis Latina: Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur in Tirol’, Renaissance Quarterly 67:1 (2014), 193–195.
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Ottoman Empire. Turkish invasions and occupations were among the main factors of instability in all Croatian regions. Noble estates in Croatia-Slavonia also had to continually struggle to retain their political autonomy (one of whose hallmarks was the active use of Latin in public life3), balancing between the Habsburg king and Hungary. An especially dramatic change came in 1671 with the suppression of the so-called Zrinski- Frankopan Conspiracy (in Hungary also known as the Magnate or Wesselenyi Conspiracy), which the Habsburg court used to eliminate and expropriate the wealthiest noble families in Croatia-Slavonia (and some in Hungary). The chronic instability of the peripheral region also resulted in a lack of proper centres of higher education – the first modern Croatian university, the one in Zagreb, was fully established only in 1874 (a more modest academy had been active there from 1669). The main medium of intellectual life, the printing press, was equally difficult to access. After several small shortlived undertakings in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (which published books in Croatian vernacular), the first printing house with some continuity was the one in Zagreb, active from 1694 ; the real development of printing in Croatia took off only in the second half of the eighteenth century. The Croatian middle class and its bureaucracy were small, and there were few individual sponsors of literature and the arts. All these circumstances orientated intellectual and cultural life strongly outward. The usual destinations for talented Croatian intellectuals were Italy, the Habsburg dominions in Austria and Hungary, sometimes the German lands and (Renaissance) Poland. A different form of outward orientation was recognizable in the political visions of the Illyrianism, ‘a discursive product of the South Slavic branch of the res publica litteraria which was intensively engaged in the symbolic constructing of distinctive national identities ever since the rise of Humanism’.4 In the system of the Habsburg dominions, Tyrol was a periphery country as well, but it was peripheral in a different way. Situated high in the Alps, detached from the other Erblande and further cut up into a number of enclaves belonging to imperial prince-bishops, it enjoyed virtually no commercial links with the rest of the Austrian hereditary lands. Instead, it served as an important route between Italy and southern Germany. The region had developed its own significant industries and trade (glass, silk, arms and ammunition, mining of metal and salt) ; its peasantry was largely free (contrary to the situation in Hungary and Croatia, with the exception of the Militärgrenze). 3 For the complex political and cultural dynamics of language use in the multinational Hungarian Kingdom, see G. Almási and L. Šubarić, eds., Latin at the Crossroads of Identity: The Evolution of Linguistic Nationalism in the Kingdom of Hungary (Leiden 2015). 4 Z. Blažević, ‘Indetermi-Nation: Narrative Identity and Symbolic Politics in the Early Modern Illyrism’, in Whose Love of Which Country? Composite States, National Histories and Patriotic Discourses in Early Modern East Central Europe, ed. B. Trencsényi and M. Zászkaliczky (Leiden 2010), 203–224, at 205.
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Politically, Tyrol was to a large extent governed by its powerful, self-reliant estates and by the bureaucracy they appointed and paid. For three hundred years, from 1363 until 1665, the land had its own line of Habsburg rulers, with their own court and courtly culture ; there were courts of prince-bishops in Trento (the location of the famous council in 1545–1563) and Brixen. Important cultural centres were monasteries and gymnasia, and a system of public elementary schools – for girls and boys, in cities, market towns and even some villages – was regulated at the level of the whole province already in 1586. Soon after the reunification under the Austrian Habsburgs, the University of Innsbruck was founded (in 1669, the same year the Neoacademia Zagrabiensis was established in Croatia). Printers were continually active in Tyrol from the late fifteenth century, with a conspicuous rise in production from the late sixteenth century onwards. All the differences notwithstanding, Croatia and Tyrol also show some similarities in terms of their historical development. Both regions remained essentially untouched by the Reformation (and had no need for any royal edicts of religious toleration). In both, the Society of Jesus (present in Tyrol from 1560, and in Croatia from 1604) shaped a large part of the educational system and, consequentially, the intellectual life. As Habsburg crownlands, the regions remained loyal supporters of their ruler in times of crisis. And from the point of view of Neo-Latin studies, the main similarity between the two are their rich – to modern eyes, even surprisingly rich – Latin literatures, both flowering at a surprisingly late date : while the traditional focus of Neo-Latin studies lies in the period from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, a major part of Tyrolean and Croatian Latin texts were written from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, or even later (for disciplines such as theology or philology). In a collection of papers such as this one the two large and still largely under-researched bodies of literature could not have been systematically compared across genres and periods. Our intention has been more modest. We aimed simply to start a dialogue, to see where the two local branches of the same discipline are at the present moment, what interests them, and what is insufficiently visible to the outsiders, or even (equally important) to the insiders. The dialogue documented in this book began at the Croatica et Tyrolensia conference in the Croatian city of Split in April 2015 as an event of the 25th Colloquium Marulianum.5 The Croatian and the Tyrolean research teams met to discuss the first versions of the papers collected here. To echo the stimulating atmosphere and exchange of opinions during that spring in Split, we have asked the authors (including some who were not present at the original conference) to contribute 5 The Colloquium Marulianum, organized by the Split Literary Circle and the Marulianum Research Centre, is a yearly scholarly conference devoted to the study of the life and works of Marko Marulić and of Croatian Humanist and Renaissance literature; the first Colloquium Marulianum took place in 1991.
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to this volume not only their own work, but also brief responses to others’ papers. The responses were meant not to praise or criticize, but to look at the subjects ‘from the other side’ – to say whether something similar to Tyrolean phenomena could be found in Croatia, or vice versa. And, if not, why ? The volume is divided into three sections. The first one, ‘Defining the Corpora’, starts from the most obvious difference of the study of Neo-Latin in Croatia and Tyrol : the stories of the two literatures are told in different ways. As Lav Šubarić reminds us, an important innovation of the Tyrolis Latina as a literary history was the decision to treat together ‘the Neo-Latin authors who would in a traditional national literary history be separated into Italians and Austrians […] joined with German, Swiss, Dutch, Irish, and other immigrants and travellers who left their mark on Tyrolean culture’, whereas Croatian literary history always regarded the authors (even those writing in Latin) as ‘Croats’ and the literature as expressing the ‘national spirit’. Responding to the invitation to reinterpret Croatian literary history as a system of regional literatures, Luka Špoljarić warns that the idea of the nation is an important component of Croatian intellectual history already from the Renaissance onwards, and in order to really understand the dynamics, we need a careful, creative balance between the individual, the regional, the national and, of course, the international. Gorana Stepanić notes that the problem of a heterogeneous framework for a literary history is not exclusively Croatian or Tyrolean or Austrian : the modern discipline of Neo-Latin studies has been struggling with mixed national and regional categories since the seminal Companion to Neo-Latin Studies by Jozef IJsewijn (1977) to the latest Oxford Handbook of Neo-Latin (2015), and the lack of coverage of ‘Austrian Neo-Latin literature’ in all recent reference works may be considered an excellent litmus test for the hybridity of approaches in these surveys. In a brief historical sketch, Stepanić combines the regional approach with the classification of genres, thus diagnosing and explaining different northern and southern Croatian attitudes to the baroque. Simon Wirthensohn finds the same dependence of literary production on the specific regional cultural contexts valid for the Jesuit school drama in Vorarlberg and Tyrol ; Wirthensohn notices, however, that activities of individual authors may transcend boundaries of any hypothetical system, and that a strictly regional literary history cannot include ‘texts written by Tyrol-born authors outside Tyrol’. The divergence between literature (seen as the interplay of individual works and biographies) and a ‘special history’ of a place or a nation is the starting point for Martin Korenjak. He shows that Neo-Latin literature can be, paradoxically, at the same time global and parochial ; it has both a supranational canon of famous authors and an amazingly broad basis of obscure writers whose ‘texts […] were distributed and read only or mainly in the region in which they had been composed’. Contrary to modern notions of regional literature, however, regional Neo-Latin is revealed to be ‘a kind of small-scale
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replica of Neo-Latin literature as a whole’. Bratislav Lučin tries out Korenjak’s theses, applying them to the Croatian context (or contexts), but it is much harder to imagine Croatia or its regions as a closed literary system – though Korenjak’s general conclusions on the fullness of repertoire, and on the interpretative value of the regional context, undoubtedly hold here as well. The central section of the volume is dedicated to extended explorations of case studies from Tyrolean and Croatian Neo-Latin. Vladimir Rezar offers a detailed survey of the celebrated microcosm of humanist Latin authors from the Republic of Dubrovnik (Ragusa) in its heyday during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The image of Dubrovnik as the ‘Croatian Athens’ already appeared in the nation-building nineteenth century, and Rezar is uniquely positioned to enhance the conventional notion with recently discovered or reinterpreted facts, such as an overview of Damjan Beneša’s cycle of epigrams in Ancient Greek, which were inspired by Angelo Poliziano’s Greek poetry. Korenjak’s corresponding brief overview of a slower and more limited development of literary humanism in the towns of Tyrol – at the time, the Tyrolean communes must have been less open to Italian political, economic and cultural trends – demonstrates that in this period the differences between (the southern part of ) Croatia and Tyrol were more prominent than the similarities. Two papers consider literary innovations closely bound to the local contexts of NeoLatin writings. Luka Špoljarić postulates a new epideictic genre (or sub-genre, or thematic group) of Dalmatian humanism, a genre prompted by political rituals of the Venetian Republic during the Quattrocento : on the occasion of electing a new doge, envoys of the communes subject to the Serenissima delivered classicizing orations. Carefully piecing together circumstantial and textual evidence, Špoljarić shows that humanist envoys from Dalmatian cities approached the task with specific local, even regional strategies and agendas. Johanna Luggin admits that a similar corpus of orations cannot be found in Tyrol during the same period (its political situation being different) – but then she goes on to use Špoljarić’s thesis as a heuristic instrument and recognizes a similar attitude in certain Tyrolean courtly speeches. In her own contribution, Luggin describes an innovative Tyrolean approach to the Menippean satire, which was not employed in other Neo-Latin literatures ; though, in claiming so, Luggin has to face the challenge of establishing minimum criteria necessary to constitute a genre, or a tradition, on a local scale. Irena Bratičević can confirm that the Tyrolean satires are unique – they have no known equivalent in Croatian Neo-Latin, at least – but she also notes that Croatian occasional poetry of the eighteenth century (especially in Dubrovnik) discovered a different mode of innovation, celebrating important events by multilingual collections of poems.
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A further intriguing point of contact between Latin and other languages is explored by Simon Wirthensohn, who shows how the Jesuit school drama influenced other Tyrolean theatre activities : those of non-Jesuit educational institutions, of student theatre and of popular theatre (including performances in the villages). Wirthensohn’s paper leads Gorana Stepanić to realize that the Jesuit Neo-Latin theatre, though well studied in the German-speaking area, remains an almost untouched theme in Croatia ; a first collection of materials has only recently been put together. Irena Bratičević provides both an overview and an interpretation of the eighteenthand nineteenth-century dynamics in the Neo-Latin poetry of Dubrovnik : later generations both glorified and emulated ‘the four great’ poets from the second half of the eighteenth century (Bošković, Stay, Kunić and Džamanjić, all active in Italy for a large part of their careers). An examination of verbal echoes proves that later poets not only revered the great authors, but also carefully studied and thoroughly assimilated their works. Isabella Walser concludes that at this point developments in Neo-Latin literatures in Croatia and Tyrol become very similar – with the important exception of the absence of inspirational ‘great names’ in Tyrol. The paper of Bratislav Lučin reminds us that Neo-Latin writing comprises much more than just belles lettres. Lučin discusses development in Croatia of the scholarly genre of antiquarianism, defined as a general interest in the realia of antiquity. Lučin provides an analysis of the chronological and thematical changes of the genre, and interprets these changes in terms of specific regional strengths and weaknesses. The response by Lav Šubarić finds clear parallels between antiquarianism in Tyrol and in the northern part of Croatia. The final section of the volume, ‘Comparing the Corpora’, presents two explicit attempts to compare features of Tyrolean with those of Croatian Neo-Latin. Florian Schaffenrath juxtaposes epic poems from both literatures, with a special focus on the Marian epic. Though differing significantly in length and motive for writing, Croatian and Tyrolean works clearly belong to the same tradition (of the classicizing epic inspired by Italian models) and show marks of a common contemporary (baroque) style. In his response, Neven Jovanović expands the Croatian corpus of baroque Marian epics with two less typical examples, and problematizes the usual working definition of the genre. Jovanović’s own contribution addresses two collections of digital texts – the above mentioned Croatiae auctores Latini (CroALa) and the Latinitas Tyrolensis (LatTy) – using one to explore the other. Schaffenrath responds by acknowledging some of the risks and rewards of Jovanović’s experiments. ***
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| Neven Jovanović Tuum sit scribere tuis, quod certe pulchrum est, vel etiam ventosae plebis suffragio recreari, quod inglorium non est: nos paucis lectoribus per Europam aliasque terrarum partes dispersis contenti sumus, eosque nostram in familiaritatem obsequenter invitamus, eorumque Latinis munusculis delectamur. Delectamur, iuvat enim benevolentiam, quam experti sumus, recordari, delectamur lectione epistolarum, quas Latinissimas nobis scripsit vir Austriacus, summo genere natus, delectamur lepidissimo epigrammate, quo nos Lutetiam adeuntes salutavit vir Batavus, ingenio et dignitate nobilis, delectamur duabus elegiis, quarum alteram paucis abhinc annis debuimus iuveni Britanno, alteram paucis abhinc mensibus iuveni Gallo, utrique valde erudito et antiquae virtutis. Digna quidem essent et haec quae indicavimus, et alia pulcherrima a Ragusinis et Italis ad nos amicissime missa, quae publicam in lucem ederentur. Marko Faustin Galjuf, Specimen de fortuna Latinitatis (1833)
The world that, in the years after the French Revolution, Marko Faustin Galjuf, an expatriate from Dubrovnik internationally famous for his Latin improvisations, tried to stop from disappearing – the world of Neo-Latin commonality, an informal alliance sharing a tradition, education, a language, an aesthetic – was doomed to perish under the wheels of modernity and popular culture. But today a myriad of traces of that commonality remain, continually challenging us to interpret them and understand them. We have tried to suggest that this can also be done by a kind of triangulation. The dynamic interplay of the local and the universal does not have to be approached and assessed just from a single baseline point. Sometimes it is precisely the opposite angles and those lying beyond traditional boundaries that help us to see better not only what our respective heritage holds, but also what is missing from it. Working together in that way, although we remain, like Galjuf ’s readers, pauci et per Europam aliasque terrarum partes dispersi, we are able – again like these readers – to invite each other, and all of you, obsequenter nostram in familiaritatem. This book and the whole Croatica et Tyrolensia project gladly acknowledge the generous support of three institutions : the Unity through Knowledge Fund (now part of the Croatian Science Foundation), the Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft, and the Split Literary Circle–Marulianum. The editors and contributors also express their deep gratitude to the two scholars and mentors who have laid the groundwork for all recent Neo-Latin research in Croatia and Tyrol : to Darko Novaković (University of Zagreb) and Karlheinz Töchterle (University of Innsbruck).
I. DEFINING THE CORPORA
Lav Šubarić
Universal, National, Regional: Concepts of the Neo-Latin Literary History
As a genre of scholarly literature, literary history has always been somewhat controversial. It has a reputation of being old-fashioned, has a positivist odour and is open to fundamental criticisms.1 The authors of literary histories are forced to choose from the plethora of transmitted writings only those that they consider most important, characteristic and interesting. In doing so, they create or, in many cases, perpetuate a canon, sometimes with catastrophic consequences for the further fate of the authors who did not make the cut. The historic dimension of literary histories suggests the existence of lines of development and lets us construct causal relationships, which are in fact not necessarily always present. Depending on authors’ personal taste and the current scholarly fashion, they construct linear development from inferior to better literature, or vice versa, or the one conforming to the topos of decline and rebirth. The mistakes and wrong conclusions, once they have found their way into the widely read literary histories, easily become the accepted truth and are much tougher to correct and eradicate from the communis opinio than those found in articles and monographs. Nonetheless, literary histories are still indispensable. Only when we need them and they are not at hand do we realize how useful and necessary they really are. They provide an orientation and easy access to a given literature. They make it possible to put an author or a work in the correct context, and to get the ‘big picture’, something a lexicon or a database cannot achieve so easily. In our discipline of Neo-Latin studies, literary histories are especially important. Pressed for the justification of our existence by an environment that cares less and less for the traditional educational contents and values, we try to explain to the general public (or, more precisely, to still responsive parts of the general public) that the literature written in a language that most people (even among the well-educated) can no longer understand is somehow in some way relevant and important to their identity (be it class 1 Cf. e.g. H. R. Jauß: Literaturgeschichte als Provokation der Literaturwissenschaft (Konstanz 1967); W. Vosskamp, ‘Theorien und Probleme gegenwärtiger Literaturgeschichtsschreibung’, in Literaturgeschichts schreibung in Italien und Deutschland: Traditionen und aktuelle Probleme, ed. F. Baasner (Tübingen 1989), 166–174; R. Moritz, ‘Wie schreibt man eine Literaturgeschichte? Zu stilistischen und anderen Defiziten einer Textsorte’, in Literaturgeschichte: Österreich (Prolegomena und Fallstudien), ed. W. Schmidt-Dengler et al. (Berlin 1995), 64–78.
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identity, regional, national or European identity). A literary history, ideally combined with an anthology in translation, seems to be the best way to present the diversity and richness of such a literature and to explain its relevance. It puts Neo-Latin literature firmly on the map, makes it visible, and thus forces anyone concerned with the historical dimension of the given identity to face the relevance of Latin heritage. How, then, are the histories of Neo-Latin literature to be organized ? Apart from the literary quality and significance of their works, on what basis should authors be included ? We all know and accept that Neo-Latin literature is a European phenomenon, a uniquely transnational, or supranational literature. Due to its orientation towards classical Latinity, it is characterized by a common and to a large extent uniform language without regional variations, by Europe-wide intellectual networks, by a common reference system of the classical antiquity and by a general uniformity of the genres. All this suggests that the ideal scope for writing a history of Neo-Latin literature should be broad in order to encompass texts from the whole of Europe, or, even better, the whole world. However desirable such a concept is, two problems are likely to hinder the writing of a universal history of Neo-Latin literature : the vast quantity of texts and the lack of knowledge of the real extent of the literature. We can begin with the second issue. Despite all our efforts, Neo-Latin literature is still not extensively researched well enough to allow for an expansive synthesis in the form of a Pan-European or a global literary history. Although we know a great deal about the major figures involved, and every day learn more and more about the minores and the minimi, the proportion of unknown material hidden in libraries and archives is probably still greater than what is known to us – and even what is ‘known’ is often known only by name or title. The mass digitization process provides us with more and more texts that have yet to be read and appraised for the first time after centuries of neglect. The vastness of this literature and our insufficient knowledge of it can be demonstrated on the situation in Tyrol, one small European territory, where, as a prelude to the writing of a comprehensive literary history, a systematic search for Latin works was conducted between 2001 and 2004.2 Before this process only approximately 400 works were generally known, while after a systematic exploration of bibliographies, archives and libraries the material exploded, finally amounting to around 7,000 works.3 We can assume that the situation is similar in other parts of Europe, although in some of them the 2 This research project resulted in publication of the first regional literary history of Latin literature: Tyrolis Latina: Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur in Tirol, 2 vols., ed. M. Korenjak et al. (Vienna 2012). 3 In this context a work can denote anything from a single ode to a monastic history in nine folio volumes or a poetry collection comprising over one hundred poems.
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imbalance between the known and the unknown is probably less dramatic. A Europe- wide systematic exploration and appraisal of all this as of yet unknown material is not something we can expect in the foreseeable future. Thus, we would be writing a literary history without having a complete picture of that literature. But even if we were to concentrate only on the tip of the iceberg and ignore the rest by writing a history of European Neo-Latin literature on the basis of what is known now, we would still face the first problem : the material is already so enormous that our literary history would be more or less a superficial enumeration of intellectual giants, or would grow into a multi-volume publishing nightmare of unmanageable proportions. It is not surprising that in spite of calls for such a universal history of Neo-Latin literature,4 we are much more likely to get encyclopaedias, handbooks, companions and introductions than a traditional literary history of the whole Neo-Latin literature.5 In order to reduce the material to a reasonable proportion, instead of writing a universal literary history, we could choose a nation as a frame for our endeavour. The time-honoured concept of national literary history has a lot of advantages. Indeed, modern literary history came about in the early nineteenth century during the age of rising national consciousness, replacing the early modern history of erudition, the old polyhistoric historia litteraria. The new concept of a nation displaced the earlier dominant heuristic frames ranging from the cosmopolitism on the one side to local patriotism on the other. The first modern literary histories were genuinely nationalistic projects. In Germany, for instance, in the context of the fragmented political situation and the confessional differences, literary history was a way to demonstrate German unity, at least in the cultural field, in the form of the ‘German spirit’.6 In other politically divided nations, like Italy, Poland or Croatia, the development was similar. Across Europe, this became the more or less universal concept for dealing with the literature, spreading also to the countries where dividedness was not an issue.7 The literature was no longer seen as a sum 4 E.g. J. Leonhardt, ‘Was kommt nach der Revolution? Pragmatische Überlegungen zu den Aufgaben Neulateinischer Philologie’, Rheinisches Museum 146 (2003), 415–424, at 422. 5 Brill’s Encyclopaedia of the Neo-Latin World, 2 vols., ed. P. Ford et al. (Leiden 2014); S. Knight and S. Tilg, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Neo-Latin (Oxford 2015); V. Moul, ed., A Guide to Neo-Latin Literature (Cambridge 2017). The title of Martin Korenjak’s Geschichte der neulateinischen Literatur: Vom Humanismus bis zur Gegenwart (Munich 2016) is slightly misleading: it does offer a general historical overview on ca. 80 pages, but the bigger part of the book is dedicated to Neo-Latin literature’s relevance, role and influence. 6 J. Fohrmann, ‘Geschichte, Nation, Literaturgeschichte’, in Literaturgeschichtsschreibung in Italien und Deutschland, ed. Baasner, 50–59. 7 E.g. France: see F. Wolfzettel, ‘1846: Humanistische Tradition, liberaler Aufbruch und die Geburt nationaler Literaturgeschichtsschreibung aus der Entdeckung des ‘Französischen Geistes’’, in Zur Geschichte und Problematik der Nationalphilologien in Europa, ed. F. Fürbeth et al. (Tübingen 1999), 259–268.
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of everything that was written in a given land, regardless of the language in which it was written or the ethnicity of the authors. Instead, it became the mirror of the inner life of the people. The focus of the national literary histories was placed on the texts written in the respective national languages, as a direct expression of the genius and the vitality of the nation. These romantic notions have, of course, since largely disappeared, but the nation still remains the dominant concept for imagining literary history, as a glance into any better bookstore can teach us. However enduring and successful this concept is in general, in regard to the description and analysis of older periods of literary history, the Middle Ages and the early modern period, it sometimes becomes problematic, as it projects the modern notion of the nation and all its connotations into the time in which they did not play a major role, if at all. While in some cases in which the territorial continuity of a political unit during the greater part of the Middle Ages and early modern period largely corresponds with the modern concept of a given nation, as in England, there is no obstacle to using the nation as the heuristic frame, in others it creates a distorted context for the analysis and appraisal of works we are analysing. Let us take Austria as an example. In the early modern period the Austrian dynasty, Casa d’Austria, ruled over a complex of hereditary lands within the borders of the Holy Roman Empire, besides others outside the empire, like Croatia and Hungary. From some of these territories in the old Empire the new Austrian empire was created in 1804 and consolidated during the Congress of Vienna, when the secularized princely archbishopric of Salzburg was added to it, while other scattered possessions in today’s Germany and Belgium were lost. After the First World War the Austrian republic was created : the predominantly Slavic territories of the empire seceded, others were joined to Italy, while a chunk of the Kingdom of Hungary was added to the new state. Somewhere along the lines of the creation of the Austrian state, the Austrian nation came into being, a highly contested and ideologically loaded concept, which won large acceptance only in the late twentieth century. What then would Austrian literature be, for example, in the seventeenth century ?8 The literature of an Austrian nation, of which no one had any idea at that time ? Are there any common denominators of that literature, except for the fact that their authors were all subjects of some branch of the Habsburg family ? Common consciousness, common destiny, common language ? In the area of vernacular literature we might be tempted to use linguistic criteria as an additional support for the national concept, but there was no distinct Austrian German language in this period. The vernacular of Vorarlberg, the 8 There is a long, ongoing debate on character, merits and limits of Austrian literary history e.g. Schmidt- Dengler et al., eds., Literaturgeschichte: Österreich.
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westernmost part of today’s Austria, was and still is much more similar to that of eastern Switzerland or southwest Germany than to that of Vienna. The territory, the other main determinant of a nation besides language, looks like a more promising way of projecting the concept of the Austrian nation into the past and thus defining the national literature. But which borders do we choose ? The modern ones ? This would exclude South Tyrol, a territory, which many Austrians, at any rate most Tyroleans, still consider in some way, at least culturally, a part of their nation, although today it lies outside of the state borders, in Italy. The borders of the old Austrian Empire, on the other hand, would include Czech and Slovene lands as well as territories inhabited by Italians. If we limited ourselves to the predominantly German-speaking crown lands of the Empire, we would include South Tyrol, but would exclude the Burgenland region in the east, then a part of Hungary, which all Austrians consider as an integral part of their nation, and at the same time include the Italian Trentino, which however they do not consider an integral part. If the object of a literary history is to be Neo-Latin literature, the nation becomes even less satisfying as a frame for writing it. Firstly, the bulk of Neo-Latin literature was written in the period before the creation of modern nations or at least before their universal assertion. Secondly, it was written in a decidedly non-national language, mostly employing genres and motifs used throughout Europe. Using the modern national borders could be justified if we were able to prove that there are some common characteristics of the Latin literature written within the area that would later become Austria that set it apart from other Neo-Latin literature, that there existed strong exclusive networks, affinities and influences within this area. There are without a doubt connections and influences between Tyrol and Vienna or Carinthia and Vienna, especially in the field of the panegyric literature, thanks to Vienna’s role as the imperial residence and an undisputed centre of this part of Europe. However, these literary ties seem not to have been any more significant than Vienna’s ties with, e.g., Hungary or Bohemia. On the other hand, aside from Vienna, there are hardly any special literary ties among other parts of Austria, between Tyrol and Styria or between Vorarlberg and Upper Austria. The Jesuits, for example, an especially large and productive group of Latin authors, constantly circulated within the province of Upper Germany between Innsbruck, Munich and Ingolstadt, but very rarely transferred to the Jesuit province of Austria, to Vienna or Graz.9 Thus it would be easier to establish affinities and direct ties between the Neo-Latin literatures of Tyrol and Bavaria than between those of Tyrol and Styria or Carinthia. 9 For the relevant biographies cf. H. Gerl, Catalogus Generalis Provinciae Germaniae superioris et Bavariae Societatis Jesu 1556–1773 (Munich 1968) and [ J. N. Stöger], Scriptores provinciae Austriacae Societatis Jesu (Vienna 1855).
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In cases like this, the smaller units, the historical regions, could provide a much more satisfactory heuristic frame. Regional literary histories are nothing new. The early examples (at least in the German-speaking world) were conceived as ‘tribal’ literary histories, putting the linguistic criteria in the forefront.10 Since the 1980s there has been a resurgence of interest in the concept of region and the discussion has added various other criteria for defining the region as a literary landscape.11 The regional frame based primarily on political criteria was successfully adopted for the purpose of the literary history of the Middle Ages. It has been demonstrated that the contemporaneous political territory, with its administrative, social and confessional characteristics, with its specific educational, cultural and material conditions, is the ideal frame for the description and analysis of pre-modern literatures.12 The production and reception of literature happened for the most part within the smaller-scale political territories, and such territories were the main reference point for both writers and readers.13 The interaction between the literature and the social and political structures creates a distinct literary landscape. The main criterion for the inclusion of an author into the regional literary history is whether his works were written in or for the region, thus becoming a part of its literary system. In the field of Neo-Latin, the regional approach was used in writing the history of the Latin literature in Tyrol, a trilingual historical territory now divided between two modern nations, Austria and Italy, which gained political unity at the beginning of the late Middle Ages and had fairly stable borders until 1918. In Tyrolis Latina, the Neo-Latin authors, who would in a traditional national literary history be separated into Italians and Austrians, are treated together, joined with German, Swiss, Dutch, Irish, and other immigrants and travellers who left their mark on Tyrolean culture. In this way, their 10 E.g. J. Nadler, Literaturgeschichte der deutschen Stämme und Landschaften (Regensburg 1912–18). 11 Cf. e.g. N. Mecklenburg, ‘Stammesbiologie oder Kulturraumforschung? Kontroverse Ansätze zur Analyse regionale Dimensionen der deutschen Literatur’, in Kontroversen, alte und neue: Akten des VII. Internationalen Germanisten-Kongresses Göttingen 1985, ed. Albrecht Schöne (Tübingen 1986), vol. 10, 3–16. H. Tervooren, ed., Regionale Literaturgeschichtsschreibung: Aufgaben, Analysen und Perspektiven (Berlin 2003); A. Brandtner and W. Michler, eds., Zur regionalen Literaturgeschichtsschreibung: Fallstudien, Ent würfe, Projekte (Linz 2007); M. Cescutti et al., eds., Raum-Region-Kultur: Literaturgeschichtsschreibung im Kontext aktueller Diskurse (Innsbruck 2013). 12 Theoretical foundations in M. Siller, ‘Territorium und Literatur: Überlegungen zu Methoden, Aufgaben und Möglichkeiten einer territorialen Literaturgeschichtsschreibung des Mittelalters und der Frühneuzeit’, Geschichte und Region / Storia e Regione 1:2 (1992), 39–84. A good practical example is F. P. Knapp, Geschichte der Literatur in Österreich, vol. 1: Die Literatur des Früh- und Hochmittelalters (Graz 1994); and F. P. Knapp, Geschichte der Literatur in Österreich, vol. 2: Die Literatur des Spätmittelalters (Graz 1999). 13 See the paper by Martin Korenjak in this volume.
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common points of reference, mutual connections, similarities, but also their differences become visible. Could we apply the regional approach to Croatian Neo-Latin literature, which is traditionally seen as a national phenomenon ? We still do not have a dedicated, comprehensive book-size history of Croatian Neo-Latin literature, but there are histories of Croatian literature, which include Neo-Latin authors,14 and there are more or less short overviews of Croatian Latinity or Croatian humanism.15 Furthermore, there are representative anthologies,16 bibliographies,17 and our favourite digital bookshelf, CroALa,18 all determining through their selection implicitly what belongs to Croatian Neo-Latin literature. Their heuristic frame is a Croatian nation, understood as an ethno-cultural community sharing a common descent : being a Croat, or rather being seen as a Croat by modern-day members of this nation, is the key to belonging to this literature. Ignoring the political dividedness of the early modern polities that would one day form modern Croatia along with the quite distinct influences determining their culture, and including even the authors working outside these territories as long they are of Croatian stock – this approach suggests the existence of an integrated literature with common characteristics, interconnected works and a sense of belonging. There are of course some specific (although not exclusive) thematic features of the Croatian Latinity (e.g. the antiturcica). There existed personal connections among the different polities, though we still need much prosopographic research to determine whether they were more significant than connections to other countries. Some among the authors in question certainly saw themselves as somehow belonging to a community larger than the particular political unit in which they lived. But all this is easily counterbalanced by the fact that the Kingdom of Croatia was a part of the Central European cultural sphere, while Istria 14 E.g. M. Franičević, Povijest hrvatske renesansne književnosti [History of Croatian Renaissance literature] (Zagreb 1983); I. Frangeš, Povijest hrvatske knjizevnosti [History of Croatian literature] (Zagreb 1987); S. Prosperov Novak, Povijest hrvatske književnosti [History of Croatian literature], vol. 2: Od humanističkih početaka do Kašićeve ilirske gramatike 1604 [From humanist beginnings to Kašić’s Illyrian grammar of 1604] (Zagreb 1997). 15 For an overview of overviews, see N. Jovanović, ‘Pred jednom zbirkom hrvatskih latinista’ [Facing a collection of Croatian Latinists], in Perivoj od slave: Zbornik Dunje Fališevac [The garden of glory: A Festschrift for Dunja Fališevac], ed. T. Bogdan et al. (Zagreb 2012), 143–153. Most recent overview: G. Stepanić, ‘Neo-Latin literature in the Balkans (Croatia)’, in Brill’s Encyclopaedia of the Neo-Latin World, 1058–1061. 16 V. Gortan and V. Vratović, eds., Hrvatski latinisti-Croatici auctores qui Latine scripserunt [Croatian Lati nists-Croatici auctores qui Latine scripserunt], 2 vols. (Zagreb 1969–70); D. Novaković, ed., Hrvatski latinisti: razdoblje humanizma [Croatian Latinists: The age of humanism] (Zagreb 1994). 17 Š. Jurić, Iugoslaviae scriptores Latini recentioris aetatis (Zagreb 1968–71); B. Franolić, Works of Croatian Latinists Recorded in the British Library General Catalogue (Zagreb 19982). 18 .
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and Dalmatia were dominated by Venetian influence, and Dubrovnik mostly oriented itself towards other Italian centres. The strong outside influences on and connections with the Neo-Latin literatures in these entities make a subdivision of a supposedly monolithic national literature and a regional approach to its history quite plausible. Gorana Stepanić’s research has already pointed toward some significant differences between the literature in the continental and the Mediterranean parts of Croatia.19 The division of Croatian Neo-Latin literature along the lines proposed in her PhD dissertation,20 into a royal Croatian, a Veneto-Dalmatian and a Ragusan, makes sense at least for the period from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. These were distinct territories defined by their own political, administrative, and legal conditions, exposed, to different degrees, to different cultural influences. Focusing our attention on these literatures separately, in their immediate context, might help us not only to appreciate their specific features but also see clearer what connects them and thus better understand their contribution to the forming of both the modern Croatian identity and the European identity.
19 See her article in this volume. 20 G. Stepanić, ‘Hrvatsko pjesništvo na latinskom u sedamnaestom stoljeću: stilske tendencije i žanrovski repertoar’ [Seventeenth-century Croatian poetry in Latin: Stylistic tendencies and genre inventory], PhD Dissertation (Zagreb 2005).
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Response by Luka Špoljarić
Drawing a parallel with the Tyrolean experience, Lav Šubarić reflects on an important question that has rarely, if ever, been discussed in the context of Croatian literary history, much less its Neo-Latin segment : how should this history be written ? While Croatian Neo-Latin scholars have long shown sensitivity to regional idiosyncrasies of the Croatian Neo-Latin canon in both analytic studies and synthetic overviews – as chapters of this volume amply demonstrate – there has so far been no effort to lay down the theoretical groundwork for an exhaustive history of national Neo-Latin literature along the lines of Tyrolis Latina. The reasons are logistical. Considering the limited number of scholars in the field, and a significant portion of the unedited texts preserved outside the Republic of Croatia, the efforts have so far concentrated on producing critical editions, and in some cases translations, of these long neglected and largely inaccessible works. Yet, Tyrolis Latina stands as a reminder that Neo-Latin literary histories are feasible projects, even in situations when there is limited editorial groundwork available. In response to Šubarić’s compelling call for a national literary history divided along regional lines, I will discuss some issues concerning the very legitimacy of the national framework in studying Croatian Neo-Latin literature as well as the very nature of the Croatian early modern intelligentsia, that is, the wider social group to which the Neo-Latin authors belonged. To start off, it is important to acknowledge that early modern Neo-Latin literature is anything but devoid of nationalism. The so-called modernist paradigm that presents nationalism as a nineteenth-century phenomenon – developed most notably by Ernest Gellner after World War II in response to primordialist views that saw nations as unchanging ahistorical entities – has in recent decades come under criticism of intellectual historians, perhaps none as relevant for Neo-Latin studies as that of Caspar Hirschi. In an effort to reconcile the modernist paradigm with the observable existence of nationalist discourse before the nineteenth century, Hirschi argues that, while nationalism established itself as a mass phenomenon with the industrialization and political democratization of societies in the nineteenth century, the emergence of nationalist discourse is inherently connected with the diffusion of Renaissance humanism. It was Italian humanists who first presented the natio as an abstract community that by default extended honour to all those who formed part of it. By glorifying the origins, history, geography and dominant character traits of their nation, Italian humanists claimed cultural superiority over other European peoples, which they viewed as barbarian. Before long the emerging humanists around Europe began to respond to the Italian claims of cultural superiority by composing classicizing works of various genres that celebrated the glorious achievements of their respective nations. Thus, although the vast majority
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of European population would have hardly been exposed to, or had any use of relatively sophisticated nationalist ideas, these ideas came to thrive in the learned circles and influenced much of Neo-Latin literature.21 It is precisely here that Croatian and Austrian experience respectively, which Šubarić considers in parallel, differ. While the particular Austrian national identity is the product of the twentieth century – earlier the Tyrolean intellectuals would have shared in the wider German national identity – the intellectuals from Croatia (later Croatia-Slavonia), Dalmatia and Dubrovnik had with the rise of humanism already formed visions of their imagined nation. The shape and boundaries of this nation – under classicizing influences often defined in Latin as ‘Illyrian’ – were ever changing, always adapting to a given author’s present needs. In terms of scope, the visions could have been narrowly Croatian (encompassing Croatia proper, Slavonia, Dalmatia with Dubrovnik and, at times, Bosnia), wider South Slavic (where Orthodox and Muslim South Slavs under the Ottoman rule were seen as co-nationals in need of conversion) or, on occasion, even pan-Slavic.22 From the fifteenth through the nineteenth centuries, as Croatian lands came under the increasing Hungarian, Habsburg, Venetian and Ottoman pressure, the nation became one of the most popular themes of Croatian Neo-Latin literature. The anti-Turkish theme, a pan-European one indeed, was for Croatian intellectuals inherently tied to the national question, since only the destruction of the Turks guaranteed the restoration of their nation to its former glory, which often made the choice whether to write about the nation or the Turkish threat merely a matter of rhetorical strategy. And perhaps there should be nothing surprising in the fact that on Christendom’s periphery, where intellectuals lacked an independent ‘national’ state to identify with and were faced with challenges to their cultural identity from all directions, nationalism dominated their discourse more so than it did in, say, England or France. An important aspect of Neo-Latin literature is the institutional context, something that Tyrolis Latina has successfully integrated into Tyrolean regional literary history. In a way, Tyrolean Neo-Latin scholars were helped by the historical circumstances : Tyrol was for some five hundred years a politically stable region that saw little political change, which provides seemingly perfect conditions for studying the local literature in 21 C. Hirschi, The Origins of Nationalism: An Alternative History from Ancient Rome to Early Modern Germany (Cambridge 2012). See also H. Münkler et al., Nationenbildung: Die Nationalisierung Europas im Diskurs humanistischer Intellektueller, Italien und Deutschland (Berlin 1998); J. Helmrath et al., eds., Diffusion des Humanismus: Studien zur nationalen Geschichtsschreibung europäischer Humanisten (Göttingen 2002); and B. Trencsényi and M. Zászkaliczky, Whose Love of Which Country? Composite States, National Histories and Patriotic Discourses in Early Modern East Central Europe (Leiden 2010). 22 For a study of early modern Illyrianism, see Z. Blažević, Ilirizam prije ilirizma [Illyrianism before Illyrianism] (Zagreb 2008).
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the longue durée. The situation was markedly different in Croatian lands. Owing to the political instability of the wider region and its status as Christendom’s periphery, Croatian early modern intellectuals were extremely mobile and the vast majority of them at some point of their lives belonged to national diasporic communities. Therefore, if we are to understand the development of Neo-Latin literature in Croatia, Dalmatia and Dubrovnik as a historical phenomenon, we have to understand the history of Croatian communities and institutions that were formed in Venice, Padua, Rome, Loreto, Bologna, Graz, Vienna, institutions that for centuries represented central hubs for the education and intellectual exchange of Croatian early modern literati and that represented important promoters of the national idea. A sensitivity to regional idiosyncrasies and a division along the lines proposed by Šubarić is much needed, indeed, but pushing the pendulum in the direction of regional studies while excluding this wider national network would run the danger of imposing parochiality onto the world that was markedly trans-regional. Integrating these trans-regional figures and national diasporic communities and institutions into a history of Croatian Neo-Latin literature in a way that is analytically valid is tricky. For one thing, we must go beyond claiming intellectuals as ‘Croats’ and uncritically, without self-reflection, perpetuating the same nationalist discourse, which, as Šubarić rightfully points out, has been the time-worn strategy of Croatian, as much as any other national literary history. Rather, we have to understand, on a case-by-case basis, which individuals participated in wider national networks and how these networks influenced their lives, careers and, most importantly for our purposes, their Latin writings. It goes without saying that a national framework can take us only so far in understanding other aspects of Croatian Neo-Latin literature. Yet, by default no literary history, neither national nor regional, is free of this problem. As a theoretical concept, the idea of a regional literary system cannot allow us to understand all works from a given period produced in various social contexts of a given region. Just as a prospective history of Croatian literature would be tailored to the modern Croatian audiences, Tyrolis Latina conforms in part to modern Tyrolean regional sensibilities and political initiatives, from both the Austrian and Italian side of the border. In other words, when it comes to writing a history of Neo-Latin literature, both a regional framework and a regionally-sensitive national one proposed are, I believe, historically grounded. We have to be aware, however, that both frameworks explain the literature they cover only partly and that the choice which we take is always partly an ideological one.
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Gorana Stepanić
Rethinking the Unity of Croatian Neo-Latin Literature: Zones of Cultural Influence and Generic Repertoire in Poetry (1650–1720)
Introduction
In July 2013 I was contacted by one of the editors of Brill’s Encyclopaedia of the NeoLatin World (2014),1 who asked me to write a short article on the topic of Neo-Latin literature in the Balkans region. Honoured by the proposal, I accepted immediately. It seemed that they had decided to include this geographical area at the last moment since the Encyclopaedia was almost finished at that point and I was asked to write the article quickly. I told them that it would be mostly on Croatian Neo-Latin literature, since I had neither the resources nor time to research the neighbouring countries. They agreed. At that moment, I did not think much about the repertoire of the authors the entry should include. It was all clear : the majority of the authors written on would be of Dalmatian origin, and also some Northern Croatian authors would deserve a few lines. I only mentioned two non-Croatian humanists (Petrus Paulus Vergerius the Elder and the Younger) born in Koper, Slovenia. I never thought of the injustice I did to the other Slovenian Neo-Latin authors (who are quite a few), as well as to the writers from Voj vodina, Bosnia or Montenegro, or anywhere else in the Balkans.
The Concept of Croatian Neo-Latin Literature
The editorial concept of Brill’s Encyclopaedia of the Neo-Latin World, as far as the parts on the history and geographical diffusion of that common European (and global) phenomenon are concerned, was to combine the zonal approach with the national one.2 The encyclopaedia combines entries on national Neo-Latin corpora, such as ‘Neo-Latin 1 Brill’s Encyclopaedia of the Neo-Latin World, 2 vols., ed. P. Ford et al. (Leiden 2014). 2 By the term ‘national approach’ I mean the (anachronistic) identification of the boundaries and the repertoire of historical literatures with the borders of modern European states. Whereas ‘area’ is a neutral term, I use ‘region’ for historical regions (such as Tyrol), and ‘zone’ for geographical areas which are not necessarily politically coherent or which do not share a sense of unity (e.g. Dalmatia, or Central Europe).
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Literature–Slovakia’ or ‘Neo-Latin Literature–France’, with contributions on broader, linguistically coherent areas, such as ‘Neo-Latin Literature–German Regions’. A decision to concentrate in the entry ‘Neo-Latin Literature–Balkans’ on the most representative national Neo-Latin literature in the area, that from Croatia, seemed acceptable both to the editors and to myself : Croatian Neo-Latin literature, or, as it is more commonly called in Croatia, Croatian Latinism, is a well-established concept from the late 1960s onward. By Croatian Latinism we usually mean literature, in the broadest sense, written in Latin since the Middle Ages by Croatian authors, living in the territory of historical Croatian lands or abroad, as well as writings authored by non-Croatians who lived in the territory of Croatia and took an active part in the community they chose to live in. That kind of all-comprising national, ethnic and geographical concept seems to be influenced by a pronounced urge, typical for Croatian intellectual life in the last decades, to distinguish between what belongs to ‘us’ and what does not. A concept which tends to include rather than exclude has been backed up by the academic study of Croatian Neo-Latin literature. The research of Croatian Neo-Latin authors started in the second half of the nineteenth century and continued, with more or less intensity, through the first half of the twentieth century. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the activities concerning the study of the national Latin literature intensified with the edition of the first extensive anthology of Croatian Neo-Latin literature, the famous two-volume bilingual edition Hrvatski latinisti.3 In the mid–90s the discipline gained in importance within the academic community with the state-financed projects awarded exclusively to the field, as was Neolatina Croatica (led by Darko Novaković), the first and so far the biggest Neo-Latin project in the country.4 By the same time, the City of Split and Split Literary Circle founded the Marulianum, Centre for Studies on Marko Marulić and his Humanist Circle, which has played host to important conferences, in large part on the topic of NeoLatin literature, since the early 1990s. Although it is not an academic institution sensu stricto, the Marulianum and its researchers have always been closely connected with the academic institutions in Croatia and abroad. At the beginning of the millennium new projects on Croatian Neo-Latin literature followed and produced many valuable editions, translations and studies on the subject and, last but not least, numerous digital editions. A large part of the academic curriculum is dedicated to the study of the field in the Classics departments of Croatian universities, and there is even one major pro3 V. Gortan and V. Vratović, eds., Hrvatski latinisti-Croatici auctores qui Latine scripserunt [Croatian Latinists-Croatici auctores qui Latine scripserunt], 2 vols. (Zagreb 1969–70). 4 The project was carried out at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Zagreb.
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gramme of Croatian Latinity at the Centre for Croatian Studies, University of Zagreb. The study of Neo-Latin literature has become the central and often the only field Croatian classicists dedicate themselves to, much to the detriment of the classical studies. But that is a whole other story. A ‘complete’, in-depth and ‘official’ history of Croatian Neo-Latin literature does not exist yet, but there are several historical and generic surveys of that literature which give a clear picture of how Croatian scholarship sees the national Latin writing from Renaissance Humanism to the nineteenth century.5 The national corpus of Neo-Latin writers was several times defined and fixed in the dictionaries and encyclopaedias, some of them specialized, like Leksikon hrvatskih pisaca (2000).6 Apart from a short entry on the subject in Brill’s recent reference work, several surveys of Croatian Humanism and Neo-Latin literature have been written in English, mostly, but not exclusively, by Croatian authors.7 The subject was also discussed in the 1970s by Jozef IJsewijn in his Companion to Neo-Latin Studies together with other Southern Slavic Neo-Latin literatures.8
5 K. Krstić, ‘Humanizam kod Južnih Slavena’ [Humanism among Southern Slavs], in Enciklopedija Jugoslavije [Encyclopaedia of Yugoslavia], 8 vols. (Zagreb 1955–71), 4:287–303; K. Krstić, ‘Latinitet kod Južnih Slavena’ [Latinity among Southern Slavs], ibid., 5:478–494; Gortan and Vratović, eds., Hrvatski latinisti, 1:7–43; R. Mardešić, ‘Novovjekovna latinska književnost’ [Early Modern Latin literature], in Povijest svjetske književnosti [The history of world literature], vol. 2, ed. V. Vratović (Zagreb 1977), 405–480; D. Novaković, ‘Hrvatska novolatinska književnost od 15. do 17. stoljeća’ [Croatian Neo-Latin literature from the 15th to the 17th century], in Introduzione allo studio della lingua, letteratura e cultura croata, ed. F. Ferluga Petronio (Udine 1999), 165–176; P. Knezović, ‘Hrvatski latinisti 18. i 19. stoljeća’ [Croatian Latinists in the 18th and 19th centuries], in Introduzione allo studio, ed. Ferluga Petronio, 177–189; B. Glavičić, ‘Latinism in Croatia: 13th–16th Century’, in Croatia in the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. E. Hercigonja (Zagreb 2008), 405–421; D. Novaković, ‘Croatian Latinism in the Seventeenth Century’, Croatia in the Baroque Period and the Age of Enlightenment, ed. I. Golub (Zagreb 2015), 509–519; V. Vratović, ‘Latin Literature by Croatian Authors in the Eighteenth Century’, ibid., 521–533; D. Novaković, ‘Latinsko pjesništvo hrvatskog humanizma’ [Latin poetry of Croatian humanism], in M. Tomasović and D. Novaković, Judita Marka Marulića–Latinsko pjesništvo hrvatskoga humanizma [ Judith by Marko Marulić–The Latin poetry of Croatian humanism] (Zagreb 1994), 53–116. 6 Leksikon hrvatskih pisaca [Lexicon of Croatian writers], ed. D. Fališevac et al. (Zagreb 2000). 7 D. Budiša, ‘Humanism in Croatia’, in Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms and Legacy, vol. 2: Humanism beyond Italy, ed. A. Rabil, Jr. (Philadelphia 1988), 265–292; V. Gortan and V. Vratović, ‘The Basic Characteristics of Croatian Latinity’, Humanistica Lovaniensia 20 (1971), 37–67; M. B. Petrovich, ‘Croatian Humanists and Writing of History in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’, Slavic Review 37 (1978), 624–639; Glavičić, ‘Latinisim in Croatia’; Novaković, ‘Croatian Latinism’; Vratović, ‘Latin Literature’. 8 J. IJsewijn, Companion to Neo-Latin Studies, vol. 1: History and Diffusion of Neo-Latin Literature (Leuven 19902), 92–97.
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| Gorana Stepanić The Concept of Austrian Neo-Latin literature
The concept of the national Neo-Latin literature is, as I have tried to show, a well-defined notion and an established area of research in Croatia today. Writings in Latin are considered a mere linguistic alternative to the Early Modern vernacular literature within the framework of the (at least bilingual) national literature, on which the intense presence of Latinity attaches a special value in terms of its historical belonging to Western literary culture. Croatian Neo-Latin authors have inspired a clear feeling of national pride in the last few decades, which has only corroborated the national concept of that literature. The national frame of a Neo-Latin literature, however, works differently in other modern nations. Let us take the example of Austria. The counterpart of ‘Croatian NeoLatin Literature’ should be ‘Austrian Neo-Latin literature’. Yet, it seems that the latter is not as clear a concept or at least not as widely used as the concept of Croatian Neo-Latin literature. If we take a look at the first volume of IJsewijn’s Companion, we will not be able to find a separate chapter on Austrian Neo-Latin literature. The authors coming from Austria are included in the chapter titled ‘The German World’.9 Although it is true that there is no separate chapter on Croatian Neo-Latin literature in the Companion and that the Croats are presented as part of the larger ‘Southern Slavs : Bulgaria and Yugoslavia’ group, it has to be admitted that they are treated separately from other Southern Slavic Neo-Latin literatures. The Austrians do not even get that sort of special treatment. In fact, the word ‘Austria(n)’, according to the indexes in the first volume of the Companion, appears only nine times, sporadically and mostly in reference to individual authors.10 It is also mentioned as an influence region for Southern Slavic humanisms, such as Slovenian.11 The rest of the times when Austria is mentioned, it has to do with the secondary sources IJsewijn quotes, within what he calls ‘German regions’.12 IJsewijn was, of course, well aware of the relativity of ethnic denominations in Early Modern Europe and their inappropriateness when talking about European literatures of the period, quoting a well-known case, that of Janus Pannonius, the famous humanist poet claimed by Hungarians, Croats and Germans alike.13 Moreover, the Belgian scholar does not seem to be entirely happy with the concept of the ‘German world’ he himself chose to use for the Neo-Latin literatures on the territories of the German Empire, and 9 IJsewijn, Companion, 177–205. 10 For Sigismund von Herberstein, see IJsewijn, Companion, 30; for Nikolaus Avancini, Simon Rettenpacher, Michael Denis, see ibid., 183; for Rettenpacher and Otto Aicher, see ibid., 186. 11 IJsewijn, Companion, 91. 12 IJsewijn, Companion, 197: ‘Regional and Local History: Austria (Österreich)’ and ibid. 202: ‘Theatre: Local Studies – Austria’. 13 IJsewijn, Companion, 178.
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later under the Prussian and Austrian regimes, which included mainly areas populated by Slavs, Hungarians, Romanians, the Baltic peoples and other ethnic groups.14 I agree with that, but the fact remains, and that is my point here, that Austrians (an established nation at the time IJsewijn wrote his Companion) did not get a separate treatment as did, for example, Albanians (unlike Austrians, quite insignificant for the history of NeoLatin literature, but treated separately from other Balkan countries). One might claim that IJsewijn’s criterion was (however methodologically inappropriate when speaking of Latin literature) that of national languages, separating Czech and Slovak, or Croatian and Slovenian Neo-Latin literatures, while gathering all the German-speaking authors into ‘the German world’ group. But Switzerland and Lichtenstein got a separate chapter, as did the USA and Canada. The things did not change for Austria even in the Companion’s so-to-say sequel, Brill’s Encyclopaedia of Neo-Latin World (2014). Again, there is no article on Austrian NeoLatin literature, although there are articles on various surrounding national literatures (Hungary, Slovakia, Bohemia, sometimes with separate entries for different centuries). Austria was once more included into the German world.15 Moreover, it is rarely mentioned, whether as Austria or ‘Habsburg lands’. The University of Vienna is only alluded to as giving initiative to humanistic lectures in the mid-fifteenth century, and the Court of Vienna in relation to court poetry, as a Catholic centre in which occasional and court poetry flourished (unlike in the rest of German lands).16 In the most recent manual on Neo-Latin literature, The Oxford Handbook of NeoLatin (2015), the editors decided to classify Neo-Latin literature according to nations as well as zones (‘France’, ‘Scandinavia’), larger or smaller (‘Iberian Peninsula’, ‘Asia’), linguistically and culturally coherent or diverse. Such an approach resulted in Austrian Neo-Latin literature being once again included into the German speaking regions and Croatian Neo-Latin literature into the broadly imagined East-Central Europe.17 The example of Austrian Neo-Latin literature, compared to Croatian, shows a huge imbalance in the perception of different (national) Neo-Latin literatures. On the one 14 IJsewijn, Companion, 177. See also ‘Preliminary problems’, 39–41. 15 N. Thurn, ‘Neo-Latin Literature – The German Regions’, in Brill’s Encyclopaedia of the Neo-Latin World, 1077–1080. 16 Thurn, ‘Neo-Latin Literature – The German Regions’, 1078–9. Not only geographical, but also chronological lacunae can be identified in Brill’s Encyclopaedia of the Neo-Latin World. There is, for example, the article ‘Neo-Latin Literature – Italy: The Quattrocento’ (Craig Callendorf, 1087–1089), followed by ‘Neo-Latin Literature – Italy: The Cinquecento’ (Fantazzi, 1089–1091), and then comes ‘Neo-Latin Literature – Italy: Fascism (1922–1943)’ (H. Lamers, B. L. Reitz-Joosse, D. Sacre, 1091–1096), skipping the centuries in between. 17 R. Seidel, ‘The German-Speaking Countries’, in The Oxford Handbook of Neo-Latin, ed. S. Knight and S. Tilg (Oxford 2015), 445–460; C. Neagu, ‘East-Central Europe’, ibid., 509–524.
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hand, there is no clearly defined Austrian or even Habsburg-lands Neo-Latin literature : what today is a nation, and once was a political unit, a centrally ruled multi-ethnic monarchy, is not considered a whole in the Neo-Latin world. On the other hand, there is the case of Croatia : although it is a political unit today, that was not the case in most of the centuries of flourishing Latinism. With the exception of the independent Ragusan Republic (Dubrovnik), its territory in the Early Modern Period was divided between Venetian rule (Dalmatia, since 1420) and the Habsburg crown (the north and the Northern Adriatic, since 1527), being subject to their respective cultural influences. Large parts of Croatian lands were under the Ottoman rule, thus generally excluded from Western scholarship and humanistic influences. On a political level, there existed a certain cooperation between Croatia’s continental and coastal nobility and Dalmatian urban centres, especially in the pre-Habsburg period. The Ottoman threat, common both to Dalmatia and Northern Croatian lands, created a need for a new pragmatic genre, orationes contra Turcos, practised by continental humanists (Bernardin Frankapan, Oratio pro Croatia, 1522) and Dalmatians alike (Marko Marulić’s letter to Pope Hadrian VI de calamitatibus occurrentibus et exhortatio ad communem omnium Christianorum unionem et pacem, 1522). A certain thematic unity and interest in building a common Croatian or Illyrian identity is noticeable in historiography (Marulić, Mrnavić, Rattkay, Ritter Vitezović). In Neo-Latin poetry, there are cases of politically engaged writing on the subjects from ‘the other side’, especially in the years of the decline of the Turkish power, such as political epyllia by Dalmatian authors on the second Ottoman siege of Vienna (1683) or other Austrian victories over Turks.18 Still, beyond a thematic level, one can observe that poetry in Croatian lands, both Latin and vernacular, tended to demonstrate different generic and stylistic repertoires in Dalmatia and on the continent as a result of the social differences between the South and the North of Croatia, as well as the impact of different zones of cultural influence. The main cultural reference point for Dalmatian authors was Italy, and for continental authors such points were feudal courts and urban centres in the Habsburg lands.
18 Cf. carmen by Antun Matijašević Karamaneo (1658–1721) from the island of Vis on the liberation of Buda, In Budae a Turcarum tyrannide libertatem assertore invictissimo Leopoldo Romanorum imperatore semper augusto carmen (Padua 1686); De Vienna Turcarum obsidione liberata carmen by Matej Jelić Dražoević from Omiš (Matteo Gelich, 1636–1721) or the epyllion to Prince Eugene of Savoy by the Ragusan poet I. Đurđević (Augustissimo caesari Carolo Austriaco hujus nominis sexto […] ductu […] principis Eugenij a Sabaudia […] triumphatori […] expugnatori […] epinicium quatuor libris comprehensum canit et consecrat D. Ignatius Georgius Ragusinus abbas Melitensis (after 1717).
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South vs. North in the Renaissance period
The sociological differences between the Northern and Southern Croatian type of Latin Renaissance Humanism have already been spotted and defined.19 In the South, Renaissance Humanism flourished in the rich coastal towns and among educated citizens (‘communal humanism’), whereas in the North it depended on the feudal institutions (‘courtly humanism’). Dalmatian vernacular literature was under the constant influence of Italy and what was new on the Italian literary stage soon was transported to the eastern side of the Adriatic. Literature in Dalmatia, in all of its languages (Croatian, Italian, Latin), passed through the period of emancipation from medieval literary communication forms and literary genres, renewing its generic repertoire in the Renaissance. That was not the case in the North, where literary communication remained predominantly connected to social rituals, courtly or religious. In sixteenth-century Dalmatia, apart from humanistic Latin writing, which flourished in wealthy coastal cities, a variety of genres of classical and Italian origin (short lyric poem, idyll, pastoral, epic, comedy, tragedy) formed a substantial body of literature in the Croatian language. In the North, advanced literary communication was mainly in Latin, depending on feudal courts, often outside the borders of the present-day Croatia (e.g. royal and archiepiscopal courts in Hungary). While (Latin) Humanism did exist in Northern Croatia, there was no (vernacular) Renaissance : the revival or classical intellectual legacy was limited to the Latin world and did not pass into the sphere of vernacular literary communication. The North only started to ‘catch up’ with the South in the late eighteenth century and did not do it properly until the nineteenth-century Romanticism.
The Declining Period: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
The cultural differences between the Northern and Southern Croatian lands in the Renaissance period presented above continued in the next two centuries. And it is not only vernacular literature that took its own course in the South and in the North of Croatia. A different social status literature had in the respective zones was also reflected in the generic and stylistic repertoire of Neo-Latin writings in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Those are the centuries in which the Latin language generally started to lose its primacy and the intellectual prestige it once had had, especially in non-Catholic European regions (England), or those which by that time had already had 19 D. Novaković, ‘Latinsko pjesništvo’, 61–62.
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a rich vernacular literary production and lived in a ‘golden age’ of vernacular literature (Spain, France), or both. Nevertheless, in the regions where the educational system was controlled by Jesuits, Latin remained an important school subject and a literary medium. That was the case, for example, in Dubrovnik, where Neo-Latin literature was produced with the same zeal deep into the nineteenth century, as well as in the parts of Croatia which gravitated towards Central European, mainly Austrian intellectual centres (Graz, Vienna). Both the Croatian North and South continued writing literature in Latin, but with a difference which has often been neglected and which I would like to point out here : the difference in the degree to which Latin literature is disposed to accept what in vernacular literatures is called baroque. During my research on the seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Croatian Neo-Latin poetry I noted that there was a significant difference in the usage of the non-classical genre of pattern poetry between the Southern (Dalmatian, Mediterranean) and the Northern (Central European) Neo-Latin poetry of Croatian authors from the 1650s to the 1720s. Whereas in Dalmatia the dominant stylistic and generic option follows ‘classical’ Latin poetry, in Northern Croatia the authors lean towards a more ‘baroque’ style (concetto, complex metaphors, apostrophe, exuberant enumerations) and pattern poems in the broadest sense, especially in occasional and religious poetry.
The Repertoire and the Main Northern Croatian Representatives of Pattern Poetry
Despite large amounts of verses that can be defined as pattern poetry in the North of Croatia, there are surprisingly few authors who wrote them. The vast majority of the pattern poetry we know of was written by two poets : the historian and polymath Pavao Ritter Vitezović (Paulus Eques ; 1652–1713) and the Pauline monk Ladislaus Simandi (1655–1715). Besides these two, there are authors who probably should not be considered minor given the numerous and ambitious titles of works they authored, but sometimes their work is not preserved and we only know the titles of their works. Such is the case of the Jesuit Ivan Despotović the Elder (1638–1711), professor of rhetoric, philosophy, theology and aesthetics and rector of Jesuit colleges in Zagreb, Graz and Trnava, possibly even a teacher of the young Ritter in the mid-1660s. Nine works, all of an occasional nature and related to Jesuit academic life, were published under his name, and some of them suggest the extensive use of pattern or ‘cross-media’ poetry, such as Hecatombe votiva magni Viennensium flaminis inaugurationi erecta (Vienna 1685), Apparatus emblematicus sacrae celebritatis (Vienna 1671), C coronaria et grandis litera (Graz 1673) or Chronographica pro singulis anni diebus (Trnava s.a.). Hecatombe
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votiva contains a hundred anagrams ;20 Apparatus emblematicus is a luxurious edition of emblems honouring the canonization of the Jesuit Francis Borgia IV;21 C coronaria et grandis litera must be a collection of a hundred epigrams (inscriptions) in honour of the founder of the University of Graz, Charles II of Austria (1540–1590).22 Cronographica pro singulis anni diebus, according to the title, is a series of chronograms for each day of the year. Besides academic authors like Despotović, there are a number of minor authors of whom we know that they wrote one or two pattern poems. They are usually not literary or academic professionals, but composed poems as a pastime or as a sign of friendship. One such author was Martin Brigljević (sixteenth century), who in 1559 authored an alphabetic poem on St Paul the Hermit, each of its verses beginning with the letter P. Lieutenant Colonel Adam Sigismund Domjanić (c. 1660–1717) wrote a few epistles to his friend Pavao Ritter Vitezović, one of them containing tautogrammatic verses, different rhyme patterns and a concetto.23 One of the most complex combinatorial artifices, a chronosticon, a complex cabalistic calculation based on numeric values of letters, a paratext of Rattkay’s Memoria regum et banorum regnorum Dalmatiae, Croatiae et Sclavoniae (Vienna 1652), was composed by a Petrus Baxai (Petar Bažaj ?), otherwise unknown. The majority of the pattern poetry verses in our corpus were composed by Pavao Ritter Vitezović. The repertoire of his pattern poems is ample. It includes simpler artifices such as acrostics, mesostics and telestics, in various combinations, and versus cancellati, where letters are ‘cancelled out’ of the text and form a shape (a cross, a circle). Many of his verses contain chronostics, and in many poems it is the main constructive element, often combined with rhymed quantitative verses (Figure 1). Ritter’s logodaedalia also includes the figure of echo, elegiacs with Leonine rhyme, alphabet poems and rebuses (Figure 2). The most numerous artificium in Ritter’s oeuvre are his anagrams, about a thousand of them. The majority of them were published in the monumental two-volume edition Fata et vota, sive opera anagrammaton (Vienna 1699). The number of Ritter’s artificial verses can be estimated at around 6000.
20 A copy in ÖNB 220152-C, available as a scan. It was published in 1685 and not in 1686 as is usually claimed. 21 ÖNB 74.G.72, available as a scan. 22 It is preserved in Steiermärkische Landesbibliothek (60856 I). 23 Equitis Pauli Ritter Otia metrica curis exularibus surrepta, National and University Library, Zagreb, Manuscripts and old books colection, R3460, f. 69. Cf. transcript in V. Moretti, ‘Jezik i stil latinskih pjesničkih poslanica Pavla Rittera Vitezovića’ [The language and style of the Latin verse epistles of Pavao Ritter Vitezović], PhD Dissertation (Zagreb 2014), available at .
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The next great author of pattern poetry is Ladislaus Simandi, a Pauline who published an ambitious booklet of Latin pattern poems titled Corvi albi heremitici nova musa inconcinna, dedicated entirely to the patron saint of the order, St Paul of Thebes. It was finished in 1712 and published the same year in the Polish town of Częstochowa, in the printing house of the Pauline monastery in Jasna Góra.24 The booklet was to serve as a source to the novices of the order and has a didactic role, apart from a laudatory and theological function.25 In its 68 pages Nova musa contains 34 technopaegnia, all about St Paul of Thebes.26 The repertoire of combinatorial artifices which Nova musa inconcinna comprises is stunning. The collection opens with simpler forms : an anagram (1–3 ; 5–10), then an acrostic in which every word in single elegiac couplets begins with the same letter (a sort of ‘horizontal acrostic’, 7–14), then an anagram combined with the declension of the permutated phrase (15–16). A hologram follows (a mesostic, 17), then aequivocatio (a figure of traductio, the usage of homophone words with different meanings, usually in the rhyming positions, 18–19), then a cube similar to the famous Sator square with permutations on the word level (20), then aenigma cum logogrypho (a riddle with a key, 21–22), versus concordantes (two verses sharing syllables, 23–24), Leonine-rhymed elegiac couplets (25–26), paralepton (or versus columnares, which give opposite meanings when read in different directions, 27–28) ; an echo (30) ; a lipogram (here a poem without the letter ‘R’, 31–34). Carmen centaurium cum duplicata cadentia seems to be ‘merely’ a poem with Leonine rhyme in four consecutive verses (35–38). In the acrosticon aequilibre letters form a cross (39) or five columns (40). Then there is a carmen cancellatum with a cross in the middle and a syllabic acrostic/telestic (41–42, Figure 3), followed by lipogrammatic chronostics which omit the letters M, D, C, L and X (43–47). Then follow three visual poems : a circle (48), a star (49), a clock (in which the letters of Roman numbers are incorporated in the circular text) (50, Figure 4). A cubus (51) and a 24 Full title: Corvi albi eremitici nova musa inconcinna, quae in deserto coenobitico sacrae Paulinae religionis proto-eremiticae studio, ac labore R. P. F. Ladislai Simandi, eiusdem ordinis provinciae Croaticae presbyteri, variis distenta figuris artificiosis, in laudem & gloriam Summi Patriarchae Nostri, sancti patris Pauli Primi Eremitae, ligatis versibus concinnatur. Anno Salutis, M. DCC. XII. Typis Clari Montis Częnstohoviensis. István Kilián, claims that 1719 is the real year of the first edition. Cf. Kilián, ‘Die Visuelle Poesie des Paulinermönchs László Simandi (1719)’, in Der Paulinerorden: Geschichte–Geist–Kultur, ed. G. Sarbak (Budapest 2010), 359–393, at 366. 25 ‘Itaque […] pro idea tyronibus posui opus hoc carminicum, varijs artificijs excogitabilibus concinnatum […] pro tyronibus poëseos, in persona CORVI ALBI concinnui’, Nova musa inconcinna, 4. 26 Kilián, ‘Die Visuelle Poesie’, 359–393; I. Kilián, A régi magyar képvers – Old Hungarian Pattern Poetry (Miskolc 1998); S. Lukacs, ‘Zu den Anfängen der kroatischen visualen Dichtung: Ladislaus Simandi (1655–1715)’, Studia Slavica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 49:3–4 (2004), 305–313; S. Lukač, ‘Začetnik hrvatske vizualne poezije Ladislaus Simandi’ [Ladislaus Simandi, the first author of Croatian visual poetry], Republika 3 (2004), 56–61.
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version of the Sator square (52) come next, followed by a combinatorial and mathematical artifice based on the so-called Josephus problem (53–56).27 The rebus (hyeroglificum [sic !], sc. carmen57) is visually attractive, but the two following artifices are linguistic and combinatorial masterpieces. One of them (58) is simultaneously a bilingual poem, written both in Croatian and Latin (with explicatory notes for easier understanding),28 and the other one (60) a carmen cancrinum which can be read in Latin and Croatian, if read backwards. Another, exclusively Latin carmen cancrinum (61) and an artificium alphabeticum (62) give way to a macrolocon (63) in which both the hexameter and the pentameter consist of only two words. Then there is a verse composed of vowels only (64), another carmen caballisticum (65–66) and a couplet inscribed in two wheels (67). The final chronogrammatic epitaph to St Paul of Thebes concludes the book. Simandi is beyond any doubt the greatest author of pattern poetry among Croats. And what about Dalmatia ? Pattern poetry and the baroque style in Latin poetry are, of course, not phenomena reserved for the Northern Croatian authors. There is a manuscript collection of emblems by the Ragusan noble and politician Franciscus Gondola (1587–1629), mainly on the New Testament topics. The polymath Antun Matijašević Karamaneo from the island of Vis (Matthiasaevius Caramanaeus Issaeus, 1658–1721) composed an elegy on the letter R, in which meaning fluctuates constantly between the literal and metalinguistic level. Technopaegnia sensu stricto are rare in the seventeenth-century Dalmatia, but some exist : Vicko Zmajević (Vincentius Zmaievich, 1670–1745) wrote a short acro-telestic to praise the Venetian captain Antonio Zeno (Musarum Chorus, Rome 1694). Still, in terms of quantity, pattern poetry in the North exceeds by far the one in Dalmatia.
North and South: Baroque and Pattern poetry
There is an interesting contemporary parallel which might help us better understand the special attraction of Northern Croatian areas to pattern poetry. It was noted and defined by Zoran Kravar on the corpus of Croatian vernacular baroque poetry.29 The 27 G. Stepanić, ‘Josipov problem u latinskoj kombinatoričkoj poeziji Ladislava Simandija (1655–1715)’ [The Josephus problem in the Latin combinatoric poetry of Ladislaus Simandi (1655–1715)], Lucida intervalla (2014), 195–206. 28 ‘Una eademque cantilena more apostolico variis linguis loquitur, Latino scilicet et Croatico idiomate, unde probat se esse natura Croatam et arte Latinum’. This is the only one, but clear, declaration of the author’s ethnicity. 29 Z. Kravar, ‘Varijante hrvatskog književnog baroka’ [Variants of Croatian literary baroque], in Nakon godine MDC [After the year MDC] (Zagreb 1993), 46.
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author argues that although the baroque style was present, in variable degree, throughout the whole of the territory of what today is Croatia, the generic repertoire of baroque verses was very different between the zones. In Dalmatia, in wealthy post-Renaissance urban centres the role of poetry was mainly aesthetic and the genres the poets used were of classical origin, whereas in Slavonia, Central Croatia and the ‘Ozalj circle’ literature served pragmatic purposes (didactic, religious). The baroque style was a style which was attractive, easy to imitate and which penetrated different genres and languages, existing both in ‘high’ and ‘low’ literature. Whereas the literatures which had their Renaissance later ‘moved on’ from the baroque style and embraced classicism, in Central Europe (especially in its Catholic areas), where there was no proper vernacular Renaissance, the baroque as style remained attractive for popular literature as late as the mid-eighteenth century. There was a parallel process in the life and development of Early Modern pattern poetry : just as the baroque style, it could have been performed in different languages, societies, religions and religious confessions,30 and it seems that it tended to be especially attractive and long-lasting in the areas which had ‘slept through the Renaissance’ and continued practising the medieval, pragmatic, socially conditioned types of literary communication in the baroque period. Pattern poetry lived, above all, in religious poetry and in occasional poetry praising feudal patrons, and these often overlapped. Also, it could have been anonymous, a characteristic which can be seen as a sign of a dominantly pragmatic literature. Although the basis of all Neo-Latin literature is the same, and all Neo-Latin writers read the same classics to learn good Latin, it was the society that made them prefer certain genres or styles and embrace (in cases considered here) the popular mannerist pattern poetry as a dignified means of writing.
Croatian Neo-Latin Literature as Seen from the Northern Angle
The corpus of Croatian Neo-Latin literature includes authors from different geographical and political zones, heterogeneous societies and cultural circles. Those differences can be perceived, as I have shown, in the generic and stylistic repertoire of the seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Latin poets. Today we speak of Croatian NeoLatin literature as a whole and tend to claim that it consisted of the well-developed Dalmatian literature and somewhat inferior continental literature. But, in terms of cultural 30 Cf. a labyrinth in Serbian: J. Todorović, An Orthodox Festival Book in the Habsburg Empire: Zaharija Orfelin’s Festive Greeting to Mojsej Putnik (1757) (Aldershot 2006).
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history and communication, those two zones had little to do with each other until the nineteenth century. The poetic differences between the two regions led us to re-examine the well-established concept of Croatian Neo-Latin literature as a pre-defined corpus and interpretative framework, and think of a possible different approach, in which the boundaries of an imagined relevant body of texts would not be national, but regional or zonal, as was done in the monograph Tyrolis Latina (2012) on the history of Tyrolean Neo-Latin literature.31 Just the same, Northern Croatian Neo-Latin literature should, in my opinion, be considered part of a corpus we call Croatian Neo-Latin literature, but it should be seen and judged in terms of the social and poetic standards of its zone of influence : the Habsburg Monarchy, Central Europe, southern German lands, Hungarian lands, or however we might define the cultural area Northern Croatia was part of. In consequence, its NeoLatin literature should be measured by the literary standards in the same zone and not by the standards of Dalmatian or Italian literature. By that criterion, the Croatian North kept up with what was going on in the literary world of the time (and space), just as the Dalmatian authors did.
31 Tyrolis Latina: Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur in Tirol, 2 vols., ed. M. Korenjak et al. (Vienna 2012), 1:10.
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Fig. 1: Chronogram in rhymed hexameters. (P. Ritter Vitezović, Sacer chorus, sive applausus metricus a Phoebo et Musis celebrates [1682], detail. National and University Library in Zagreb, Manuscripts and Old Books Collection, Otia metrica, R 3461, fol. 20r; printed with permission.)
Fig. 2: Rebus dedicated to Bishop Leopold Karl von Kolonich. (P. Ritter Vitezović, Nova equestris imago [1682], detail. National and University Library in Zagreb, Manuscripts and Old Books Collection, Otia metrica, R 3461, fol. 63v; printed with permission.)
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Fig. 3: Cross-shaped carmen cancellatum with syllabic acrostics and telestics (L. Simandi, Corvi albi heremitici Nova musa inconcinna [1712], 42. The library of the Franciscan monastery in Kloštar Ivanić; printed with permission.)
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Fig. 4: Clock-shaped pattern poem with chronogrammatic hexameters. (L. Simandi, Corvi albi heremitici Nova musa inconcinna [1712], 50. The library of the Franciscan monastery in Kloštar Ivanić; printed with permission.)
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Response by Simon Wirthensohn
Surveys of literary history rely on definitions of bodies of texts. These definitions are inevitably problematic, since even large-scale presentations can only introduce excerpts of a more complex, continuous reality. Criteria which reliably prevent the cutting of texts belonging together or the appropriation of texts which would fit better into other paradigms, can hardly be defined. It goes without saying that approaches based on modern nation-states, using current territorial entities as a definitional basis for the presentation of historical contexts, are particularly uncoherent. Yet, books reconstructing history on the basis of such an approach are still written today – not only in Croatia, but also in Austria. Besides marketing strategies and preferences for customary categories of reflection and order, emotional and patriotic reasons still seem to play an important role in the historiography of literature. In 2011, renowned German scholar Wynfrid Kriegleder stated in his Kurze Geschichte der Literatur in Österreich emphatically : ‘And the German-language literature of Austria naturally does not belong to German literature’.32 Of course, the author does not explain from his point of view what the difference is between German literature written in Austria and German literature written in Germany. He avoids this question by focussing, inevitably, not on Austrian literature (whatever this may be) but on literature written on the territory of present-day Austria. Writers such as Nikolaus Avancini, born in Trento, or Ödön von Horváth, born in Rijeka, are, as a matter of course, dealt with in his book, which seems appropriate to me : indeed, both playwrights had a lasting effect on Viennese theatre. However, the example of the Jesuit Avancini shows that Kriegleder’s implicitly postulated unity of a literary area called Austria is debateable. The impact of Viennese Jesuit theatre on the Jesuit stages of western Austria was always limited. The colleges of Tyrol and Vorarlberg, belonging to the southern German Jesuit province, had much stronger bonds with the colleges of present-day Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg. It was with them that they exchanged their plays, not with the other Austrian colleges. Jesuit authors often changed their community, but very rarely their province. Against this background, approaches based on regional differentiation, as presented in Gorana Stepanić’s paper, appear definitely more coherent than concepts based on national borders. The narrower prospective, Stepanić suggests, allows a better understanding of interdependencies and connections. In addition, it makes it easier to convey the history of literature to readers : by leaving out the unconnected works written in other areas, the presentation becomes clearer. Anyway, it would be interesting to expand 32 W. Kriegleder, Eine kurze Geschichte der Literatur in Österreich: Menschen–Bücher–Institutionen (Vienna 2011), 11.
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Stepanić’s studies to other genres. We can presume that pattern poetry is not the only field that would benefit from a discriminating description of Dalmatian and northern Croatian literature which reflects upon the historical conditions of the production of literature better than a holistic approach. Analogous considerations underlie Tyrolis Latina. Also in this case not a modern political entity, but a historical cultural circle is taken as a basis. The editors justified their regional approach – besides pragmatic aspects – with the cultural homogeneity of the investigated area. Of course, this comparatively small area was homogeneous only to a certain extent, since here too the venues of production of literature were manifold. Throughout the centuries in Tyrol different religious orders, active in dispersed monasteries, produced literature. With the courts in Innsbruck, Brixen and Trento, three cultural centres with different cultural circumstances can be identified : the northern part of the area was influenced by the German world ; the southern part was under Italian influence. However, on account of the continuous territorial and political development, cultural life in the historic Tyrol was characterized by a certain coherency since the thirteenth century.33 From the sixteenth century onwards this uniformity was reinforced by the installation of a networked system of education. Confessional homogeneity did contribute too. Hence, a relatively consistent literary field could evolve, which allows the drawing of a synoptic picture of Tyrolean literary history in the Latin language ; even more, since many of the texts dealt with in this publication circulated in Tyrol, and hardly ever were received outside this area. It is clear that the restriction to the literature produced in a small geographic section involves lamentable renunciations. Texts written by Tyrol-born authors outside Tyrol cannot be included.34 Hence, an overall presentation of such authors cannot be provided. Also collected oeuvres, such as the manuscript collection Codex Fuchsmagen, can be dealt with only partially. As a consequence, the recipient of such works has to be made aware of their inevitably fragmentary presentation. It has to be explained clearly that the literary scene of a certain area was naturally exposed to external influences and connected with other cultural circles. As for Tyrol, this is particularly evident, given the exposed geographic situation in the middle of Europe. This is valid, however, for all studies following a regional approach.
33 Tyrolis Latina: Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur in Tirol, 2 vols., ed. M. Korenjak et al. (Vienna 2012), 1:10. 34 Tyrolis Latina, 1:12.
Martin Korenjak
Regional Latinity: A Worm’s-Eye View on Neo-Latin Literature
Glancing through Jozef IJsewijn and Dirk Sacré’s Companion to Neo-Latin Studies or the recently published Brill’s Encyclopaedia of the Neo-Latin World,1 one comes across names like Petrarch, Erasmus and Comenius – authors whose works were printed and read and prompted reactions across the whole of Europe. And one lays the book down with the familiar impression of Neo-Latin literature as a shared enterprise of the continent’s greatest minds, a pan-European and sometimes even global affair. When skimming through the Tyrolis Latina, a history of mainly Neo-Latin literature from and about Tyrol from the beginnings to the present day,2 one encounters authors like Andreas Castner, Biagio Aliprandi and Josef Anton Rigler – shadowy figures, often dwelling in such complete oblivion that the title pages of their works may be the only surviving traces of their very existence.3 One walks away with the strange feeling that Neo-Latin literature also could be quite mundane and parochial. To a certain extent such a contrast can be expected when juxtaposing two global overviews of Neo-Latin literature with a professedly regional literary history. Nonetheless, its very sharpness may give one pause. Is our pan-European picture of Neo-Latin literature just a kind of optical illusion, one may ask, a mirage conjured up by researchers’ fixation on a canon of big names ? Fortunately, this is not the case. Writers of Erasmus’s calibre were real, and so was their tremendous influence on intellectual life in early modern Europe. Nonetheless, a perspective on Neo-Latin literature that focuses exclusively on authors of such stature is just that, a perspective, and it should not be confounded with the whole of its subject, Neo-Latin literature itself.
1 J. IJsewijn and D. Sacré, Companion to Neo-Latin Studies, 2 vols. (Leuven 1990–98); Brill’s Encyclopaedia of the Neo-Latin World, 2 vols., ed. P. Ford et al. (Leiden 2014). 2 Tyrolis Latina: Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur in Tirol, 2 vols., ed. M. Korenjak et al. (Vienna 2012). Broadly speaking, the historical Tyrol includes today’s Austrian province of Tyrol plus the Italian provinces of South Tyrol and Trentino. 3 For these authors, see M. Korenjak, ‘Dichtung’, in Tyrolis Latina, 1:400–402, 432–434 and F. Schaffenrath, ‘Dichtung’, in Tyrolis Latina, 2:937–938, respectively.
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In what follows, I will contrast this familiar pan-European outlook ‘from above’ with the far more seldom regional perspective ‘from below’,4 a worm’s-eye view, so to speak – not in order to substitute, but to complement the former. What does Neo-Latin literature look like when seen from the angle of a small region that, while being no intellectual wasteland, certainly cannot compare with countries such as Italy or the Netherlands and with cities like Florence or Paris ? Unsurprisingly, I will take as my example the one already alluded to, historical Tyrol. Since every European region is of course unique in some way, generalizations are somewhat dangerous ; however, given the fairly broad nature of the conclusions that can be reached from the Tyrolean material, I nonetheless believe that they will in principle be valid for other regions as well. My remarks will fall into two parts : First, I will assemble a number of elementary facts about regional, in this case Tyrolean, Latinity in early modern times and illustrate them with a few examples. Based on this, I will then proceed to ask if and how a worm’seye view on Neo-Latin literature can complement the usual bird’s-eye view in a meaningful and valuable way. Before beginning, however, I should clarify what I mean by ‘regional Neo-Latin literature’, especially since the modern concept of regional literature has a quite different meaning – a point to which I will return soon. Of course, every Neo-Latin text (as with every other text) has been written somewhere, in some region, which nevertheless does not lead to an obvious meaningful distinction of the term in question. Rather, I would like to restrict this designation to such texts – manuscripts as well as prints – as were distributed and read only or mainly in the region in which they had been composed, either because their authors did not cater to a wider audience in the first place or because their higher aspirations came to nothing. As to the term ‘region’ itself, it should for the present purpose be understood as a territory exhibiting a certain political and hence presumably also cultural unity in early modern times (but not necessarily today).5
4 To the best of my knowledge, the only monograph that consistently underlines the regional dimension of Neo-Latin literature is N. Thurn, Neulatein und Volkssprachen: Beispiele für die Rezeption neusprachlicher Literatur durch die lateinische Dichtung Europas im 15.–16. Jh. (Munich 2012). However, Thurn focuses exclusively on Renaissance poetry. His core thesis that there were many distinctive regional traditions comprising Latin and vernacular poetry in close interaction does not apply to Tyrol, since nothing like a specific Tyrolean tradition of vernacular poetry existed in early modern times. Some perceptive remarks on the regional and national dimensions, respectively, of Neo-Latin literature can also be found in J. Leonhardt, Latein: Geschichte einer Weltsprache (Munich 2009), 214–218. 5 On this concept of ‘region’ and its implications for literary history, see M. Siller, ‘Territorium und Litera tur: Überlegungen zu Methoden, Aufgaben und Möglichkeiten einer territorialen Literaturgeschichts schreibung des Mittelalters und der Frühneuzeit’, Geschichte und Region / Storia e regione 1:2 (1992), 39–84.
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Regional Latin Literature from Tyrol
One good thing about the present definition of regional Latin literature, averting the danger of circular reasoning, is the fact that the Tyrolis Latina was actually not based on the above criteria. Rather, the project was intended to include every text that was either written in historical Tyrol or had something to say about the region.6 Nonetheless, the overwhelming majority of the circa 7,400 texts by circa 2,400 known authors covered by the aforementioned criteria turned out to be also regional in terms of distribution : they were sold, bought and read nearly exclusively in the region itself. At least, this is the natural conclusion to be reached on the basis of the history and present location of the extant manuscripts and of the printing places, history and present location of the prints. In the latter case, though, the picture is somewhat blurred by the fact that many Tyrolean texts were actually published outside the region, in centres of printing such as Augsburg, Munich or Venice. However, this should not mislead one into thinking that they were also sold and read in the place of publication to a substantial degree. Rather, authors were in many cases simply forced to rely on foreign printers because of the insufficient printing facilities at home. Over a long time, only a few printers established themselves in cities such as Innsbruck, Brixen, Rovereto and Trento, and they often lacked the economic and technical resources to produce voluminous or typographically challenging texts.7 For this reason, many works of blatantly local or regional character were published abroad. This is true, to cite just one telling example, of a nicely illustrated broadsheet treating the foundation legend of the monastery of Wilten near Innsbruck in Latin hexameters with facing German translation, printed at Augsburg in 1601 (see Fig. 1).8 Of course, some Tyrolean texts actually reached a wider, in a few cases even a pan-European audience. The most striking examples, however, were composed by authors such as Nicolaus Cusanus, Enea Silvio Piccolomini/Pius II and Jacob Balde who spent only a few years in Tyrol while acquiring international fame for themselves and international
6 It goes without saying that this had to remain an ideal. Of course, some authors and texts have escaped the attention of collaborators and editors. Moreover, some genres, notably epigraphy and charters, were from the outset excluded for practical reasons. 7 On the history of printing in Tyrol, see F. Waldner, Quellenstudie zur Geschichte der Typographie in Tirol bis zum Beginne des XVII. Jahrhunderts: Ein Beitrag zur tirolischen Culturgeschichte, 2 parts (Innsbruck 1888–90); W. Meighörner, ed., Druckfrisch. Der Innsbrucker Wagner Verlag und der Buchdruck in Tirol: Ausstellung Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum 13. Juni bis 26. Oktober 2014 (Innsbruck 2014). 8 Christoph Wilhelm Putsch and Paul Ottenthaler, De Haymone gygante et origine monasterii huius VVilthinensis (Augsburg 1601); see W. Kofler and M. Korenjak, ‘Dichtung’, in Tyrolis Latina, 1:234–235.
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circulation for their works either before or after that period. What they wrote in the region is, so to speak, Tyrolean literature only by accident. Although some true exponents of the local culture were read and exerted some influence beyond Tyrol’s borders, their success was nonetheless more limited. To this class belong, to cite just a few cases, Petrus Tritonius from Bolzano with his Melopoiae (Augsburg 1507), considered an important work of early modern musical theory, or the physician Pietro Andrea Mattioli, a native of Siena who spent most of his life in Tyrol and wrote a commentary on Dioscurides (Venice 1544, many further editions and translations) ranking among the most influential works of sixteenth-century pharmacology. A didactic poem about the upbringing of children, the Paedotrophia sive de puerorum edu catione, composed by another physician, Giulio Alessandrini from Trento, was printed abroad twice (Venice 1547, Zurich 1559) before its final edition at home (Trento 1586). Clementino Vannetti from Rovereto penned an interesting Liber memorialis de Caleostro (Mori 1789) that was translated several times into Italian and German and remains an important source for the life of the charismatic swindler.9 However, authors and works such as these must always be regarded as exceptional. All in all, it is in fact an understatement and not an exaggeration to say that ninety-five per cent of the copious Neo-Latin literature written in Tyrol was neither read nor had any impact to speak of beyond the borders of the region. What does the Tyrolean literary scene look like in comparison to the larger Neo-Latin world outside ? Turning for a moment towards what is called ‘regional literature’ today,10 one can observe that much, though by no means all, of it is written by amateurs as opposed to professional writers. It chooses local themes, tries to evoke a distinctive sense of place and is fond of location-dependent literary forms, for example the so-called Heimatroman (‘homeland novel’) in the German-speaking world. Its language often shows a certain local flavour or may even be the respective region’s dialect. On the other hand, the appeal of modern regional literature is not necessarily restricted to a local readership,
9 For the authors and works cited in the last two paragraphs, see S. Tilg, ‘Philosophie’, in Tyrolis Latina, 1:167–182 and C. Lehne, ‘Rechtswissenschaft’, in Tyrolis Latina, 203–206 (Cusanus), W. Kofler, ‘Biographie’, in Tyrolis Latina, 1:128–129 (Piccolomini), M. Korenjak, ‘Dichtung’, in Tyrolis Latina, 1:397–398 (Balde), L. Oberrauch, ‘Musik’, in Tyrolis Latina, 1:144–146 (Tritonius), L. Šubarić, ‘Naturwissenschaft’, in Tyrolis Latina, 1:359–361 (Mattioli), W. Kofler and M. Korenjak, ‘Dichtung’, in Tyrolis Latina, 1:261–264 (Alessandrini), P. Kennel and M. Korenjak, ‘Biographisches Schrifttum’, in Tyrolis Latina, 2:986–988 (Vannetti). 10 One should however note that the kinds of writing covered by this term and its apparent synonyms in other modern languages – for example ‘littérature populaire’ or ‘letteratura regionale’ – vary significantly between different countries. Although the bibliography on the subject is vast, I have been unable to find a good general introduction.
Regional Latinity: A Worm’s-Eye View on Neo-Latin Literature |
as it sometimes meets with nationwide or even, in cases such as Johanna Spyri’s Heidi, global success. By contrast, most of the aforementioned traits do not apply to Tyrol’s regional NeoLatin literature. In general, it was rather a kind of small-scale replica of Neo-Latin literature as a whole. Beginning with its authors, they came from the same social strata as made up the respublica litterarum across the whole of Europe : Most of them were either clerics or had an academic background of some kind. They often earned their living at the important courts of the region at Innsbruck, Brixen and Trento, or they belonged to a monastic community or the Society of Jesus. Later on, many of them also taught at the University of Innsbruck, founded in 1669. In linguistic terms, there was nothing specifically Tyrolean about Tyrolean Neo-Latin literature either. Humanism found its way into Tyrol from the late fifteenth century onwards and international linguistic standards were backed up by a robust educational system since the arrival of the Jesuits in 1560.11 Accordingly, authors used the same humanist Latin as everywhere else : more strictly classicising and Ciceronian in belles lettres, handled with greater freedom in factual and technical writing. The literary genres cultivated and scholarly disciplines treated did not differ greatly from the European picture in general either.12 In the field of poetry, one finds epics, didactic poems, bucolic poetry, elegiacs, hendecasyllables, Horatian meters, even some ‘medieval’ poetry (featuring rhyme and stress accent) and a few Menippean satires, all of which applied not only to worldly but also to sacred subjects. Drama was represented primarily by Jesuit plays. Regarding prose, orations were given at a great many occasions, while rhetorical theory was learnt from foreign manuals. Historiography, sacred and profane, was produced in huge quantities, from universal and dynastic history to histories of cities, religious orders and their monasteries, monographs on specific events and antiquarian studies. Biographies described the lives of saints and rulers. Countless letters (of which the better part is certainly lost) were written in chancelleries, monasteries and by private persons ; in a more polished form, they could also serve to dedicate books or even grow into self-contained literary works. In the realm of scholarly and scientific prose, theology loomed large, and her handmaiden philosophy received her share of attention, too. Civil and canon law was cultivated not only at the University of Innsbruck, but also in many monasteries and in the cities. Medical texts treated pharmacology, plagues, dietetics and a plethora of particular questions. Other natural sciences 11 L. Šubarić, ‘Epochenbild’, in Tyrolis Latina, 1:62–65; K. Töchterle, ‘Epochenblid’, in Tyrolis Latina, 1:220–222. 12 Examples for what follows are easy to find in Tyrolis Latina, as the book is structured by genres and disciplines.
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such as mathematics, physics, botany and geography mainly flourished at the university, forming the subject of bulky monographs as well as of many academic dissertations. Thus, if Tyrolean Neo-Latin literature was regional in the sense that it had little impact on the wider Neo-Latin world, the reverse was not the case – quite the opposite. Everything written in the region was deeply influenced by linguistic and literary developments at the European level and faithfully reproduced genres and topics cultivated throughout the continent. Insofar as this literature can be called ‘typically Tyrolean’ at all, such a label must pertain nearly exclusively to its contents. There were quite a few genres which strongly tended to regionality in this respect : occasional and panegyrical poetry as well as oratory were by their very nature tied to locally and regionally important events such as marriages, inaugurations or funerals. In a somewhat different way, letters were closely linked to what happened at the place and time of their composition, too. Most historiography was also concerned with regional events. Jesuit plays staging Tyrolean incidents such as an alleged ritual murder in the surroundings of Innsbruck obviously had a special appeal for their local audience.13 Even academic dissertations were sometimes inspired by local circumstances. When the Inn Valley was struck by a heavy earthquake in 1670, Anton Manincor reacted to this with a Disputatio philosophica de terraemotibus anni 1670, while Christoph Leopold’s Philosophia historica de montibus was obviously inspired by Innsbruck’s mountainous surroundings.14 By contrast, formal innovations leading to something like locally confined literary subgenres were of exceptional rarity. The two panegyric Menippean satires presented by Johanna Luggin in this volume may indeed constitute the best example of such a subgenre.
Why Study Regional Latinity?
Given that Neo-Latin literature can boast so many great authors of international fame, of what use could it be to direct one’s attention instead to the plethora of regional auctores minores et minimi ? For sure, doing research on regional cultural heritage can 13 The text of the respective play, staged in 1621 at Hall, is lost, but the perioch, entitled Summarischer Innhalt der Action / Von dem H. dreyjärigen Kindlein Andrea […], survives; see S. Tilg, ‘Die Popularisierung einer Ritualmordlegende im Anderl-von-Rinn-Drama der Haller Jesuiten (1621)’, Daphnis 33 (2004), 623–640. 14 Anton Manincor, Disputatio philosophica de terraemotibus anni 1670 (Innsbruck 1671); cf. S. Tilg and M. Korenjak, ‘Philosophie und Naturwissenschaft’, in Tyrolis Latina, 2:839–844; Christoph Leopold, Philosophia historica de montibus (Innsbruck 1713). Modern Edition: R. Steixner, ed., Philosophia historica de montibus: Eine Dissertationsschrift der Universität Innsbruck aus dem Jahr 1713 (Vienna 2009).
Regional Latinity: A Worm’s-Eye View on Neo-Latin Literature |
open up interesting opportunities on a local or national level, including possibilities for funding. But apart from such mundane motives, there are also a number of good scholarly reasons to direct one’s attention towards such authors and texts. In my view, the ‘regional’ approach to Neo-Latin literature can form a valuable counterpart to the ‘international’ one. In what follows, I will try to substantiate this claim by discussing four ways in which regional Latinity may contribute to a better and fuller understanding of Neo-Latin literature as a whole. (a) Though regional Neo-Latin literature perhaps contains much dull and uninspired material, there is also a fair amount of eloquent, conceptionally original and thematically interesting texts which are completely unknown and repay closer study. Often, such texts shed new light on the political, cultural and intellectual history of their region of origin. To cite just one case in point, a major episode in the War of Spanish Succession, known as the Bayrischer Rummel (‘Bavarian fair’), took place in Tyrol. Important insights into the background of the military action are provided by a kind of historical monograph à clef surviving in one single copy that was brought to light only a couple of years ago.15 Interesting specimens of Tyrolean Latinity such as this one have already been the subject of a dozen or so diploma theses and dissertations and continue to be published in a series entitled Tirolensia Latina.16 (b) Besides making for a more variegated and animated picture of Neo-Latin literature, regional Latinity also highlights some of its overall characteristics that tend to recede to the background if one deals exclusively with the great names. Two of these characteristics may briefly be mentioned : The first one, often emphasized but hardly ever specified, is sheer bulk. There are still no trustworthy estimates of the total number of Neo-Latin texts ever written. Under such conditions, the fact that over 7,400 items (leaving aside epigraphy and charters, as said before) have been produced in a tiny part of Europe that comprises no more than 0.25 per cent of the continent’s total area at least provides a basis for an educated guess. The second trait worthy of emphasis, since Neo-Latin still tends to be perceived as a phenomenon of the Renaissance and the Re formation Era, is its longevity and its vigour in the later centuries of its history. This, too, is perceived more clearly if one tries to record what has really been written in a given region than if one adheres to a canon of great authors, since such canons usually privilege old over new – just witness the canons of ancient Greek and Roman literature. In Tyrol, for example, the quantitative highpoint of Neo-Latin literature was reached in 15 [Ignaz Reydax], Epitome rerum Oenovallensium MDCCIII ([probably Amsterdam, no date]). Modern edition: F. Schaffenrath and S. Tilg, eds., Achilles in Tirol: Der ‘bayerische Rummel’ 1703 in der ‘Epitome rerum Oenovallensium’, eingeleitet, übersetzt und kommentiert (Innsbruck 2004). 16 1997–2015, 9 vols. so far.
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the second half of the eighteenth century17 – at a moment when the Neo-Latin world already lay in deep twilight according to Brill’s Encyclopaedia.18 (c) One of the most interesting issues raised by regional Neo-Latinity concerns the reasons behind the very existence and the flourishing of Neo-Latin in early modern times. Why did Europe need a dead language such as Latin and a literature written in it at all ? The usual answer to this question is that Latin was the much-needed lingua franca of a linguistically diverse continent, the equivalent of present-day English. This is certainly part of the truth, but it cannot be the whole truth. If this were entirely the case, how could it be explained that Latin was also used so extensively within small, linguistically unified regions ?19 To account for this fact, other reasons must be adduced. One that readily springs to mind is prestige, and there is certainly some truth in this. But I think there is at least one more factor to be reckoned with, namely the sheer practical usefulness of Latin also beyond its function as a link language. At least in the German-speaking parts of Tyrol, there existed no codified standard language in early modern times, while the regional language and the dialects lacked the lexical and syntactical preconditions to become a full-fledged literary language. If one wanted to discuss complex issues or to express oneself at a certain stylistic level, this was only possible in Latin with the lexical riches of its many technical languages and with its poetic and rhetorical tradition. (d) Having begun this sketch with the great names of Neo-Latin literature, I briefly return to them at the end. In reading these famous authors also against the regional background that represents the largest part of Neo-Latin literature, one can understand them better than when reading them in isolation or comparing them only to their ancient models. The motivation of Pius II’s Commentarii is easier to grasp when placed in the context of the many autobiographical writings composed out of apologetic and 17 The database that underlies the Tyrolis Latina gives the following total numbers of datable manuscripts and prints for every tenth year from 1650 to 1800: 1650: 19; 1660: 16; 1670: 20; 1680: 15; 1690: 27; 1700: 23; 1710: 28; 1720: 21; 1730: 32; 1740: 41; 1750: 47; 1760: 35; 1770: 63; 1780: 46; 1790: 16; 1800: 8. Of course, this data must be treated with caution since, as already mentioned, a certain number of texts no doubt have been overlooked. However, there is no reason to assume that this should have distorted the picture in favour of later texts. Moreover, Tyrol is not an isolated case in this respect. In Hungary, the highpoint of Latin book production was reached as late as 1800: see G. Almási and L. Šubarić, eds., Latin at the Crossroads of Identity: The Evolution of Linguistic Nationalism in the Kingdom of Hungary (Leiden 2015), 5. 18 The whole period from 1700 to the present day is covered there in a short section entitled ‘Neo-Latin: The Twilight Years’ (Brill’s Encyclopaedia of the Neo-Latin World, 865–903). 19 Tyrol is not the best example in this respect, since besides German, Italian and to a lesser degree Ladin dialects were also spoken on its territory. However, German was dominant except for the southernmost part of the region, and most Latin texts accordingly would have been read by people who shared the respective author’s mother tongue. I do not know of a single passage that stresses Latin’s usefulness as a common lingua franca between Tyroleans of different native languages.
Regional Latinity: A Worm’s-Eye View on Neo-Latin Literature |
self-promotional motives by other ecclesiastical dignitaries, while at the same time their literary brilliance becomes even more admirable. Jacob Balde’s famous ‘odes of pilgrimage’ to the Virgin, his Parthenia, lose much of their strangeness and gain in stature once the reader becomes aware that they stem from a long and rich tradition of devotional poetry for local saints and places of pilgrimage. Even the science fiction-like setting of Ludvig Holberg’s Iter subterraneum may become less of a surprise considering that an eighteenth-century schoolteacher in Trento could write a dissertatio about extraterrestrials.20 In all these cases, a regional background helps to explain what these Neo-Latin greats wrote and in estimating how well they wrote, based on the literary standards exemplified by the regional texts that they were familiar with from their early days. After all, the stars among Neo-Latin authors were as a rule not natives of the major centres of learning. They grew up, learnt Latin at school and started to write in provincial and regional settings.
20 As an example of an apologetic autobiography written by a Tyrolean ecclesiastical dignitary, one may cite the Diarium of Ulrich Putsch, bishop of Brixen 1427–1437; see W. Kofler, ‘Biographie’, in Tyrolis Latina, 1:124–126. For devotional poetry for local saints and Mary, see M. Korenjak, ‘Dichtung’, in Tyrolis Latina, 2:640–648. For Gaspare Savoy, Dissertatio philosophica de planeticolis (Trento 1770) see S. Tilg and M. Korenjak, ‘Philosophie und Naturwissenschaft’, in Tyrolis Latina, 2:837.
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Fig. 1: A definitely regional text from Tyrol printed abroad: De Haymone gygante et origine monasterii huius (Tyrolean State Museum Ferdinandeum, FB 7208, printed with permission)
Regional Latinity: A Worm’s-Eye View on Neo-Latin Literature |
Response by Bratislav Lučin
The one and the multiple. For most of its history, the Tyrol region belonged to a single political unit – it was ruled by the House of Habsburg until the end of the World War I, when the Tyrolean lands were divided between Italy and Austria. The modern Croatian state comprises several regions which historically belonged to various political entities (the Kingdom of Hungary and Croatia, the Venetian Republic, the Habsburg Monarchy, the Ottoman Empire, the independent city-state of Dubrovnik). Consequently, the cultural history of Tyrol, belonging to a single sphere of influence, presents a certain continuum, while the cultural history of Croatia is marked by frequent ruptures and by effects of multiple forces. Croatian cultural and literary history was shaped mainly by two culture complexes : the Mediterranean one (Dalmatia, Dubrovnik and to an extent Istria) and the Central European one (central Croatia, Slavonia and to an extent Istria). The common and the individual. Even Croatian writers sometimes seem to have been barely aware of the disjointed Croatian regions as parts of a single entity with a common identity ; historians of literature often disregarded this common identity or (especially in the case of non-Croatian historians) used the disjointedness to deny the national aspect of this entity. Hence a certain reluctance of Croatian cultural and literary scholars to consider a regional approach to history. Inertia was also a factor : while the differences are incontrovertible and easy to spot, the connections are often scattered and tenuous, requiring additional effort and profound knowledge to be recognized and interpreted. The multiplicity of Croatian vernacular literature can be perceived already at the level of its three dialects, which all developed into vehicles for literary expression ; the literature in Latin encounters – as elsewhere – the difficulty of expressing a national identity in an international linguistic medium, using the devices of an international literary tradition (moulded, of course, by the ancient Greeks and Romans). The Tyrolis Latina vs. Croatiae auctore Latini : similarities and differences. Korenjak defines a region as ‘a territory exhibiting a certain political and hence presumably also cultural unity in early modern times (but not necessarily today)’, which applies well to Croatian regions. However, his definition of a regional Neo-Latin literature as being constituted by ‘such texts – manuscripts as well as prints – as were distributed and read only or mainly in the region in which they had also been composed’ is much less suited to Croatian Neo-Latin literature and its regions than to their Tyrolean counterparts. For Korenjak, the distribution is what makes Tyrolean Latin a regional phenomenon : the texts ‘were sold, bought and read nearly exclusively in the county itself ’. The case of Croatian Latin is largely the opposite : many of its manuscripts are preserved abroad ; practically all printed books (with some seventeenth and eighteenth century exceptions) appeared outside Croatia (which had no printing shops or publishing houses) ; a signif-
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icant number of texts address the foreign (or, at least, not only the local) reading public. Moreover, many Croatian Latin authors plied their trade outside Croatian historical lands. Korenjak regards Tyrolean Neo-Latinity in general as ‘a kind of a small-scale copy of Neo-Latin literature as a whole’ ; the same general judgement can be applied to Croatian Neo-Latin, which is, however, particularly productive in the genre of the antiturcica. Additionally, a comparison with Neo-Latin literature as a whole brings out clearly the differences between the southern (Mediterranean) and the northern (Central European) culture complex in Croatian Neo-Latin (for more information, see the paper by Gorana Stepanić in this volume). Why study Neo-Latin literature in its Croatian or Tyrolean variety ? Korenjak’s answers apply to Croatian Latin as well : (a) This literature includes numerous elegant, interesting, original texts that help us to understand the political and cultural history of the region. Among such may be mentioned the epics of Jakov Bunić and Marko Marulić, the elegies of Ilija Crijević and Janus Pannonius, the epistle of Juraj Divnić, the speeches of Franjo Trankvil Andreis and Šimun Kožičić Benja, the letters of Antun Vrančić, the historical work of Ludovik Crijević Tuberon, the technopaegnia by Pavao Vitezović Ritter, the Annuae by Baltazar Adam Krčelić, the poem Navis aeria by Bernard Zamanja, the Specimen de fortuna Latinitatis by Marko Faustin Galjuf. b) Croatian Latin, just like its Tyrolean counterpart, demonstrates two common characteristics of European NeoLatin literature : its ‘sheer bulk’ (1,263 authors, 3,926 works) and its ‘longevity’ (the authors remain quite productive to the middle of the eighteenth century, and even long into the nineteenth). A notable difference is in the peak periods of the two literatures : the number of Croatian Neo-Latin authors is the largest during the eighteenth century, whereas the largest number of Tyrolean authors were active in the seventeenth.21 (c) The motives for clinging to a dead language in Croatia were in part similar to those in Tyrol : both regions saw Latin as a European lingua franca and a vehicle of cultural prestige. Nevertheless, in Croatia Latin was not a medium for bridging the gap between the vernaculars ; on the other hand, since political circumstances impeded the use of Croatian as an official language, Latin in Croatia was used to keep Magyarization and Germanization at bay. (d) Korenjak suggests that a comparison with the great authors of Neo-Latin literature – as well as with the great authors of Greek and Roman antiquity – helps us to better understand and assess the worth of local writers ; this holds perfectly in the case of Croatian Neo-Latin.
21 See ; ; and the paper by Neven Jovanović in this volume.
II CASE STUDIES
Vladimir Rezar
Humanists of Dubrovnik
The Croatian territory owes its relatively early encounter with the idea and forms of Renaissance humanism to the traditional orientation towards the cradle of the movement itself – the Mediterranean cultural circle, particularly Italy. The closest contacts Croatian culture had with the new spiritual atmosphere took place in the coastal cities, places where the flow of people and ideas was more intense, and where shipping and trade, or negotium, created favourable conditions for fostering the spirit, or otium. No wonder that Dubrovnik, economically most prosperous Croatian city on the Adriatic, became one of the first centres of literature, being constantly interested in gathering people known for their scholarship and the artistic gift. Thus, already in the fourteenth century Dubrovnik felt a breath of humanism, when one of the first travelling erudites, Giovanni Conversini da Ravenna (1343–1408), sojourned there as a chancellor from 1384 to 1387.1 Fifty years later the Venetian teacher Filippo Diversi (teaching in Dubrovnik from 1434 to 1440) established a humanist educational system, and from that time on prominent foreign instructors of the liberal arts took turns at the helm of the Dubrovnik school. The youth of Dubrovnik were subsequently educated by Tideo Acciarini (1477–1480), who had previously taught in Split (among his pupils was the future eminent Croatian humanist Marko Marulić), and by Marin Beçikemi of Shkodër (1492–1496), renowned for the commentaries on ancient authors. There were also ambitious but unsuccessful attempts to engage the famous Greek Demetrius Chalcondyles (1424–1511), the editor of the first printed edition of Homer, and his disciple, the prominent poet and philologist Angelo Poliziano (1454–1494). In Dubrovnik, even instruction in Greek could have been obtained, from the chancellor of the Republic, Senofonte Filelfo (1460–1470), son of the famous humanist Francesco Filelfo ; from Daniele Clario of Parma (1482–1505), the vir utraque lingua doctus, as Aldo Manuzio once called him ; or from the distinguished scholar of his time, Raffaele Regio (1513–1515).2 1 For more information on Conversini, see F. Rački, ‘Ivan Ravenjanin, učenik Petrarkin, dubrovački kancelar (1384–1387) kao preteča humanizma u Dubrovniku’ [Giovanni of Ravenna, student of Petrarch, chancellor of Ragusa (1384–1387) as the forerunner of humanism in Dubrovnik], Rad JAZU 74 (1885), 135–191. 2 Regio, the author of the most frequently printed sixteenth-century commentary on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, published a Latin translation of Plutarch’s Apophthegmata in Venice in 1518. For more information on
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From the second half of the fifteenth century, young Ragusan noblemen, after receiving initial education in the city, often attended university centres in Italy and France. A certain number of them established themselves abroad and became the leading figures of particular courts and intellectual centres. The most distinguished ones among them were Feliks Petančić (1455–1516) and Petar Džamanjić as heads of the Corvinus Library, and Tomo Baseljić and Serafin Bunić as teachers at his Academy.3 Others, however, came back to the city after completing their studies and transmitted their knowledge to younger generations, as was the case with the Ragusan poet Ilija Crijević (1463–1520), who was the head of Dubrovnik’s school for more than a decade. A certain Vuk Bobaljević (1420–1472) is remembered as Dubrovnik’s first humanist poet : his poetry was praised by a fellow poet, the city chancellor Giovanni Lorenzo Regini of Feltre (1449–1460), but no traces of it have been preserved.4 At that time Bobaljević was not alone in Dubrovnik : his humanist circle included the names of Paskal and Nikola Rastić, Junije Gradić, Stjepan Gučetić and Frano Beneša. However, not a single trace remained of their literary activity neither.5 The same is with Petar Menčetić (1451–1508), for whom there is even an indication that he gained the title of poeta laureatus at the Roman Academy of Giulio Pomponio Leto. Ivan Gučetić (1451–1502) was the first Dubrovnik humanist who, according to the testimony of his contemporaries, had an excellent knowledge of the Greek language. Ilija Crijević says in his funeral oration in honour of Gučetić : Primus enim in patriam, quantum omnes meminisse possumus, Atticas veneres et illud Isocratis mirothecion, in familiam vero utramque dicendi copiam, hoc est Graecam et Latinam, advexit. Unfortunately, Gučetić, whose Latin poems were praised by Angelo Poliziano, had burned the three books of his love poetry before his death, and his prose writing Delphinus is also known only by the title. All that is left today of his opus are a few occasional verses – one of them quoted later in the text, praising his fellow citizen Jakov Bunić – and a commendatory speech dedithe chancellors, notaries and teachers working in Dubrovnik in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, see A. Cronia, ‘Relazioni culturali tra Ragusa e l’Italia negli anni 1358–1526’, Atti e memorie della Società Dalmata di storia patria 1 (1926), 1–39; S. Škunca, Aelius Lampridius Cervinus, poeta Ragusinus saec. XV (Roma 1971), 35–37. 3 Škunca, Aelius Lampridius Cervinus, 40. 4 Cf. M. Rešetar, ‘Pjesme Ivana Lovra Regina, dubrovačkoga kancelara XV. vijeka’ [The poems of Giovanni Lorenzo Regini, the fifteenth-century chancellor of Dubrovnik], Građa za povijest književnosti hrvatske 3 (1901), 1–43, at 31–35. Along with Regini, another Italian chancellor and a humanist poet, Bartolomeo Sfondrati of Cremona, could have also influenced the intellectual atmosphere during the years spent in Dubrovnik (1449‒1504). Cf. Z. Pešorda Vardić, U predvorju vlasti: Dubrovački antunini u kasnom srednjem vijeku [On the threshold of power: The Antunini of Dubrovnik in the Late Middle Ages] (Zagreb 2012), 168–169. 5 Cf. Leksikon hrvatskih pisaca [Lexicon of Croatian writers], ed. D. Fališevac et al. (Zagreb 2000), 81.
Humanists of Dubrovnik |
cated to the Hungarian king Vladislas II, which was held in Buda in 1493.6 Again, not much more is known of Frano Lucijan Gundulić (1451–1505), the author of the only surviving Latin short story of Croatian humanism, printed under the title Baptistinus in Venice in 1490 or 1500.7 As opposed to those just mentioned, the following names left a far deeper mark on the literary history of the city. The poetic legacy of Karlo Pucić (1458–1522) is rather small, but in terms of form and content it is one of the high points of Croatian humanism.8 Pucić’s collection, preserved under the title Elegiarum libellus de laudibus Gnesae puellae, was printed around 1499 in Vicenza, and contains about two hundred verses organized into three poems in elegiac distich, and one in hendecasyllables. Following the model of Latin love elegy bequeathed by the main representatives of the genre, Propertius, Tibullus and Ovid, Pucić formed a coherent story that ranges from the poet’s initial complete love obsession, through descriptions of his love sufferings, to sobering and the final renunciation of love. One can recognize the standard characteristic of the genre : there are, as required, the domina, the servitium amoris and the renuntiatio amoris, with the characteristic apparatus of classical mythology that picturesquely emphasizes either the mistress’s beauty or evokes the severity of the poet’s love wound. Thus, emulating his models, in the first elegy Pucić says the following about Gnesa’s charms : Herculeos pro te quis non perferre labores, Quis Lybicas pro te nollet inire feras? Altitonans pro te sumpsisset mille figuras, Pro te pavisset pulcher Apollo greges! Non Elenam, sed te Phrygius rapuisset adulter, Te Iovis ob Danaen destituisset amor. Gnosida Nyctelius, Daphnen sprevisset Apollo, Lux mea, si talem saecula prisca darent.9
6 For Menčetić and Gučetić, cf. Škunca, Aelius Lampridius Cervinus, 37–38, 184–189. 7 See P. Šoštarić and D. Ivanišević, ‘Baptistinus Frana Lucijana Gundulića’ [Baptistinus by Fran Lucijan Gundulić], Latina et Graeca 10 (2006), 99–133. 8 For more information on Pucić, see Đ. Körbler, ‘Iz mladih dana triju humanista Dubrovčana 15. vijeka’ [The youth of three fifteenth-century humanists of Dubrovnik], Rad JAZU 206 (1915), 218–252; D. Novaković, ‘Latinsko pjesništvo hrvatskoga humanizma’ [The Latin poetry of Croatian humanism], in M. Tomasović and D. Novaković, Judita Marka Marulića–Latinsko pjesništvo hrvatskoga humanizma [ Judith by Marko Marulić–The Latin poetry of Croatian humanism] (Zagreb 1994), 53–117. 9 1.17–24.
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In another elegy, titled Elegia de crudelitate amoris, in a series of conventionally shaped laments, the poet complains about Amor’s ruthlessness with frequent recourses to the examples from Greek mythology : Sisyphus ipse valet posito requiescere saxo, Montis in adversum quem grave lassat opus, Et Danai proles solito vacat illa labore Dolia dum fusis vana reportat aquis. Interdum Stygii manes umbraeque quiescunt, Nec tenet assiduus Tartara regna labor: Quando blanda Venus miseros non vexat amantes, Quando vincla suis saeva remittit Amor?10
The third elegy, De vero amore vel de mutatione amoris, already in its title announces the elaboration of the generic standard motif of the renunciation of love. But unlike the Roman love elegists, Pucić’s eyes are opened not by an expected infidelity of a mistress, but by a religious conversion, which fills the poet’s heart with love for the Blessed Virgin : Diva placet summique parens innupta Tonantis, Quae recipit nostras Virgo beata preces.11
The final break with earthly love and a sincere commitment to heavenly love is confirmed in the fourth poem, Carmen de fragilitate humana et mutatione amoris. This somewhat unexpected denouement, the shift in terms of form and content away from the classical genre canon indicates Pucić’s enthusiasm for the Petrarchan literary heritage. Taken as a whole, the amalgam of two influential traditions, together with Pucić’s extraordinary linguistic and versifying competence, makes his collection one of the greatest achievements of Croatian humanist poetry. According to Damjan Beneša, who lamented his death with Latin and Greek epigrams, Pucić composed poetry until his death, and thus his last words, as words of an uncompromising humanist, were reportedly a Latin elegiac distich : Nulla diu restare queunt mortalibus unquam: Ecce ego communi lege poeta petor.12 10 2.25–32. 11 3.35–36. 12 Damiani Benessae Epigrammatum liber II, 20.9–10 (Archives of the Franciscan Monastery in Dubrovnik, MS 78).
Humanists of Dubrovnik |
Pucić was almost the same age as Ilija Crijević (1463–1520).13 When and where the two received humanist education is not certain. However, as a young man Crijević established himself as a poet in Rome, where he won the title poeta laureatus at the prestigious Academy of Pomponio Leto in 1484 in competition with other excellent humanist poets. During his stay in Italy Crijević made a number of acquaintances with Italian humanists, who later frequently showed up as dedicatees in his poems, the most famous of them being Alessandro Farnese, future Pope Paul III. Since 1487, Crijević mostly stayed in Dubrovnik, where among other things he served as the head of the grammar school. This career path is attested by Crijević’s manuscript legacy, which in its prose part, apart from letters and twenty speeches, contains three lectures on Plautus, Virgil and Propertius. Nevertheless, the majority of his opus consists of Latin poems, which – with the exception of four commendatory epigrams printed alongside the works by Juraj Dragišić and Frano Lucijan Gundulić – were not published during Crijević’s life. They amount to about 240 poems composed in different meters, predominantly in the elegiac distich. In addition to hymns, odes, epigrams and elegies, Crijević also left an unfinished epyllion on the founding of Dubrovnik (De Epidauro, 572 hexameters). The poems are arranged in seven books, and thematically can be roughly divided into religious and secular ones. Among the secular poems, the prominent position is occupied by occasional poems Crijević sent to his friends, although the fourth book, which contains a cycle of love poems dedicated to the Roman lady Flavia, has attracted the most attention so far. Twelve elegies and two epigrams in some eight hundred verses bring, just as it was the case with Pucić, a complete story shaped by the canons of Latin love elegy, where Crijević relies heavily on the tradition of Ovid and Propertius. Apart from his love for Flavia, Crijević remains remembered for his almost fanatical love of the ancient cultural heritage and the Latin language, and his scorn for the local, Croatian language, which he called stribiligo Illyrica. He is considered the best Croatian humanist versifier and one of the best stylists in the entire history of the national Latin literature. At the same time, however, Crijević, as a result of his sometimes ostentatious scholarship and humanist intertextuality, makes for a very demanding read. How far his poetic playfulness goes, can be clearly demonstrated by the following introductory verses of a poem dedicated to his friend Marin Bunić (died in 1540), one of Dubrovnik’s most respected humanists of that generation :14 13 For more information on Ilija Crijević, see Škunca, Aelius Lampridius Cervinus; Körbler, ‘Iz mladih dana’, 229–239; and Leksikon, 137–139. 14 The first sentence of the poem (IV, 1.1–51) extends over more than fifty verses, and the reader will have difficulties understanding it as the main verb is not mentioned before the forty-eighth verse. On Marin Bunić, see I. Bratičević, ‘Knjiga i čitanje u pismima Ilije Crijevića Marinu Buniću’ [The book and reading in Ilija Crijević’s letters to Marin Bunić], Colloquia Maruliana 21 (2012), 69–88.
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| Vladimir Rezar Nullo pumice munus expolitum, Nec uenalitio colore cultum Nec uelamine purpurae superbum, Non unctam Tyrio cutem ueneno Fucatamque amethystino colore Indutum et tunicam supiniorem, Mercatis opulentum et umbilicis Et prostrantibus omnibus tabernis, Quales pagina delicata portat Cum lenocinio superba cultus Falsam comparat aestimationem (Seu captis studeat placere moechis, Seu ducit meritorios cinaedos Lasciuosque greges ephaebiorum); Nullis denique mercibus coemptis Magno nec sine tedio paratis Rebusque emporii pecuniosi Ornatum, aut rotulas tenaciores Et cultros miseri libellionis Perpessum et gemitus laboriosos, Nulla congluuie luti tenacis Compactum nec adorea polenta, Nullas stygmatis ustulationes, Nec ferri calidas inustiones, Quales barbaricae ferunt catastae, Expertum, neque uinculis aduncis Praefixis ligulis et aere curuis Tam pressum bene, tam bene alligatum, Vt Tritoniacis putes trapetis; Nulla denique fibulatum alutha, Summo margine frontibus cohaesis, Non blattas madidum fugante cedro Longaeuosque situs aranearum Et morsus tineae famelicosae Et longe cariem putrem senectae, Nec uentrem metuente seculorum, Quales scrinia diuitum libellos Et capsae retinent beatiores,
Humanists of Dubrovnik |
Sed nudum, lepidum, merum, recentem Intactum, horridulum, rudem libellum, Tactum Cecropiae iocis Mineruae Et nostris salibus simul madentem Necnon Ausonia procacitate, Verum scribere quam Vitellianis Auctor debuit et notare chartis, Lusus deposita seueritate Qualescunque, Mari, genus Bonorum, Boni consule et ocium legendis Impartitus amoribus pusillum Differ seria tediumque frontis Morosique supercili remittas.
Slightly younger than Crijević was Jakov Bunić (1469–1534), a merchant by vocation, who occupies a place of honour in Croatian literary historiography as the author of the oldest epic poem, De raptu Cerberi, printed in 1490 in Rome.15 In 1,006 hexameters imitating Virgil’s diction, divided into three books titled after the names of the Graces (Aglaia, Thalia, Euphrosyna), the epyllion allegorically presents Christ’s victory over death through Hercules’ descent into Hades. What is interesting is that Bunić composed this work – a copy of which found its way to the library of the father of Croatian literature, Marko Marulić of Split – before he left to pursue studies in Italy (Padua or Bologna). The early date of composition thus testifies to the level of humanist education Ragusans could have received in their native city. Finally, having made his fortune trading in Egyptian precious stones and fabrics all over Western Europe, Bunić devoted himself to composing his life’s work, an epic poem entitled De vita et gestis Christi. The poem was printed in Rome in 1526 with the imprimatur of Pope Clement VII, along with the previously published epyllion. It has as much as 10049 hexameters divided into sixteen cantos. Rich compositional symbolism is more than evident : the first nine cantos are addressed to the nine angelic choirs (Chori), and the remaining seven to the gifts of the Holy Spirit (Dona). In addition, the first nine cantos are organized into three ‘hierarchies’ (Hierarchiae) : the first one is dedicated to God the Father, the second to the Son, and the third to the Holy Spirit, with a dedicatory poem (in the Sapphic stanza) at the end of each hierarchy. The four cantos of the second part also end with dedicatory poems, this time addressed to the Virgin Mary (the first in the Phalaecian verse, the 15 For more information on Jakov Bunić, see Đ. Körbler, ‘Jakov Bunić Dubrovčanin, latinski pjesnik’ [ Jakov Bunić of Dubrovnik, Latin poet], Rad JAZU 180 (1910), 58–145; and Leksikon, 117–118.
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others in the Sapphic stanza), while the last three cantos are once again dedicated to the persons of the Holy Trinity, with accompanying hexameter poems. In terms of content, from the second canto onwards the epic is mostly faithful to the outline presented in the New Testament, combining all four Gospels, beginning with Matthew’s, and maintaining the chronological order of the story in line with that in the Bible. Jesus’s birth, childhood and youth are covered in the first nine cantos, while the remaining seven deal with Jesus’s conflict with the Jewish religious leaders, and the motives of the Passion and Resurrection. True to the contemporary humanist aesthetic, the work is enriched by the mythological material of ancient provenance as well as by interesting geographical and ethnographic digressions which reflect the poet’s long experience as a marine merchant. In terms of form and style, the work follows rules of the genre, with Virgil’s Aeneid serving as the model. One encounters multiple invocations, a large number of extended comparisons, ecphrasis, a catalogue, or emphasized periphrasis ; Virgil’s influence, apart from many similar verses, is noticeable even in the two lines that were deliberately left incomplete. This ambitious epic interpretation of the whole history of Christ was enthusiastically received, both in Dubrovnik and in the Western humanistic circles, the more so because the work appeared in the period of the Reformation turmoil and the rejection of the authority of Rome, so its importance transcended the boundaries of art. The publication of the epic poem was praised by intellectual authorities such as Pietro Galatino and Ivan Polikarp Severitan,16 while Ivan Gučetić honoured it with the following verses : Seu tibi Pegasides ueniunt in uerba sorores, Pollice seu docto Thracia plectra moues, Dic quibus in syluis, quibus es nutritus in antris: Nam tibi Apollineum carmen ab ore sonat. Rara canis (fateor) nostroque incognita saeclo, Pluribus et gemmis dicta referta struis. Cum genio grauitas in te certasse uidetur: Vis dicam? Remoues ex Helicone deas. Sollicitare chelin nimia dulcedine curas, Meque tuum retines, me quoque semper habes.17 16 The Italian Franciscan Galatino (1460–1540) was a renowned theologian and philosopher well versed in Jewish religious literature, while Ivan Polikarp Severitan (1472–1526) was a versatile Šibenik Dominican who, apart from philosophy and philology, also wrote poetry: he published the epic poems Solimais (1509) and Feretreis (1522). 17 J. Bona, De vita et gestis Christi (Rome 1526), 287.
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In the framework of the Catholic Revival propaganda, even translations of Bunić’s epic into other languages were in preparation. However, with the appearance of the epic Christias by Girolamo Vida (1535), a conceptually innovative work, much more similar to the Aeneid (especially in length), and obviously more acceptable to the audience than Bunić’s, the glory of the older epic irretrievably lost its lustre. As was the case with Crijević, Bunić’s death was commemorated with a lengthy epicedium by Damjan Beneša, the same humanist who had lamented the death of Karlo Pucić in two short epigrams in Latin and Greek. Younger than those three, Beneša (1476– 1539) was very familiar with their literary work, which influenced his own.18 Beneša is, in fact, the most distinctive figure among all the humanists of Dubrovnik, surpassing them in the scope of his commitment to humanism. It is not known where, when and what kind of education he received, but like Bunić, he was involved in maritime trade, travelling from the shores of Britain all the way to Asia. In 1514, before his final return home, he found himself in Lyon, where he edited and published the pocket edition (in octavo) of the epic poem Opus de secundo bello Punico by Silius Italicus, today an interesting early contrafatto of Aldus’s italic type. Although only three epigrams (accompanying the edition of Dragišić’s work De natura coelestium spirituum, 1499) and two prose epistles (along with the already mentioned publication of the epic by Silius Italicus, 1514) were published in his lifetime, Beneša’s poetic opus consists of more than sixteen thousand Latin verses, and sixty verses composed in Greek. All of his work is preserved in two autograph manuscripts (Dubrovnik Franciscan Archive, MS 78 and Dubrovnik Research Library, MS 4), the first of which contains small poetic texts (three books of epigrams, a book of eclogues, two books of odes, a book of satires, several poetic renditions of Latin and Greek templates), and the second one a large Christian epic poem De morte Christi in ten cantos, or around 8,500 verses. The prose epilogue of the poetic collection, written in late 1538 or at the beginning of 1539, reveals the Beneša’s intention to publish his oeuvre in print. Since his intention was hindered by his sudden death and the manuscripts remained outside the libraries of Dubrovnik for a long time, the corpus saw poor literary reception. Beneša exemplifies, however, the essential poetic characteristics of the early Croatian cinquecento : his rich opus, written in both classical languages – the head of Dubrovnik’s grammar school Nikola Petrović from Korčula called him vir utraque lingua doctissimus – is characterized by a diversity of genres unique to Croatian circumstances, as well as by an exceptional willingness to adopt current poetic models. A trendy love-elegy cycle inspired by a certain Frenchwoman Zanna, a iambic lament on the death of the firstborn son Paskal 18 For more information on Damjan Beneša, see Körbler, ‘Iz mladih dana’, 219–239; and V. Rezar, Damjan Beneša: De morte Christi (Zagreb 2006), 11–97.
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(modelled on Pontano’s collection Iambici, lamenting the death of his son Lucio), and the eclogue Alieuticon (modelled on Sannazaro’s genre-defining innovative collection Eclogae piscatoriae with the characters of fishermen instead of shepherds populating Dubrovnik’s landscape), stand out in this regard. It is furthermore safe to assume that it was the Florentine Angelo Poliziano, and his Liber epigrammatum Graecorum (first published in 1498) in particular, which gave impetus to Beneša’s pioneering poetic endeavours in Greek, not long after Greek poetry reached its zenith in Florence. Yet, when one talks about the spread and proliferation of ancient Greek scholarship at the turn of the fifteenth century, one should bear in mind that the history of printing registers only 65 Greek incunabula altogether, exclusively of Italian origin, compared to an impressive number of some 40,000 Latin incunabula, published throughout Europe. In this very context, the only attested case of humanist Greek poetry in Croatian cultural history unveils Beneša as the most dedicated follower of the prevailing humanist literary trends on the eastern coast of the Adriatic. What follows is one out of nine Beneša’s Greek epigrams, on Heaven and Earth, recognizably influenced by Plato’s classical poem :19 Περὶ Οὐρανοῦ καὶ Γῆς Οὐρανοῦ ἀστερόεντος ἐγὼ γὰρ ἰσόχρονος εἰμί, Καίπερ τοῦδ‘ ἄλλως πολλὰ στεριζόμενος· Τοῦδε γὰρ ἢν αἰεῖ αὐγάζοντος ἀείδιον εἶδος, Πασσυδίῃ πολλοῖς ἄστρεσι λαμπόμενον, Ἀλλὰ κάτω ζοφερὸς καὶ τοῦδ‘ ὑποκείμενος αὐτὴ Οὐρανόθεν πολλοῖς ὄμμασι βλεψάμενος. Ἀρσενικὴ δύναμις κεῖνος, τὸ δὲ θηλικὸν αὐτή, Τίκτω καὶ μήτηρ ὥσπερ ἅπαντα τρέφω.
Finally, the epic poem De morte Christi is a fruit of Beneša’s late years, which still posed no obstacle for him to compete in such a demanding literary genre. In terms of content and concept, Beneša’s epic represents an obvious reaction to the innovative epic poem Christias (1535) by Girolamo Vida, displaying the in medias res narrative, and inserting scenes which are not part of the Christian biblical canon. After the first, introductory canto, which sets the conceptual stage for the action of the epic, Beneša devotes three 19 The anthology of ancient Greek epigrams, the Anthologia Graeca Planudea, was first published in 1494 by the famous humanist scholar Janus Lascaris. Plato’s epigram, which left its mark on Beneša’s own poetry, reads as follows: ᾿Αστέρας εἰσαθρεῖς, ᾿Αστὴρ ἐμός· εἴθε γενοίμην οὐρανός, ὡς πολλοῖς ὄμμασιν εἰς σὲ βλέπω.
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cantos to the elaboration of the scene of the Last Supper, three to the scene of Christ’s interrogation before Pilate and the assembly of the Jews, and three to his death and resurrection. The result is an untypical epic, as its narrative is mixed with extensive contemplative interpolations, which brings it close to the definition of a ‘narrative poem’.20 Apart from literary trends, in the last decade of his life Beneša followed the European political events of the day with great interest. He dedicated to these issues a number of epigrams, odes and satires, while his ambition to influence the processes in some way is mostly evident in the recently discovered letters from 1534, where Beneša, in the best manner of humanistic epistolography, appeals to three European monarchs, Ferdinand I, Charles V and Francis I, calling for Christian unity and collective resistance against the Turkish threat.21 This overview of Beneša’s work concludes with an epigram which indicates the typical humanist intertextuality of his poetic expression, and introduces the last of Dubrovnik’s humanists to be mentioned in more detail : Ad Alesum abbatem Quotquot litore uel fuere nostro Vel sunt, aut aliis erunt in annis, Cunctarum pater eruditionum, Et qui quotidie referre pergis Quantos Illiricum priore seclo Nec nouisse latus puto lepores, Istę sic oleę ocium perenne Componant tibi, lęserint nec Austri Vicinum nemus, ut queat trapetis Foelix soluere debitum laboris. Neu cęles modo de meis Camęnis Quid, doctissime, senseris: Catullum An quicquam redolent, Horatiumue? Mallem hoc quam Libias utrumque et Indum.22
20 A ‘poem’ in the Croatian literary history tradition is considered (under the influence of Russian literary terminology) a form between the epic and the lyric, narrating, often monologically, the plot with few events, involving few characters and situations; cf. P. Pavličić, Rasprave o hrvatskoj baroknoj književnosti [Disquisitions on Croatian baroque literature] (Split 1979). 21 See V. Rezar, ‘Pisma Damjana Beneše europskim vladarima’ [Damjan Beneša’s letters to European rulers], Povijesni prilozi 42 (2012), 191–214. 22 Damiani Benessae epigrammatum 2.3 (Archives of the Franciscan Monastery in Dubrovnik, MS 78).
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In addition to seeking views on his own poetry, Beneša praises the education of his dedicatee, who is, as he puts it, a peerless scholar on the eastern coast of the Adriatic. This learned Alesus abbas is actually a Benedictine from Dubrovnik, Ludovik Crijević Tuberon (1458–1527), the most important Croatian humanist historian.23 Tuberon was – according to some unsubstantiated claims – educated in Paris, and soon after his return to Dubrovnik began to lead a religious life within the walls of Dubrovnik’s Benedictine houses. From 1502 until his death he was the abbot of the Monastery of St James in Višnjica, close to the city. Even today, the initials ACT above the doors of the monastery complex testify to Tuberon’s stay there, and the millstone that still lies in the yard may have been the very part of the plant for processing olives mentioned by Beneša in the poem above. Tuberon’s masterpiece, Commentarii de temporibus suis, is an extensive history in eleven books that focuses on events in the period from 1490 to 1522, that is, from the death of King Matthias Corvinus to the election of Pope Hadrian VI, which left their mark in Southeast Europe, Italy and the Kingdom of Hungary. Since the work was written with an obvious intention to both inform and entertain, the monotony of the presentation of the main thematic framework is avoided by many highly stylized fictional speeches and frequent digressions of a geographical, ethnographic and anecdotal character, which unquestionably give a belletristic charm to the Commentaries. The work is distinguished by highly individual interpretations of political and military events, as well as by moralistic critical attitude, which, in the spirit of the times, does not spare even the highest officers of the church hierarchy. Tuberon’s dialogue with antiquity is recognizable in all segments of the work. It becomes noticeable not only through stylized diction in which a classically educated reader can recognize the influences of Sallust, Caesar, Livy and other ancient authors, but also through characteristic references to ancient authors, references to the characters and episodes from classical mythology, comparisons with some anecdotal events from ancient history, and especially through the constant use of ancient toponyms and ethnonyms. Tuberon has always been interesting to the public. His Commentaries became famous before the first printed edition : already in 1570, the manuscript awed the Hungarian historian Ferenc Forgách during his stay in Dubrovnik and inspired him to bring the Commentaries to the Transylvanian court of Prince Stephen Báthory, who valued it highly. It was also read and valued by Mavro Orbini, Stjepan Gradić, Juraj Rattkay and Pavao Ritter Vitezović, and its popularity did not vanish in spite of the fact that in the first half of the eighteenth century it was included in the Church’s list of banned books. 23 For more information on Tuberon, see V. Rezar, ‘Dubrovački humanistički historiograf Ludovik Crijević Tuberon’ [Ragusan humanist historian Ludovik Crijević Tuberon], Anali Zavoda za povijesne znanosti HAZU u Dubrovniku 37 (1999), 47–94.
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In the preface to the third edition (1746) the editors judged that Tuberon enjoyed the leading position among writers of Hungarian history, and this Sallustius Ragusinus – a title of honour given to him at the beginning of the nineteenth century by Francesco Maria Appendini – enjoys the same reputation even in modern Hungarian historiography. Extremely philanthropic, religiously conciliative, politically unbiased, linguistically and narratively appealing and warmly received by the humanist world, Tuberon thus became one of the most impressive figures of the Croatian Latin cinquecento. In addition to this, with regard to the rational and critical approach to the selection and interpretation of historical sources, Tuberon was ahead of his time, and in a way can be considered a forerunner of scholarly historiography, for which Ivan Lučić laid the foundations in Croatia in the mid-seventeenth century. Finally, there is no doubt that humanism in Dubrovnik was also strongly influenced by the already mentioned prominent Bosnian Franciscan, Juraj Dragišić (1445–1520), a humanist, philosopher and theologian, whose most significant work, De natura coelestium spirituum, was written and published during his five-year stay in Dubrovnik (1499).24 The story of Dubrovnik’s humanism is not complete without mentioning the name of another foreigner, the persecuted Portuguese Jew Didacus Pyrrhus (1517– 1599), who found refuge in Dubrovnik in 1558 and lived there until his death. In the forty years he spent there, Didacus left a significant mark as a teacher of classical languages and a poet : among his printed Latin poems, inter alia, are those which celebrated the city that received him all over humanist Europe. Croatian literary historiography considers him the last great humanist in Dubrovnik.25 In conclusion, in the context of Dubrovnik’s humanism it would be a mistake not to mention some less known, but still eminent Ragusan scholars of the sixteenth century, like the learned Juraj Kružić (died in 1513), who bequeathed his valuable library with many illuminated manuscripts and valuable incunabula to Dubrovnik’s monasteries, for the benefit of all citizens of Dubrovnik eager to learn. Only recently has it been discovered that Dubrovnik can also boast the oldest preserved Latin translation of Xenophon’s Anabasis in the history of European humanism, made by the Ragusan nobleman Miho Gradić (c. 1470–1527).26 Furthermore, one should neither omit the names of Miho 24 See Leksikon, 188–189. 25 See Đ. Körbler, ‘Život i rad humanista Didaka Pira Portugalca, napose u Dubrovniku’ [The life and work of Didacus Pyrrhus the Portuguese, paticularly in Dubrovnik], Rad JAZU 216 (1917), 1–169. 26 Miho Gradić called Celius, to whom Damjan Beneša dedicated six poems, was completely unknown to Croatian literary historiography up to now; see V. Rezar, ‘Novo ime dubrovačkog humanizma: Miho Celije Gradić’ [A new name in Dubrovnik humanism: Miho Celije Gradić], Colloquia Maruliana 25 (2016), 5–16. The manuscript of the translation mentioned above is kept in Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, MS 218 Phill. 1900.
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Bučinić (1479–1549), Tuberon’s protégé and the author of a printed report of a highly polished style on the state of the Ottoman Porte ; and Matej Beneša (1530–1599), son of Damjan, also a Latin poet and a translator of Aristotle’s work On the Soul into Latin.27 The last to be mentioned here is Antun Medo (1530–1600), a close friend of the famous Italian erudite Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, who wrote commentaries on Aristotle and Porphyry and had them published in Venice (1598–1600).28 All the previously mentioned humanists as well as those not mentioned made their contribution to, and together were a part of, a remarkable cultural phenomenon, in which one small area, geographically quite distant from the European cultural centres, with its intellectual and artistic capacity measured up to them, and thereby left a significant mark in the history of European humanism.
27 For Kružić, see M. Brlek, Rukopisi knjižnice Male braće u Dubrovniku [The manuscripts of the Franciscan library in Dubrovnik], (Zagreb 1952), 10. For Bučinić, see Hrvatska književna enciklopedija [Croatian literary encyclopedia], ed. V. Visković et al. (Zagreb 2010), 232. For Beneša, see Leksikon, 62. 28 On Antun Medo, see E. Banić-Pajnić, Antun Medo, dubrovački filozof šesnaestog stoljeća [Antun Medo, a sixteenth-century Ragusan philosopher] (Zagreb 1980).
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Response by Martin Korenjak
In what follows, ‘humanistic literature’ will be understood as a body of writings conceived in classical Latin (and sometimes even Greek), emphatically imitating classical models and continuing classical genres, from the beginnings of the Renaissance up to c. 1600. A man may be labelled a ‘humanist’ if he gains prestige and advancement from his knowledge of ancient literature, history and philosophy as displayed primarily through the composition of humanistic literature. The conditions for the development of literary humanism in this sense were in many respects less favourable in the towns of Tyrol than in Dubrovnik and other Dalmatian cities. Despite their geographical proximity to Italy (for example, Trento lies just 100 km north of Verona), they did not exhibit the same close political, economic and personal ties like those that linked Dubrovnik to the motherland of humanism, especially to Venice. Towns like Trento, Bolzano, Brixen, Innsbruck and Hall were smaller and poorer than Dubrovnik, while Schwaz with its silver and copper mines was large and prosperous, but showed little interest in higher education and literature. Moreover, Trento, Brixen and Innsbruck were subject to clerical or secular princes. Rather than the towns themselves, it was the princely courts that were the most important centres of culture and learning, followed by rich monasteries such as Stams in the upper Inn Valley and Wilten near Innsbruck. Yet even the princes in question were comparatively slow in welcoming Italian humanism, at least as far as its literary aspects were concerned. It is true that Johannes Hinderbach, prince-bishop of Trento from 1465 to 1486, installed a short-lived press and attracted humanists from Italy to his city, but he did so only in order to procure propagandistic back-up for his attempts to prove an alleged Jewish ritual murder in 1475. Nearly a century later, even such a major event as the Council of Trento, held from 1545 to 1563 under prince-bishop Cristoforo Madruzzo, had but a very limited impact on Tyrol’s literary scene. In the whole region, printing facilities developed quite slowly until the early seventeenth century. Even more importantly, despite the existence of municipal and cathedral schools, there was no satisfactory schooling in a truly classical Latin until the mid-sixteenth century. It was only after archduke Ferdinand II brought Jesuits to Tyrol, and their opening of schools in Innsbruck (1562), Hall (1573) and Trento (1624), that the situation changed for the better. As a result, the towns of Tyrol cut a somewhat sorry figure compared to the literary riches of Ragusan, let alone of Dalmatian humanism as a whole in at least two respects : Firstly, humanistic literature was much slower in coming to towns like Trento or Innsbruck and its development there was much weaker than in Dubrovnik. With few exceptions, no poetry, oratory or historiography of a humanistic character was written before c. 1500 ; even throughout the sixteenth century, the production was not too impressive
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and most of it remained in manuscript. A number of quintessentially humanistic genres such as the grand heroic epic, the love elegy or Catullian poetry in hendecasyllables was conspicuously absent. Although an important collection of classicizing poetry from the early sixteenth century, known as the Codex Fuchsmagen, contains a number of pieces of Tyrolean origin and reference, as a whole it is a product of the Viennese Societas Danubiana. The first real collection of humanistic poetry printed in a Tyrolean town, Gerard de Roo’s Sapientia Salomonis, appeared only in 1572 – and was the work of a man from the Low Countries drawn to the princely court at Innsbruck. And this leads to the second major difference with the Ragusan/Dalmatian context, namely the paucity of native humanists. Of course, some names spring to mind, for example Petrus Tritonius from Bolzano, who published a seminal work of musical theory (Melopoiae, Augsburg 1507), the physician Giulio Alessandrini from Trento, who wrote the first poem on paediatrics (Paedotrophia sive de puerorum educatione, Venice 1547), or the brothers Johannes and Christoph Wilhelm Putsch from Innsbruck. However, this list could by no means be extended ad infinitum. Moreover, all Tyrolean humanists received their academic education abroad, since no university existed in Tyrol until 1669, and many of them stayed abroad for the rest of their lives. Contrariwise, most Tyrolean literary works that can be termed ‘humanistic’ were written by foreigners, many of them from northern Italy. Only in Trento something like a circle of local humanists seems to have existed, as may be guessed from a couple of unpublished collections of poetry. These two points should not imply the lack of important and interesting Neo-Latin literature written in the towns of Tyrol. For the most part, however, such texts originated after the heyday of humanism and their authors did not pursue humanistic interests in the strict sense of the word. Nonetheless, an essay as impressive as Vladimir Rezar’s could not have been written about the humanists of Trento, Brixen or Innsbruck.
Luka Špoljarić
Power and Subversion in the Ducal Palace: Dalmatian Patrician Humanists and Congratulatory Orations to Newly Elected Doges* Of all the classical genres that Renaissance humanists revived, the diffusion of Ciceronian oratory was most symptomatic of the transformation of humanism from what had been the pursuit of small groups of literati to a widespread cultural and educational movement. From the early 1400s Ciceronian oratorical performances, which included a recognizable set of stylistic and argumentative features, began to pervade both the civic life and the diplomatic protocols of the Italian peninsula.1 One example of this proliferation of classicizing oratory were the Venetian orationes in creatione ducis, congratulatory orations to newly elected doges, whose origins were very much tied with the city’s growing status as a dominant force in the eastern Mediterranean and northern Italy. With its energetic expansion into the Italian mainland and across the Adriatic in Dalmatia, the Venetian state began to organize ritual welcoming of the envoys of subject cities every time a new doge was elected. The envoys arrived to Venice and were given audience in the Ducal Palace, where they were expected to deliver classicizing orations praising the Venetian state and its benevolent rule, congratulate the new doge on his election and reaffirm the allegiance of their respective communes. Numerous copies of these speeches circulated, creating a standard repertoire of tropes, and thus, before long, a genre was born which perhaps most fully embodied the union of humanist ideas and * The edition of the Dalmatian congratulatory orations that will be discussed here will appear in the Croatian redaction of the present paper, which I am currently preparing for publication. Therefore, when citing passages from them I will refer to the manuscript copies, but I will also indicate the chapter according to the division in the forthcoming edition. The English translations of the quoted passages are mine. L.Š. 1 The recent work by Brian Maxson and Clémence Revest, who both approach humanism from a sociological perspective, has done much to place Ciceronian oratory back into its proper context; see B. Maxson, The Humanist World of Renaissance Florence (Cambridge 2014); C. Revest, ‘La naissance de l’humanisme comme mouvement au tournant du XVe siècle’, Annales: Histoire, Sciences sociales 68:3 (2013), 665–696; and C. Revest, ‘Naissance du cicéronianisme et émergence de l’humanisme comme culture dominante: réflexions pour une histoire de la rhétorique humaniste comme pratique sociale’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome – Moyen Âge 125:1 (2013), 219–257. For the stylistic and argumentative features that distinguish the humanist oratorical practice, see Revest ‘Naissance du cicéronianisme’, 230–237. For the emergence of Ciceronianism, see also R. Witt, ‘In the Footsteps of the Ancients’: The Origins of Humanism from Lovato to Bruni (Leiden 2001), 338–391.
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Venetian imperialist politics, and in which, as this paper will show, the emerging patrician humanists from the Venetian territories in Dalmatia took part as well.2 Congratulatory orations to newly elected doges still represent insufficiently explored material, receiving only a passing mention in Margaret King’s pivotal synthesis of the Venetian humanism of the Quattrocento and in Edward Muir’s classical account of Venetian state rituals.3 Indeed, the only study that seems to have dealt with this genre more extensively is that by Staale Sinding-Larsen, approaching sixteenth-century examples – which were regularly delivered in Italian and are today far better preserved, often as part of printed anthologies, such as those published by Francesco Sansovino or Agostino Michele4 – from the perspective of the centre, as sources for the ideas of Venice among the Venetians themselves.5 As Sinding-Larsen argues, the orations in creatione ducis are well suited for such an undertaking, since praise of Venice, its history, institutions and the whole patriciate, on the one hand, and the new doge, on the other, were the two keynotes mandated by the rules of the genre. The orations were, indeed, for the most part conventional, although they did differ in terms of length, structure and use of metaphors, depending on the skill and ambition of a given orator : while some would have lasted no more than five to ten minutes, other must have taken up to half 2 Private individuals presented newly elected doges with panegyrical poetry outside the diplomatic context. These works do not belong to the genre of oratio in creatione ducis, which, as this paper will show, were delivered separately, in a particular diplomatic setting. Moreover, it should be mentioned that, aside from the subject cities, the University of Padua’s colleges of jurists and artists also sent their orators to congratulate the doge, and on occasion resident ambassadors of foreign governments as well. These, however, reflect different power relations than those sent by the subject cities and should, therefore, be analyzed separately. Finally, given the scope of this volume, it is worth drawing attention to the oration delivered before Doge Cristoforo Moro on behalf of Ivan (VII) Frankapan, a Croatian lord that ruled the island of Krk from 1451 until 1480 as a vassal of Venice. This oration serves as another potent example of Italian political and cultural influences on the literary production at the courts of Croatian lords before the integration of the kingdom into the Habsburg lands in 1527. For more on this question, see L. Špoljarić, ‘Illyrian Trojans in a Turkish Storm: Croatian Renaissance Lords and the Politics of Dynastic Origin Myths’, in Portraying the Prince in the Renaissance: The Humanist Depiction of Rulers in Historiographical and Biographical Texts, ed. P. Baker et al. (Berlin 2016), 121–156. For more on the zones of cultural influence and Croatian Neo-Latin literature in the later centuries, see the contribution by G. Stepanić to the present volume. 3 M. King, Venetian Humanism in an Age of Patrician Dominance (Princeton NJ 1986); E. Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton NJ 1981). 4 F. Sansovino, ed., Delle Orationi recitate a principi di Venetia nella loro creatione da gli ambasciatori di diverse città (Venice 1562); and A. Michele, ed., Scielta delle orationi fatte nella creatione del Seren.mo principe di Vinegia, Pasqual Cicogna (Venice 1587). A number of orations have been printed individually as well, starting with those to Doge Nicolò Tron in 1472. 5 S. Sinding-Larsen, Christ in the Council Hall: Studies in the Religious Iconography of the Venetian Republic (Rome 1974), 134–155.
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an hour ; while some were well structured, others were more chaotic jumping between two main objects of praise ; while some presented straightforward listing of attributes, others complemented Venetian myths with rich imagery drawn from Biblical and classical sources. As seen from a number of preserved examples – such as the orations of Antonio Carabello of Bergamo before Francesco Foscari (1423) ; Lelio Giusti of Verona before Pasquale Malipiero (1458) ; Giacomo Castelli of Brescia before Cristoforo Moro (1462) ; Pietro Francesco Tomai of Ravenna, Antonio Turchetto of Padua and Cristoforo Lanfranchino of Verona before Nicolò Tron (1472) ; or Gian Nicola Faella of Verona before Nicolò Marcello (1473) – Sinding-Larsen’s conclusions hold true for the fifteenth century as well, with the most significant difference being that these were regularly delivered in Latin.6 To be more specific, in what is one of the shorter orations, Tomai elaborates on the virtues of Doge Tron, his justice, fortitude and temperance, draws attention to his cursus honorum and highlights the nobility of his family.7 He then turns his attention to the city of Venice : quae (sc. urbs Venetiarum) sicut vera religione, iustitia, quiete, libertate, optimis artibus, sanctissimis institutis facile Italiae caput est, ita virtute, fortuna, potentia, rebus gestis terra marique late dominatur. Et incredibile dictu est, Princeps foelicissime, quanta de tua hac praestanti civitate, quae tanquam regina caeteras claras urbes superat et excellit, et de vobis apud omnes exteras nationes opinio sit, quanta observantia, quantum nomen. Noverunt enim bonam civitatem non moenibus neque parietibus, sed his teneri et conservari civibus, qui unum in locum, uno consilio, una mente, una voluntate congregati, hisdem moribus, hisdem institutis, hisdem inter se legibus uterentur. Noveruntque pace et concordia nihil melius, nihil utilius, nihil divinius ab immortali Deo hominibus datum esse.8 6 None of these orations is available in a modern edition. For Carabello’s oration, see MS Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana (hereafter BNMV), Marc. lat. XII, 139 (4452), ff. 30r–34v. For Giusti’s, see MS BNMV Marc. lat. XIV, 126 (4664), ff. 34v–36v. For Castelli’s, see MS BNMV Marc. lat. XIII, 90 (4143), ff. 41r–46r. (This particular manuscript includes a number of other orations delivered before Cristoforo Moro.) For Tomai’s, see Petrus Franciscus de Ravenna, Oratio pro patria ad illustrissimum principem Nicolaum Trunum Venetum ducem (Venice 1472). For Lanfranchino’s, see Christophorus Lafranchinus, Oratio ad Nicolaum Tronum (Verona 1472). For the orations of Turchetto and Faella, see Sansovino, ed., Delle Orationi recitate a principi di Venetia, ff. 77r–80v and 81r–84r, respectively. While fifteenth-century orations were usually delivered in Latin, there are exceptions to this rule, such as the oration by Francesco Capodilista before Pasquale Malipiero in 1457 on behalf of Padua, preserved in MS BNMV Marc. lat. XIV, 265 (4501). 7 Petrus Franciscus de Ravenna, Oratio pro patria, f. 1r–2r. 8 Petrus Franciscus de Ravenna, Oratio pro patria, f. 2r. (Trans.: ‘just as she is on account of her true piety, justice, stability, liberty, fine arts, and most sacred institutions easily the capital of Italy, so too her virtue, fortune, might, and valorous deeds on both land and sea extend her reign further. It is beyond words, most felicitous Prince, to describe in what honour, in what regard, in what esteem are both You and this
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What Tomai, as well as other envoys, thus elaborates in his oration was the myth of Venice : the idea – promoted, first and foremost, by the Venetian patriciate, both individually and institutionally – that the Venetian state, on account of its political stability, divine sanction and never-tarnished freedom, stood superior to all others, which made it its right and duty to rule people that were incapable of ruling themselves.9 The whole ritual, in other words, functioned as an instrument of Venetian imperialism that served to strengthen the idea of its benevolent rule among provincial elites. Even when Tomai commends his city as Venice’s ‘most loyal and obedient daughter, servant and ward’, he gives but a mere glimpse of local patriotic pride, mentioning that Ravenna ‘was not conquered in war but joined you of its own free will’.10 Peppered with occasional classical references, and completely centred on its objects of praise, Tomai’s oration stands as an ideal example for studying how Venetian power was articulated in the halls of the Ducal Palace. Still, Sinding-Larsen’s qualification of the orators as ‘Venetian’ is misleading.11 A large number of case studies have in the last decades shed light on the vibrant power dynamics that took place between Venice and its subject cities. Stephen Bowd rightly stresses that ‘the Venetian state was no more than an aggregation of communities in bilateral agreement with Venice : a fluid and polycentric reality’.12 It is important to bear in mind, therefore, that the orators that delivered the congratulatory orations were not Venetian political panegyrists, but representatives of provincial elites who had distinct communal identities from the Venetian patriciate, and who, most importantly, often had other concerns besides praising the ruling regime. Whereas a somewhat unambitious orator as Tomai might have presented a brief, straightforward, conventional praise of the doge and the Venetian state, Antonio Turchetto makes an effort to weave in the extraordinary city, which like a queen surpasses and overshadows other glorious cities, held by all other nations. They know that a good city is not preserved and kept in order by walls and barricades, but by these citizens here, which are gathered in one place with one cause, one mind, one will, and which are governed by the same way of life, the same traditions and the same laws. They know that there is nothing better, nothing more useful, nothing more divine that is given to men by the immortal God than peace and concord’.) 9 King, Venetian humanism, 92–205; Muir, Civic Ritual. See also R. Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice (London 1980), 27–37; and E. Cochrane, Historians and Historiography in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago IL 1981), 77–86. 10 Petrus Franciscus de Ravenna, Oratio pro patria, f. 2v: ‘Ravennam vero tuam devotissimam ac observantissimam filiam, ancillam et alumnam, nullo marte domitam, sed in sinum tuum ultro coniectam proni supplicesque commendamus’. 11 Sinding-Larsen, Christ in the Council Hall, 134–135. 12 S. Bowd, Venice’s Most Loyal City: Civic Identity in Renaissance Brescia (Cambridge MA 2010), 13. Bowd discusses these historiographical developments in detail at pp. 3–18.
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praise of his native Padua and expand on its foundation by the Trojan hero Antenor. Turchetto then drives his point home by stressing that Venetians themselves drew their origin from Padua, concluding : Quaenam igitur pietate maior, quaenam iustior, quaenam meritis praestantior commendatio esse potest, quam si mater, quae olim multorum populorum regina ingravescente iam aetate filiae felicissimae se ipsam tutandam gubernandamque commisit, nunc pia voce, supplici corde sese commendet?13
Turchetto’s earlier insistence on the long history of Venice that surpassed that of the Roman Empire thus serves to stress the even older pedigree of his city of Padua. While Tomai and other orators regularly present Venice as queen, and their respective cities as her daughters and wards, Turchetto turns the metaphors around to distinguish Padua’s special role within the Venetian dominions. What Turchetto’s example thus shows is that provincial envoys often arrived at the Ducal Palace not merely to play to the ear of the ruling regime by regurgitating their own ideas of themselves, but also to subvert the main purpose of the genre as an instrument of Venetian imperialism by presenting the laudationes of their own cities and voicing their own concerns. As a medium both of power and subversion, the orationes in creatione ducis can be explored both within the corpus of Venetian humanist literature, as Sinding-Larsen does, and the corpora of various provincial ones. This paper thus focuses on the orations delivered by envoys from Dalmatian communes that during the Venetian-Hungarian wars of 1409–1420 succumbed one by one to the Serenissima. While the terraferma orators prided on their distinct communal identities grounded in local autonomy, the power dynamics were even more complex in Venetian Dalmatia, where local patrician humanists professed not only a different communal identity from the Venetian elite but, with the European diffusion of humanism and humanist nationalism, eventually also came to identify with their Dalmatian-Croatian or Illyrian nation.14 As the goal of this 13 Sansovino, ed., Delle Orationi recitate a principi di Venetia, 80rv. (Trans.: ‘What commendation, then, could be more pious, what more just, what more distinguished in merit than if the mother, who once stood as queen to many a people and in her frail years committed herself to the care and tutelage of her most fortunate daughter, now commends herself to her with a gentle voice and a humble heart?’) 14 The Dalmatian humanists’ insistence on their national identity was a response to the Ottoman threat, and to the Italian humanists’ claims of the cultural superiority of the Italian natio. For the emergence and diffusion of humanist nationalism, see C. Hirschi, The Origins of Nationalism: An Alternative History from Ancient Rome to Early Modern Germany (Cambridge 2012). For a study on Dalmatian Illyrianism, see Z. Blažević, Ilirizam prije ilirizma [Illyrianism before Illyrianism] (Zagreb 2008), 114–137. My forthcoming biography of a fifteenth-century bishop Nicholas of Modruš will explore the role that Croatian churchmen played in the diffusion of humanist nationalism into Dalmatia and Croatia.
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paper is to account for the role of the orationes in creatione ducis in the development of Dalmatian humanism, it analyses not only the two preserved orations delivered by envoys from the Dalmatian communes, but also traces documentary and literary evidence of those that have not been preserved. The scope of the investigation thus extends to the orations delivered before the first four doges that these envoys came to congratulate : Pasquale Malipiero (1457), Cristoforo Moro (1462), Nicolò Tron (1471) and Nicolò Marcello (1473). The final limit here is not arbitrary, since the apparent lack of any preserved examples from the final quarter of the century, not only from Dalmatia but the Venetian state in general, suggests that the ritual may have been put on hold with the election of Doge Pietro Mocenigo in 1474 and restarted only under Doge Leonardo Loredan in 1501.15 Whatever the case may be, this period of sixteen years, from the election of Malipiero in 1457 to that of Marcello in 1473, coincided with the heyday of the second generation of Dalmatian humanists, who were the first to intellectually mature under the Venetian regime.16 Since no major literary works were composed in the region before the 1470s and the publication of works like Koriolan Cipiko’s The Deeds of Commander Pietro Mocenigo,17 the humanist interests of many of these figures are inferred from scattered evidence, such as letters and manuscripts of the classics and humanist bestsellers. The congratulatory orations, therefore, represent important witnesses of this early period of Dalmatian humanism. Indeed, as this paper will show, they played a major role in its development.
15 I was not able to identify any orations delivered before the doges Pietro Mocenigo (1474–1476), Andrea Vendramin (1476–1478), Giovanni Mocenigo (1478–1485), and Marco (1485–1486) and Agostino Barbarigo (1486–1501) in Paul Oskar Kristeller’s Iter Italicum. (There are, however, numerous examples of panegyrical poetry addressing these doges that were presented privately.) As for the orations delivered before Doge Leonardo Loredan, see, for instance, the one by Leonardo Commenduno of Bergamo in Sansovino, ed., Delle Orationi recitate a principi di Venetia, ff. 84v–88r. 16 For an overview of the beginnings of humanism in Dalmatia, see D. Novaković, ‘Scribes, Scholars and Authors: The Beginnings of Humanism in Croatia’, in Classical Heritage from the Epigraphic to the Digital: Academia Ragusina 2009 & 2011, ed. I. Bratičević and T. Radić (Zagreb 2014), 147–168; and L. Špoljarić, ‘The First Dalmatian Humanists and the Classics: A Manuscript Perspective’, in A Handbook to Classical Reception in Eastern and Central Europe, ed. Z. Martirosova Torlone et al. (Oxford 2017), 46–56. 17 In 1475 Koriolan Cipiko of Trogir composed an account of the anti-Ottoman expedition of the Venetian admiral Pietro Mocenigo, in which he himself took part, under the title Petri Mocenici imperatoris gestorum libri tres. It was printed in 1477 in Venice and earned him fame across the Italian humanist circles. For the edition of the work, see R. Fabbri, ed., Per la memorialistica veneziana in latino del Quattrocento (Padua 1988), 139–230. The first translation into English came out recently; see C. Cippico, The Deeds of Commander Pietro Mocenigo, trans. K. Petkov (New York NY 2014).
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Dalmatian Envoys in Venice and their Congratulatory Orations: Towards a Corpus
When in 1423 Francesco Foscari assumed the ducal throne, three years had passed since the victorious wars with Sigismund of Luxembourg, King of Hungary and Croatia and the Holy Roman Emperor, had brought all Dalmatian communes save for Dubrovnik into the Venetian fold ; more than a decade since Zadar, the most important among these communes, had been gained as the first foothold in the region, and a number of local patricians and citizens were exiled and confined in Venice on account of their pro-Hungarian sympathies.18 When the time came for the new doge to entertain various envoys congratulating him on his election as part of a ceremonial, nascent at the time, no Dalmatian communes seem to have sent their envoys to greet him. The new doge was congratulated, however, by the representative of the Zadar exiles in Venice. The short, unelaborated oration, devoid of any classical references, which an anonymous envoy delivered on this occasion – ascribed long ago, on weak grounds, to Francesco Filelfo – represents a forerunner, as it were, of the later Dalmatian orations in creatione ducis, and, at the same time, stands as the testament to the still weak reception of humanism among Dalmatian elites.19 By 1457, however, when Francesco Foscari was forced to abdicate, humanist ideas took firm root in the region, as testified among other things by the classical references that abound in two preserved orations from the subsequent period. The first is the oration addressing Foscari’s immediate successor, Doge Pasquale Malipiero, and delivered
18 For the Zadar exiles in Venice, see T. Raukar et al., Zadar pod mletačkom upravom 1409–1797 [Zadar under the Venetian regime 1409–1797] (Zadar 1987), 33–44. 19 More than a century ago, Giovanni Benadduci edited this anonymous oration, which is to be found in a humanist miscellany, MS Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria di Torino, H.III.8, ff. 118v–119r, and ascribed it to Francesco Filelfo, whose oration precedes the Zadar one in the manuscript; see G. Benadduci, Al doge Francesco Foscari per gli esuli zaratini (Tolentino 1900). However, it is difficult to accept this attribution: the manuscript is a miscellany which includes various pieces of humanist oratory aside from that of Filelfo, and, most importantly, the anonymous orator presents his case as one of the Zadar exiles (commending Nosque Hyadrenses), and not as a disinterested party on their behalf. What is most conspicuous about this oration is that it provides no place for the praise of the city of Venice. The laudation was, rather, directed solely at the new doge Foscari, listing his intellectual and moral virtues. While unelaborated, simple form, and its lack of any classical references may very well reflect the anonymous orator’s lack of humanist learning, the decision to centre praises exclusively on the doge may have been part of his rhetorical strategy. Given that the exiles were rounded up and shipped to Venice for protesting, or on mere suspicion of scheming, against the regime in the early years of the wars with Hungary, and that doubts of their loyalty continued to be voiced in the Venetian Senate well into the late 1430s, the orator may have well known that flattering the Senate and the entire Venetian patriciate would have been received as insincere.
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in February 1458 by the envoy from Šibenik, Ambroz Mihetić.20 A ducal letter from 2 June 1458 reveals that the embassy was not in Venice for the mere sake of ceremonies and that envoys wished to be heard on other matters of interest to their respective communes.21 The choice of the orator was hardly surprising. Mihetić was a towering figure in communal politics, who had earned his doctorate in arts at the University of Padua in 1442 and later played a definitive role in determining the appearance of the Šibenik cathedral.22 On the other hand, Juraj Linjičić, who is mentioned in the ducal letter as the other envoy, seems also to have been well read. In the letter he is referred to as vir sapiens, and recent research has shown that his library included manuscripts of Cicero’s letters, Terence’s comedies and an unidentified treatise on rhetoric.23 The particulars of the 1472 oration are, however, more difficult to trace. It was delivered before Doge Nicolò Tron by an anonymous envoy from Zadar.24 In the absence of any evidence related to this embassy in the proceedings of the Zadar communal council, the name of Ivan Kršava might be tentatively proposed. Kršava studied and earned his doctorate in civil law at the University of Padua on 8 January 1472, where he had a chance to befriend humanists such as Battista Mantovano, Peter Garázda and Juraj Šižgorić, a prominent member of the Šibenik humanist circle who praised Kršava’s humanist credentials.25 Taking into consideration the case of Jakov Andreis of Trogir, who, as will soon be seen, formed part of the Trogir embassy in 1462 whilst living in Padua, Kršava’s presence there in the same period when Doge Tron welcomed the envoys adds 20 The oration is preserved as part of a humanist miscellany, MS BNMV Marc. lat. XIV, 126, ff. 30r–33v, together with that of Lelio Giusti of Verona which was delivered before the same doge (see above, n. 6). It was transcribed (from the microfilm copy) by A. Vlahov, ‘Pozdravni govor Ambroza Mihetića za mletačkoga dužda Pasquale Malipiera iz 1458’. [Congratulatory oration of Ambroz Mihetić for the Venetian doge Pasquale Malipiero from 1458], BA Thesis (Zagreb 2012). 21 Š. Ljubić, ed., Listine o odnošajih izmedju južnoga slavenstva i mletačke republike [Documents on the relations between the South Slavs and the Republic of Venice], vol. 10 (Zagreb 1891), 129–131. 22 For Ambroz Mihetić, see P. Marković, Katedrala sv. Jakova u Šibeniku: Prvih 105 godina [The Cathedral of St James in Šibenik: The first 105 years] (Zagreb 2010), 433–440. 23 The books are listed in the inventory of his widow, Vlada; see G. Budeč, ‘Kultura čitanja u kasnosrednjovjekovnom Šibeniku’ [The culture of reading in Late Medieval Šibenik], Zbornik Odsjeka za povijesne znanosti ZPDZ HAZU 32 (2014), 79–98, at pp. 86, 92, 93. 24 The still unedited oration is preserved as part of a humanist miscellany, MS Biblioteca Ambrosiana (hereafter BAM), F 33 sup., ff. 10r–12r. I thank Bratislav Lučin for drawing my attention to it. 25 For Šižgorić’s poem to Kršava; see J. Šižgorić Šibenčanin, Elegije i pjesme [Elegies and poems], ed. and trans. N. Šop and V. Gortan (Zagreb 1966). Kršava was an addressee of three epigrams by Mantovano; see Mantovano’s Epigrammata iuvenilia in the Poeti d’Italia in lingua latina database (). Kršava was present as a witness at the doctoral defence of Juraj Šižgorić on 12 February 1471, and defended his doctorate on January 8 the following year; see E. Martelozzo Forin, Acta graduum academicorum Gymnasii Patavini ab anno 1471 ad annum 1500 (Padua 2001), 275 (doc. 8), and 302–303 (doc. 69). (D. Petrus Garasda Ungarus appears as one of the witnesses at his defense.)
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further weight to this attribution. Finally, Kršava was the only patrician who held the title of the doctor and who returned from Italy precisely in the spring of 1472 to a prominent role in the communal politics.26 Aside from these two preserved orations, documentary and literary evidence allows us to identify a number of other occasions between 1458 and 1473 when Dalmatian envoys were in Venice congratulating a new doge. In 1462 we find records of two Dalmatian delegations that were sent to congratulate Doge Cristoforo Moro. Thus, according to the seventeenth-century historian Pavao Andreis, Trogir sent the envoys Kristofor Andreis, Zuane Vitturi and Jakov Andreis.27 Although no information is provided as to the question of who exactly delivered the oration, it must have been Jakov Andreis, one of the city’s most learned patricians, who at the time lived in Padua, where he served as the newly elected rector of the jurists and later earned his doctorate in civil law.28 Just as Mihetić and Kršava, Andreis had contacts among the humanists, such as Split’s chancellor, Leonardo Montagna, and returned home to assume a prominent position in local politics. Aside from often being sent as the communal envoy to Venice, he served as the commander of the Trogir galley, first in Nicolò Canal’s fleet that failed to stop the Ottoman conquest of Negroponte and later in Pietro Mocenigo’s campaigns in the Aegean.29 The other Dalmatian delegation in 1462 arrived from Zadar and is attested by the proceedings of the Zadar communal council. According to the records, it was led by Filip Ferra, Nikola Benja and Rafael Nassi.30 Again, the oration must have been de26 Having completed his studies, from the summer of 1472 through 1478 he served as one of the counselors of the Zadar count on three occasions; see MS Znanstvena knjižnica Zadar (hereafter ZKZ), 704, ff. 119v–120r ( July 26 1472), 133v–134r ( July 31 1474), 159r and 160r ( July 26 1478). For the Kršava family, see B. Grbavac, ‘Kršava’, in Hrvatski biografski leksikon [Croatian biographical lexicon], 8 vols. so far (1983-), 8:244–247. 27 P. Andreis, Storia della Città di Traù, ed. M. Perojević (Split 1908), 166. 28 G. Pengo, ed., Acta graduum academicorum Gymnasii Patavini ab anno 1461 ad annum 1470 (Padua 1992), xix, provides the list of the rectors of the jurists taken from I. Facciolati, Fasti Gymnasii Patavini (Padua 1757), which names Henricus Muermester de Hamborcho as the rector in both 1462–1463 and 1463–1464. However, as noted in the footnote by Pengo, no university records have been preserved for the year 1462–1463 that would confirm this, and, indeed, a Paduan notarial record from March 1462 refers to Jakov Andreis as the elected rector for the coming year. Although the record of his doctoral defence cannot be found among the published acta graduum, on 11 October 1464 he was listed as having a doctorate in civil law; see Pengo, ed., Acta graduum 1461–1470, 136 (doc. 361). 29 See T. Radauš, ‘Andreis, Jakov’, in Hrvatski biografski leksikon, 1:120; and V. Omašić, ‘Opremanje galije suprakomita Jakova Andreisa godine 1470’. [Equipping the galley of the sopracomito Jakov Andreis in 1470], Prilozi za povijest umjetnosti u Dalmaciji 22 (1980), 86–106. I am currently preparing an edition of Leonardo Montagna’s epigrams connected to the time he spent in Split, including the one addressed to Andreis. 30 MS ZKZ 704, ff. 78v–79r.
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livered by Nassi, who seems to have earned a doctorate in civil law at the University of Padua. Although no information can be established concerning any interests he might have had in humanism, it is certain that he was a figure distinguished for his learning, who played a prominent role in communal politics after his return from Padua, from at least 1442, when the earliest preserved proceedings of the Zadar communal council are dated, until his death in 1469. Indeed, Rafael Nassi served on no less than 22 occasions (more than any other patrician during this period) as one of the four counsellors of the communal count, which was the most prestigious office available to a local patrician under the Venetian regime.31 The proceedings of the Trogir communal council, which are in this period preserved only for the years 1470–1481, allow us to trace two of their delegations to Venice. At the end of 1471, after the election of Cristoforo Moro, the city decided to send a delegation led by Petar Andrijin Cega and Pavao Petrov Andreis.32 Two years later, in 1473, after the election of Doge Nicolò Marcello, the envoys were Marko Cipiko and Mate Chiudi.33 The names might be somewhat surprising at first, given that we do not have any information concerning the education and learning of any of these figures. However, it is important to note that the two most learned patricians in the communal council – Jakov Andreis, who, as we saw, delivered the congratulatory oration in 1462, and Koriolan Cipiko, who boasted top-notch humanist education – were both from 1470 to 1474 away in the Aegean in the war against the Ottomans as part of Pietro Mocenigo’s fleet.34 The last but certainly not the least among the known Dalmatian orations was delivered by Marko Marulić of Split before Doge Nicolò Marcello. At the time Marulić 31 The act of his graduation cannot be identified, but he is listed among the witnesses of the defence of Albertus de Porcellinis from Padua as an in iure civili scolaris on 9 March 1433; see C. Zonta, and I. Brotto, Acta graduum academicorum Gymnasii Patavini ab anno 1406 ad annum 1450 (Padova 1970), vol. 1, 296 (doc. 926). He is regularly listed as legum doctor in the proceedings of the Zadar communal council. For the analysis of the first volume of the proceedings of the Zadar communal council, see Raukar et al., Zadar pod mletačkom upravom, 103–108. 32 I. Pederin, ‘Acta politica et oeconomica cancellarie communis Tragurij in saeculo XV’, Starine JAZU 60 (1987), 101–177, at 119–122. For Petar Andrijin Cega and Pavao Petrov Andreis, see M. Andreis, ‘Trogirski patricijat u srednjem vijeku’ [The patriciate of Trogir in the Middle Ages], Rasprave iz hrvatske kulturne baštine 2 (2002), 5–210, at 49, 60. 33 Pederin, ‘Acta politica’, 130–131. For Marko Cipiko and Mate Chiudi, see Andreis, ‘Trogirski patricijat’, 66, 69, and 62, 64, respectively. 34 Koriolan Cipiko would compose an account of the expedition in 1475, which then became the first major literary work of Dalmatian humanism; see above n. 17. Omašić (‘Opremanje galije’, 88) implies that in 1471 Cipiko’s galley was launched after Jakov Andreis’s returned, but Pavao Andreis makes it clear that both served in Pietro Mocenigo’s campaigns (see Storia della Città di Traù, 169–170), which is also clear from the proceedings of the Trogir communal council, where both are noticeably missing during this period.
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was a twenty-three-year-old prodigy, later to become the most prominent Dalmatian humanist of the Renaissance, styling himself as the Croatian Dante. As Bratislav Lučin argues, it was precisely this oratorical performance that first brought Marulić to the attention of the Venetian literati.35 The context of this lost oration was discussed by Giuseppe Praga, a prominent historian of interwar Dalmatia.36 Following up on the information provided by Marulić’s contemporary biographer Frane Božičević, who first mentioned this oration,37 Praga found a reference in the notarial books of the Split commune to the delegation that was sent in December of 1473 to Venice to congratulate the newly elected doge Marcello.38 The two envoys mentioned in the document were influential local patricians, Zanci Alberti and Matej Papalić. While Alberti was chosen due to his connections to the family of the new doge,39 the additional reason for including Papalić may have been his learning, given that he studied in Padua during the early 1440s, where he socialized with other Dalmatian patrician students, most notably Ambroz Mihetić.40 As Praga concluded, Marulić, who was Alberti’s nephew and enjoyed good rapport with the Papalić family, seems to have been invited to accompany the envoys as one of the noble youths that regularly travelled to Venice as part of these embassies, where he was, on account of his exceptional talent, given the opportunity to deliver the oration himself. In sum, in addition to the 1423 oration for the Zadar exiles, the evidence allows us to identify seven Dalmatian delegations in Venice each time a new doge was elected between 1457 and 1473 : 35 B. Lučin, Iter Marulianum: Od Splita do Venecije tragovima Marka Marulića / Da Spalato a Venezia sulle tracce di Marko Marulić (Rome 2008), 132–136. 36 Praga discussed this oration in an unpublished article that is today preserved among his notes; see MS BNMV Marc. It. VI, 579 (12373), ‘L’orazione di Marco Marulo per il doge Marcello’. 37 F. Božićević, Život Marka Marulića Splićanina [The life of Marko Marulić of Split], ed. and trans. by B. Lučin (Split 2007), 30–33: ‘in Latinis litteris adeo profecit ut pene puer in laudem serenissimi principis Nicolai Marceli cunctis admirantibus pulcherrimam orationem habuerit’. 38 Praga does not indicate the precise location of the documents he cites, but see Državni arhiv Zadar, Stari splitski arhiv, busta 13, fasc. 30–1, f. 438v: ‘Die quartodecimo Decembris 1473. Ser Bertanus de Lapo de Spalato presentavit domino Nicolao Michael comiti Spalati in uno saculo uncias quinquagintas in grossetis quas comunitas sive sindici comunis fecerunt sequestrari pro certa differentia; quas monetas prefatus dominus comes dessignavit ser Matheo de Papalibus et ser Zancio de Albertis oratoribus qui se conferunt Venetias ad se congratulandum de electione novi principis ut eas presentant dominis auditoribus novis’. 39 In 1447 Zanci Alberti had married Maria Marcello, the daughter of Pietro Marcello, Nicolò’s brother, but it should also be noted that in 1475, Matej Papalić’s cousin, Dmine, married Marcella, Maria’s younger sister; see Lučin, Iter Marulianum, 133. This may suggest that the Papalićs used precisely this opportunity to secure the marriage and strengthen their ties to the Marcello clan and the ruling regime. 40 Matej Papalić appears as a witness at Ambroz Mihetić’s defence; see Zonta and Brotto, Acta graduum ab anno 1406 ad annum 1450, vol. 2, 141 (doc. 1615).
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• • • • • • •
1458 : Ambroz Mihetić (doctor of arts) on behalf of Šibenik 1462 : Rafael Nassi (doctor of civil law) on behalf of Zadar 1462 : Jakov Andreis (doctor of civil law) on behalf of Trogir 1472 : an anonymous envoy (Ivan Kršava doctor of civil law ?) on behalf of Zadar 1472 : Petar Andrijin Cega / Pavao Petrov Andreis ( ?) on behalf of Trogir 1474 : Marko Cipiko / Mate Chiudi ( ?) on behalf of Trogir 1474 : Marko Marulić (noble youth) on behalf of Split
The problem with establishing the corpus of these orations is the scarcity of sources. Only two of these seven orations were preserved in manuscript form. While some orations were probably not intended to be preserved in writing at all, others, like that of Marulić, were lost in the coming centuries. On the other hand, the proceedings of the Dalmatian communal councils, where the congratulatory delegations were supposed to be registered, are only preserved in Zadar, and partially Trogir for the 1470–1481 period. Yet, for instance, the fact that no mention is made of the 1472 delegation in the proceedings of the Zadar communal council, although a copy of the oration itself is extant, reveals that even this evidence is problematic and that much of our knowledge of them is owed to coincidence. Finally, one may also raise here the question of smaller Dalmatian communes, such as Pag or Rab : documentary evidence reveals that they did occasionally send envoys to Venice, and one may, then, wonder whether they sent congratulatory delegations as well, or whether expenditures for these ceremonials were simply too great and gains too few.41 In any case, what the available evidence, in particular from Zadar and Trogir, suggests is that delegations from the four most important Dalmatian communes, Zadar, Šibenik, Trogir and Split, in the period between 1457 and 1473 regularly travelled to Venice to pay homage to each of the four new doges. We may, therefore, speculate that there were as much as sixteen ceremonial orations from this period (perhaps even more if we consider the smaller communes), only two of which have been preserved. In the absence of any major humanist treatises during this period, the sheer number of these orations, which were regularly delivered by the most learned among provincial elites, leads to the conclusion that they can be considered as one of, if not the most, prominent humanist genres in Dalmatia during the years in question.
41 For instance, as Monique O’Connell noted, until 1450, Rab sent five delegations to Venice and Pag eight; see M. O’Connell, Men of Empire: Power and Negotiation in Venice’s Maritime State (Baltimore MD 2009), 116.
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The Diplomatic Context: From the Preparations to the Ceremonial
In discussing the orations in creatione ducis, it will be useful to refer to the work of Brian Maxson, who through a series of case studies situates humanist oratory within the diplomatic context.42 According to Maxson, in the fifteenth century successfully delivered panegyrics, which had often been passed over by Neo-Latin scholars as dry pieces of ceremonial rhetoric, became in fact essential cultural gifts that opened diplomatic discussions and brought honour to both diplomats and the cities they represented, making foreign governments and rulers more amenable to their subsequent requests. As a result, the Italian political elites became increasingly concerned with entrusting diplomatic missions to men who possessed sufficient humanist learning and were able to deliver such orations.43 If we turn to Venice and the ritual welcoming of the envoys of subject cities, much of Maxson’s argument about the importance of ceremonial oratory holds true. Daniele Montanari’s research on the proceedings of the Brescian general council concerning their congratulatory delegations to Venice in 1457 and 1462 provides penetrating insights into the attitude of provincial elites towards the ritual.44 On 30 October 1457, after Pasquale Malipiero was named Francesco Foscari’s successor as the new doge, ducal letters were sent to subject cities instructing them to send envoys to Venice to reaffirm their allegiance. Already on 4 November 1457, the Brescian general council convened to set up one commission to discuss the salaries of the delegation, and another to deal with the necessary technical and financial aspects. Yet, when everything had been settled, when the budget had already been set, gifts prepared and a delegation of eight distinguished citizens – consisting of two milites, four doctores and two nobiles, each accompanied by four servants and two youths – chosen, news arrived that other communes from the terraferma were preparing even larger delegations. The fact that the Brescian council immediately expanded their delegation reveals not only the emphasis the terraferma elites placed on the honourable presentation of their commune before the regime in Venice but also the agonistic side of the whole ritual in general. The intricate power dynamics at play here are even more visible in the discussions concerning the embassy to Doge Moro in 1462, when Brescian inner communal rivalries over the selection of envoys greatly prolonged the preparations, which were cut short when a warning arrived from the Venetian governors that not sending a delegation will lead to dedecus huius civ42 Maxson, The Humanist World of Renaissance Florence. On this question, see also Revest, ‘Naissance du cicéronianisme’. 43 See specifically the case studies on Florentine diplomacy in Maxson, The Humanist World, 85–106. 44 D. Montanari, Quelle terre di là dal Mincio: Brescia e il contado in età veneta (Brescia 2005), 111–114.
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itatis.45 The inter-communal rivalries over the size of embassies, inner-communal fights over the selection of the envoys, and the insistence on the dominant presence of doctores that were capable of fulfilling the duty of delivering the classicizing oration all reveal the importance that the terraferma elites attributed to this ritual. The involvement of local Venetian governors in the discussions is no less indicative of the importance ascribed to it by the ruling regime. As has already been seen, the proceedings of the communal councils, which provide the most insight into the preparations, are not as completely preserved in Dalmatia. From the seven identified delegations sent between 1457 and 1473, only three have been recorded in the proceedings of the communal council. On 20 June 1462, after a ducal letter arrived in Zadar informing about the death of Pasquale Malipiero and the election of Cristoforo Moro, the communal council gathered to discuss sending the congratulatory delegation to Venice.46 The embassy was supposed to consist of three patricians, accompanied, ‘so as to ensure they may perform their duty with honour’, by four youths of patrician families and three servants (famuli). Although the same concern for the honour of the commune governed the discussions, it seems that Dalmatian elites were not pressured by the Venetian authorities as strongly as Brescian ones and that, as Mihetić comments in the opening of his oration, some flexibility was shown to the cities of the stato da mar.47 On the other hand, although the Zadar communal council made no effort to formally emphasize the need to have doctores present in the embassy, the fact that Rafael Nassi, the only doctor in the communal council, was chosen as one of the envoys, suggests that the patricians recognized the importance of learning in these diplomatic appointments.
45 The oration delivered on this occasion by Giacomo Castelli, listed in the proceedings of the Brescian commune as one of the doctores that took part in the embassy, is preserved; see above, n. 6. 46 MS ZKZ 704, f. 78v: ‘Cum dignum et conveniens sit pro debito et honore huius egregie comunitatis Iadre mittere eius nomine oratores Venetias ad nostrum Illustrissimum dominium ad se congratulandum de creatione domini nostri Serenissimi principis noviter ellecti, domini Cristofori Mauro. Ideo cum presentia et licentia magnificorum dominorum rectorum Iadre in hoc presenti comscilio, ibit pars per egregios comsciliarios magnifici domini comitis quod elligantur per scrutinium tres nobiles Iadre pro ambassiatoribus qui ire debeant ad pedes prefati nostri Illustrissimi principis et dominii Venetiarum et illi cum omni debita reverentia ut decet se congratulari nomine istius sue fidelissime comunitatis Iadre de sua condigna creatione, et eidem exponere illas debitas comendationes prout melius videbitur dictis tribus oratoribus, qui ut vadant honorifice, prout debent et iustum est, adducere debeant secum quatuor iuvenes nobiles et tres famulos et habere libras 300 parvorum a prefata comunitate Iadre pro eorum expensis’. 47 MS BNMV Marc. lat. XIV, 126 (4664), fol. 30r (c. 1): ‘Non admiretur celsitudo tua, illustrissime Princeps, nos, qui longis et maritimis navigationibus ab huiusmodi officio et munere legationis excusamur huc ‹in› praesentia accesserimus, de tua felici creatione ‹orationem› facturos’.
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The Trogir council records from 1471 and 1473 reveal similar concerns with honourable representation. The council was put in a difficult situation by the fact that during this period the two of its most learned members, Koriolan Cipiko and Jakov Andreis, were away serving as galley commanders in the Venetian fleet. In late 1471 the count of Trogir, Alvise Lando, thus had to instruct their less experienced replacements to make sure to praise Luca Tron, the new doge’s father, and stress the fact that he had been the very first count of Trogir after the establishment of the Venetian rule. This, as will soon be seen, seems to have been one of the standard tropes of the genre.48 Similarly, in 1473 the council instructed the envoys to attach to their delegation two patricians that happened to be in Venice at the time.49 Whether they hoped that by this time Mocenigo’s fleet, including Andreis and Cipiko, would return to Venice, or had other members of the council in mind, it is clear that they wanted to capitalize on the experience and learning of their colleagues based in Venice. Indeed, the same strategy was at play earlier in 1462 when Jakov Andreis, rector of the jurists in Padua, was included among the Trogir envoys to deliver the congratulatory oration and in this way ensure the honourable representation of the commune. The delegations seem to have spent a month or two in Venice waiting to be received, separately, by the new doge.50 They were introduced into the Ducal Palace, where they delivered their orations in the Collegio before the doge and the Senate.51 These were not only ceremonial visits, however. Documentary evidence reveals that these delegations used the opportunity to address the doge on issues related specifically to the practical functioning of their communes, probably immediately after delivering the ceremonial oration.52 Yet, as will be seen in the following section, the orators did not use the opening panegyrical oration merely to pay lip service to the regime, but used it to advance their respective agendas as well. 48 Pederin, ‘Acta politica’, 120–121. Luca Tron served as the governor of Trogir from 1421 to 1423; see B. G. Kohl et al., eds., ‘The Rulers of Venice, 1332–1524’, Internet (), no. 52376. 49 Pederin, ‘Acta politica’, 130. 50 In 1473 the Trogir envoys received a salary for three months; see Pederin, ‘Acta politica’, 131. While Ambroz Mihetić delivered his oration on 1 February 1458 (see MS BNMV Marc. lat. XIV, 126 (4664), fol. 33v (T)), Lelio Giusti, envoy of Verona, delivered his two weeks earlier, on 14 January (see MS BNMV Marc. lat. XIV, 126 (4664), fol. 36v); while Pietro Francesco Tomai delivered his oration on behalf of Ravenna on 25 February 1472 (see Petrus Franciscus de Ravenna, Oratio pro patria, 2v), Cristoforo Lafranchino addressed the doge on behalf of Verona on 24 January (Lafranchinus, Oratio ad Nicolaum Tronum, f. 4v). 51 Sinding-Larsen, Christ in the Council Hall, 134. 52 This can be clearly seen from the example of the 1458 Šibenik delegation, when Mihetić dedicated his Latin congratulatory oration to the praise of Venice and the new doge, and then proceeded to address the doge, in Italian, on other pressing matters; see Ljubić, ed., Listine, vol. 10, 129–131.
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While generic conventions may have resulted in a certain conformity of congratulatory orations, careful analysis does highlight differences that were dependent on the general political context, concerns of the provincial elites that the envoys presented and, finally, the envoy’s own learning and talent. At the turn of 1458 Ambroz Mihetić arrived in Venice as one of the first Dalmatian envoys that would in the following sixteen years regularly visit the city on lagoons to greet new doges. As a patrician who had earned his doctorate at Padua and formed relationships there with prominent Venetian intellectuals, such as Lauro Quirini, and who then used his learning to affirm his position in local politics, Mihetić was more than up to the task before him.53 He opens his oration by highlighting the fact that the new doge’s father, Nicolò Malipiero, once served as count of Šibenik.54 He praises the virtues of the new doge, likening him to the Roman kings of the old, and recounts his glorious achievements during his previous posts. Finally, he rounds off his praise with wordplay on the family name of Malipiero, which evoked the maris imperium and thus portended a further extension of the Venetian rule over the seas.55 Having thus portrayed Malipiero as the ideal doge, Mihetić continues by describing the city of Venice. At length he praises its unique location, its riches, great palaces, the Arsenal and its glorious navy, likening the city to the two famous Phoenician ports, Sidon and Tyre. He praises the stability of the Venetian political order, comparing it favourably to that of Rome, which often witnessed turmoil in its turbulent history. Finally, he focuses on the reputation of Venice among the other peoples and describes the joy of the Senate and Venetian subjects at the election of the new doge. In sum, Mihetić resorted to all the standard tropes of the genre, and strengthened his case with a number of classical references and quotes. Still, the Šibenik envoy had an axe to grind. To be sure, his goal was not to highlight the special place of his city within the Venetian dominions, which, as we have seen above, would be the main focus of Turchetto’s oration in 1472. Indeed, the city of Šibenik, 53 Lauro Quirini was a prominent Venetian humanist, who in his treatises On Nobility and On the Republic, both written around 1449 in response to Poggio Bracciolini, argued that nobility is grounded in nature and that aristocracy is the best form of government; see King, Venetian Humanism, 118–132, 419–421. He appears as a witness at Mihetić’s defence; see Zonta and Brotto, Acta graduum ab anno 1406 ad annum 1450, vol. 2, 141 (doc. 1615). 54 Nicolò Malipiero served as count of Šibenik in 1421–1422; see Kohl et al., eds., ‘The Rulers of Venice, 1332–1524’, no. 52390. 55 MS BNMV Marc. lat. XIV, 126 (4664), fol. 31v (c. 4): ‘Gloriosum quidem est tantum principem decorum nomen Pascalem sortitum esse, et agnomen quod imperium maris protendit’.
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though one of the major cities of Dalmatia, hardly boasted a pedigree comparable to that of Padua, or even that of Split for that matter. Whereas in the communal school of Split noble pupils learned about their city’s glorious history and their origins going back to neighbouring Salona, capital of the Roman province of Dalmatia,56 Šibenik was founded by the medieval Croatian kings, and, indeed, Mihetić’s younger friend and fellow patrician humanist, Juraj Šižgorić, would three decades later have to go to some trouble to finally establish its ancient pedigree, not least by proposing his own emendations of Pliny the Elder.57 Yet, there was another, much more pressing issue that Mihetić found worth addressing : Tantus et tam insolitus concursus legationum, qui te principem salutant et cum pompa insueta, aliquid sane futurum significat! Regina Austri venit videre sapientiam Salamonis, et regina Amazonum Macedonum Regem, et Magi ab Oriente salutare Christum ducem, non sine magno mysterio rerum futurarum. Animadverte igitur, sicut facis, munera tibi tuaeque rei publicae divinitus collata, et intuere animos religiosos illorum priscorum patrum, qui adversus imperatoriam maiestatem pro religione, pro iustitia, pro vicario Christi, et, ut ita dicamus, pro uno homine arma victricia sumere non dubitarunt, sola fide et religione freti. Et Graecia quondam unius mulieris raptae iniuriam non tulit, et Sabini raptarum contumeliam ulti sunt magnis animis consiliisque. Tu vero in tanto solio constitutus divinitus Christiani imperii sedem et sanctorum domicilium in manibus barbarorum diutius permanere sustinebis? Hereditarium est huic urbi non solum Dei immortalis iniurias sed etiam hominum vindicare. In hoc enim nata, in hoc educata, ut contumelias Christi sui non ferat, quo duce vincere exploratissimum est! Memineris igitur tibi tuaeque fidei patrocinioque rem Christianam divinitus esse creditam.58 56 The teaching of local history in the Split communal school is revealed by Marko Marulić’s letter to Marko Prodić, a noble and priest from the neighbouring island commune of Brač, who was apparently Marulić’s fellow pupil; see B. Lučin, ‘Marulićevo pismo bračkom svećeniku Marku Prodiću’ [Marulić’s letter to the Brač priest Marko Prodić], Colloquia Maruliana 4 (1995), 103–111. Given the unique ancient heritage of Split, its rich chronicle tradition, and humanist civic pride, one may wonder here whether Marko Marulić made use of the local traditions in his congratulatory oration. 57 Šižgorić treats the question in his De situ Illyriae et civitate Sibenici, which not only discusses local history but explores the history of the Illyrian nation; see J. Šižgorić, O smještaju Ilirije i o gradu Šibeniku [On the Location of Illyria and the City of Šibenik], ed. and trans. V. Gortan (Šibenik 1981). 58 MS BNMV Marc. lat. XIV, 126 (4664), fol. 33r (c. 9). (Trans.: ‘Such a great and never-before-seen rally of delegations, which greet You, Prince, with marvelous pomp, heralds that good things are before us! The Queen of the South came to witness the wisdom of Solomon, the Queen of the Amazons to see the King of Macedon, and the Magi arrived from the East to salute Christ the leader as an omen of great things to come. So behold, as you do, the gifts that were divinely bequeathed to You and Your state, and observe the pious hearts of those fathers of the old, who did not shy away from taking up their victorious arms against the imperial majesty, relying solely on their faith and piety, all in defence of religion, of justice, of
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What Mihetić evokes here was the mythical donation of the ducal trionfi – the gifts that symbolized the doge’s authority and represented the basis of the myth of Venice – by Pope Alexander III to Doge Sebastiano Ziani in 1177 as a token of his gratitude for the help he received from Venice in his struggle against Emperor Frederick Barbarossa.59 He introduces this myth, however, not for the sake of praising Venice and its unique status, but exploits it to cast the city in the role of propugnaculum Christianitatis, calling for the liberation of Jerusalem. The focus on the holiest city of Christianity, at the time under the Mamluk Sultanate, was of course not meant to be taken as a direct strategic advice. Rather, it was a call, one tailored to ceremonial rhetoric, for a more aggressive stance towards the Ottomans, whose expansion in the Balkans in the 1450s and looming conquest of the Bosnian Kingdom was about to expose Šibenik and the rest of Dalmatia to the raids of their akıncı irregulars. Indeed, one of the points that Mihetić raises after his congratulatory oration was precisely the poor state of Šibenik’s city walls. What is particularly important to note here is that tasking Venice with the role of the chief defender of Christendom went directly against the official state policy. In spite of the increased Ottoman pressure in the Balkans and the diplomatic initiatives by the popes and the Hungarian court, the Venetian regime vehemently rejected the possibility of waging war against the Sultan.60 While Mihetić later addresses the issues related to his commune specifically, he used the ceremonial oration not only to praise Venice and the new doge, but to voice the views of the Šibenik elite on the foreign policy of the Venetian state in general. His oration thus stands an important witness to the fact that Dalmatian elites were not only aware of the potential danger brought by the Ottoman expansion in the Balkans, but that even before the fall of Bosnia and the first raids of Ottoman akıncılar on Dalmatia they sought to influence the Venetian position on the question. Seen in this light, Mihetić’s congratulatory oration emerges as one of the first Dalmatian antiturcica, even if a veiled one.
the Vicar of Christ, a single man, so to say. Long ago Greece too did not put up with the insult when a single woman was abducted, and the Sabines bravely took revenge when more were taken. Will You, then, now that You have been placed by divine intervention on a throne of such honuor, allow for the seat of the Christian empire, home of the saints, to remain in the hands of the barbarians any longer? It is the inherited duty of this city to avenge the wrongs done not only to the immortal God but also to man. It is for this that She was born, for this that She was bred: not to stand by the insults wrought upon Her Christ, under whose leadership She will most certainly stand triumphant! Remember, therefore, that it was to You and to Your faith and protection that the Christian cause was divinely entrusted’.) 59 The ducal trionfi were the banners, musical instruments, a candle, a cushion, a faldstool, an umbrella and a sword. For more on this myth, see Muir, Civic Ritual, 103–119. 60 For the anti-Ottoman diplomacy and lack of Venetian involvement during these years, see K. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant (1204–1571), vol. 2 (Philadelphia PA 1978), 161–230.
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It did not take long for the situation in Dalmatia to take a turn for the worse. In 1463 the Kingdom of Bosnia fell, and in response Venice finally entered an anti-Ottoman alliance with Hungary and the pope. The war financially strained the state and led to significant territorial losses, most notably in 1470 with the fall of Negroponte, the chief Venetian naval base in the Aegean. The situation was no better in Dalmatia, which from 1468 became exposed to the frequent raids of the Ottoman akıncı irregulars from Bosnia that pillaged communal districts and drained the economic resources of communal elites. These events instigated manifold responses from local humanists. Juraj Šižgorić, a patrician of Šibenik and, at the time, student at Padua, composed an elegy to voice his grief over the loss of two brothers, one of whom died in the skirmishes against the akıncılar ; Ilija Banjvarić, a notary of Šibenik, searched in his copy of Quintus Curtius’s History of Alexander the Great for the origins of these marauding Turks, tracing them to the marauding Thracians of antiquity ; Tideo Acciarini, a communal teacher in Split, exhorted the new pope Sixtus IV to take up arms by describing in hexameter the fall of Negroponte and raids in Dalmatia.61 Whereas these were all private responses, the communal councils turned to the official channels, sending envoys to Venice to call for more active engagement of the central government. One of such opportunities came with the election of Doge Nicolò Tron in 1471. Whereas in 1458 Mihetić had concluded his oration by calling for a more aggressive approach to the Ottoman question in more subtle terms, the anonymous envoy from Zadar – who delivered his oration before Doge Tron in the first months of 1472 and who, as has been argued, could have likely been Ivan Kršava, Šižgorić’s fellow student in Padua – would dwell precisely on this point. To be sure, the anonymous envoy too praised the Venetian state, and the new doge. He spoke of the joy at the election of so great a prince, and reminded him – as Mihetić had done in 1458 and as the Trogir envoys were also instructed to do in 1471 – that his father, Luca Tron, had once served as count of his city.62 He too, like Mihetić, uses wordplay on the doge’s family name for
61 For this first version of Šižgorić’s elegy, see D. Novaković, ‘Nepoznata verzija Šižgorićeve elegije o smrti dvojice braće’ [A hitherto unknown version of Juraj Šižgorić’s elegy on the deaths of his two brothers], in Hrvatska književna baština [Croatian literary heritage], vol. 1, ed. D. Fališevac et al. (Zagreb 2003), 253–266. For Banjvarić’s notes on the Ottoman Turks, see L. Špoljarić, ‘The First Dalmatian Humanists’, 53–54. For Acciarini’s poem, see B. Lučin, ‘Neobjavljena pjesma Tidea Acciarinija papi Sikstu IV’. [An unpublished poem of Tideo Acciarini to Pope Sixtus IV], Colloquia Maruliana 24 (2015), 65–114. Tellingly, Acciarini’s poem to Sixtus IV is preserved in the same manuscript as the 1472 Zadar oration. 62 Having served as count of Trogir from 1421 to 1423, Luca Tron returned to Dalmatia in 1430 as count of Zadar, and stayed there until 1433; see Kohl et al., eds., ‘The Rulers of Venice, 1332–1524’, no. 52335.
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rhetorical effect, drawing his inspiration from the Bible.63 Yet, when the time comes to turn to the praises of the Senate and the city of Venice, he focuses on exhorting them to fight for the Christian cause, reserving no place for the praise of the city’s history, its physical appearance or its institutions. Moreover, his chief concern was to draw to the doge’s attention, and the attention of the Senate, the disastrous effects of the recent Turkish raids on Dalmatia : Libet enim iam ad alumnam vestram Dalmatiam sermonem convertere et eius vultum ac faciem intentissimam oculis clementiae pietatisque tanti Principis ac Senatus ostendere. Quae salva est quidem et vivit vestris praesidiis praetorum ac praefectorum diligentia et summa in se cari tate vestra, sed Turchorum ferocium immanitate ac rapinis frequentibus contabescit, qui suis latrociniis et ferina crudelitate grassantes iam paene exhaustam illam et enervam reddiderunt. Vastos agros et solitarios reliquerunt. Pecorum greges, armenta, immo vero hominum infelices ac miserandas turmas mixtas pecoribus abegerunt, aut errore nequissimo infelicitatis polluendas aut sub corona vendendas, quas Christus innocens olim redemit, pro quibus mortuus est, in quarum iustificatione et gratia sanguinem proprium expendit et crucem pertulit acerbissimam. O si vel civitatis nostrae imago et Hiadertina calamitas in conspectum hunc clementium oculorum venire posset, quam non illa a vobis maternam pietatem acciperet? Quam misericordiam tam mansuetae civitatis non conciliaret sibi, cum vix murorum saeptis hostium insultus ac impetum arceamus?64
A detailed account of the Turkish raids and Venetian inability to deal with them continues further, which becomes all the more striking once one considers that both Turchetto and Tomai, who delivered their orations before the same doge, hardly devoted a line to 63 MS BAM F 33 sup., f. 11v (c. 5). ‘Ubi autem melius ac significantius Dominus noster virtutum suarum arcana hactenus et incognita miracula explicabit quam in eo principe de quo scriptum est Tronus tuus, Deus, in saeculum saeculi?’ (Heb. 1,8) 64 MS BAM F 33 sup., ff. 11v–12r (c. 6). (Trans.: ‘I would now like to turn my speech to Dalmatia, Your ward, and bring her stare and her desperate face before the mild and pious eyes of so great a prince and the Senate. She is safe indeed, and lives under the protection of Your commanders, diligence of Your governors, and Your utmost care for her. Yet, she grows weak from the barbarity and recurring raids of the Turks, whose looting and beastly savagery have all but drained her and worn her out. They have left her fields desolated and deserted. They have taken the sheep and cattle, and along with these the wretched and miserable throngs of men in order to either pollute them with that most vile and squalid heresy or sell them as slaves – them, no less, whom innocent Christ long ago redeemed, for whom he died, in justification of whom and because of whom he spilt his own blood and suffered the most painful of deaths on the cross! Oh if I could bring the image of this city of ours, of Zadar’s tragedy before Your pious eyes, what motherly solace would she not receive from You? What mercy would she not win for herself, when our walls barely withstand the enemy attacks and assaults?’)
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the issue – in spite of the fact that not even two years had passed since Venice suffered the catastrophic loss of Negroponte. While the Turkish raids were not a concern of the terraferma elites, with the exception of those in Friuli, the anonymous envoy from Zadar obviously took every possible opportunity to bring this to the attention of those whose duty it was to defend them. Thus, while Mihetić argued for a more aggressive stance towards the Ottomans indirectly and in broader historical terms, in line with the decorum, the anonymous envoy from Zadar overstepped the rules of the genre and turned his ceremonial oration in praise of the new doge into a political one, calling for more active defensive engagement in Dalmatia. Yet, what particularly distinguished the oration of the Zadar envoy was his justification for his decision. As he concludes his oration : Haec sunt quae in praesenti ut dicerem neccessaria omnino videbatur. Nam gratulationis officium non adeo visum est mihi opportunum, praesertim quo more et licentia usurpari a pleris que oratoribus consuevit, quibus necessarium videtur omnem vitam et mores ac praeclara facinora principis evolvere ac singulatim enararre debere. Verum si Ciceroni, homini acutissimo et in re publica exercitato civi, in eis libris quos scripsit de re publica optimis consilium in animo fuit non oportere quemquam vivum adhuc et superstitem publice laudari, et constet gravi tatem tuam hoc genus laudationis semper exhorruisse, quoniam adulatorium et servile est, facile possum ab aliis dissentire et libenter dissentio, hoc magis quod ea sunt potius ornamenta exsequialis ac funebris pompae, ut Plato censet et gravissima continentissimaque haec civitas observavit. Testatur oratio illa Iustiniana de Carolo Zeno pulcherrima et imprimis gravissima, quae Tullianae facundiae et ingenii formam his nostris saeculis elegantissime expressit ac tradidit.65
Not only does the anonymous envoy thus subvert the entire genre by briefly passing over the main themes he was there to celebrate, but here at the end of his oration he ex65 MS BAM F 33 sup., f. 12r (c. 8). (Trans.: ‘This is what seemed entirely necessary to speak about at this moment. The congratulatory ceremonial did not seem to me that appropriate, especially since it is usually, and with permission, usurped by many orators who deem it necessary to present and recount point by point the whole life, character and glorious deeds of a doge. However, if Cicero, most astute man and citizen well versed in the matters of the state, argued in those great books he wrote On the Commonwealth that no one should publicly praise anyone who is still alive and living, and if it is well known that Your dignity always shuddered at such a form of flattery, it being sycophantic and servile, I can easily take a different path from others. And I do so gladly, even more so, since such orations are features more suited for funeral processions and rites, as Plato believed and as this most venerable and most restrained city has observed in practice. A testament to this is that famous oration by Giustiniani on Carlo Zeno, most beautiful and above all most dignified, which most elegantly expresses the form of Tully’s eloquence and brilliance, and presents it to our age’.)
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plicitly criticizes the very practice of delivering panegyrical orations on these occasions, calling the whole genre ‘sycophantic’ (adulatorium), ‘servile’ (servile) and ‘more suited to funeral processions’ (potius ornamenta exsequialis ac funebris pompae). To strengthen his case, he presents this as alien to the character of the new doge himself, and supports his views, and his humanist ethos, by drawing on the authority of Plato and Cicero, and by invoking Leonardo Giustinian’s oration for Carlo Zeno, a Venetian humanist classic and one of the most widely circulated pieces of funeral oratory in the Quattrocento.66 This conscious breach of genre conventions and attack on the congratulatory ceremonial in general could have, indeed, been received as insolent, yet it is precisely this breach of conventions, legitimized by recourse to the classical and Venetian authorities, that powerfully communicated the dire situation that Zadar faced. Whether Ivan Kršava was the anonymous orator or not, the 1472 Zadar oration was a rhetorical tour de force and certainly represents one of the highlights of Dalmatian humanist literature that has undeservedly languished in manuscript form for centuries.
Orations in creatione ducis and the Dalmatian Humanism of the Quattrocento
After it seems to have been put on hold in the final quarter of the fifteenth century, possibly due to the rapid succession of five doges that took place during the 1470s, the ritual re-emerged to witness its heyday in the sixteenth century, with congratulatory orations slowly moving into the realm of the vernacular. The oration by Lujo Detriko of Zadar, published as part of Agostino Michele’s collection of orations delivered before Doge Pasquale Cicogna in 1585, shows that Dalmatians not only continued to send their envoys to greet newly elected doges but that they still used the opportunity to voice their own concerns.67 Which cities sent their envoys, who were the envoys, and what concerns they expressed remains to be dealt with in another study. What is certain is that the 66 The anonymous envoy was somewhat creative in his use of Cicero. In the cited passage of On the Commonwealth (4.10.12), which was transmitted through Augustine’s The City of God (2.9), Cicero actually discusses the theatre and not public discourse in general, saying that no man still alive should be either eulogized or satirized on the stage (‘veteribus displicuisse Romanis vel laudari quemquam in scaena vivum hominem vel vituperari’). As for Plato’s views on epideictic rhetoric, he was critical of the genre in general, even at funerals; see A. Wilson Nightingale, ‘The Folly of Praise: Plato’s Critique of Encomiastic Discourse in the Lysis and Symposium’, The Classical Quarterly 43:1 (1993), 112–130. For the popularity of Giustiniani’s oration, see J. McManamon, Funeral Oratory and the Cultural Ideals of Italian Humanism (Chapel Hill NC 1989), 24. 67 Lujo Detriko thus used the opportunity to lavish praises on his own family and its service to the Venetian regime. For the oration, see Michele, ed., Scielta delle orationi; and the facsimile in the Archivio storico per la Dalmazia 27 (1939), 198–208.
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ceremonial did not last until the end of the Republic. According to Giovanni Benedetto Mitarèlli, eighteenth-century Venetian erudite and General of the Benedictine Order, it seems to have been abolished under Doge Nicolò Sagredo (1675–1676) due to the exorbitant expenses it put on the subject cities, which became even more difficult to bear after the twenty-four-year long war with the Ottomans and the loss of the island of Crete.68 The abolition of the ritual that had for two and a half centuries served to promote the myth of Venice among provincial elites fittingly symbolized the collapse of Venetian imperial pretensions. Nonetheless, congratulatory orations to newly elected doges played an important part in the development of Dalmatian humanism. To be sure, the 1423 oration of the Zadar exiles was an isolated case that more reflects the determination of the exiled Dalmatian communities in Venice to use all available means at their disposal to secure repatriation, than it reveals the diffusion of humanist ideas among their ranks. Yet, as for the subsequent orations, the numbers speak for themselves. During the brief period of sixteen years, between 1457 and 1473, four doges were elected that were greeted by altogether no less than seven, and probably as much as sixteen, congratulatory delegations of the four major Dalmatian communes. These numbers assume even greater significance once we consider the fact that the only classicizing literary works that were produced during this earliest period of Dalmatian humanism are letters and, and by the mid-1460s, short poetry. The names of envoys that were entrusted by communal councils with delivering these orations are no less telling. They represented the most learned figures from the patrician ranks. Some of them, such as Ambroz Mihetić and Marko Marulić, are today familiar names in the history of Dalmatian humanism, whose importance for its genesis has long been established. Others, however, as Jakov Andreis, Rafael Nassi and, perhaps, Ivan Kršava, have until now stayed out of the spotlight, and although we do not have (m)any insights into the scope of their humanist interests, there can be no doubt that they too were able of producing classicizing, Ciceronian oratory. To be sure, Dalmatian communes sent their delegations to Venice on other occasions, and often these same learned figures were the ones that were chosen to lead them. These delegations, however, addressed specific, practical concerns related to their commune, often in Italian and, as can be gathered from the documentary evidence, without any recourse to classical authorities and metaphors.69 Congratulatory orations, on the other hand, required familiarity with the rules of classicizing oratory and specific tropes of the genre, and invited orators to praise doges and the state by painting a broader historical 68 G. B. Mittarèlli, Bibliotheca codicum manuscriptorum monasterii S. Michaelis Venetiarum (Venice 1779), 556. 69 For communal delegations to Venice in general, see O’Connell, Men of Empire, 116–118.
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canvas and involving rich imagery that drew on both classical and Biblical sources. As this paper has shown, the orators used these not merely to play to the ear of the regime, but to voice their own concerns, even going so far as to challenge the official politics of the state and subtly criticize the ceremonial itself. This is not to say that they objected the Venetian rule altogether. Quite the contrary, many of Dalmatian patrician humanists, including some envoys, as Ambroz Mihetić, came from families that had strong personal connections to the Venetian patriciate and that owed their social prominence to the regime.70 In spite of this, their loyalties also lay with their respective communes and their region and nation. Indeed, what is particularly important to note is that contrary to the terraferma envoys who, as we have seen on the Brescian example, were motivated by inter-communal rivalries, Dalmatians seem to have acted en bloc. While in the subsequent discussions they did mention specific concerns related to their respective communes, they used the opening congratulatory orations to argue the case for the entire region, and prompt the central authorities for more energetic engagement against the Ottomans even before the beginning of the war in 1463.71 The sheer number of the orations in creatione ducis, the learning of their authors and their use as a medium of subversion makes it clear that these were not unimportant examples of dry ceremonial oratory, but a major stepping stone in the development of Dalmatian humanism. The elections of four new doges within a short period of sixteen years represented the first instances where the emerging Dalmatian patrician republic of letters came to the fore to promote regional concerns before the central authorities in Venice. From there it did not then take long for these local humanists to turn the tables and respond to Venetian imperialist myths by shedding light on the history of their own patria. Marko Marulić, the very same person who as a young man made his name by delivering the congratulatory oration to doge Nicolò Marcello, placed himself at the forefront of these efforts. In 1507 he composed a biography of St Jerome, attacking Italian humanists who had dared to claim the saint for Italy and deny his Dalmatian origins, while in 1510 he translated the vernacular Croatian Chronicle, a fanciful account of the origins of the Kingdom of Dalmatia and Croatia, so that it can be read ‘not only by those who speak our mother tongue’.72 Indeed, the time had come for the ruling elites to listen to the Dalmatian myths and legends.
70 I will discuss these connections and their role in the diffusion of humanism into Venetian Dalmatia elsewhere. 71 The 1472 Zadar oration laments the Ottoman raids in the entire Dalmatia, while Mihetić ends his oration by commending to the doge ‘all Dalmatians, the ones most faithful to your empire’; see MS BNMV Marc. lat. XIV, 126 (4664), fol. 33r (c. 10): ‘Dalmatas omnes tuo imperio devotissimos’. 72 For these two works, see M. Marulić, Latinska manja djela [The minor Latin works], vol. 2 (Split 2011).
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Response by Johanna Luggin
Congratulatory orations like the orationes in creatione ducis treated in Špoljarić’s article have no exact parallel in contemporary Tyrolean Latin literature. Rhetoric and textual evidence of eloquence were only slowly emerging at the end of the fifteenth century in Tyrol. There are, however, some speeches associated with the court of Archduke Sigismund (1427–1496) and of the later Emperor Maximilian I (1459–1519) in Innsbruck which could be compared to the Dalmatian congratulatory orations : The first surviving Tyrolean speech is an oration of obedience to the newly elected pope. Like most princes, Sigismund sent an envoy to ensure Pope Sixtus IV of his obedience. His envoy, Ludwig of Friburgk, though being a bit late – Sixtus had been elected in August 1471, the oration was held only in November 1472 – praised not only the new pope, but also his prince, Sigismund, and all the members of his family in a speech of about four-and-ahalf pages.73 We find congratulatory orations from Tyrol also at the court of Maximilian I. His second wedding to Bianca Maria Sforza, niece of the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, in 1494 in Innsbruck was a big political event and attracted many diplomatic representatives. Two wedding orations from Tyrol commemorating the occasion have thus survived : one held by the envoy of Ludovico Sforza, Giasone DalMaino (1435–1519), which was printed several times afterwards, the other by the envoy of Ercole I d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, Pandolfo Collenucio (1444–1504). Even though they are wedding orations, they can be compared to the Dalmatian orationes in creatione ducis because they commemorated an event that took place shortly after Maximilian had become Archduke of Austria and ruling King of the Romans when his father had died in 1493. Thus, they can be seen as a sort of oration of obedience and they do indeed both contain declarations of submission from the respective parties.74 Later examples of such congratulatory orations on the election and consecration of bishops have survived from Trento, e.g. an oration held by the Mantuan historian Giano Pirro Pincio († 1546) on the occasion of the consecration of bishop Bernardo Clesio in 1515.75 A comparison between orationes in creatione ducis by Croatian humanists and these Tyrolean speeches is surely difficult. The Tyrolean orations are later than the Croatian 73 The manuscript lies in the Franciscan monastery of Schwaz, sign. Q I/2.27, fol. 363v–365v. Cf. M. Korenjak, ‘Rhetorik und Beredsamkeit’, in Tyrolis Latina: Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur in Tirol, 2 vols., ed. M. Korenjak et al. (Vienna 2012), 1:95–104, at 98–100. 74 Korenjak, ‘Rhetorik und Beredsamkeit’, 100–103. 75 Oratio in sacris primitiis reverendissimi D. Bernardi Clesii episcopi et principis Tridentini in templo habita; cf. M. Korenjak, ‘Beredsamkeit’, in Tyrolis Latina, 1:282–306, at 282–283.
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examples ; there simply is no surviving evidence of Tyrolean Latin oratory before the end of the fifteenth century. The few examples mentioned above show some similarities to the Croatian orations, as they are clearly imitating classical examples, contain declarations of submission to the addressee, and try to illustrate the special relationship between the two parties. The large number of Croatian orationes in creatione ducis and their subversive character have, however, no parallel in the Tyrolean Latin oratory of the time – which would begin to flourish only in the course of the sixteenth century.
Johanna Luggin
Macrohistory or Microhistory? The Tyrolean Menippean Satire as a Regional Literary Genre
In studying Neo-Latin literature, a vast body of very diverse texts from different regions written over several centuries, the scholar must often choose between a macrohistorical and microhistorical approach. The macrohistorical level, for example, might describe the influence of Erasmus all over Europe, or the reception of Virgilian epic poetry between the fifteenth and eighteenth century. In the case of a microhistorical approach, the task would then be to study one work, one author, or – as is the case in these proceedings – the single region of Tyrol. While some might say that such a microhistorical approach does little more than reiterate macrohistorical research on another level, and cannot therefore be of more than regional interest, I would argue that microhistories of Neo-Latin have the potential to show us exciting new perspectives and surprising developments.1 My paper will therefore consider the study of regional literature as an opportunity to discern a discrepancy between macro- and microhistorical approaches by focussing on one example from Tyrol, which can add to and not only reiterate the macrohistories of Neo-Latin literature. When we examine the history and conception of a specific literary genre in Tyrol, the satura Menippea, the differences between the Tyrolean texts and contemporary representatives from other regions suggest that a particular regional, microhistorical development of the Menippean satire took place in Tyrol.
The Menippean Satire in the Early Modern Period
The satura Menippea constitutes an important genre in the early modern world, both in Latin and the vernacular languages. The classical examples, particularly Seneca’s Apocolocyntosis, the remnants of Petronius’s Satyrica, and to a lesser degree Apuleius’s Metamorphoses, inspired many Neo-Latin texts, both in form and content.2 Depend1 The recent Brill’s Encyclopaedia of the Neo-Latin World, 2 vols., ed. P. Ford et al. (Leiden 2014) divides its articles in ‘Macropaedia’ and ‘Micropaedia’. 2 J. IJsewijn, ‘Neo-Latin Satire: Sermo and Satyra Menippea’, in Classical Influences on European Culture A.D. 1500–1700: Proceedings of an International Conference held at King’s College, Cambridge April 1974, ed. R. R. Bolar (Cambridge 1976), 41–55.
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ing on the definition of the genre, modern theorists have identified many early modern vernacular Menippean satires, such as François Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel or Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. For Mikhail Bakhtin, the Menippea represents the carnivalesque, sometimes even the grotesque in human nature,3 while Northrop Frye emphasizes the generalizing factor of these texts, which rather than showing us the flaws and shortcomings of individuals, display universal attitudes which can then be criticized.4 While Frye, Bakhtin and others have revived research on vernacular Menippean satire,5 studies on Neo-Latin saturae Menippeae are still scarce,6 even though more and more Latin texts are being uncovered. From the middle of the sixteenth century onwards, Menippean satire played an important role in the ‘republic of letters’ : starting with the Somnium of Justus Lipsius (1547–1606), humanists used the prosimetric satire to criticize contemporary political or social issues in an ironic, paradoxical or even grotesque7 way. A particularly loosely defined genre since its antique origins, the Neo-Latin Menippean satire was predestined to serve multiple purposes. In her study of Latin Menippeae from 1581 until 1655, De Smet lists fifty-six titles of texts that correspond to her definition of the genre.8 She makes a sharp distinction between Menippean satires and related popular literary genres, such as the non-narrative prose satire, the paradoxical encomium and Utopian literature,9 and defines the humanist Menippean satires ‘as fictional […] narratives in prose interspersed with verse (which can, but need not be, original), aimed at mockery and ridicule and often moralizing’.10
3 M. Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, trans. C. Emerson (Minnesota 1984), 113–120. 4 N. Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays, ed. R. D. Denham (Toronto 2006), 309–312. 5 See G. Sherbert, Menippean Satire and the Poetics of Wit: Ideologies of Self-Consciousness in Dunton, D’Urfey, and Sterne (New York 1996). Most recently H. Weinbrot, Menippean Satire Reconsidered (Baltimore MD 2005); and D. Musgrave, Grotesque Anatomies: Menippean Satire since the Renaissance (Newcastle 2014). 6 See IJsewijn, ‘Neo-Latin Satire’; and the two-page chapter ‘Menippean Satires’, in J. IJsewijn and D. Sacré, Companion to Neo-Latin Studies, 2 vols. (Leuven 1990–982), 2:74–75. A list of works was composed by E. Kirk, Menippean Satire: An Annotated Catalogue of Texts and Criticism (New York 1980). The longest comprehensive study so far is I. De Smet, Menippean Satire and the Republic of Letters, 1581–1655 (Geneva 1996). See also D. Porter’s chapter ‘Neo-Latin Menippean Satires’, in Brill’s Encyclopaedia of the Neo-Latin World, 326–332. 7 For D. Musgrave, the grotesque is the essential characteristic of Menippean satire from antiquity to the present day; see Musgrave, Grotesque Anatomies, 1–39. 8 De Smet, Menippean Satire, 247–250. 9 De Smet, Menippean Satire, 71–86. For the more universal approach, see Kirk, Menippean Satire, who lists also paradoxical encomia, Utopian and scientific literature. 10 De Smet, Menippean Satire, 70.
The Tyrolean Menippean Satire as a Regional Literary Genre |
Tyrolean Menippean Satires
While this definition can easily be applied to the texts examined in De Smet’s study,11 other Neo-Latin Menippean satires have a rather different character. This is the case in Tyrolean Neo-Latin literature, where two Menippean satires give rise to the question of whether a microhistory of the literary genre of the Menippea can be detected – as opposed to the contemporary macrohistorical concept of the genre as it was described, for example, by Joseph Scaliger (1540–1609), Justus Lipsius, Isaac Casaubon (1559–1614) or Daniel Heinsius (1580–1655).12 The Tyrolis Latina research project identified only two Menippean satires, written and printed in Tyrol at the beginning of the eighteenth century.13 The two rather long satires show several striking similarities in form, aim, general theme and the details of their narrative. Both were written in a Jesuit context, the first example at the Jesuit College of Innsbruck, the second one at the collegium of Trento. Both are prosimetric texts and present the essential characteristics of Menippean satire, such as framework narrative, comic episodes, erudite puns and puzzles, numerous historical and literary allusions, unexpected turns of events, and complex language and style.14 What sets the texts apart from other, classical and contemporary, Menippean satires is their panegyric character : they praise a recent religious and political development, respectively, and are dedicated to key figures in these events. They are clearly a part of the very rich and diverse tradition of occasional poetry written in the Jesuit colleges at the time. Choosing the satura Menippea as the form for an otherwise rather conventional panegyric text – congratulatory poetry on the occasion of a marriage and an election, respectively – the authors of the two texts treated here venture an experiment in NeoLatin occasional poetry. The first satire was written on the occasion of the election of Kaspar Ignaz von Künigl (1671–1747) as bishop of Brixen in South Tyrol.15 The priests of the Jesuit College in Innsbruck dedicated a panegyric satire, Regulus ab Aquila exaltatus (Künigl, Exalted by an Eagle, i.e. the eagle of Habsburg) to the new episcopus. The work is a rather long 11 De Smet, Menippean Satire, explicitly calls it a ‘working definition’ especially composed for the texts under examination, 70. 12 De Smet, Menippean Satire, 32–56. 13 For an overview of the two texts, see M. Korenjak, ‘Dichtung’, in Tyrolis Latina: Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur in Tirol, 2 vols., ed. M. Korenjak et al. (Vienna 2012), 2:620–659, at 629–630, which constituted the basis of this paper. 14 Porter, ‘Neo-Latin Menippean Satires’. 15 For a short biography of Künigl, see W. Winhard, ’Künigl, Kaspar Ignaz Graf von’, in Biographisch-bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, 38 vols. so far, ed. F. W. Bautz (Herzberg 1970-), 4:768–770.
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Menippean satire in twenty-six pages. It was printed in Innsbruck in 1703, the year of Künigl’s consecration. It praises the election and consecration as a sacred unity, a sacred marriage between the diocese (which had been a widow since the death of its former bishop, Johann Franz Khuen von Belasi) and the newly elected bishop, who stems from the noble Künigl zu Ehrenburg family, which would not for the first time determine the fate of Tyrol : Kaspar Ignaz’s father and brother were both governors of Tyrol and given prominent mention in the text (11–14). The work on Künigl’s election presents many differences from contemporary representatives of the genus. In particular, its panegyric character sets it apart from other Menippean satires, which in general mock, and thus criticize, contemporary attitudes in society. In this respect, and many others beside, the Regulus can be compared to another Menippea from Tyrol : in the year 1708, the Jesuit college of Trento dedicated a Menippean satire, In Hoc Signo (IHS, In This Sign, i.e. in the name of Christ), to Elisabeth Christine of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel (1691–1750)16 on the occasion of her marriage to Charles of Habsburg, the later Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI (1685–1740), who at this time was making a claim to the Spanish throne as Charles III.17 This satire is even longer than the Regulus. It includes a dedicatory epistle to the bride Elisabeth Christine and covers a total of forty-eight pages. In the dedicatory letter, an important topic of the following satire is underlined : the author calls upon the royal couple, explicitly on Elisabeth, to support the Tridentine collegium, which like the whole region had suffered gravely from the horrors of the battles recently fought in the War of the Spanish Succession (3–6).18 The Jesuit College of Trento in particular was burned to the ground during one of the war’s sieges (10). This continues to be an important theme in the Menippean satire itself and constitutes an essential part of the panegyric for Elisabeth and Charles, who will, as the author hopes, end the war and bring peace to the Tridentine Jesuits.
16 For a biography of her, see V. Press, ‘Elisabeth Christine’, in Die Habsburger: Ein biographisches Lexikon, ed. B. Hamann (Vienna 1988), 88–90. 17 On him, see B. Rill, Karl VI. Habsburg als barocke Großmacht (Graz 1992); H.-J. Olszewsky, ‘Karl VI. (HRR)’, in Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, 3:1151–1157. 18 On this war, see A. J. Veenendaal, ‘The War of the Spanish Succession in Europe’, in The New Cambridge Modern History, vol. 6, ed. J. S. Bromley (Cambridge 1970), 410–445; F. Edelmayer, V. León Sanz and J. I. Ruiz Rodríguez, eds., Hispania – Austria III. Der Spanische Erbfolgekrieg (Vienna 2008), 11–26; Rill, Karl VI., 48–90.
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Similarities in the Framework Plot
Apart from the different events for which the two satires were written, they show a remarkable number of parallels. In particular, the framework narrative is noticeably similar : a genius, of Brixen and the Tridentine college, respectively, is sent to Vienna to celebrate the occasion of the respective marriages – the metaphorical unity between Künigl and the diocese of Brixen and the real unity between Elisabeth Christine and Charles. On their way, the two genii encounter several mythological figures and historical people, who join them in praise of Kaspar Ignaz Künigl in the first satire, and of the royal couple in the second. Their journey is interrupted, however, by the arrival of a second genius. In the first text, the genius of Brixen encounters the genius of Tyrol (2–3). In the second text, the genius of the Tridentine collegium meets the Austrian genius (21–22). The two sets of pairs enjoy a varied and exciting journey with diverse encounters before, at the end of the works, they both go to heaven19 and continue to praise the dedicatees of the satires there (Regulus, 19–21 ; In Hoc Signo, 30–48).
The Episodes
Even though the prose narrative in both cases is not in the first-person but rather the third-person, the eventful plot corresponds to the characteristics of the Menippean satire. A few examples of both texts should suffice to illustrate the varied episodes of the framework narrative : in the Regulus, the genii of Brixen and Tyrol encounter a group of nymphs who, in an invocation to Diana, praise the election of Kaspar Ignaz Künigl as the new bishop in seven stanzas. They conclude with (7–8) : Eia felix, eia perge, Qua levat Favoniorum Mollis aura, scinde nubes. Sic nitescas inter astra, Plumeum sic inter agmen Audias: Regina digna, digna ferre Regulum.20
19 In the Regulus, the genius of Brixen does so only in a dream, while in the In Hoc Signo, the genius of Trento really reaches heaven. 20 Trans: ‘Up, blessed one [Diana], up now, proceed to where the west winds’ tender air lifts you up, tear open the clouds. May you thus shine among the stars, thus among the feathery flock hear: worthy queen, worthy of carrying Künigl’.
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After that, the two genii visit the family seat of Kaspar Ignaz, the castle of Ehrenburg, where they learn about the famous members of the Künigl family and about several prodigia which occurred before Künigl’s election in Innsbruck (9–19), before the genius of Brixen falls asleep and dreams of his journey to heaven, where he beholds the palace of the new bishop (19–21). With this dream, the author includes an important element of the Neo-Latin Menippean satire in his text. Emulating Seneca’s Apocolocyntosis, the dream was used in several early modern Latin Menippeae to construct the framework of the plot, and the legacy of Petronius’s Satyrica allowed characters of several satires to narrate dreams on the intra- or even metadiegetic level.21 The genius’s dream thus moves the Regulus closer to the genre of the Neo-Latin Menippean satire. In In Hoc Signo, the genius of the Tridentine college experiences a more varied journey, which corresponds to the greater length of the text. Before his encounter with the Austrian genius, he meets an eagle at Milan, which symbolizes the eagle of Habsburg (12). After a description of the palace of the Gonzaga family as well as the cathedral of Milan (13–14), the genius catches sight of two guards locked in a battle of wits (14–16). They present each other with complex aenigmata in dactylic hexameter (15) : Prior de Insignibus Mediolanensibus ita coepit: Dic mihi, sique celer nodum dissolveris istum, Magnus Alexander, diceris & inclytus Hector: Ecce coronatus coluber dentata resolvit Claustra, ferens hominis diducto gutture corpus; Tu modo respondens, comes o dulcissime, fare, Deglutitne bolum Serpens, anne evomit? Utrum Tu credis? Medio, bene si responderis, aureo Dextram onerabo tuam. Alter autem socium ita lacessebat: Dic mihi, sique satis Sphyngi responderis isti, Aedipus & Graeco diceris Apolline major: Piscator posthac magno de milite fiam: Ingentem Piscem Sponsorum imponere mensae, Si possem, cuperem. Iam tu dic, optime sodes, […] Quoque appelletur, de quo cano, nomine Piscis?
21 De Smet, Menippean Satire, 87–116.
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Quod si veridica dederis responsa Camaena, A me tu pariter medio donaberis aureo.22
The genius oWESf Brixen, who loves peace above all, watches the quarrelling pair and, knowing the answers to both puzzles, decides to fool the guards by secretly telling each the right answer. Thus, neither of them wins or is able to ridicule the other (15–16) : Itaque in aurem posterioris ponit tenui oris susurro haec verba: Coluber Mediolanum prius comederat, postea, comestum reddidit. Priori vero tacito murmure hoc dixit vocabulum: Delphinus.23
This episode is not only a testament to a learned audience who could appreciate an enigma about Milan’s coat of arms, it also shows the witty character of the work. The genius of In Hoc Signo actually laughs about the two soldiers (subridens [15]), as should the reader. And the episode surrounding the soldiers’ aenigmata demonstrates its complex panegyric quality. The praise for the dedicatees of the satire – the royal couple Charles and Elisabeth – is woven into the text : in his enigma, the second soldier evokes the royal wedding (Sponsorum […] mensae). According to generic conventions, the two Menippean satires string together various episodes, which are held together only by the framework plot (the genius’s journeys) and are interspersed with numerous verse sections. In both works, the authors show a particular preference for ekphrasis. The Regulus, for example, describes the family seat of Künigl, the Castle of Ehrenburg and its interior in great detail, especially the ceremonial hall and its paintings (9–12). One of these paintings astonishes the two visiting genii above all, a depiction of Hercules and Atlas (11) :
22 Trans: ‘The first one began to say the following about the arms of Milan. Tell me: If you untangle this knot quickly, you will be called Alexander the Great and invincible Hector. Behold! A crowned serpent breaks open the spiked barriers, holding a human body in its wide open throat. So tell me now, oh sweetest companion, is the snake swallowing down its prey or is it vomiting it out? Which one do you believe? If you answer correctly, I will burden your right hand with half a guilder. / The other one, however, thus challenged his comrade. Tell me: If you can answer this Sphinx adequately, you will be called Oedipus and greater than the Greek Apollo. From now on, I will be transformed from a great soldier into a fisherman: I wish, if I were able, to place an enormous fish onto the betrotheds’ table. Now tell me, if you would be so kind, […] what is the fish’s name, about which I am singing? If you will get an answer to that from the truthful Muse, you will equally get half a guilder from me’. 23 Trans: ‘Therefore, with a tender whisper of his mouth, he puts the followings words into the latter’s ear: The serpent at first swallowed the Milanese, later it returned the devoured body. To the former, however, he told in a low murmur this word: dolphin’.
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When the visitors learn that the two mythological figures symbolize two important family members of the Künigl zu Ehrenburg, the father and brother of bishop Kaspar Ignaz, the news inspires the genius of Tyrol to spontaneously compose a poem on the family’s virtues in eleven Alcaic stanzas (12–14). The satire from Trento depicts ecclesiastical and secular institutions such as the Cathedral of St Vigilius at Trento, the seat of the Gonzaga in Mantua, Milan Cathedral, St Stephen’s Cathedral in Passau, while mentioning particular architectural details. Visiting Innsbruck, the genius of Trento describes the church of St James and its magnificent painting of Mary of Succour by Lucas Cranach the Elder (20–21; cf. Schaffenrath's account of this painting on p. 197–198).
The Verse Sections
As is customary for a Menippean satire, the prose narrative in the two texts is interspersed with numerous and varied verse passages. In the Regulus, they occupy around one-quarter of the work, while in In Hoc Signo it is one-sixth. They include hexameter, elegiac couplets, odes, epodes and many more.25 While in the Regulus a great part of the verse sections are dedicated to the praise of Kaspar Ignaz Künigl and his family, in the Tridentine satire the content of the poetic parts varies and sometimes demonstrates erudite wit. We have already seen the guards’ battle of wits at Milan. Later on in their journey, the Tridentine and the Austrian genii come across an echo rock, where they inquire about the fate of the lauded royal couple as well as that of their enemies (24) : Genius: Quot optas regijs Sponsis, dic, annos? E[cho]: Canos. G: In eos, qui His male volunt, quid Spiras? E: Iras. […] 24 Trans: ‘But nothing captured the eyes of the guests quite like the sight of the remarkable paintings; though they, walking around, eagerly studied each piece, they stayed especially long in front of the picture showing Atlas and Hercules. Atlas was positioned in such a way that he was transferring his burden to the nearby standing Alcides, which was placed on the latter’s shoulders and he took it over fearlessly as a substitute’. 25 Korenjak, ‘Dichtung’, 630.
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G: Sit felix Hymen in totius Europae levamen! E: Amen.26
After this oracle, the satire focuses on the horrors of the War of the Spanish Succession and the hope that Charles will bring perpetual peace to the whole of Europe. The author chooses a bucolic setting to express this hope, and consequently this verse section is written in dactylic hexameter (26–30). The author emulates Virgil’s Eclogues, which represent a fitting model for the expression of both the brutality of the past and the prospect of a brighter future.27 The genii of Trento and Austria encounter two farmers, Moeris, who has suffered gravely under the war, and Tityrus, who declares his belief in the reign of Charles and Elisabeth Christine (29) : Tit. Vincet gallinam vulpes, vulpemque Lycaon, At magno veniens cum fuste Lycaona Mopsus, Mopsum Damoetas; non te Germania Gallus. Carolus Hispanis cum jam dominetur in oris, Compulit Italiae decedere finibus hostes. Conseret ille manus: aude sperare beatos Moeri dies […].28
The Tyrolean Menippean Satire: A Regional Literary Genre?
The bucolic passage cited above adds to the diverse character of the text, which the modern reader might find confusing. The work contains serious panegyric sections as well as witty episodes, but also solemnly recalls the horrors of war. The emulation of Virgil’s Eclogues is certainly fitting for such an ambiguous topic (especially ecl. 1, 4 and 9), but the text remains a strange mixture in form, style and content. This evaluation holds true also for the satire from Innsbruck, the Regulus. To describe the two texts simply as occasional poetry, as it was produced en masse especially in the Jesuit colleges at this time, would 26 Trans: ‘Genius: Say, how many years do you wish for our royal couple? E[cho]: Grey hair. G: What do you breathe against those who wish them harm? E: My wrath. […] G: May this blessed marriage be a solace to all of Europe! E: Amen’. 27 S. Heyworth, ‘Pastoral’, in A Companion to Latin Literature, ed. S. Harrison (Oxford 2005), 148–158; R. R. Nauta, ‘Panegyric in Virgil’s Bucolics’, in Brill’s Companion to Greek and Latin Pastoral, ed. M. Fantuzzi and T. Papanghelis (Leiden 2006), 301–332. 28 Trans: ‘Tit. The fox shall defeat the hen and the wolf the fox, but the hunter Mopsus, approaching with a large club, will finish off the wolf; Damoetas will defeat Mopsus; the Gaul will not defeat you, Germany! While he already rules the Spanish coasts, Charles forced the enemy to withdraw from the Italian borders. He will engage in battle: have courage to hope in happy days, Moeris!’
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certainly not do these works justice. Choosing the form and generic conventions of the Menippean satire, they represent exceptional experiments of occasional literature, which, as far as I see, have no counterpart in the Neo-Latin literature of other regions.29 Both Regulus and In Hoc Signo show a complicated language and style and contain numerous complex historical, political, religious and literary allusions. In Hoc Signo mentions many of the famous events from the War of the Spanish Succession, Charles III’s coronation and Elisabeth Christine’s conversion to Catholicism,30 while the Regulus focuses mostly on Tyrol. In this, the two works correspond to the generic conventions of the satura Menippea. Allusions to contemporary historical events bring the Tyrolean satires closer to other Neo-Latin representatives of the genre, and, as De Smet asserts, the Menippea owes much of its popularity in the early modern period to the processing of contemporary political, religious and academic conflicts.31 Like other Menippean satires, the Tyrolean texts criticize contemporary circumstances – the horrors of the war in Central Europe – but they do not ‘aim to change this reality through mockery and ridicule’.32 Above all, the feature that sets the two texts apart from the genre of the satura Menippea is their panegyric intention. Neither do the two works correspond to related prosimetric genres, such as the paradoxical encomium or ‘histoires comiques’.33 Does this mean that we can call the two works a special type of panegyric Menippean satire that developed in Tyrol at the beginning of the eighteenth century ? The similarities between the works, especially concerning the framework narrative, suggest a close connection between the text from Innsbruck and Trento. Considering that they were printed within five years of each other and taking into account the close proximity of the two Jesuit colleges, one could certainly speculate that the authors of Regulus and In Hoc Signo are one and the same. In any case, the author of the Tridentine satire surely knew the Regulus and based his longer, more eloquent and various Menippea on the earlier panegyric text. Only two texts, possibly written by the same author, certainly do not constitute a specific regional subcategory of a genre. If, however, more works of this kind were detected in Tyrol, it might be possible to consider the development of a regional type of panegyric Menippean satire. Studying the history of the Latin Tyrolean literature as it is presented in the two volumes of the Tyrolis Latina, one can find two other prosimetric 29 Neither Kirk, Menippean Satire, nor De Smet, Menippean Satire, name a similar work. The same holds true for the introductory chapters mentioned above: IJsewijn, ‘Neo-Latin Satire’; IJsewijn and Sacré, Companion to Neo-Latin Studies, 2:74–75; Porter, ‘Neo-Latin Menippean Satires’. 30 See Rill, Karl VI., 26–90; on the latter also I. Peper, Konversionen im Umkreis des Wiener Hofes um 1700 (Vienna 2010), 117–184. 31 De Smet, Menippean Satire, 116. 32 De Smet, Menippean Satire, 13. 33 De Smet, Menippean Satire, 71–86; Porter, ‘Neo-Latin Menippean Satires’, 324–334.
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texts that can be compared to our Jesuit satires : The first work was, like In Hoc Signo, composed by members of the Jesuit College of Trento over fifty years before the above Menippean satires were produced, in 1648. The second work, Plausus Apollineus,34 was written on the occasion of the reception of Prince Ferdinand Franz, later Ferdinand IV, King of the Romans (1633–1654), and his sister Maria Anna (1634–1696), in Trento. The siblings were on their way to Madrid, where Maria Anna was to marry her uncle, Philipp IV of Spain (1605–1665). The Jesuits of the local college sang the praises of the bride-to-be and her brother with this prosimetric text, in which Apollo and the nine Muses as well as Neptune appear and praise the blessed marriage. The mixture of prose and verse sections could have inspired the later In Hoc Signo, which was, after all, also written in the same Jesuit College. Moreover, Plausus Apollineus also contains a long and detailed ekphrasis, the description of a triumphal arch, which was erected for the visit of Ferdinand and Maria Anna ([10–12]).35 The prosimetric form and the whole experimental character of the panegyric text may have served as a model for our Menippean satires from Innsbruck and Trento. Plausus Apollineus shows remarkable similarities to another prosimetric text from the end of the seventeenth century. The Helicon Oenipontanus, the Helicon of Innsbruck, was written by members of Innsbruck University and printed there in 1699.36 It was composed on the occasion of the visit of Princess Amalia Wilhelmine of Braunschweig-Lüneburg (1643–1742), who was to marry Joseph I, King of the Romans and later Holy Roman Emperor (1678–1711), in Vienna.37 The text is prosimetric and polymetric and, like the Plausus Apollineus, introduces Apollo as the main character, who encourages the Muses to praise the dedicatee, Princess Amalia. However, in contrast to the earlier panegyric prosimetric work, Helicon shows a more witty, even burlesque, character : Apollo, residing in the Tyrolean mountains, has forgotten his art, he has to scold the Muses repeatedly for their inappropriate attire, and the Anacreontic poet, who praises the marriage, does not do a better job.38 With this seemingly strange combination of panegyric and burlesque, Helicon may have inspired our Menippean satires. 34 Plausus Apollineus, quem Serenissimae Sponsae Mariannae Hispaniarum Reginae et Ferdinando Bohemiae Regi dederunt Musae Tridentinae Collegii S. J. (Trento 1648). 35 For a brief analysis of the text, see M. Korenjak, ‘Dichtung’, in Tyrolis Latina, 1:397–435, at 423–426. 36 Helicon Oenipontanus advenienti serenissimae reginae Wilhellminae Ameliae, sive universitas Oenipontana serenissimam reginam Wilhellminam Ameliam excipiens anno qVo renoVatVr Instar quVILae IVVentVS [!] DoMVs aVstrIaCae (Innsbruck 1699). For a detailed analysis of this text, see W. Kofler et al., ‘Eine Musentravestie an der Universität: Der Helicon Oenipontanus für Prinzessin Amalia Wilhelmine von Braunschweig-Lüneburg’, in Neulatein an der Universität Wien: Ein literarischer Streifzug, ed. C. Gastgeber and E. Klecker (Vienna 2008), 319–346. 37 Kofler et al., ‘Eine Musentravestie’, 321–323. 38 Kofler et al., ‘Eine Musentravestie’, 336–346.
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Both of these earlier prosimetric texts are shorter than the later Jesuit satires (18 pages each)39 and cannot be called saturae Menippeae because of the lack of a sophisticated framework narrative. But they could certainly have served as a model for the experimental, panegyric Tyrolean satires. All four texts were written on the occasion of a wedding (even the election of bishop Kaspar Ignaz Künigl in the Regulus is stylized as a divine marriage between the diocese and the holy man) and, apart from the Regulus, they were written on the occasion of a visit of the brides to Trento and Innsbruck, respectively. All four works show a prosimetric form and combine pan-European events with regional interests. The ambiguous character is similar, too : both in the Regulus and in In Hoc Signo, there are witty and humorous passages, as in the earlier two texts, passages which may seem even crude when dealing with the horrors of the War of the Spanish Succession. Nonetheless, the panegyric intention is certainly serious. To summarize, it can be noted that Regulus and In Hoc Signo are remarkable representatives of Menippean satires, even though their sometimes difficult language and allusions can at times be troublesome for the modern reader. With their accounts of contemporary political and religious events, descriptions of urban and rural landscapes as well as of works of art and architecture, they are certainly interesting for different kinds of studies. What is more, they can also shed light on the development of the literary genre of the satura Menippea in the early modern period, as they complement the macrohistorical concept of the genre with a new panegyric variety. To consider them merely interesting for regional history would certainly not do them justice, as they represent unique experiments in both Menippean satire and congratulatory poetry.
39 Korenjak, ‘Dichtung’, 424; Kofler et al., ‘Eine Musentravestie’, 329.
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Response by Irena Bratičević
Johanna Luggin analyses two texts belonging to Tyrolean Latin literature which can be defined as Menippean satires – Regulus ab Aquila exaltatus (Innsbruck, 1703) and In Hoc Signo (Trento, 1708) – so as to apply the microhistorical approach to them, observing in them a specific regional development of the genre. These texts conform to the conventions of the genre in terms of particular characteristics, especially satire ; however, considering the fact that they originated as congratulatory messages on certain social occasions (being appointed bishop ; marriage), they flout these very conventions with their strong panegyric character and become representatives specific and exclusive to Tyrolean literature. Literary historiography studying literature in Latin written on Croatian soil from the beginning of the fifteenth to the end of the nineteenth century has yet to come across a text which could be classified as Menippean satire. What it has encountered when the satirical tone is concerned are traditional forms such as satire (sermo), epigram and macaronic poetry. Therefore, in this case it is not possible to draw a comparison between Tyrolean and Croatian Neo-Latin literature at a genre level. However, some broad parallels could be found in the specificity of the two texts Luggin interprets, that is, in the fact that genre experimentation took place within the confines of occasional literature, and then we could try to find out how open to experimentation Croatian Latinists who wrote occasional poetry were. Pavao Ritter Vitezović, the author who wrote occasional verses, thus becoming the first professional poet on Croatian soil, bears the title of the greatest experimenter in the Neo-Latin literature of North Croatia, and his writing coincides with that of the two Menippean satires in Tyrol.40 In the heyday of occasional poetry in the north, in the second half of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth centuries, only the chrono gram and the acrostic were employed for such purposes. Authors remained faithful to a number of traditional forms of occasional poetry : elegies, hexameter poems, epigrams and lyrical stanzas, and, in the case of prose, epideictic rhetoric. Inaugural congratulatory messages to bishops in verse combine words of welcome, commendation of merits and virtues, biographical elements, devotional formulas and good wishes.41 40 For his experiments and combinatorial poetry in more detail, see G. Stepanić, ‘Formalni eksperimenti u latinskom pjesništvu Pavla Rittera Vitezovića (1652–1713)’ [Formal experiments in the Latin poetry of Pavao Ritter Vitezović (1652–1713)] in Pavao Ritter Vitezović i njegovo doba (1652–1713) [Pavao Ritter Vitezović and his age (1652–1713)], ed. A. Jembrih and I. Jukić (Zagreb 2016), 333–348; and her paper in this volume. 41 Latin verses addressed to bishops and other occasional poetry in the north were analyzed by I. Galić Bešker, ‘Latinsko prigodno pjesništvo sjeverne Hrvatske u 19. stoljeću: Fond prigodnica u Nacionalnoj
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In literature in Latin written in the south of present-day Croatia, especially in Dubrovnik, where it had the longest spell, the corpus of occasional poetry existed since its humanist beginnings. However, at the end of the eighteenth century and in the first half of the nineteenth century, this kind of poetic work became dominant and present in print more than ever before, as a result of the printing office having opened in the city in 1783. Poetic contributions to such collections remained conventional in terms of form and content ; what is specific about them is that in the editions of that time poems in Latin were paired with poems in Italian, which was the language of intellectual communication of the cultural elite, and poems in the national, Croatian language. This trend, innovative in relation to the practice hitherto carried out, is also evident in congratulatory collections on the occasion of inaugurations of bishops,42 and those which congratulate members of locally influential families on entering into marriage.43 As far as satirical poetry is concerned, there were two special occurrences in the literature of Latinist authors which might be worth mentioning. The first one is a small cycle of epigrams by Marin Zlatarić, in which every epigram describes a single fellow citizen of his, then, in 1784, a member of one of the government bodies of the Republic of Ragusa : each epigram has a line from Scripture as a motto and even though not all of the poems are necessarily satirical in tone, most of them paint a negative picture of somebody’s character using biblical quotes ironically. The second one is admittedly more expected – macaronic poetry. It was written in the south by Đuro Ferić, who combined Latin with Italian, and in the north by Martin Sabolović and Franjo Milašinović, both combining Latin words with Croatian ones. In conclusion, considering the fact that the Menippean satire Luggin writes about originated within a Jesuit context, it is possible to examine the genre repertoire of Croatian Jesuit authors and draw attention to the fact that it is dominated by devotional and occasional poetry, which transcends the local context (Lukarević’s treatment of the i sveučilišnoj knjižnici’ [Latin occasional poetry in nineteenth-century northern Croatia: The corpus of occasional poems in the National and University Library], PhD Dissertation (Zagreb, 2010). 42 The anthology for Ivan Skakoc when he was appointed Bishop of Hvar in 1823, in which appear the verses by such names as Urbano Appendini, Antun Krša and Inocent Čulić; poems for Antun Giuriceo when he was appointed to the Dubrovnik bishopric, on the occasion of which Krša, Beninj Albertini, Rafo Radelja, Antun Sivrić, Antun Liepopilli and others contributed to the 1831 collection; the 1837 edition for Beninj Albertini, after he was appointed Bishop of Shkodër, containing the Latin poetry of Sivrić, Liepopilli, Krša brothers, Đuro Hidža, Antun Kaznačić and others. 43 E.g. the 1816 Pucić–Gučetić wedding, with Latin poems by Đuro Ferić and the Appendini brothers; and the 1826 Gagić–Lučić wedding occasioned the anthology to add to Italian, Latin, French and Croatian verses those of classical Greek, penned by Nikola Andrović; it was an isolated occurrence of the young poet who marked several social events with Greek epigrams, which his contemporaries would then render into other abovementioned languages.
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death of Mary Stuart, his and Mondegaj’s congratulatory messages to the Spanish court) and contains rare genre excursions (Lukarević’s Stanislaus Kostka, one of rare printed dramas ; Ignjat Đurđević’s metamorphoses) and formal experiments (Đurđević’s Latin sonnet on Catherine of Alexandria44). These poets preceded the period which is considered to be a new great revival of Ragusan and Croatian Latinist literature, headed by the Jesuits Ruđer Bošković, Rajmund Kunić and Bernard Džamanjić, authors who adhered to the traditional forms and, as its distinguished members, followed the poetics of the Roman Academy of Arcadia.
44 For its analysis, see G. Stepanić, ‘Đurđevićev latinski sonet i tradicija latinskih soneta’ [Đurđević’s Latin sonnet and the tradition of Latin sonnets], Tabula 12 (2010), 124–137.
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The Impact of the Jesuit Stage on Other Theatre Forms in Tyrol
Until the second half of the eighteenth century, a lively Latin theatre tradition existed in the territory of historical Tyrol. In the Jesuit colleges in Innsbruck (founded in 1562), Hall in Tyrol (1573) and Trento (1625), Latin plays were performed on various occasions over the years. Thanks to the efforts undertaken by Zwanowetz and Tilg,1 this theatre practice has been largely examined, especially the development of the Innsbruck stage, where representative programmes could be reconstructed for ludi autumnales (public performances at the beginning or the end of the school year). However, little scholarly work has so far been devoted to the relationships of these stages with other Tyrolean theatre activities in the early modern period. Whereas the influence of court theatre in Innsbruck on the Jesuit colleges is generally well known,2 the interdependencies between Jesuit theatre and popular theatre institutions, which have a long and diverse tradition in Tyrol, are often neglected in modern scholarship on Jesuit theatre. In older publications and contributions on popular theatre, mutual influences have occasionally been observed,3 but an in-depth inquiry has yet to be conducted. The status quaestionis of regional research corresponds, then, to a tendency in Jesuit studies in general : for a long time, the prevalent approach to literary studies of Jesuit theatre was to treat it as a hermetically closed field. Interdependencies or similarities 1 G. Zwanowetz, ‘Das Jesuitentheater in Innsbruck und Hall von den Anfängen bis zur Aufhebung des Ordens’, PhD Dissertation (Vienna 1982); S. Tilg, ‘Die Entwicklung des Jesuitendramas vom 16. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert: Eine Fallstudie am Beispiel Innsbruck’, in Das lateinische Drama der Frühen Neuzeit: Exemplarische Einsichten in Praxis und Theorie, ed. R. F. Glei and R. Seidel (Tübingen 2008), 182–200; S. Tilg, ‘Innsbrucker Sonderwege im Jesuitendrama des 18. Jahrhunderts?’, in Europäische Schauplätze des frühneuzeitlichen Theaters, ed. C. Meier and A. Kemper (Münster 2011), 137–151. 2 The courtly life of the Tyrolean Habsburgs, strongly influenced by Italian baroque, led to the peak of the opera in Innsbruck. As a result of this, the significance of music and dance on the Jesuit stages of Innsbruck and Hall increased. Cf. Zwanowetz, Das Jesuitentheater in Innsbruck und Hall, 85–92, 148. 3 N. Nessler, ‘Das Jesuitendrama in Tirol. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Schuldramas’, in LVI. Programm des k.k. Gymnasiums zu Brixen (1906), 7–37, at 12; K. Lechner, ‘Geschichte des Gymnasiums’, in Programme des k.k. Staats-Gymnasiums in Innsbruck (1907–14), 3–207 [the eight sections in the programmes are numbered consecutively], at 98–100; E. Thurnher, Tiroler Drama und Tiroler Theater (Innsbruck 1968), 31; E. Schönwiese, Das Volksschauspiel im nördlichen Tirol: Renaissance und Barock (Vienna 1975), 31, 261; Zwanowetz, Das Jesuitentheater in Innsbruck und Hall, 18; E. Hastaba, ‘Das Volksschauspiel im Oberinntal’, PhD Dissertation (Innsbruck 1986), 21–30.
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with developments of the contemporary vernacular drama were often merely discussed parenthetically.4 In offering a study of the impact of Jesuit theatre on trends and themes in Tyrolean theatre more widely, this paper aims to take a step towards a more integrated view of the Society’s literary production within a broader cultural context. Specifically, it will focus on three fields, the theatre practice of non-Jesuit educational institutions, student theatre and popular theatre. Although interdependencies can already be detected in the sixteenth and seventeenth century,5 all the examples presented here are from the eighteenth century because the printed material from this period offers a convenient starting point for the examination. This choice is also justified by the fact that the printing of plays facilitated their distribution and therefore arguably reinforced their influence.
The Theatre of Other Educational Institutions
It is certain that the successful school theatre implemented by the Jesuits all over the Catholic lands acted as a role model for other educational institutions. In fact, Jesuit influence in the theatre practice of other Catholic orders in the German lands have occasionally been identified.6 As for the Tyrolean area, the impact of Jesuit theatre has already been presumed for the school theatres of the Marienberg Benedictines in Meran, the Augustinian canons in Neustift and the prince-bishop school in Brixen.7 Focus will be placed on the latter. In the early seventeenth century, the former cathedral school in Brixen had been transformed into a Gymnasium modelled on Jesuit schools.8 The teachers used the same 4 R. Wimmer, ‘Neuere Forschungen zum Jesuitentheater des deutschen Sprachbereichs: Ein Bericht (1945–1982)’, Daphnis 12 (1983), 584–692, at 677–681. Concerning the impact of Jesuit theatre on other theatre forms, Wimmer’s statements are all in all still up-to-date. 5 The Judith given on the Hall Jesuit stage in 1645 was probably repeated on the popular stage in Schwaz in 1655. Cf. Schönwiese 1975, 22. Also Anderl von Rinn, a frequent popular plot during the 17th century, is recorded for the first time on the Hall Jesuit stage in 1621. Cf. J.-M. Valentin, Le théâtre des Jésuites dans les pays de langue allemande: Répertoire bibliographique, 2 vols. (Stuttgart 1983–84), no. 862. An important meditator between the Innsbruck College and popular theatre in the 17th century was Andreas Brunner S.J. with his Bauernspile; cf. Zwanowetz, Das Jesuitentheater in Innsbruck und Hall, 68–72. 6 This regards in particular the success of Jesuit plays on the stages of the Premonstratensians and the Benedictines: M. Oberst, Exercitium, Propaganda und Repräsentation: Die Dramen-, Periochen- und Librettosammlung der Prämonstratenserreichsabtei Marchtal (1657 bis 1778) (Stuttgart 2010), 22; H. Boberski, Das Theater der Benediktiner an der alten Universität Salzburg (1617–1778) (Vienna 1978), 185–192. 7 Thurnher, Tiroler Drama und Tiroler Theater, 50. 8 S. Tilg, ‘Theater’, in Tyrolis Latina: Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur in Tirol, 2 vols., ed. M. Korenjak et al. (Vienna 2012), 2:660–700, at 682.
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school books that the Jesuit pedagogues were accustomed to working with ; from the 1750s onwards the classes were organized after those of Jesuit schools.9 As for school theatre in the Gymnasium, the evidence of performances begins after 1735.10 Its heyday can be seen in the time from 1745 to 1761. Throughout this period plays are preserved from every year except 1755 and 1760.11 The peak of Brixen school theatre is tightly bound with Joseph Resch (1716–1782), who was appointed prefect of the school in 1742.12 His plays, which were staged in the theatre hall of the Brixen Hofburg, display large variety in terms of subject matter and form. Resch dealt with traditional biblical and hagiographic themes as well as with material from Christian salvation history, but also with pagan subjects. Some of the plays were performed consistently in Latin, some alternate Latin verses with German interludes, while others are written in German, but contain Latin choruses. The wide range of topics in particular illustrates the close bonds between the playwright and the ludi of the Society of Jesus. Resch’s plays show the same typological characteristics as the dramas that Jesuit rhetoric teachers staged in their colleges. Some of the plots dealt with by Resch had been performed numerous times on the Jesuit stages of the seventeenth and eighteenth century (e.g. Scanderbegus staged by Resch in 1756, Constantini hostia staged in 1757 and 1758).13 When Resch sought to exploit the Jesuit tradition for his own pedagogic ends, he was probably able to rely on personal experiences. After finishing the Gymnasium in Brixen, he continued his education in the early 1730s in Innsbruck, possibly as a pupil at the Jesuit school, but certainly as a student of the university.14 It is very likely that he experienced Jesuit theatre during this time. 9 K. Mutschlechner, ‘Das Jesuitentheater in Brixen im 18. Jahrhundert’, BA Thesis (Padua 1975), 32. 10 Mutschlechner, ‘Das Jesuitentheater in Brixen im 18. Jahrhundert’, 39. Performances in older times can be assumed, since Latin theatre is documented in Brixen already in the early 17th century. Cf. the periocha of a play about Saint Cassian from 1625, preserved in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, 4° Bavar. 2197 I, Beibd. 77. 11 Mutschlechner, ‘Das Jesuitentheater in Brixen im 18. Jahrhundert’, 41. 12 For Resch, cf. Mutschlechner, ‘Das Jesuitentheater in Brixen im 18. Jahrhundert’; F. Grass, “Der Brixner Geschichtsforscher Dr. Joseph Resch und seine Innsbrucker Antrittsvorlesung von 1761“, in Festschrift Landeshauptmann Prof. Dr. Hans Gamper, 3 vols. ed. by F. Grass (Innsbruck 1962), 3: 167–194. E. Sauser, ‘Resch, Joseph’, in Biographisch-bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, 38 vols. so far, ed. F. W. Bautz (Herzberg 1970-), 8:56–57; and L. Šubarić et al., ‘Geschichtsschreibung’, in Tyrolis latina, 2:726–777, at 756–758. 13 For these subjects on the Jesuit stages cf. Valentin, Répertoire, 1007, 978. 14 There is sample evidence that Resch was a student of the philosophy faculty in Innsbruck from the school year 1733/34 onwards and that he later studied canon law, Die Matrikel der Universität Innsbruck. Matricula philosophica, 3 vols., ed. F. Huter et al. (Innsbruck 1752–1761), 2: 177. Die Matrikel der Universität Innsbruck. Matricula theologica, 3 vols., ed. J. Kollmann et al. (Innsbruck 1764–1783), 3: 152. If he was a pupil of the higher classes of the Jesuit school in the previous years, as proposed by Tilg, “Theater,“
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In this period the Kempten Jesuit Anton Claus (1691–1754) was teacher of rhetorica in Innsbruck and therefore responsible for the performances at the end of the school year.15 Claus, who was based at the Innsbruck College from 1730 to 1734, is considered the most significant playwright of the Tyrolean colleges in the eighteenth century.16 The four tragedies he staged in Innsbruck as autumn plays were printed in Augsburg in 1741 under the title Tragoediae ludis autumnalibus datae.17 This publication, which explicitly draws on Pierre Corneille’s poetological reflections, made an important contribution to the acceptance and distribution of classicist principles and worldly contents on the school stages of the German-speaking areas. How strongly Resch was influenced by Jesuit theatre can be illustrated by a comparison of some of his plays with Anton Claus’s tragedies. Resch’s plays based on ancient historiography and myth, Jugurtha and Agamemnon,18 follow the same didactic programme as the Tragoediae ludis autumnalibus datae.19 Both playwrights strove to diffuse general ethical values and exemplary human behaviour by presenting well-known episodes from pagan antiquity. In turn, the traditional aim of Jesuit public performances, the strengthening of Catholic faith, faded into the background. However, Resch did not merely take over general tendencies from Claus and the contemporary Jesuit stage : he used the Tragoediae as specific dramatic models. His reception of Scipio sui victor is a good example. The play, staged by Claus for the first time in the college of Freiburg im Üechtland in 1725, is set during the Second Punic War, specifically during the Roman conquest of the Iberian port New Carthage in 209 BC. In the opening scene the Roman army already has control over large parts of the city. The leader, Scipio Africanus, gives the order to attack a nearby fortress where the Punic commanders are entrenched. In Resch’s Jugurtha, staged in 1746, the initial position is analogous : the Roman army under the leadership of Marius has made important gains 682, it is unfortunately impossible to prove (the Catalogi personarum et officiorum of the upper German Jesuit province are missing in the Archiv der Deutschen Provinz der Jesuiten for the relevant period). It is, however, very likely that Resch was a pupil of the school: In the Brixen Gymnasium he would only have been able to attend the grammar classes, the classes for poesis and rhetorica would be thus missing in his formation. We have evidence that talented pupils in Brixen were sent to Innsbruck to complete their school education. See Mutschlechner, “Das Jesuitentheater in Brixen im 18. Jahrhundert,” 26–27. 15 For Claus cf. Valentin, Répertoire, 1036–1037; and H. Grünewald, ‘Claus, Anton’, in Diccionario histórico de la compañía de Jesús, 6 vols., ed. C. E. O’Neill and J. M. Domínguez (Rome 2001), 1:822. 16 Tilg, ‘Theater’, 672. 17 A. Claus, Tragoediae ludis autumnalibus datae (Augsburg 1741). 18 The manuscripts of the plays are preserved in the Library of the Brixen seminary (Priesterseminar), F 20 resp. F 22. 19 A copy of the Tragoediae ludis autumnalibus datae, possibly used by Resch, is still preserved in the school library of the Brixen episcopal Gymnasium: Gymnasialbibliothek XIX K 29.
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in the frontline area of Cirta and while the Numidians are under siege, the leader gives the signal to attack. The vocabulary Resch uses for the first speech to a significant extent is taken from Scipio sui victor. Scipio : Romane miles, cuius invicta manu una occupata nocte Carthago iacet complenda nunc victoria et, quas messuit hesterna nox, iam colligat lauros dies. Arx una, turris unica est victis super, quo Mago se recepit et adhuc insolens nec clade tanta domitus insultat tibi. Evertite receptaculum hostis ultimum discatque Poenus, quid etiam iuvene duce veterana Latii militis possit manus! Det impetendis moenibus signum tuba! (Claus, Scipio sui victor, 1–11)
Marius : Romane miles, cuius invicta manu victae tot urbes Romuli nomen timent. Age, o propago clara! generosam indolem ostende factis, gloriam et laudes meas superare tenta, nominis memor tui aliquid Quiritum spiritu dignum gere. Complenda iam victoria, urbs una est super, quo se Iugurtha recipit, et adhuc insolens, nec clade tanta domitus insultat tibi. Dubitare segnes Martius prohibet furor. Stringamus enses, impiger in hoste rue […] Utamur animis, dum calent, signum tuba det impetendis moenibus. Ad arma socii! (Resch, Jugurtha, 1–18)
Perax : Romane ductor, impetum ad breves moras suspende. Parce sanguini […] (Claus, Scipio sui victor, 12–13)
Sulla : Romane miles! Quem capis quaeso impetum, suspende paulum, sanguini parcas velim. (Resch, Jugurtha, 19–20)
Perax : Mihi obtulit fortuna, qua flectam virum, satis potentem machinam. Nempe unica captiva facile capiet hostilem ducem. (Claus, Scipio sui victor, 33–35)
Sulla : Mihi obtulit fortuna, quo flectam viros, satis potentem machinam, nempe unicus captivus est […] Captivus iste capiet hostiles duces. (Resch, Jugurtha, 26–30)
The course of action and the organization of the dialogue in the first act of Jugurtha are taken from Claus. Just as in Scipio sui victor, a colleague of the commander asks for the suspension of the attack, which the commander accepts. In the next scene a representative from the opposition arrives who is searching for a missing member of the royal family. The leader, however, does not know anything about this figure’s destiny. In the sequel it is revealed that the Roman (respectively the Roman ally), who had asked to postpone
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the attack, has captured the Carthaginian respectively Numidian figure and offers to release her if the enemy declares its capitulation. This situation initiates the central conflict of the drama. Resch picked up plot structures from Claus and recontextualized them with minor modifications. In addition, appropriations of vocabulary and phrases can be found in many places throughout the first act. Only with the beginning of the second act of Jugurtha does a more autonomous course of action begin. In Agamemnon suimet victor, performed as the autumn play in 1750, a similar procedure can be observed. Resch adopted the macrostructure of Scipio sui victor and transferred it into a new narrative. In both dramas the title character is a military leader who falls in love with a prisoner. Eventually he is forced to realize that the beloved woman has to be set free and returned to her fiancé (Scipio) or father (Agamemnon) in order not to endanger the political mission of the hero. Resch’s reception of Claus reveals recycling strategies characteristic of early modern school drama in general. The teachers who had to organize performances were particularly reliant on older dramatic texts that constituted a repertory for subjects, motifs and language. The appropriation of ‘prefabricated’ features enabled the teachers to provide dramas ready to be performed as often as required. The concrete interaction of a school playwright with a contemporary template, however, can rarely be demonstrated as neatly as in the case of Resch’s intertextual work with the tragedies of Claus. Another general trend in the development of school drama can be elucidated with an example from non-Jesuit Tyrolean school stages. In the last two decades before the suppression of the old Society of Jesus in the German-speaking area we can observe the tendency of teachers to appropriate not only single narratives and turns of phrase, but entire dramas. Instead of producing their own plays, they helped themselves from a more or less stable canon of printed texts.20 In Tyrol, this repertory of plays was attractive for other educational institutions too. The Hermenegildus by Charles Porée (1675–1741) was performed in 1775 in the Augustinian canon monastery of Neustift. The periocha that provides a witness to the staging of the play informs us that it was a German translation of the tragedy by the French playwright21. Porée’s Tragoediae, edited posthumously in 1745, were popular sources for the late Jesuit drama canon.22 Since the periocha does not provide any contextual information, we do not know on what occasion the play was performed. The actors were presumably the pupils of the school associated with the complex. 20 F. Pohle, Glaube und Beredsamkeit: Katholisches Schultheater in Jülich-Berg, Ravenstein und Aachen (1601–1817) (Münster 2010), 297–310. 21 The periocha is preserved in Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum (hereafter TLMF), FB 374/4. 22 C. Porée, Tragoediae (Paris 1745).
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By staging the play of Porée, the Neustift Augustinians returned to one of the most emblematic subject matters of baroque Jesuit theatre, the story of the Visigoth Prince Hermenegild who converts from Arianism to orthodox Christianity and is therefore pursued by his father and his brother. On the basis of a typological equation of the Arian heresy with reformist Christianity, the Jesuits brought the story into the service of their propaganda fides. The numbers of performances proves a long-lasting success : Staged for the first time in Seville in 1580, the subject gained popularity especially in the version produced by Nicolas Caussin (1583–1651), which was included into the author’s Tragoediae sacrae from 1620. On the Central European Jesuit stages, Caussin’s version had an enormous Nachleben.23 In his Répertoire, Jean Marie Valentin lists 34 performances in the German-speaking area between 1622 and 1769.24 In Tyrol, too, the subject had been represented previously. In 1679 the Innsbruck Jesuits staged a Hermenegildus at the end of the school year.25 It is likely that the representation of the subject in Neustift was also mediated by the Tyrolean Jesuit colleges. The printed editions of Jesuit plays circulated quickly within the network of the order.26 We can posit that it was through these structures of mediation that the book came to Tyrol. After the suppression of the order, parts of the inventory of the Jesuit libraries came into the possession of other orders. Perhaps this was also the destiny of the copy of Porée’s tragedies used by the choragus in Neustift in 1775.27
Student Theatre
Alongside pupils of the Gymnasium, students frequently made appearance as actors at the public autumn plays of the Innsbruck College. The demanding lead roles in particular were often given to members of the university. The enthusiasm for theatrical activity, 23 G. Zanlonghi, ‘The Production of the Tragedy Hermengildus: The Theme of the Prince-Saint’, in The Jesuits II: Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts 1540–1773, ed. J. W. O’Malley (Toronto 2006), 536–549. 24 Valentin, Répertoire, 988. 25 The periocha is conserved in TLMF, FB 572/13. 26 Cf. F. Rädle, ‘Italienische Jesuitendramen auf bayerischen Bühnen des 16. Jahrhunderts’, in Acta conventus Neo-Latini Bononiensis, ed. R. J. Schoeck (Binghampton 1985), 303–312; C. Questa, ‘Il modello senecano nel teatro gesuitico (lingua, metro, strutture)’, in Musica e storia 7 (1999), 141–181, at 144. Evidence for the transfer of Jesuit dramas within the network of the order in the 18th century is given by the editions arranged by German Jesuits of Porée’s Tragoediae (first published in Paris in 1745, reprinted in Dillingen in 1746) and Giuseppe Carpani’s Tragoediae sex (published together for the first time in Rome in 1745, reprinted next year both in Dillingen and in Munich). 27 However, no signature by a previous owner can be found in the copy preserved in Augustinerbibliothek Neustift, 2767.
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which was thus conserved even after the end of a pupil’s school career, bore fruit even outside of institutional contexts. On account of the lack of institutional organization, barely anything is known about these performances. The only references preserved are due to Maria Theresa’s restrictive cultural policy. The ban of popular theatre from 1751 met with spirited resistance from the population ; in Tyrol, the ban was often bypassed because the religious authorities supported spiritual plays, and also because the regional administrative authorities carried out the regulation only in a half-hearted manner.28 From 1765 to 1772 popular theatre was again allowed with the only exception of Passion plays.29 However, groups that wanted to stage a play had to ask for official permission. Since these requests are documented in the council minutes of the Tyrolean gubernium, we have evidence of performances carried out by students. All of them took place in the 1760s and 1770s and can perhaps be seen as a substitute for school theatre performances, which were no longer a part of the new curriculum implemented in 1764 ;30 the high number of plays for which applications were made from 1766 onwards can be explained by the fact that performances were allowed again after fifteen years of prohibition.31 An entry from May 1766 records the staging of a play by Innsbruck students.32 In 1768 some academics requested to stage Anton Claus’s tragedy Martinus during the holidays.33 The council approved the request on the condition that the group paid 24 fl. for the relief fund.34 From the following year a similar recording is preserved.35 The play by Anton Claus is the only one for which we have a title. We can assume, though, that in many cases plays from Jesuit editions were staged, firstly because these plays were accessible in the library of the college and secondly because it was certainly an advantage – if not a necessity – to choose plays which clearly conveyed Christian moral values. Perhaps otherwise permission would not have been granted. The plays were probably staged in German ; Latin performances cannot, however, be excluded.
28 U. Simek, Das Berufstheater in Innsbruck im 18. Jahrhundert: Theater im Zeichen der Aufklärung in Tirol (Vienna 1992), 111–112. 29 Sikora, ‘Zur Geschichte der Volksschauspiele in Tirol’, Zeitschrift des Ferdinandeums für Tirol und Vorarlberg 3:50 (1906), 339–372, at 342–343. 30 Tilg, ‘Die Entwicklung des Jesuitendramas’, 196. 31 Cfr. Sikora, ‘Zur Geschichte der Volksschauspiele in Tirol’, 356–357. 32 Tiroler Landesarchiv, Älteres Gubernium, Gubernialratsprotokoll 1766, I: 738. 33 No Martinus by Claus is preserved. Probably the entry refers to the play Charitas christiana published in the collection A. Claus, Exercitationes theatrales (Ingolstadt/Augsburg 1750). The lead figure of the play is Martinius, one of the founders of the Brothers Hospitallers. 34 Tiroler Landesarchiv, Älteres Gubernium, Gubernialratsprotokoll 1768, II, 657. 35 Tiroler Landesarchiv, Älteres Gubernium, Gubernialratsprotokoll 1769, II, 541.
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Popular Theatre Groups
A clear distinction between these student performances and more institutionalized forms of popular theatre is made impossible by the sorry state of the sources. Presumably, a certain number of actors and organizers overlapped. During the holidays the pupils and the students may have used their experiences gained on the Jesuit stage in their home villages and thus influenced local lay theatre companies. According to Fischnaler, some of the popular performances were carried out under the ‘silent inspection’ of the Jesuits.36 Evidence for popular theatre practices in Tyrol can be found long before the arrival of the Jesuits. As early as 1340 an Easter play is documented in Lienz.37 Around 1500 a vivid tradition of Passion plays existed. Towards the middle of the sixteenth century a whole series of performances of biblical plays is documented in North Tyrol, amongst which we find subjects such as Joseph in Egypt (Innsbruck 1540) or The Prodigal Son (Innsbruck 1551),38 which would become popular in early Tyrolean Jesuit theatre too. With the rise of the Jesuits’ theatrical activity, we have to reckon with a gradually increasing assimilation of popular activities to the Jesuit practice ;39 starting from the late seventeenth century isolated references can be found.40 In the eighteenth century, due to the relative wealth of sources in North Tyrol, influences can be clearly shown. First of all we can observe a trend towards formal assimilation. Some of the dramas preserved as manuscripts have a structure similar to Jesuit plays. A good example is the play Ansberta, Beispiel der sinnreichen christ-ehlichen Liebe by a certain Joseph Strobl, written possibly in the area of Kiefersfelden, datable to the first half of the eighteenth century.41 The man36 K. Fischnaler, Innsbrucker Chronik mit Bildschmuck nach alten Originalen und Rekonstruktions-Zeichnungen, vol. 3: Wissenschafts- und Literatur-Chronik (Innsbruck 1930), 77–78; cf. also Zwanowetz, Das Jesuitentheater in Innsbruck und Hall, 126–127; and Hastaba, Das Volksschauspiel im Oberinntal, 23. 37 N. Hölzl, Theatergeschichte des östlichen Tirol (Vienna 1966), 24–29. 38 Schönwiese, Das Volksschauspiel im nördlichen Tirol, 20–22. 39 Thurnher, Tiroler Drama und Tiroler Theater, 31. 40 Thurnher, Tiroler Drama und Tiroler Theater, 56; S. M. Prem, Geschichte der neueren deutschen Literatur in Tirol, vol. 1: Vom Beginn des 17. bis zur Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Innsbruck 1922), 29. The performances mentioned by the two publications for the 17th century and the early 18th century – a Joseph in Axams in 1677 and 1683, a Dominikus in Jenbach in 1707 – are, however, not necessarily influenced by the Jesuits. Joseph was, as I have shown, a subject of popular theatre already before the arrival of the Jesuits. Saint Dominic is not registered in Valentin’s Répertoire as a Jesuit matter. 41 Preserved in Archiv der Ritterspiele Kiefersfelden, no. 7. A copy can be found in TLMF, FB 82075. The plays preserved in the archive of the Bavarian border place can be clearly assigned to the theatre tradition of the Tyrolean Unterland; cf. Schönwiese, Das Volksschauspiel im nördlichen Tirol, 44. Similar is the structure of the Alexius given in Wattens in 1763, whose manuscript and periocha template are preserved in TLMF, FB 573.
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uscript opens with an argumentum (the author uses Latin terminology in the paratext), followed by a prologus that is intended to be partly recited (recitatio) and partly sung (aria) by allegoric figures. For the singing parts the author uses predominantly doggerel verses and folksy strophic forms. The main text, divided into five acts, is composed in Alexandrines, the vernacular equivalent of the iambic trimeter, which the Jesuit tragedy writers normally used. Throughout the play we can find again interludes in folksy verses.42 We can also observe an increasing sophistication of the performances. Following the Jesuit model these groups started to distribute periochae, just like the ones of the Hall and Innsbruck Jesuits, printed by the publishing house of Wagner in Innsbruck. The periochae were published predominately in German, but their structure corresponded to school theatre programmes (which were regularly bilingual). As in late Jesuit theatre, the libretti of the interludes are often bound together with the periochae. Even more striking are the influences visible in the subjects and motifs. A Eustachius martyr was performed by the Innsbruck Jesuits in 1764 and appeared again two, respectively four, years later on the popular stages of Axams and Hall.43 Other cases are less transparent. In the village of Mils, situated twelve kilometres east of Innsbruck, two performances are documented in 1766.44 In the periochae the organizers of the performance are called ehrsame Gemeinde. We should assume this applies to a local theatre association, which was maybe in contact with the Jesuits of the nearby town of Hall. In the spring of that year, within the framework of the adoration of the Virgin Mary, a Ramirus was staged ;45 in the summer months performances of a Hirlanda followed. Both subjects had been present on the Jesuit stages for a long time. The legend of the Asturian king Ramirus who beheads his daughters in order to save them from violation by Moorish aggressors is documented for the first time in Innsbruck in 1639,46 and in 42 Similar is the structure of the Alexius given in Wattens in 1763, whose manuscript and periocha template can be found in TLMF, FB 573. The manuscripts of popular performances (except for Ansberta) end with the Jesuit slogan O[mnia] A[d] M[aiorem] D[ei] G[loriam]; cf. Hastaba, Das Volksschauspiel im Oberinntal, 25. 43 Valentin, Répertoire, no. 691; Sikora, ‘Zur Geschichte der Volksschauspiele in Tirol’, 361–372. Already in 1613 an Eustachius had been performed on the Innsbruck stage. 44 Evidence for many of the following performances is given by periochae. One should point out, though, that in some cases when periochae were printed, the performance could not take place. However, this circumstance does not affect the purpose of this paper, i.e. to demonstrate the appeal of Jesuit theatre. 45 Valentin, Répertoire, 986 identifies him as Garcia V Ramirez, king of Navarre. The figure should not be confused with the several other bearers of the names Ramirus and Garcia present in Jesuit theatre. 46 The periocha with the title Ramirus sive praeillustre miraculum is conserved in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, 2062852 P.o.lat. 1637-1#Beibd.6. The play may have been repeated in Innsbruck in 1655; cf. Zwanowetz, Das Jesuitentheater in Innsbruck und Hall, 186. Valentin, Répertoire does not mention either of the two performances.
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the course of the following years at various southern German and Swiss colleges. The Hirlanda plays, which present the character of the faithful wife,47 are based on a lively tradition in prose. The subject matter was articulated in literature for the first time by René de Ceriziers (1603–1662) in 1640. In the second half of the seventeenth century, translations into English, Italian and German were produced. The Jesuit colleges on whose stages the story was frequently produced made an important contribution to the diffusion of the subject in the Catholic area. As early as 1657 a Hirlanda is documented for the Ingolstadt stage.48 Further representations are known from Austrian, Swiss and southern German colleges. Among popular communities the success of the plot was immense. Documented for the first time in Mutters in 1738, approximately twenty performances (respectively applications for performances) are known from Tyrolean villages until the end of the nineteenth century.49 One can only speculate about the relationship between these two performances in Mils and the Tyrolean Jesuit colleges. Ramirus belongs to a series of subject matters which appear on the local Jesuit stages in the seventeenth century and which are documented about a hundred years later in popular theatre.50 The periochae, maybe even the manuscripts of the old school performances, were probably still available in the colleges. We could assume that they were plucked off the shelves and adapted. It is also possible, however, that these subjects were taken up by popular theatre groups already in the seventeenth century, but were only mentioned in sources in later times. The second example, the subject of Hirlanda, shows no evidence of being performed on Jesuit stages of 47 While Hirlanda’s husband, the Breton king Artus, is at war, the leading character is malignly charged with infidelity and forced to flee by her brother in law, the usurper Gerald. After many years abroad she comes back home, where she is sentenced to death at the instigation of Gerald. Only the sudden appearance of her presumedly dead son saves her life and informs Artus about the truth of the situation. E. M. Szarota, Das Jesuitendrama im deutschen Sprachgebiet: Eine Periochenedition, 6 vols. (Munich 1983), 3:2281–2283. 48 Valentin, Répertoire, no. 5924. 49 Sikora, ‘Zur Geschichte der Volksschauspiele in Tirol’, 361–372. Especially fruitful reception is documented in the South Tyrolean village of Laas. In 1791 the plot was staged eight times in the version of Johannes Ulrich von Federspiel (1739–1794); cf. the edition by T. Bernhard, Johannes Ulrich von Federspiel. Hirlanda: Durch falschheit zu feir verdamte Unschuld. Edition des Legendenspiels nach der Laaser Handschrift von 1791 (Vienna 1999). 50 Besides the performance in Mils, Ramirus is mentioned in Heimfels im Pustertal in 1755, Tösens in 1791 and Kauns in 1791. Further subject matters, which were put on the Tyrolean Jesuit stage in the 17th century and appear on popular stages in the 18th century, are e.g. Hermenegild (staged in Hall in 1657, Valentin, Répertoire, no. 1811, and in Innsbruck in 1679, Valentin, Répertoire, no. 2561), given in Imst in 1766 and in Innsbruck-St. Nikolaus in 1792; Hildegard (staged in Innsbruck in 1697, Valentin, Répertoire, no. 3303), given inter alia in Hötting in 1790 and in Nassereith in 1792; Mary Stuart (see below). The data is provided by Sikora, ‘Zur Geschichte der Volksschauspiele in Tirol’, 361–372.
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Tyrol (on account of the fragmentary theatre programmes of the Hall and the Trento College, no definitive judgement can be made). However, we should suspect that the Jesuit order acted as an intermediary instance also in this case because of the popularity of the subject in Jesuit theatres elsewhere. In the form of periochae, but sometimes also in manuscript form, Jesuit plays were shared across long distances within the network of the order. It is very likely that in Tyrolean colleges there were periochae of southern German Hirlanda performances, which were subsequently brought into service of popular performances. In 1766 there is a record of an Ulfadus und Rufinus both in Wattens and Gries im Wipptal.51 The play presents an episode which was frequently staged in the Jesuit context after the mid-seventeenth century. In the eighteenth century, however, apart from a performance in Eichstätt in 1725,52 we only have evidence for performances in the Low German province. On the Tyrolean Jesuit stages it was, as far as we can see, not staged at all. Nevertheless we should assume that the story of the pagan king Ulferus, who sentences to death his two sons Ulfadus and Rufinus on account of their Christian faith, became a subject of Tyrolean popular theatre via Jesuit mediation. A last example presented here is the subject of Mary Stuart. Present on the stages of the Society of Jesus since the late sixteenth century, the Queen of Scotland was celebrated by the Jesuit choragi as a Catholic hero. In 1659 the Hall Jesuits adopted the matter.53 Maybe it was this performance which stimulated the Tyrolean popular performances of the eighteenth century. We should, however, keep again in mind the possibility of influences of remoter Jesuit colleges ; the diffusion of the periocha of the Maria Stuarta in Neuburg an der Donau in 1702 indicates the lively circulation of these printed programmes.54 The success of the subject on Tyrolean popular stages was remarkable. Documented for the first time in Innsbruck-St. Nikolaus in 1735, in the second half of the century a series of performances is documented.55 The comparison of the periochae of the performances in Imst in 1767 and in Hötting in 176856 shows that the course of the action and the interludes were more or less identical ; single phrases were taken over, 51 The periochae of the Wattens play with the title Die gekrönte Tugend zweyer Engelländischen Prinzen Ulfadi und Rufini is preserved in Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, 4° Bavar. 2193 VII, Beibd. 19. The Gries performance is reported by Sikora, ‘Zur Geschichte der Volksschauspiele in Tirol’, 368. Sikora also mentions a performance of the play in Absam in 1790. 52 Valentin, Répertoire, no. 4447. 53 Valentin, Répertoire, no. 1873. 54 Valentin found it in no less than seven libraries; cf. Valentin, Répertoire, no. 3534. 55 St. Nikolaus 1749, 1755; Hall 1759; Imst 1766(?), 1767; Hötting 1767, 1768, 1794; Fulpmes 1769; Volders 1790; Mutters 1792, 1799; Telfs 1802. Cf. Sikora, ‘Zur Geschichte der Volksschauspiele in Tirol’, 361–372. 56 Preserved at the TLMF, Dip. 473/39 (Imst), FB 573 (Hötting).
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presumably from a common template. However, they are no simple reprints. The writer of the Hötting periocha chose another subtitle than the one in Imst, and turned the scene paraphrases in the form of rhymed Alexandrines. These differences are a clear indication that the high number of performances of certain subjects was not due to a centrally controlled distribution or instruction by the Jesuits. Although the performances are based on common Jesuit material, the theatre groups of the single villages adapted them in different ways. We can, therefore, state that although in some cases the Jesuits themselves possibly encouraged groups to stage religious plays in order to enhance popular piety, the largest part of this theatrical activity was carried out without direct involvement of the members of the Society of Jesus. In particular the frequency of performances, some of which took place in extremely remote villages,57 suggests a quick autonomization of Jesuit dramatic subjects in a non-Jesuit context. Such a high number of performances as documented in the late 1760s would have been impossible for the Jesuit colleges to manage ; even less so since many of the plays were performed several times. What we are dealing with is thus an exciting process of cultural transfer. On the initiative of (former) Jesuit pupils or other inhabitants who were familiar with the Jesuit plays, the cultural heritage of the order’s stage experienced an intensive reception in the villages of Tyrol in the eighteenth century. Translated into German, provided with popular features, and arranged with a probably somewhat less elaborate apparatus scaenicus than the Jesuit stages had offered,58 elements of the Jesuit theatre practices spread beyond the frame of the elitist educational institutions in which they had been developed. Paradoxically, by abandoning Latin the playwrights in the villages replaced precisely the characteristic feature that for the Jesuit teachers had been the primary raison d’être of their theatre activity. This emancipation from its traditional didactical-pedagogical contexts does not mean, though, that these dramas would have lost their pedagogical objectives completely. The assertion of religious interests that Jesuit playwrights were committed to mainly in the seventeenth century remained a purpose of these plays even outside their original framework. We can assume that country parsons often used the performances for reasons of edification. In any case, it is striking that almost exclusively religious themes were brought to the popular stages. The fact is at first glance surprising, because in this period on the Jesuit stages Christian topics became rare, were gradually substituted by pagan 57 Cf. e.g. the periocha of a play about the Virgin Mary in Kaltenbrunn im Kaunertal in 1766, TLMF, FB 673. 58 The performances, however, may not be imagined as completely ‘sober’. Frequently in the periochae we find indications of a musical part.
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subjects, or at least shifted, in form of meditational plays, into the Marian Congregations.59 A possible reason for this tendency is the fact that for sacred plays it was easier to receive permission by the religious deputation.60 In addition, this choice seems to be motivated by reception-aesthetic considerations. It is probably no coincidence, that the subjects performed on the Tyrolean popular stages in the second half of the eighteenth century were often the same ones which had contributed to the peak of Jesuit theatre in the seventeenth century, when Jesuit performances regularly had fascinated hundreds of spectators. The spiritual-cruel spectacle offered by these plays obviously favoured a mode of reception, which was very well received in traditional societies shaped by Catholicism. In later times, however, the demand of performances of these plays could not be satisfied anymore by the Jesuits themselves, who in the meantime had oriented their theatre to more sophisticated aesthetic and pedagogic scopes and, moreover, were increasingly put under pressure by the enlightened state. Thus, popular theatre groups seized the opportunity to attract a numerous audience by offering this distinctly catholic entertainment, whose public effectiveness had been proved for a long time.
59 Cf. Tilg, ‘Innsbrucker Sonderwege im Jesuitendrama des 18. Jahrhunderts?’, 140. 60 Sikora, ‘Zur Geschichte der Volksschauspiele in Tirol’, 345.
The Impact of the Jesuit Stage on Other Theatre Forms in Tyrol |
Response by Gorana Stepanić
The early modern literary and theatre scene in Tyrol was, as Simon Wirthensohn’s article shows, rich and vibrant, particularly in the eighteenth century. In its context, school drama, a typical cultural product of Jesuit education, found a new life beyond the walls of a Jesuit college. It spread horizontally, to other institutions and even to other social groups. Thus, Latin school plays survive in three other ‘zones’ : in the theatre of non-Jesuit educational institutions (including other church-funded schools) ; in the non-institutional theatre, performed by university students (often ex-Jesuit pupils) ; and in the performances of popular theatre groups which had developed a taste for a more learned kind of theatre. The Jesuit theatre is a well-studied cultural component in the whole German-speaking area. It is also a focus of interest not only among theatre studies experts or historians, but also among Latin or Neo-Latin scholars. This should be pointed out because things are quite different in the study of Jesuit drama and theatre in Croatian lands. There the Jesuit theatre has only rarely been studied as a part of Neo-Latin studies. School drama performances have been systematically recorded in repertoires of Croatian theatres and in monographs about the Jesuit order and its colleges in Croatia (which include chapters on the school theatre of the order).61 But there is no scholarly monograph on Croatian Jesuit Latin drama as a genre. One of the reasons behind this could be the monopoly that theatre studies tend to have, at least in Croatia, over all the manifestations of theatrical life. But the blame lies rather with Neo-Latin studies in Croatia and their perception of Neo-Latin drama in Croatian lands. One of the immediate causes for that is a brief survey in the so-far largest and most authoritative (although in many points long obsolete) anthology of Croatian Neo-Latin literature.62 The survey dedicates to drama only half a page, and its first sentences read : Compared to other literary genres, dramatic literature in Croatian Neo-Latinism did not achieve any significant artistic level, and, besides, the dramatic texts are poorly preserved. […] Although the Latin language was carefully cultivated throughout the centuries, it still could not penetrate into the masses, so that Latin drama couldn’t have counted on a wider audience. Still, Latin school drama was performed at the Jesuit colleges […] 61 M. Petranović and L. Ljubić, Repertoar hrvatskih kazališta [Repertoire of Croatian theatre], vol. 5: Deskriptivna obrada važnijih predstava na hrvatskom jeziku i izvedbi na stranim jezicima hrvatskih izvođača do 1840. godine [Descriptive analysis of performances in Croatian or by Croatian performers in foreign languages till 1840] (Zagreb 2012); M. Vanino, Isusovci i hrvatski narod [The Jesuits and the Croatian people]. 3 vols. (Zagreb 1969–2005). 62 V. Gortan and V. Vratović, eds., Hrvatski latinisti-Croatici auctores qui Latine scripserunt [Croatian Latinists-Croatici auctores qui Latine scripserunt], 2 vols. (Zagreb, 1969–70), 1:30.
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Thus Neo-Latin drama in Croatia has traditionally been considered less important, less ‘artistic’ and inspired, not a ‘real’ drama. Its supposed detachment from a wider audience was counted as another sign of its lesser literary value. We should not be surprised. The authors of the 1969 anthology often judged the poetic quality of texts leaning on the Crocean notions of inspired vs. uninspired texts ; ‘inspiration’ for them often suggested at least some degree of national (and/or anti-Turkish) topicality and sensibility.63 The Gortan and Vratović anthology was influential enough to determine, for the next few decades, the content and the value of the corpus of what was regarded as Croatian NeoLatin literature. Today, however, the aesthetic criterion has lost much of its relevance. We are ready to accept into the corpus of national Neo-Latin literature all texts, regardless of their so-called artistic level. Still, Croatian Latin drama has managed to slip ‘under the radar’ of literary scholars. There are some signs that the things are beginning to change, however. In the past few years, Croatian Neo-Latin scholars have begun to consider the Croatian Jesuit theatre as a Neo-Latin phenomenon. Within the framework of the Croatica et Tyrolensia project, our colleague Nina Čengić has collected and annotated a considerable set of materials regarding Jesuit school drama in Croatia.64 Her work, based on present bibliographies (and on over five hundred titles of secondary literature), defines the state of the art in the field : currently, we can say that we know the titles of 735 Jesuit plays performed in Latin and 430 in Croatian. The genre seems to have been at its peak towards the mid-eighteenth century, at Jesuit colleges in Zagreb, Varaždin, Rijeka (this Adriatic city hardly appears on the usual map of Croatian Neo-Latin) and Požega. We have information mostly about performances of the plays ; in some cases, their summaries (periochae) survive ; the dramatic texts, however, have only rarely been preserved. This absence of texts, in addition to the fact that many of the plays are anonymous, may have contributed to the corpus being held in low esteem by earlier literary scholars. Today, however, owing to approaches similar to Wirthensohn’s, we may sense in Croatian Latin school drama a huge and culturally significant, but almost unexplored area of research : a phenomenon waiting to be interpreted and surveyed from the Neo-Latin perspective. 63 That Jesuit Latin school drama in the 18th century took national sensibilities into consideration is proven by titles such as Arma Croatica (Varaždin, 1705), Bajazethes (Rijeka, 1761), Croatiae rex […] in parentem impium (Varaždin 1768), Czechus et Lechus, fratres Crapina pervetusta Croatiae urbe orti (Zagreb 1702), Croatia theatrum virtutis Erdödianae (Zagreb 1733), Felix infelicitas s. Joanni Gostomili, Croatiae regis filii (Zagreb 1728), Gemini Croatiae heroes: Petrus et Joannes Patatichii (Zagreb 1737), Pro Deo et rege, sive Croatiae semper integra in Deum fides, fidelitas pro domo Austriaca (Zagreb 1722), Regni Croatiae felicitas (Zagreb 1704), Sissiensis victoria Christianis felix, Turcis funesta (Zagreb, 1717), Sopitae Croatiae spes (Zagreb 1733). 64 Cf. CroALabib: drama ().
Irena Bratičević
Latin Poets in Late Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Dubrovnik
Ragusinae civitatis gloriam saepe animo repetentibus inter claros, qui omni aetate in unaquaque disciplina ex ea urbe prodierunt viri, clarissimi quidem solent nobis videri, qui amoenioribus litteris mentem quum adjunxerint, latinae in primis linguae decus scriptis vindicarunt et auxerunt suis. Nam ut de veteribus sileamus, quorum sunt ubique concelebrata nomina, quatuor patrum nostrorum memoria suspexit Roma Ragusinos cives tanta latine scribendi laude florentes, ut aurea Augusti et Leonis decimi saecula per id temporis redonata sibi esse haud immerito putaverit. Quis est enim, quem lateat, quales quantique homines fuerint Rogerus Boschovichius, Benedictus Stayus, Raymundus Cunichius, Bernardus Zamagna? Quis est, qui horum omnium perlegens latina carmina mira se perfundi suavitate non sentiat, gaudeatque, quum intellexerit eos non solum vivos municipibus suis horum studiorum auctores proprio exemplo extitisse, sed hoc idem assequi etiam post mortem iis, quae diximus, luculentissimis monumentis? Vivunt Ragusii vel hodie praestantissimi haud pauci ejusmodi litterarum cultores, qui praeclara tantorum virorum vestigia ingressi propriam hanc patriae famam perbelle sustinent, eandemque se longe auctiorem posteris transmissuros editis operibus confirmant. Michele Ferrucci, 1829.1
The sentences with which the young Italian Latinist Michele Ferrucci (1801–1881), a professor of classics at the University of Bologna, began the obituary for the Ragusan poet Luko Stulli contain several ideas that frequently feature in the literature of Dubrovnik at the end of the eighteenth and in the nineteenth century. One of these is the idea that the fame of the City (as the inhabitants, and all Croatians, style Dubrovnik) was owed to its men skilled in different areas, but especially in the writing of Latin ; another is that four Ragusan Latinists – based in Rome, the capital of Latin literature – became well known throughout Europe ; yet another is that new generations of Ragusan Latinists, impressed by the creative work of their predecessors, strove to maintain and prolong the fame of Ragusan literature in Latin. The four Latinists in question were Ruđer Bošković (1711–1787), Benedikt Stay (1714–1801), Rajmund Kunić (1719–1794) and Bernard Džamanjić (1735–1820). 1 A perpetua onoranza del dottor Luca Stulli di Ragusi prose e versi (Bologna 1829), 8.
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The reputation they acquired abroad is only one among several common features in their biographies and poetic work. In this essay, I would first like to present a short survey of the available information regarding their lives and works in order to identify the connections between their writings and the work of the younger generations of Ragusans who continued the tradition of writing in Latin throughout the nineteenth century.2 All four writers received their basic educational training in Dubrovnik. The education was at the time the responsibility of the Jesuit teachers, for the most part sent from Italy, in whose college students were trained in Latin and Greek grammar, classical literature and the skills of rhetoric and poetic composition. Bošković, whose elder brother (Baro, also a poet) was already a Jesuit in Italy, as well as Kunić and Džamanjić continued their education as Jesuit novices in Rome, completing before their priestly and monastic vows a course of study in philosophy, pedagogical practice in smaller colleges and finally a course of study in theology. Benedikt Stay is the only one of the four who left Dubrovnik later in his career and who instead of becoming a Jesuit became a diocesan priest. He arrived in Rome in 1746, having already composed his first scientific epic, over ten thousand hexameters in length, in which he expounded the natural philosophy of René Descartes (Philosophiae versibus traditae libri sex ; Venice, 1744 ; expanded edition Rome, 1747, and Venice, 1749).3 The reputation acquired through his Latin writings, but also the support by Bošković, paved his way to a series of prestigious positions in the Vatican : he was the pope’s Latin secretary (from 1762), and then his secretary of foreign affairs (1769–1800) ; in addition to this, he was for a while a professor of rhetoric at the University La Sapienza, the canon of the basilica Santa Maria Maggiore, and canon and archpresbyter of St Jerome of the Illyrians, the national church of the Croats in Rome. He spent the rest of his life 2 A survey of the work of these four poets is found, for instance, in J. Torbarina, ‘Hrvatski latinisti 18. stoljeća u Dubrovniku’ [Croatian Latinists in eighteenth-century Dubrovnik], in Zbornik Zagrebačke slavističke škole [Proceedings of the Zagreb School of Slavic Studies], vol. 3, ed. F. Grčević and M. Kuzmanović (Zagreb 1975), 49–60; and, in English, in A. Kadić, ‘The Role of Four Croatian Jesuits from Dubrovnik in the Cultural Life of Settecento Rome’, in A. Kadić, The Tradition of Freedom in Croatian Literature (Bloomington IN 1983), 62–70. It must be noted that the latter source is riddled with errors; the first is found in the essay’s title, which wrongly claims that Benedikt Stay was a Jesuit. 3 Stay’s contemporary and author of the monumental survey of Ragusan literature to the beginning of the nineteenth century, Francesco Maria Appendini, observes that, before the epic on the philosophy of Descartes, Stay composed one on the undertakings of Alessandro Farnese; F. M. Appendini, Notizie istorico-critiche sulle antichità, storia e letteratura de’ Ragusei, vol. 2 (Ragusa 1803), 161. This work, which does not seem to be extant, is unlikely to have stayed in Dubrovnik. When he arrived in Rome, Stay asked his brother Kristo and Božo Bošković to send him from Dubrovnik all the poetic compositions he had left behind in his study, explicitly mentioning his epic poem on Farnese; we have no knowledge about its later fortunes; see B. Truhelka, ‘Prvi uspjeh Bena Staya’ [The first success of Beno Stay], Književnik 1.9 (1928), 322–334, at 330.
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in Rome, but he was in frequent contact with his homeland, performing a number of diplomatic and other tasks for the Ragusan Republic while also showing a keen interest in the young Ragusans who came to study in Rome. His second, even more celebrated didactic epic, Philosophiae recentioris versibus traditae libri decem, is more than twice the length of the first one and it expounds not just Newton’s but also Bošković’s philosophy (it was published in Rome in three parts : the first part in 1755, the second in 1760, the third in 1792). During the composition of the poem, Bošković was a source of constant assistance to Stay, as he explained to him Newton’s ideas and furnished the greater part of the poem with notes and additions. Bošković acquired international fame very early, even before he began to lecture in the Roman College, on account of his Latin treatises in the fields of mathematics, physics, astronomy, optics and geodetics, archaeology and philosophy. The most important of these, Philosophiae naturalis theoria, was published in Vienna in 1758. Bošković was also a poet : at the height of his career he composed a scientific epic entitled De Solis ac Lunae defectibus (London 1760), while also enthusiastically writing devotional and occasional poetry dedicated to the powerful personages of his time. He became known, especially toward the end of his life for his improvisational skill, displayed during visits to friends in their villas and summer estates. He was able to compose elegiac couplets on the spur of the moment and with remarkable dexterity. Not infrequently he recorded such couplets from memory and had them transcribed.4 Like Stay, Bošković performed diplomatic tasks for the Ragusan Republic, but returned to Dubrovnik only once, visiting it in 1747. Like Kunić and Džamanjić, he lived through the suppression of the Jesuit order in 1773 and became a member of the secular clergy. He accepted the position of the director of optics for the French navy in Paris, and toward the end of his life he moved to Bassano, Brera and finally Milan, where he died and was buried. The epigram mourning his death composed by Rajmund Kunić as well as his numerous other epigrams and elegies dedicated to Bošković, Džamanjić and Stay – even, for example, De ficta coma p. Rogerii Boscovichii (Kunić’s translation of the humorous Italian poem by G. C. Cordara about Bošković’s wig) – testify to the close bond maintained among the four Ragusans. They testify, too, to the poetic virtuosity of Kunić, who was considered one of the best Latinists and Grecists in Rome in the second half of the eighteenth century. Kunić was Bošković’s student, and later a professor of Greek, 4 The largest part of his manuscript collection, which features not only autographs of his extemporaneous epigrams and a series of longer poems but also papers in astronomy, philology, philosophy, geodetics, hydro graphy, mathematics, mechanics, optics, and theology, private documents, and about two thousand letters, are preserved in the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley (USA); see R. Hahn, ‘The Boscovich Archives at Berkeley’, Isis 56.1 (1965), 70–78; ‘Finding Aid to the Ruggero Giuseppe Boscovich Papers, 1711‒1787’, Internet ().
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rhetoric and poetics, first at a Jesuit novitiate and then in the Roman College. His entire oeuvre is in Latin and his fame rests primarily on his outstanding translations from Greek, beginning with translations of Theocritus and of 499 epigrams from the Greek Anthology (Anthologica sive Epigrammata Anthologiae Graecorum selecta Latinis versibus reddita et animadversionibus illustrata, Rome 1771), and culminating with his monumental rendering of the Iliad (Homeri Ilias Latinis versibus expressa a Raymundo Cunichio Ragusino, Rome 1776), which is considered his crowning achievement and thought by many to be the best translation of Homer’s epic into Latin.5 In addition to orations, elegies and longer poems in hexameter (carmina), Kunić’s original poetic opus includes his hendecasyllabic poetry, epistles and almost 3,600 epigrams, later divided into nine groups (satirical, humorous, encomiastic, religious, votive, moral, sepulchral and lugubrious, varia, and epigrams to Lyda). Many of these epigrams were written late in his life as entertainment for the intellectual elite of the Roman society of the time, particularly at the salon of the learned lady Maria Pizzelli (endearingly named Lyda). Kunić cultivated his connections with family and friends in Dubrovnik through correspondence, but he never returned to the city after entering the novitiate. It was only Bernard Džamanjić, the youngest of the four poets, who eventually returned to his native city. After Jesuit education and ordination in Rome, he taught rhetoric in Siena until 1779 and rhetoric and Greek in Milan until 1783. Trained by Kunić and Bošković, Džamanjić followed the example of his teachers both in the selection of topics and in the selection of genres in which he composed. His didactic epyllions Echo (1764) and Navis aëria (1768) show his interest in scientific questions and in their versified treatment in Latin hexameters. On the other hand, he devoted himself to the translation of Greek authors into Latin, which resulted in renderings of the works of Hesiod, Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus ; in 1777, one year after the publication of Kunić’s Iliad, Džamanjić published his own Latin version of the Odyssey. Also popular was his collection of elegies in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In 1783 he travelled to Dubrovnik to attend briefly to family matters, but he ended up staying in the city and resigning from his teaching post in Milan. 5 See for example F. M. Renazzi, Storia dell’Università degli studi di Roma detta comunemente la Sapienza che contiene anche un saggio storico della letteratura romana dal principio del secolo XIII sino al declinare del secolo XVIII, 4 vols. (Rome 1806), 4:357 (‘Imperocchè un’impresa, con amplissimi premi eccitata già dal gran Niccolò V, niuno aveva osato prima del Cunich di condurla a sì felice, e sollecito compimento’); or J. IJsewijn, Companion to Neo-Latin Studies, 2 vols. (Leuven 1990–982), 1:94 (‘Raymundus Cunichius, who translated what is considered to be the best Latin version of the Iliad’). See also V. Vratović, ‘Fides i venustas u Kunićevu razmišljanju o prevoditeljskim načelima’ [Fides and venustas in Kunić’s reflections on the principles of translating], Umjetnost riječi 28.3 (1984), 201–203, at 201; and D. Novaković, ‘Hrvatska novolatinska epika’ [Croatian Neo-Latin epic poetry], Latina et Graeca 8 (2005), 33–38, at 36.
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Once back in Dubrovnik, Džamanjić became vicar general of the diocese of Dub rovnik, while during the French occupation he supervised the operations of the new lyceum (since 1808), the direction of which was entrusted to the Piarist Fathers. His compositions during this period were not so numerous : we find occasional epigrams and a collection of epistles sent mostly to his fellow citizens. He also tried his hand at the translation of Croatian poetry into Latin, but he quickly abandoned his intention to translate the famous Baroque epic Osman, written by Ivan Gundulić, arguing that Slavic and Turkish names gave him too much trouble when he attempted to adjust them to the demands of Latin prosody. He was an enthusiastic participant in literary conversations and meetings. Younger writers saw in him a kind of literary Nestor, whose poetic judgment was always to be heeded. He regularly received new editions and cultural news from Italy. The Ragusan Senate asked him to deliver the ceremonial address on the occasion of Bošković’s death in 1787, and when Kunić’s papers were sent to Dubrovnik after his death, he proved to be the most suitable person to sort them and to assist in the reading and editing of Kunić’s autograph writings. Džamanjić thus forged a link between the younger generation of poets living in Dubrovnik and their great predecessors abroad, whose poetry and the praise which the learned public, especially in Italy, bestowed upon them never ceased to matter.6 *** 6 In his Ragusan diary that records events in the city from 1806 to 1829, Vlaho Stulli writes the following in connection with Džamanjić’s death: ‘H’ aver egli sopravissuto a tutti i grandi letterati suoi contemporanei, lo faceva chiamare il patriarca della letteratura’; V. Stulli, Diario di Biagio Stulli dell’ anno 1806. all’ anno 1842, Library of the State Archives in Zadar, MS 49, 68v. The epigraph to this essay could be combined with a number of similar examples that celebrate the four poets. In the biography of Benedikt Stay, for instance, we read: ‘Fuit vero cujusdam felicitatis, ut ex una urbe Ragusio praeter Stajum plures habuerit lauro Apollinea dignissimos, Boscovichium, Cunichium, Zamaniam, qui quod non minorem gloriae fructum putarunt ex Latinis versibus percipi posse, quam ex Italicis, propterea quod Latina leguntur in omnibus fere gentibus, magnum honorem addiderunt Latii Musis, vel ea tractantes, quae recusare poesis videbatur’; A. Fabroni, Vitae Italorum doctrina excellentium, vol. 19 (Lucca 1804), 15. The Parisian Itinéraire classique de l’ Italie from 1828, in a short entry on Dubrovnik, mentions only the recent French occupation, infertile soil, navy and trade, beautiful palaces, and finally: ‘Raguse a donné naissance à MM. Boscovich, Cunich, Stay et Zamagna’ (356). The obituary for Ivan Josip Pavlović Lučić states: ‘Chi non sia straniero ai fasti di quella città dee aver presenti i nomi spettabili dei Cunich, degli Stay, dei Zamagna, dei Boscovich, e colla rimembranza dei nomi la coscienza di quanto valessero nelle lingue di Virgilio e di Omero, per tacere delle scienze esatte, dell’ astronomia coltivata con tanta rinomanza dal Boscovich’; [A. Meneghelli], Poche linee intorno alla vita e alle opere di monsignore Gian Giuseppe Paulovich Lucich (Padua 1841), 7–8. Giulio Natali, while sketching the intellectual and literary life in Rome in his monumental history of eighteenth-century Italian literature, writes: ‘I migliori latinisti erano ragusèi’; G. Natali, Storia letteraria d’Italia, Il Settecento, 2 vols. (Milan 31936), 1:31.
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When I speak of the younger generations of poets in relation to Bošković, Kunić, Stay and Džamanjić, I mean those poets who were born after 1750 and who were therefore active in the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth century, and in some cases later. It is possible to speak of about thirty poets who during this time made a mark in the cultural life of the city and left behind them small or large oeuvres, most often multilingual and almost always partly Latin.7 These Ragusan poets lived during a time of violent social and political changes on account of which the centuries-old Republic experienced an economic and demographic decline. In 1806, exhausted by the attacks of the Russian-Montenegrin army, the Ragusan Republic submitted itself to the French rule while still sustaining significant financial damage because of the presence of the French army in the city. In 1808, General Marmont abolished the Ragusan Republic and instituted French rule, while only seven years later the city and its environs, numbering about 40 thousand people, became part of the Habsburg Monarchy, remaining within it for a whole century. During this period the city led a somewhat lethargic, provincial life on the margins of the Empire. The citizen class outnumbered the nobility and rose above it in material terms as well. Both classes included supporters of French and Austrian rule, but also its opponents, who held onto the idea of a renewed republic for a long time. Educated individuals from both classes shared their interests in literature, philosophy, science and economics at learned salons, some of which turned into the so-called academies. Cultural progress was signalled by the introduction of the first permanent printing press in the city in 1783, but in spite of this important technological innovation manuscript circulation remained the dominant mode of textual transmission. The poets in question received their education early on, with Latin still being the basic subject of study. Some of them were schooled in the Jesuit college but the majority were educated by the Piarist Fathers, who came from Italy in 1776 to take over the college after the Society of Jesus was abolished.8 The basic languages in the Piarist college were Latin and Italian, taught through a continuous practice of versifying and 7 The most important biographical sources for the poets mentioned are Hrvatski biografski leksikon [Croatian biographical lexicon], 8 vols. so far (Zagreb 1983-); Hrvatska književna enciklopedija [Croatian encyclopedia of literature], 4 vols. (Zagreb 2010–12); I. Kasumović, ‘Dubrovački pjesnici u XIX. vijeku prije ilirskoga preporoda’ [Ragusan poets in the 19th century before the National Revival], Školski vjesnik 11 (1904), 119–122, 633–635, 857–860; Ž. Puratić, Đorđe (Đuro) Ferić (život i djelo) [Đorđe (Đuro) Ferić (Life and work)] (Zagreb 1982); and S. Ćosić, ‘Luko Stulli i dubrovačka književna baština’ [Luko Stulli and the literary heritage of Dubrovnik], Anali Zavoda za povijesne znanosti HAZU u Dubrovniku 41 (2003), 259–286. 8 In the meantime, before the arrival of the Piarists, the teaching was taken over by some local priests who had up to that point been active as private tutors. The person who mediated between the Ragusan government and the Piarists was Benedikt Stay; see J. Posedel, ‘Povjest gimnazije u Dubrovniku, II. dio’ [The
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rhetorical composition. After elementary training in mathematics, physics, philosophy and biology, many of the students – such as Đuro Hidža, Luko Stulli, Antun and Tomo Krša, Luko Didak Sorkočević as well as numerous others – went on to study in Italy and after that returned to Dubrovnik. However, two poets, somewhat given to wandering, stayed in Italy. Marko Faustin Galjuf (1765–1834) is the last Ragusan Latinist who, after his four predecessors from the city, won international fame.9 This was, in fact, not without their help. As Galjuf himself noted at a later date, Benedikt Stay had encouraged him to devote himself to poetry ; besides, Galjuf was appointed scriptor apostolicus and the scribe for private correspondence in the Papal office. Galjuf ’s career as an improviser of verses began when Rajmund Kunić casually observed in the Academy of Arcadia that a sonnet that had just been recited could easily be turned into a couple of Latin distichs, which Galjuf immediately did, with great virtuosity and to great acclaim. He was celebrated as one of the best extemporizing poets of his time, but he cared little for these compositions, or indeed for his other poems (which he styled carmina meditata), which were for the most part recorded, collected and published by his friends and disciples. Excited by the political events of the time, his enthusiasm for French ideas left him jobless several times, forcing him to travel around Europe. He eventually settled in Genova. Before his death, Galjuf published a selection of his poems and a prose treatise entitled Specimen de fortuna Lati nitatis (Torino 1833). As an attempt to show the superiority of Latin in comparison to other languages and to protest against its neglect, this treatise is unique in the history of Croatian writing in Latin. Another young Ragusan that came to Rome was Petar Frano Aletin (1768–1836). He was educated under the direction of Benedikt Stay, his uncle, while Kunić, who was his teacher, had great hopes of him and even went so far as saying that he would die a happy death if he could only know for certain that Aletin would succeed him as the professor of Greek and Latin rhetoric.10 Kunić’s wish, however, did not come true, as history of grammar school in Dubrovnik, part II], Program ć. k. velike državne gimnazije u Dubrovniku za školsku godinu 1901–1902 (1902), [3]–32, at 4 and 7. 9 In the words of Tomo Krša: ‘Quel Faustino Gagliuffi, per cui Ragusa non è ancora scaduta dal principato della poesia latina, che con poemi immortali le acquistarono gli Stay, i Boscovich, i Cunich e gli Zamagna’; Degli illustri Toscani stati in diversi tempi a Ragusa commentario di Tommaso Chersa (Padua 1828), 23. 10 The statement comes from Vlaho Stulli and is found in his biography of Aletin, in Memoriae nonnullorum Rhacusanorum et exterorum doctrina et virtute praestantium, a manuscript in the State Archives in Dubrovnik, HR-DADU 283, Osobni arhivski fond Pavlović, vol. 40, 49v: ‘Fu istruito pertanto dai più valorosi maestri, che vi fossero in Roma, segnatamente dall’ insigne professore Raimondo Cunich suo concittadino, il quale, conoscendo il di lui grande ingegno, ebbe a dire, che morirebbe lieto se potesse sapere, che dopo la sua morte sarebbe conferita ad Aleti la cattedra della Greca e Latina eloquenza’.
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Aletin had a very turbulent life, characterized by flights, hiding and exiles caused by his revolutionary and Francophile views. He eventually settled in Osimo and died in Ancona. We only have a small collection of his Latin poems, ten in number, among which are translations of epigrams from the Greek Anthology, modelled on those previously made by his teacher Kunić. In this, Aletin seems to have followed the friendly advice given to him by Bernard Džamanjić in an epistle entitled Ad Petrum Aletium virum clarissimum. Džamanjić is convinced it is the eloquent uncle (Stay) who encourages Aletin to pursue Latin poetry ; he also advises him to follow Kunić (Illius exemplo tu, cui et vis et favet aetas / Haud studii impatiens, nisumque intende). In the same poem, Džamanjić modestly contrasts Kunić’s immortal fame (Cunichides meus ille et vixit magnus, et usque / Major florescet) with his own poetic compositions, which, apparently, he holds in little esteem and for whose destiny he cares nothing : Post obitum quid erit de rebus, quas male scripsi / Vel fors recte etiam, prudens et quaerere omitto, / Et famam haud curo, quae non audita sonabit, / Ipse ubi non adero. Mea vel mittantur in ignes / Scripta, vel in vicum vendentem sal, piper, et thus, / Ignoscam haeredi facilis, culpamque remittam.11 But what Džamanjić claims in his verses is in fact contrary to what he willed in his testament. There, he asked his executors to produce a beautiful new edition of his already published work.12 They failed to do so, but ten years after Džamanjić’s death Francesco Maria Appendini paid him homage by publishing his biography and his shorter poems, some of which had never been printed before.13 While Džamanjić’s poetic opus was obviously known to the younger generation of Ragusan poets, we are entitled to ask to what extent they knew the poetry of the other three Ragusans whose fame reached them from the other side of the Adriatic. Doubtless, editions of their published works circulated in Dubrovnik.14 On the other hand, 11 Epistolae Bernardi Zamagnae patricii Rhacusini scriptae annis 1795. et 96. (Venice [1796]), 35–36. 12 ‘Prego in ultimo i miei eredi, che potendo fare commodamente, facciano una bella edizione delle mie opere gia stampate’; for his testament, see State Archives in Dubrovnik, HR-DADU 276, Osobni arhivski fond Katić, box 16, F 26. The named executors were Džamanjić’s nephews, Ivan Bosdari and Pjerko Sorkočević. 13 F. M. Appendini, De vita et scriptis Bernardi Zamagnae patricii Rhacusini commentariolum. Accedunt ejusdem Zamagnae carmina ex editis et ineditis selecta et in IV. libros digesta (Zadar 1830). The collection brings together two hexameter poems (carmina), four idylls and four epistles, 12 poems in Phalaecian hendecasyllable, 21 elegies, 116 epigrams, and two inscriptions. 14 See, for example, the catalogue of the Andrović family library from 1805 (State Archives in Dubrovnik, HR-DADU 62, Memoriae, vol. 25); the catalogue of the library of Marija Đurđević Bunić (died 1839) in the Archives of the Croatian Academy in Zagreb (Arhiv HAZU I. c. 63); Saggio alfabetico di bibliografia Ragusea by Ivan August Kaznačić from 1867 (State Archives in Dubrovnik, HR-DADU 264, Obiteljski arhivski fond Martecchini, vol. 26).
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we know that Bošković’s papers, today held by Berkeley, were sent to Dubrovnik to his friend Orsat Lujo Ranjina (1733–1818) but remained inaccessible until the time of Ranjina’s granddaughter and great-granddaughter, which can be concluded from the fact that there is no evidence of the poems surviving exclusively among these papers being copied or circulated in the city. Stay left his property to his brothers, who died without any descendants, so the heir to the legacy became Petar Frano Aletin. His library, which contained around twenty manuscript copies of Stay’s published philosophical epics but no unpublished verse, was sold at auction. As for Kunić’s oeuvre, the efforts of the undersecretary of the Ragusan Republic, Ivan Luka Volantić, resulted in Kunić’s autographs and copies of his poems held by his friends in Rome being sent to Dubrovnik after the poet’s death (1794). Volantić, assisted by Džamanjić, worked very diligently on the sorting of the papers he received from Rome. After him, the work was continued by the well-known scribe Rafo Radelja, himself a poet, who published a selection of Kunić’s epigrams in 1827. Judging from the number of manuscript copies of Kunić’s poetry surviving in Dubrovnik – amounting to around one hundred – he was clearly the author whose poetic legacy was the most widely known. *** In order to see what kind of influence the four poets had on the new generations of Ragusan Latinists, we need to consider the thematic preoccupations and the generic makeup of the poetry composed at the end of the eighteenth and in the nineteenth century. That the presence of these earlier models is strongly felt will also be seen on other creative levels, from the ‘programmatic’ to the expressive. The poetry written during the period under discussion is predominantly occasional. This is not unusual, since the Ragusans are trying both to adapt to new social circumstances and to preserve and commemorate everything associated with the glorious past of the city. Occasional poems were partly written in honour of the French and Austrian authorities, not without fawning. Collections of poems by various hands also marked the passing of prominent individuals, births, weddings, consecrations of bishops, first masses, victories and defeats in battle, ship launchings, book publications and so on. The forms used are usually short : mostly epigrams in elegiac couplets, hendecasyllables and elegies, and somewhat less often odes and carmina in hexameters. For this kind of poetry models could have been found among the Ragusans in Rome,15 but the question 15 For instance, Bošković’s hexametric apotheosis of Stanislaus I, 1756; Stay’s alcaic ode, Kunić’s elegy, and Bošković’s poem in hexameter included in the collection Pro restituta valetudine Benedicto XIV P. O. M.
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is whether they needed to look so far back given that formal occasions and political and religious festivities offered opportunities for precisely the kind of versifying that was practised in the schools. This is confirmed by the surviving programmes of school festivities from the time of the Jesuits and the Piarists ; among these is also Esercizio accademico sulla morte di monsignor Benedetto Stay, insigne filosofo e poeta, tenuto l’anno 1802. nel Collegio delle Scuole pie in Ragusa dagli scolari della rettorica e dell’umanità. Later, in 1808, a similar literary academy was held during a three-day celebration of the arrival of Duke Marmont of Ragusa, when the Ragusans, grateful to the general who had saved them from the onslaught of Russians and Montenegrins even though he abolished the Republic, organized banquets and decorated the city with balloons, banners and a triumphal arch in honour of Napoleon. Among those penning praises for the French were the same people who several years later were to contribute to collections of poetry celebrating, on an annual basis, the birthdays of Francis I. Antun Krša (1779–1838), one of the most prominent poets of the time and a former supporter of French rule, is featured in a collection of occasional poems published in 1815 and marking the annexation of Dubrovnik to the Habsburg Monarchy with a poem in hexameters entitled Prosopopaeia Rhacusae ad Caesarem. In this poem, Ragusa remembers the happy days of its liberty, peace and fame, especially in diplomacy and culture, and then bewails the trouble caused by the French rule while celebrating the Austrian emperor and the new, happy age he has ushered in. The same collection features Antun’s brother Tomo as well as Rafo Andrović and Luko Stulli.16 Other poets, such as Urbano Appendini, Đuro Hidža, Beninj Albertini and Rafo Radelja, joined them in annual publications on the occasion of the emperor’s birthday, and in 1826, when Francis’s recovery17 called for special celebrations, their Latin poems were translated into Italian by Urbano Lampredi (1761–1838), a Florentine essayist and man of letters who spent a couple of years (August 1825‒May 1827) in Dubrovnik as a guest of Niko Pucić Sorkočević.18 Collections of poems put together for various occasions featured not only writings in Latin but also in Italian and Croatian. Moreover, to a collection published in 1826 celebrating a wedding, entitled Per le faustissime nozze del sig. cavaliere Geremia Gaguitsch Arcadum carmina, 1757; Stay’s ode to Maria Theresa and Kunić’s elegy in Arcadum carmina pars tertia, 1768; a number of Kunić’s encomiastic epigrams, including his final public appearance at the academy in honour of Teresa Bandettini, 1794; Džamanjić’s idyll on the wedding of Abondio Rezzonico and Ippolita Buoncompagni, 1768, and on the death of Maria Theresa, but also on that of Count Firmiani’s dog etc. 16 Alla sacra cesarea regia apostolica maestà di Francesco I. […] Per la riunione della provincia di Ragusa all’impero (Ragusa 1815). 17 Nella faustissima occasione della ricuperata salute di s. m. i. r. a. Francesco I. d’Austria versi (Ragusa 1826). 18 Considering the diversity of addressees in the occasional poetry and their often radically different political allegiances, the really interesting question is who financed the print editions. Regrettably, no research has so far been undertaken on this question.
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consigliere onorario di […] tutte le Russie colla signora Eustachia Lucich versi, Niko Andrović (1798–1857) contributed elegiac couplets in ancient Greek, while the Dominican friar Anđeo Maslać (1772–1836) submitted an ode in French. An especially festive occasion was the consecration of Antun Jurić (Giuriceo) as bishop in 1830. The congratulatory collection of poems19 in Croatian, Latin and Italian featured – in addition to Antun Krša, Radelja, Maslać, and Hidža – Antun Kaznačić, Sebastijan Franković, Antun Liepopilli, Antun Sivrić, Mato Sorkočević and the Franciscan Beninj Albertini (1789–1838), who contributed to a number of such occasional collections, while a year later he himself was the addressee in the poems which this same group of authors composed to celebrate his election to the Skadar bishopric.20 Brothers Antun and Tomo Krša together with their friend Rafo Radelja published in 1825 a collection of funerary poems entitled In funere Mariae Chersae carmina, but already a year later Antun suffered another tragedy when his brother Tomo died. On this occasion was published a collection of poems In morte di Tommaso Chersa versi, for which Niko Andrović wrote three funerary epigrams in Greek (one of them Albertini translated into Latin, and Maslać even into German) while poems in Latin were contributed by Urbano Appendini, Luko Stulli, Antun Kaznačić, Radelja, Albertini, Hidža, Liepopilli, and Luko Flori. Vlaho Stulli added a eulogy in the form of an inscription.21 Antun wrote three elegies in memory of his brother, the second of which mentions Tomo’s works that placed Ragusan culture in his debt (on the life and works of Đuro Ferić, on the life and works of Didacus Pyrrhus, on famous Tuscans who lived in Dubrovnik), while the third addresses comforting verses to the deceased brother in the elegiac style : O quantis passim plausibus excipiunt / Te Cives, pia turba, tui, quorum aurea scripta / Ragusiae aeternum promeruere decus, / Atque ille inprimis, qui te dilexit amore / Constanti, omnigena laude Zamagna nitens !22 One of the most notable of these occasional collections dates from 1819, but it commemorates an event from 1817, when the ship belonging to the Senkić brothers was officially launched. It was the largest ship ever built in the shipyard of Gruž, and the act of building it signified the beginning of a new life in the ship industry of Dubrovnik. The collection of poems contained thirteen Latin, three Italian and four Croatian compositions.23 19 Pel solenne ingresso nella sua Chiesa di M.r Antonio Giuriceo Vescovo di Ragusa (Ragusa 1831). 20 Per la fausta elezione a Ministro provinciale […] del P. M. P. Benigno Albertini […] versi (Ragusa 1832). 21 Italian poems were contributed by Lampredi, Antinori, Ivellio, Zangerolimi, Luko Stulli, Rafo Andrović, and Mostahinić, and a poem in Croatian was contributed by Antun Kaznačić. 22 In morte di Tommaso Chersa versi (Ragusa 1826), 59. 23 Nave ragusea distinta col nome del celebre antico matematico Marino Ghetaldi. Componimenti Latini, Italiani ed Illirici ([s. n.] 1819). Poems in Latin were contributed, aside from Galjuf, by Džamanjić, Urbano Appendini, Miho Grgurević, and Luko Stulli.
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Among the Latin ones Galjuf ’s ‘eidyllium’ Navis Ragusina, intensely patriotic, is of particular interest. It is conceived as a story about the celebrations in the port of Gruž, where the debate about the name of the new ship is resolved by poeta clarissimus, Bernard Džamanjić. He first declines the honour of having the ship named after him. Then he comments on the hardships which Dubrovnik underwent during the French occupation – in order, of course, to praise Francis I – and after enumerating the great Ragusans who excelled in Latinist philosophy, science and poetry (Stay, Bošković, Kunić and Baglivi), he eventually settles on the name Bete as the appropriate one, after the nickname of the famous mathematician Marin Getaldić. Finally, the genre of occasional poetry also includes verses of praise written in the form of an inscription. The greatest authority in the epigraphic genre in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was the Italian Stefano Antonio Morcelli (1737–1821), a disciple of Kunić, ‘inscriptionum Latinarum summus artifex et magister’, as a former owner of a copy of his book Electorum libri II (1818) refers to him (the copy is today held in the State Archives in Dubrovnik).24 We do not have many testimonies regarding inscriptions by the four poets ;25 in reality, the first who tried his hand in this genre with any seriousness was Galjuf. Worth mentioning in this context is the outstanding and unique collection of inscriptions by Vlaho Stulli (1768–1843), whose eulogies were published in some of the occasional publications from the period. Among around seventy inscriptions found in Stulli’s manuscript collection are also those commemorating the deaths of Bošković, Kunić, Stay and Džamanjić, as well as an inscription written to honour Radelja’s edition of Kunić’s epigrams.26 ***
24 Morcelli also composed an epigraph on the occasion of Kunić’s death; S. A. Morcelli, Parergon inscriptionum novissimarum ab anno MDCCLXXXIIII Andreae Andreii rhetoris cura editum (Padua 1818), 112. He is of further interest here because of his connections to Ragusans, who, after he had spent time in the city doing professional practice, wanted to appoint him as the city’s archbishop in 1799, but he declined; see more on this G. Baraldi, Notizia biografica di Stefano Antonio Morcelli (Modena 1825), 37–38. 25 Among Kunić’s letters to Miho Sorkočević is an autograph inscription on the death of Pavo Lazzari from 1782 (HR-DADU 255, Obiteljski arhivski fond Bizzaro, AB2). In his selections from the works of Džamanjić, Appendini published two inscriptions on Francis I (Appendini, De vita et scriptis Bernardi Zamagnae, 286–287). At the request of the Senate, Stay composed a long inscription for a plaque honouring Ruđer Bošković and placed in the Dubrovnik cathedral. 26 Stulli’s collection has been preserved in an autograph copy (see note 8; the epitaphs for the four poets are found on folios 9v–10v and 15v). A copy of this manuscript is also held in the Austrian National Library in Vienna (Cod. ser. n. 4507). The roughly sixty Ragusan manuscripts preserved in the Austrian National Library were part of a private collection owned by the cultural historian Vicko Adamović.
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Having reviewed occasional poetry, we now need to see what other kinds of poetry, apart from that prompted by public events, preoccupied poets from this period in the Ragusan context : shorter forms (epigrams, elegies, hendecasyllables, odes, satires, carmina), longer forms (epics and epyllia), and finally translations. Epigrams were written by a number of authors. The most prolific representative of this genre, Đuro Ferić (1739–1820), generationally close to Džamanjić, left a rich and diverse opus in both Latin and Croatian. In it, we see a gradual distancing from the classicist circle focused on the imitation of Latin models and a movement toward Romantic poetics and the culture of national revival, primarily evident in Ferić’s interest in the vernacular literary tradition. All of his collections of epigrams, numbering almost 3000 poems, mostly moral and satirical in characters, remain unpublished (Epigrammata, Disticha, Apophthegmata Erasmi Latinis versibus explicata, Epigrammata de nostratibus, Elogia on Ragusan authors).27 An important part of Ferić’s opus are also his fables, in Croatian and Latin, in which folk wisdom is given popular expression. He wrote epistles as well, wishing to inform his contemporaries outside of Dubrovnik about the local tradition, and paraphrases of Roman or Italian poets, of Croatian poetry and psalms. Following the advice of his friend Benedikt Stay, he varied about fifteen different classical meters in his paraphrases of psalms. Compared to Ferić, the other poets were much less prolific. Especially worth singling out is the work of Đuro Hidža (1752–1833), similarly diverse but also special because of a number of mostly satirical epigrams directed against the French rule from 1806 to 1814. Equally opposed to French ideas was Džono Rastić (1755–1814), whose satirical poetry, modelled on both Horace and Juvenal, constitutes the single most important contribution to this genre in the whole tradition of Croatian writing in Latin. Urbano Appendini (1777–1834), an Italian Piarist Father who, like his brother Francesco Maria, came to Dubrovnik to teach and later moved to Zadar, published a collection of his poems (elegies, epigrams, hendecasyllables, and fables in iambic senarii) together with an anthology of Ragusan writing in Latin, the first of its kind to see print.28 Among his elegies is one in funere Benedicti Stay, while his epigrammatic output features encomiastic as well as religious, moral, satirical and humorous epigrams. One part of the poetic production within the classicist circle under discussion is concerned with everyday communication among its members, normally conducted in Latin verse. There are numerous manuscript witnesses of this fashionable way of maintaining 27 The manuscripts are located in the Archives of the Franciscan Monastery in Dubrovnik (Elogia: AMB 127; Epigrammata de nostratibus: AMB 180; Apophthegmata Erasmi: AMB 931) and in the Collection of Baldo Bogišić in Cavtat (Epigrammata: ZBB 30; Disticha: ZBB 32). 28 Urbani Appendini […] carmina. Accedunt selecta illustrium Ragusinorum poemata (Ragusa 1811).
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friendships. One of the more remarkable illustrations of it is a bundle of papers held today in the Archives of the Franciscan Monastery in Dubrovnik (AMB 1635) containing mostly autograph poems predominantly in Latin, but also in Italian and Croatian, with one poem in Greek. The majority of these poems – featuring epigrams, shorter elegies and odes as well as Italian sonnets – were composed during Urbano Lampredi’s stay in the city (1825–1827). Among them are Lampredi’s poems to Ragusans together with their replies, filled with friendly flattery and witticisms, learned allusions and conventional statements. Apart from Lampredi, the featured authors include Hidža, Radelja, Luko and Vlaho Stulli, Beninj Albertini, Niko Andrović (the Greek epigram), Marin Zlatarić, Mato Sorkočević, Nikola Ivellio, Antun Liepopilli and others, with the majority of poems, excluding Lampredi, being by Antun Krša. Krša was one of the more prominent members of this cultural circle. His former teacher, Francesco Maria Appendini, rightly observes that Krša followed in the steps of Kunić and Džamanjić, thus endeavouring to preserve the memory of Latin muses in Dubrovnik.29 Among other things, Krša helped Radelja in the editing of Kunić’s works while also providing Appendini with the manuscripts of Džamanjić’s works for purposes of publication. During his years in Italy, where he studied and often travelled, Krša made strong connections with respected Italian intellectuals and men of letters, with whom he corresponded once back in Dubrovnik. Primarily a writer of occasional verse, as has already been indicated, he also produced translations, such as those of Vincenzo Monti and Ippolito Pindemonte into Latin. He was featured more frequently than other Ragusans in the publications of the Roman Academy of Arcadia, a literary society of which Bošković, Stay and Kunić, as well as Džamanjić while in Rome, were very active members who came to meetings and recited verses that are often found in the published collections of the Academy. Already at this time Arcadia entered a period of decadence and in the early nineteenth century no longer played an important role in cultural life. Nonetheless, membership in a society in which four Ragusan Latinists were practically celebrities counted as recognition for the provincial poets ; around twenty Ragusan authors from the period were therefore members of the Arcadia even though some of them had never been to Rome.30 29 Appendini, De vita et scriptis Bernardi Zamagnae, 285. 30 More on the Ragusan poets as members of the Arcadia can be found in P. Stanojević, Kraj književnosti starog Dubrovnika [The end of old Dubrovnik literature] (Beograd 2002), 11–40. Marin Zlatarić (1753– 1826) described his joining the Arcadia in an elegy that, unfortunately, has only partially survived (the manuscript is held in the National and University Library in Zagreb: M. Zlatarić, Idillii Gesnerovi /Idyllen/ u slovinske pjesni složeni i obraćeni; Varie poesie; Lettera sull’ isola di Meleda, NSK R 5192, 189–192). In this period there were two attempts in Dubrovnik itself to found academies modelled on the Arcadia. First, Miho Sorkočević founded in 1793 Società patriottica [Patriotic society], members of which were
Latin Poets in Late Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Dubrovnik |
Although Ragusans had native models in the poetic writing on scientific and philosophical topics in figures such as Bošković, Stay and Džamanjić, longer poetic forms (epics and epyllia) with didactic intent are almost completely absent. Treatment of scientific topics in Latin verse flourished in the eighteenth century primarily under the aegis of the Jesuit order and its rhetorical educational programme. The different social circumstances of the Ragusan poets prompted them to turn to ordinary events, be they private or public in nature. There are, however, two exceptions to this general observation. Luko Stulli (1772–1828) was a medical doctor by profession and the author of several notable prose treatises on medical topics. He was the first to introduce the practice of vaccination to this part of the world. Delighted by the results, he composed an elegy entitled Vaccinatio (254 lines), in which he describes the principles of Jenner’s method of vaccination and praises the beneficial effects of scientific progress on the quality of life.31 As a poet, he is frequently featured in the multi-author collections with shorter, occasional pieces in Latin and Italian. Striving to familiarize the general public with the achievements of Ragusan literature in Latin, Stulli published a booklet in Italian hendecasyllables in which he paraphrases three accounts of the great Ragusan earthquake of 1667 : those by Stjepan Gradić, Benedikt Rogačić and Benedikt Stay (a section from the fourth canto of Philosophiae versibus traditae libri VI). In the preface to the paraphrases he particularly praises Stay’s poetic energy and depth : nothing, apparently, could proceed from Stay’s mind that was not ‘splendid, sublime, and, so to speak, divine’.32 The other didactic work from this period is known, unfortunately, only from a second-hand witness. According to the eulogy written by Vlaho Stulli and addressed to Petar Frano Aletin, Aletin composed a large part of his own epic (‘poema latino didascalico’) by 1802, when he last visited Dubrovnik. The epic in question was designed to describe the origins of science and of arts, great discoveries, their application and usefulness. To those inquisitive about the work’s title, Stulli tells us, the author jestingly remany of the already mentioned poets; however, it was more devoted to scientific than literary topics, and anyway it did not last longer than a year. Some time later, in 1802, Antun Kaznačić founded the last academy in Dubrovnik and named it Intrepidi Arcades, which also did not last long. See M. Deanović, ‘Odrazi talijanske akademije ‘degli Arcadi’ preko Jadrana’ [The influences of the Italian Academy of Arcadia across the Adriatic], Rad JAZU 248 (1933), 1–98, at 15 and 17–18. Apart from the academy meetings, poets and writers met at private, family and friendly gatherings, forming literary salons, as it were. But their verses, seeing print with increasing frequency, attracted an audience not only in the city but outside of the city limits too. The correspondence at that time between the Ragusans and prominent literary personages in Italy, Dalmatia and north Croatia bears eloquent testimony to this fact. 31 Vaccinatio. Carmen elegiacum (Pisonii 1804). The edition was published in Bratislava, not in Pest, as is regularly claimed in scholarly publications. 32 Le tre descrizioni del terremoto di Ragusa del MDCLXVII di Gradi, Rogacci, Stay: Versione dal Latino (Venice 1828), 9.
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plied by referring to it as ‘La Grande Bestia’. We learn that Aletin’s diction was pure and cultivated, his style lucid and elegant. Francesco Maria and Urbano Appendini, ‘ambi poeti e latinisti egregi’, read the parts Aletin shared with them when he visited the city. They found the work to be outstanding and deserving, once completed, to be ranked alongside the best didactic epics ever composed. However, Stulli doubts the work was ever finished because Aletin, he claims, on account of the burden of erudition weighing upon him, lost his breath and failed to persevere to the end.33 The longest original work in verse composed during this period is entitled Periegesis orae Rhacusanae (1803) ; it amounts to 3,379 hexameters. Its author, Đuro Ferić, describes those parts of the Dubrovnik archbishopric which he visited in the course of his priestly duties. His intention was not to write a travelogue aimed at praising the beauty of nature ; instead, he laid emphasis on the nature and customs of the population and on their everyday occupations : agricultural and architectural labour, hunting and fishing, possibilities for economic development. A thread of moralizing runs through the work, bringing Ferić closer to the literary practice of the Enlightenment. The longest work of Ragusan Latinism at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century actually belongs to the field of translation, its author being Vlaho Getaldić (1788–1872). Even here Kunić could serve as the ideal model given his masterly translations of Greek epigrams and, especially, of the Iliad. The same is true of Bernard Džamanjić, the translator of the Odyssey, of Hesiod, and of the Greek bucolic poets. That Vlaho Getaldić looked up to these models is confirmed by his choice of the expression ‘Latinis versibus expressa’ in the title of his translation of Osman (Ioannis Francisci Gondulae patricii Ragusini Osmanides a Blasio e baronibus Ghetaldi eius conterraneo Latinis versibus expressa).34 Furthermore, he called the introductory essay Ratio operis ab interprete reddita.35 In this essay Getaldić does not, however, elaborate his translation principles ; instead, he briefly states that his greatest master was Virgil. In an edition that was published in Venice in 1865 and meant to address an international audience, Getaldić labours to contextualize the Ragusan author Ivan Gundulić and his baroque epic Osman, which tells the story of the Polish victory over the Turks at Chocim in 1621 and of the death of Osman II. This epic poem attained the status of a Ragusan classic very early on, which is shown by the many surviving manuscript copies, more than of any other literary work. Osman was first published in print in Dubrovnik 33 Stulli, Memoriae nonnullorum Rhacusanorum, 51r. 34 In imitation of Kunić’s title Homeri Ilias Latinis versibus expressa a Raymundo Cunichio Ragusino, professore eloquentiae et linguae Graecae in Collegio Romano and of Džamanjić’s Homeri Odyssea Latinis versibus expressa a Bernardo Zamagna Ragusino. 35 In imitation of Ratio operis lectori ab interprete reddita found in Džamanjić’s translation and Operis ratio eidem cl. v. ab interprete reddita in Kunić’s.
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in 1826, in Zagreb in 1844, and had by this point been translated into Italian no fewer than three times. Getaldić’s translation of it into Latin had no real predecessor. He knew that Galjuf, as his letter to Ivan Antun Kaznačić shows, wished to translate the poem, but nothing is known about the materialization of this wish. The fragment translated by Džamanjić, about thirty hexameters in length, was incorporated by Getaldić into his own version as a tribute, so he puts it, to a fellow countryman whose translations from the Greek had made him immortal.36 Getaldić’s preface to the first version of the translation, preserved in MS 2305 of the Archives of the Franciscan Monastery in Dubrovnik, is significant because it contains information about the inception of the work and about his views on the status of the Latin language in Dubrovnik at the time. The translation came about as a result of a suggestion made by Bernard Kaboga, a Ragusan whom Getaldić visited in Vienna and who thought that, rendered into Latin, Osman would be both better known and better understood. The suggestion was at first rejected on the pretext that such a feat had not been attempted by any of Getaldić’s contemporaries, even those more skilled in Latin than himself. He held that he lived during a time when Latin poetry was unappreciated and that he lacked both ability and time for such a difficult and uncertain undertaking. Yet he also believed that a Latin translation of Osman would be an act of patriotism, so upon returning to Zadar, where he worked as a government advisor, he tried his hand at the first stanzas of the poem. Not entirely dissatisfied with the result, he continued the task with great ardour and completed the translation – numbering 5086 hexameters – within a year. He was conscious that the translation needed correction and refinement, which he intended to seek from those with a superior knowledge of Latin. Even though two decades later he did decide to publish in print his translation of Osman, Getaldić left most of his compositions in manuscript. He was doubtless one of the most productive Latinists not merely in the nineteenth century but in the whole history of Dubrovnik. Nineteen bulky volumes filled with Latin epigrams (and Italian sonnets) bear eloquent testimony to this fact.37 He recorded them daily, contemplating in his verses all sorts of topics from private and public life, but also amusing himself. He believed, as late as the second half of the nineteenth century, that his Latin Osman could have an international readership, yet he was conscious that within the walls of his own city there was no longer an audience for the language against whose neglect Galjuf had much earlier raised his voice. 36 Getaldić was related to Džamanjić by blood; he was his ‘pronipote’. His grandmother on the mother’s side, named Ana, was Džamanjić’s youngest sister. On Galjuf ’s and Džamanjić’s translation attempts, see Ioannis Francisci Gondulae patricii Ragusini Osmanides a Blasio e baronibus Ghetaldi (Venice 1865), xvi–xvii. 37 They are held in the Archives of the Franciscan Monastery in Dubrovnik (AMB 563, 1051–1067, 1162).
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At this time, two or three other poets interested in Latin composition can be identified in Dubrovnik. Getaldić died in 1872. Judging from the dates of his poems, which he duly noted, he seems to have continued writing until his death. The late 1850s witnessed the last individual collections of Latin poetry in print : Nicolai Aloysii comitis de Pozza patricii Rhacusini carmina (1858), and Carmina meditata et extemporalia, by Mato Džamanjić (1859), both published in Venice. Antun Kaznačić (1784–1874) enthusiastically joined the national revivalist movement and, as one of the most prominent Ragusans among the so-called Illyrians, supported the idea of political integration with Croatia. He is known as a poet of occasional verse, satires and carols in Croatian, but he considered his earlier Latin poetry, classicist in inspiration, as similarly deserving of preservation. In later years (1857), he copied his epigrams, inscriptions, elegies and a poem in hexameters into a collection entitled Antonii Casnacich Ioannis filii Ragusini Carmina latina. We learn from published scholarship that Petar Alojzije Bettera (1802– 1889) wrote an extended elegy on the history of Dubrovnik and its famous citizens, including among others Bošković and Stay.38 The last occasional poems in Latin were written in 1894 by Ivan Stojanović (1829–1900), who explained his need to versify in Latin as an addiction of sorts, no doubt owed to the rhetorical education of his youth. *** The tradition of Latin writing in Dubrovnik during the period under discussion – the late eighteenth and the nineteenth century – is filled with direct allusions to the four Ragusan Latinists from the preceding era who attained European renown. Before I mention some of these acts of homage, I also want to give examples of formal imitation, in the form of clauses and lines, that prove the central importance of the works of Bošković, Stay, Kunić and Džamanjić for the successive Ragusan Latinists.39 Thus, for instance, Antun Krša, the copyist and editor of Kunić’s verses, shares with Kunić clauses and expressions such as dicere non dubitem, fila movere lyrae, scita mathesis, tempus in omne fide, falsis ludat imaginibus, sacro Pythia de tripode and many others, with Kunić and Džamanjić moribus aureis and memor officii, with Džamanjić temporis historias, and so on. Urbano Appendini incorporates into the line the expression aliquod medio ex Heli38 M. F[oretić], ‘Bettera, Petar Alojzije’, in Leksikon hrvatskih pisaca [Lexicon of Croatian writers], ed. D. Fališevac et al. (Zagreb 2000), 71. I am not familiar with the text of this elegy. 39 This part of my research has been conducted with the help of the searchable editions and databases of Latinist literature, above all the CroALa database. As proof of borrowing from the four authors, only those clauses have been admitted that appear both in them and in later Ragusan poets but are not to be found in the databases of Roman literature in Latin (Musisque Deoque) and of Italian humanist poets (Poeti d’Italia). As the databases are incomplete, the results of the research should be taken with a grain of salt.
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cone petitum and natura pudorem, following Stay, from whom Rastić takes over the combination a corpore corpus, while in an elegy on the death of Kunić he deploys Džamanjić’s omnes periere lepores. In both Radelja and Kunić we find endings such as doctae Palladis omnigenas, varia sub imagine formae, credula blanditiis or oscula cum lacrymis, as well as de mente fugavit in Radelja and Džamanjić. Bošković’s pulchra Gravosa suas finds its counterpart in Urbano Appendini’s pulchra Gravosa rates, but also in Agić’s pulchra Gravosa, sinu. Niko Pucić takes over from Stay the fortuna retorsit, from Kunić ludere carminibus, and several instances from Džamanjić : Epidauria tellus, fastidia mentem, vesanae audacia mentis. Ferić uses fortissima pubis, like Kunić and Džamanjić before him, or for example dapibusque refecti (from Kunić) and vestigia arena (from Džama njić). It is hardly surprising that for his Latin version of Osman Getaldić borrows clauses from the epic poems of the four authors, be they originals or translations : panduntur hiatu (Bošković), flectit in arcum, manifestam reddere mentem (Stay), exercere sub armis, rigabat obortis (Kunić), columenque senectae, quum fulget Eoo (Džamanjić). Finally, Stojanović’s plentiful borrowings illustrate a special case : Hunc, superi, servate urbi, pacalis olivae and Laetitia in tanta nil mirans debita dicam are lines taken from Kunić, while Si vero vides defendi haud posse, relinque / Blattis scripta malis latebrosa in sede voranda comes from Džamanjić. The exemplary status accorded by later Ragusan poets to their four great predecessors is evident in their original compositions as well. While three of them were still alive, Marin Zlatarić, upon his joining of the Academy of Arcadia (1792), wrote to his friend Betondić back home : Fas mihi Stayadem, decus immortale Ragusę, / Meonidi et charum noscere Cunichium, / Et longo sermone frui, patriaque loquela / Ilyricas Latiis addere Pieridas !,40 and Niko Pucić Sorkočević, as he was getting ready to leave for Rome, thought of it as a city that had seen Bošković the astronomer, Kunić the translator of the Iliad, and Stay the explicator of philosophical obscurities.41 In 1802, Luko Didak Sorkočević invited Ivan Gučetić to read belles lettres in the following manner : te dulcia carmina vatis / Felsinei, te Stayadae, te docta Zamagnae / Cunichiique manent Musae, te Cotta tuusque / Ille Fraccastorius.42 Francesco Maria Appendini canonized them in his literary history : ‘Bartolommeo, e Ruggiero Boscovich, Benedetto Stay, Raimondo Cunich, e Bernardo Zamagna riempivano le colte città dell’ Eurpa [sic] colla celebrità del loro nome’, and in the same way Luko Stulli was able to speak of ‘quattro nomi da farne onorate un grandissimo regno, non che una piccola città, qual è Ragusa’, while Tomo 40 Zlatarić, Idillii Gessnerovi, NSK R 5192, 190. 41 Nicolai Aloysii comitis de Pozza patricii Rhacusini carmina (Venice 1858), 26. 42 Đ. Körbler, ‘Latinske pjesme Luke Didaka Sorga i austrijska censura godine 1847’ [Latin poems of Luka Didak Sorgo and Austrian censorship in 1847], Rad JAZU 201 (1914), [14]–46, at 39. Felsineus vates is Francesco Maria Zanotti (1692–1777).
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Krša, in an extended excursus on the four poet scholars, pointed out the influence they had on Đuro Ferić.43 Still, Džamanjić’s nephew Mato Džamanjić responds in verse to Cardinal Monico, who had described him as Bernard’s successor : Sed mea Musa quidem tam longe distat ab illa / Quam supera Stygius distat ab arce lacus ; and when Antun Krša flatters Urbano Appendini that only he was destined to be equal to Kunić, Appendini responds in wonder, knowing that he lacks the poetic power needed to come close to such a model (tanquam dederint mihi numina vires / Queis valeam tanto proximus ire viro ?).44 The last Ragusan Latinists, those from the end of the eighteenth and the nineteenth century, encouraged among other things by the fame Bošković, Stay, Kunić and Džamanjić attained as a result of writing in Latin, kept alive in the Croatian south a literary language that in most other European countries had been buried and largely forgotten, but they did so fully aware that their own endeavours could not match the aesthetic excellence of their great predecessors.45
43 Appendini, Notizie istorico-critiche, 157; Stulli, Le tre descrizioni del terremoto di Ragusa, 11; Della vita e delle opere di monsignore Giorgio Ferrich discorso di Tomaso Chersa (Ragusa 1824), 14–15. 44 M. Šoštarić, ‘Epigrami Mate Luiđa Zamanje’ [Epigrams of Mato Luiđ Zamanja], Latina et Graeca n. s. 5 (2004), 29–41, at 29; Urbani Appendini […] carmina, 15. 45 I am greatly indebted to Ivan Lupić for his assistance and to Simon Wirthensohn for his comments and suggestions. I.B.
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Response by Isabella Walser
After the foundation of the University of Innsbruck in 1669 by Emperor Leopold I, the region of the historical Tyrol witnessed a booming of the arts and sciences in the eighteenth century and the first two decades of the nineteenth century, which was also supported by the introduction of the compulsory education under Maria Theresa in 1774, and the growing importance of learned societies and academies such as the Academia Taxiana in Innsbruck (founded in 1740) or the Accademia degli Agiati in Rovereto (founded in 1750).46 During this time span, there is especially one striking parallel between the Tyrolean literature and the literature of Dubrovnik : most of the Tyrolean poetry was occasional,47 often reflecting the current political and historical developments (e.g. the invasion of Bavaria in the course of the War of the Spanish Succession and the Napoleonic Wars ; the loss of the autonomy as a Landesfürstentum ; the threats to the unity of the Tyrol) as well as the Tyrolean self-conception (e.g. the religious enthusiasm of the region). However, in contrast to the example of the four big Dubrovnik poets and despite its huge Neo-Latin literary production, Tyrol did not bear any prominent poetic figures that would earn a Europe-wide fame and represent a source of imitation for subsequent generations of Tyrolean Neo-Latin poets. Tyrolean poets of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries would basically come from everywhere in the region, although there certainly was a slight majority of Latin poets coming from the Trentino. As far as the background of the Tyrolean Latin poets, the body of poets was composed of educated men of all kinds – students and professors of Innsbruck University, teachers of the secondary schools of the larger Tyrolean cities, jurists, or, most prominently, clergymen. Yet unlike in Dubrovnik, the number of Jesuits among them was not disproportionately high. The time between 1669, the year of the foundation of Innsbruck University, and 1773, the year of the suppression of the Society of Jesus, was the most prolific time for NeoLatin literature in Tyrol. Among the occasional poetry produced in these years, panegyric poems are the most common, followed by religious poems. The greatest number of the panegyric poems address the ruling House of Habsburg, like, for example, pieces celebrating the birth of the archducal offspring Joseph II (Franz Xaver von Sternbach’s Genethliacon […] neo-nato Josepho, Innsbruck 1741) and Leopold II ( Joseph Wolff ’s Nativitas Petri Leopoldi atque natalis Theresiae, Innsbruck 1747 ; at once relating to Maria Theresa’s birthday), presented in the epic hexameter and stuffed with epic allusions such 46 L. Šubarić, ‘Epochenbild’, in Tyrolis Latina: Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur in Tirol, 2 vols., ed. M. Korenjak et al. (Vienna 2012), 2:609–619, at 614–617. 47 Cf. M. Korenjak, ‘Dichtung’, in Tyrolis Latina, 2:620–659.
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as the acknowledgement of military and political glory.48 Other poems react to events such as the opening of the new university building in Vienna by Maria Theresa (De praestantia logicae from 1756, a didactic poem on the proper use of reason by the priest and theologian at Innsbruck University, Giovanni Battista Graser from Rovereto).49 Apart from poems dedicated to the House of Habsburg there are also occasional poems in praise of erudite Tyrolean men. The foundation of the University of Innsbruck especially fuelled a genre of poetry that played an important role within the cultural atmosphere of Tyrol in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries : panegyrical poems written on the occasion of the conferrals of doctorates. Most of those poems were dedicated to graduates of law and medicine and composed in the elegiac couplet.50 The third strand of poetry in the eighteenth century, religious poetry, was in particular represented by hymnic, Marian and meditative poetry. Religious poems of these kinds played an important role in Tyrol, where people related strongly to Catholicism and perceived it as one of the leading characteristics of their identity. Not surprisingly, religious poetry was almost exclusively carried out by clergymen – one of the most prolific among them certainly was Cassian Primisser from the Cistercian Order in Stams. A masterpiece of a religious poem of the time is the epic De partu Virginis (Trento 1744) by the cleric Giuseppe Pruner from Trento, which is a reworking of Jacopo Sannazaro’s famous De partu Virginis from 1526.51 From 1800 onwards, the production of Neo-Latin literature in Tyrol started to decrease ; gradually, Latin was becoming restricted to being the language of the Church and theology. Latin lost its central role in education, and was eventually only taught to be understood passively.52 Given this development, most Tyrolean Neo-Latin poets from the end of the eighteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century would also turn to occasional poetry, since its potential small form as well as its obvious contemporary political context suited both the writers and the readers. One of the recurrent topics reflected in the Tyrolean poetry of the time were the Napoleonic Wars, during which Tyrol was occupied several times by France and its ally Bavaria, and split up and separated from Austria (cf. e.g. the Elegies by the Tridentine priest Giuseppe Mosca con48 In greater detail presented in Korenjak, ‘Von der Gründung der Universität’, 621–624. 49 For the edition of the poem cf. I. Walser, ed., Im theresianischen Zeitalter der Vernunft. Giovanni Battista Graser: De praestantia logicae (Innsbruck 2013). 50 For further information on the so-called Promotionspanegyrik and a presentation of selected examples, cf. Korenjak, ‘Von der Gründung der Universität’, 637–640. 51 Cf. Korenjak, ‘Dichtung’, 641–654. The infrequence of epic poetry in Tyrol in the 18th century constitutes a striking similarity to the Dubrovnik literature of the 18th century. 52 F. Schaffenrath, ‘Epochenbild’, in Tyrolis Latina, 2:909–917, at 914; K. Töchterle, ‘Epochenbild’, in Ty rolis Latina, 2:1073–1078, at 1073.
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cerned with the French occupation of Trento). The reunification of Tyrol with Austria in 1814, after the defeat of Napoleon, was also commemorated in numerous poems (e.g. Gianvigilio Carli : Francisco I. Austriae imperatori Tyrolis vindicata et in fidem accepta carmen, Trento 1814).53 Although occasional poetry dominated, other genres and topics were still present in the nineteenth century : one of the most prolific poets of that time, the lawyer Francesco Moar, already at the age of twenty published an epic poem In mortem Christi (Trento 1837), dedicated to his fellow pupils in Trento ; another poet, the Franciscan Bernhard Niedermühlbichler from Hall, put out a collection of 237 epigrams entitled Epigrammata novi ex parte generis (Innsbruck 1844), which addressed studious adolescents and people generally interested in the Latin language.54 Finally, it needs to be stated that Tyrolean poetry of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century showed the gradual transition from the Neo-Latin language to the vernacular (Italian in the South, German in the North and East), with a great number of poets producing both Neo-Latin and vernacular poetry (e.g. Giovanni Battista Graser, Bartolomeo Carlo Gerloni).55
53 Cf. F. Schaffenrath, ‘Dichtung’, in Tyrolis Latina, 2:918–940, at 928–932. 54 On Moar, see Schaffenrath, ‘Dichtung’, 922–923; on Niedermühlbichler, ibid., 2:935–936. 55 Schaffenrath, ‘Dichtung’, 918–920, 936–937, 940; Walser, Im theresianischen Zeitalter, 14–17.
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Antiquarianism in Croatia: An Overview
1
At the very outset, every conversation about antiquarianism encounters the need to define the scope of its subject. Arnaldo Momigliano in his seminal study of 1950 pointed out the basic distinction between an antiquarian and a historiographer : the concept of antiquarius means ‘a lover, collector and student of ancient traditions and remains’, not a writer of ancient history.1 Antiquities are understood to mean both texts and material remains that help in the reconstruction of ancient civilization. When antiquarianism is discussed, it is mostly an interest in material remains that is meant, such as ancient inscriptions, coins, artistic objects and architectural traces, ruins and so on (which today on the whole are part of the purview of the archaeologist). But antiquarianism in a somewhat wider sense covers an interest in all those written sources that give information about everyday life, customs, social systems, military affairs, religion, topography and geography, in short, the realia of antiquity.2 While historiography is concentrated on a reconstruction of events and cause-and-effect relations (i.e. the dynamic side of history), antiquarianism deals with static phenomena, systems and structures.3 The fruits of their labours are also different. Historiography provides chronological surveys and narratives, while the object of antiquarianism in the narrower sense is most often to create a collection. The collection can consist of real objects, in which case we speak of a lapidarium, a collection or a museum ; it can also be virtual (i.e. written down), in the form of a sylloge, a catalogue, a commentary. Systematic textual processing of a collection – real or virtual – would produce an antiquarian treatise ; in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such works were most commonly called Thesaurus, Bibliotheca, Lexicon or Catalogus. In the antiquarian writings that rise 1 A. Momigliano, ‘Ancient History and the Antiquarian’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 13:3/4 (1950), 285–315, at 290. 2 What Mazzocco calls ‘classical institutions’; see A. Mazzocco, ‘Biondo Flavio and the Antiquarian Tradition’, in Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Bononiensis: Proceedings of the Fourth International Congress of NeoLatin Studies, Bologna 26 August to 1 September 1979, ed. R. J. Schoeck (Binghamton 1985), 124–136, at 124. 3 Brill’s New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World, ed. H. Cancik et al., 15 vols. (Leiden 2002–10), 1:142.
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above the level of the mere list or description, written sources take on crucial importance – information from ancient writers helps in the identification and understanding of the material remains of antiquity and these material remains in their turn help in the better understanding of texts.4 In this paper we shall take antiquarians to mean persons who created real or virtual collections of the material remains of classical antiquity, those who wrote about such material remains, and those who wrote about the intangible aspects of antiquity (such as ancient political systems, religions, armies and other institutions) primarily on the basis of material remains. In their writings Croatian antiquarians almost exclusively used the Latin language, and considering the sheer bulk of their work, it is safe to say that antiquarian writings constitute a significant part of the Croatian Neo-Latin corpus.5 Generally, in this survey of antiquarianism only those people are included who were by descent from the historical regions of Croatia (i.e., the territory of today’s Republic of Croatia). This means that foreigners (such as Cyriac of Ancona, Wolfgang Lazius, Luigi Fernando Marsigli, Jacob Spon, George Wheler, Antonio Soderini, Alberto Fortis and Robert Adam) are not included into the domestic antiquarian tradition, however much they might, on their journeys or during their stays in the country, have recorded – some of them systematically and some coincidentally – antiquarian information.6 Still, most of them stayed in Croatia for a short time or left just travel notes. An exception is Maffeo Vallaresso, who spent the larger part of his life in Zadar, and certainly made an impact on 4 Brill’s New Pauly, ibid.; P. N. Miller and F. Louis, ‘Introduction: Antiquarianism and Intellectual Life in Europe and China, 1500–1800’, in Antiquarianism and Intellectual Life in Europe and China, 1500–1800, ed. P. N. Miller and F. Louis (Ann Arbor 2011), 1–24, at 3–4. For the principles of the use of written sources in modern archaeology, see B. Kuntić-Makvić, ‘Pisani izvori u službi arheološkog istraživanja. Scripta et effossiones: nastava’ [Written sources in the service of archaeological research. Scripta et effossiones: Lectures], Opuscula archaeologica 30 (2008), 225–267. 5 Rare exceptions appear in the 17th and early 18th centuries, when Petar Nicolini, Ruđer Bošković, Šimun Stratik, Petar Barnaba Ferro and Radoš Ante Michieli Vitturi composed some of their works in Italian. 6 For Cyriac’s role on the eastern coast of the Adriatic, see B. Lučin, ‘Litterae olim in marmore insculptae: Humanist Epigraphy on the Eastern Coast of the Adriatic until the Age of Marko Marulić’, in Classical Heritage from the Epigraphic to the Digital: Academia Ragusina 2009 & 2011, ed. T. Radić and I. Bratičević (Zagreb 2014), 23–65, at 41–50; T. Galović, ‘The Epigraphic Heritage of the Renaissance Period in Dubrovnik (15th Century)’, ibid., 67–101. For recent contributions and a bibliography on Lazius and Marsigli, see V. Vukelić, ‘Povijest sustavnih arheoloških istraživanja u Sisku od 16. stoljeća do 1941. godine’ [The history of systematic archaeological research in Sisak from the 16th century until 1941], PhD Dissertation (Zagreb 2011), [28]-[29], [42], [231]-[238] (available at ). For Spon, Wheler and Soderini, see I. Mirnik, ‘Jacob Spon, George Wheler i jedna zadarska numizmatička zbirka iz 17. stoljeća’ [ Jacob Spon, George Wheler and a 17th-century numismatic collection in Zadar], in Ascendere historiam: Zbornik u čast Milana Kruheka [Ascendere historiam: Papers in honour of Milan Kruhek], ed. M. Karbić et al. (Zagreb 2014), 347–356.
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the local setting (although, when his antiquarianism is concerned, we still do not know to what extent). On the other hand, people from Croatian regions who spent most of their careers outside their homeland are included (Ivan Lučić, Anselm Bandur, Đuro Baglivi, Ruđer Bošković), because during their lifetime they kept up close connections with the Croatian setting, put into their works information about local antiquities and, at least partially, made an impact on antiquarian interests in their native region. In Croatian literature there are a number of useful reviews of individual antiquarian domains and themes. Basic information on the history of archaeology is still offered by the pioneering works of Šime Ljubić and Frane Bulić.7 Worth mentioning from recent times are reviews of epigraphy ( Jadranka Neralić),8 numismatics (Ivan Mirnik),9 archaeology (Marin Zaninović),10 the history of museums and museology (Ivo Maroević, Višnja Zgaga),11 individual sites ( Jasenka Gudelj),12 and contributions about the history of antiquarianism and leading antiquarians (Marko Špikić).13 The most comprehensive synthesis is found in the book of Žarka Vujić, which has largely served as the foundation for this overview.14 It has to be said, however, that the scope of the present paper 7 Š. Ljubić, ‘O napredku arkeologičke znanosti u našoj hrvatskoj zemlji’ [On the advancement of archaeological studies in our Croatian land], in U proslavu pedesetgodišnjice prieporoda hrvatske knjige [On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the revival of Croatian literature] (Zagreb 1885), 148–164; F. Bulić, ‘Razvoj arheoloških istraživanja i nauka u Dalmaciji kroz zadnji milenij’ [The development of archaeological research and studies in Dalmatia during the last millennium], in Zbornik Matice hrvatske: o tisućoj godišnjici hrvatskog kraljevstva [Papers of the Matrix Croatica: on the occasion of the millennial anniversary of the Croatian kingdom], ed. F. Lukas (Zagreb 1925), 93–246. 8 J. Neralić, ‘Povijesni izvori za antičku epigrafiju u Dalmaciji’ [Historical sources for ancient epigraphy in Dalmatia], Građa i prilozi za povijest Dalmacije 24 (2012), 295–368. 9 I. Mirnik, ‘Tradicija numizmatičkog istraživanja u Hrvatskoj: U povodu 140-godišnjice postojanja numizmatičke zbirke Arheološkog muzeja u Zagrebu’ [Tradition of numismatic research in Croatia: On the occasion of the 140th anniversary of the existence of the Numismatic Collection of the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb], Vijesti muzealaca i konzervatora Hrvatske 26.1 (1977), 44–51; I. Mirnik, ‘Das Münz sammeln der kroatischen Aristokratie’, Numizmatikai Közlöny 98/99 (1999/2000), 21–29. 10 M. Zaninović, ‘Antička arheologija u Hrvatskoj’ [Ancient archaeology in Croatia], Opuscula archaeologica 11–12 (1987), 1–71. 11 I. Maroević, Uvod u muzeologiju [Introduction to museology] (Zagreb 1993); V. Zgaga, ‘Počeci muzeja u Hrvatskoj’ [Beginnings of museums in Croatia], Muzeologija 28 (1991), 7–13. 12 J. Gudelj, Europska renesansa antičke Pule [The European Renaissance of ancient Pula] (Zagreb 2014). 13 M. Špikić, ‘Život i djelo antikvara Ivana Josipa Pavlovića-Lučića’ [Life and career of Ivan Josip Pavlović-Lučić, antiquarian], Peristil 51 (2008), 47–70: M. Špikić, ‘Razmjene spoznaja o antici u poslanicama hrvatskog humanizma 15. stoljeća’ [Exchanges of knowledge of antiquity in the epistles of Croatian humanism of the 15th century], Colloquia Maruliana 18 (2009), 63–81; M. Špikić, ‘Aux origines de l’ archéologie en Dalmatie, le rôle de l’antiquaire Anton Steinbüchel’, Revue germanique internationale: Archéologies méditerranéennes 16 (2012), 29–42. 14 Ž. Vujić, Izvori muzeja u Hrvatskoj [The origins of museums in Croatia] (Zagreb 2007), with an extensive English summary (287–312).
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is somewhat narrower than, and a little different from, that of her valuable work. Here it is only antiquarianism (i.e., an interest in the culture of Greek and Roman antiquity) that is considered, while antiquities from other periods, cabinets of the world, natural history collections and gardens and so on are excluded ; moreover, information about antiquarian history will be classified according to somewhat different criteria.
2
The earliest, very rudimentary trace of an antiquarian interest can be identified in the work of Thomas, the Archdeacon of Split (ca. 1200–1260). In his Historia Salonitanorum pontificum atque Spalatensium, talking of Emperor Diocletian, Thomas briefly refers to the ancient architecture of his city.15 Another medieval chronicler from Split, Micha Madius de Barbazanis (ca. 1284–after 1358), discusses the ancient origin of his city and citizens, but does not refer to any material remains of antiquity.16 Such writings, however interesting, cannot here be considered antiquarian. As might have been expected, the interest in antiquarianism sensu stricto appeared in the fifteenth century, together with a new social group, the humanists. They no longer looked upon the material remains of antiquity as scraps from the old times, at best as building materials and at worst as repugnant relicts of paganism. Rather, they started to see in them semiophores, objects of historical and cultural significance.17 Artists, too, became interested in the ancient objects, finding in them prototypes for their works. There also appeared a group of rich and socially influential collectors, consisting of church dignitaries and secular princes, whose humanist education nurtured their interest in antiquity ; they practised collecting as a form of social presentation and self-fashioning. All these social groups are represented in the early antiquarianism in Croatia. The most widely disseminated interest among the humanists was in epigraphic monuments, while their collections of inscriptions were mostly virtual.18 The first collector and copyist of ancient epigraphs on the eastern shores of the Adriatic whose work is reliably documented was Petar Cipiko of Trogir (ca. 1390–1440). From the fifteenth century, we have the epigraphic sylloge of Marin Marinčić of Labin ; there were also, probably, sylloges belonging to Juraj Benja (Zadar), Jeronim Trogiranin ( J. Makarelić ?, 15 Thomas Archidiaconus Spalatensis, Historia Salonitanorum atque Spalatinorum pontificum / History of the Bishops of Salona and Split, ed. O. Perić et al. (Budapest 2006), 20. 16 Michae Madii de Barbazanis Historia de gestis Romanorum imperatorum et summorum pontificum, in Ioannis Lucii Dalmatini De regno Dalmatiae et Croatiae libri sex (Amsterdam 1666), 371–380, at 376. 17 K. Pomian, Collectors and Curiosities: Paris and Venice 1500–1800 (Cambridge 1990), 5, 30, 32, 34–35. 18 For an overview of the Croatian humanist epigraphy, see Lučin, ‘Litterae olim in marmore insculptae’.
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Trogir, ca. 1440) and Marin Rastić of Dubrovnik (ca. 1440). Specific forms of antiquarian interest were shown by two early humanists of Zadar : the Abbot of the Monastery of St Chrysogonus Petar Kršava (died 1447) restored the ancient triumphal arch of Melia Anniana (CIL III 2922) and commemorated the event with an archaising Latin epigraph (dated according to the years of the Olympiads) ;19 Juraj Benja, apart from copying out ancient texts and epigraphs, corresponded with Cyriac of Ancona, received the famed epigraphist in his home in 1435 and took him on a tour of the ancient monuments of Zadar. They lingered with particular attention in front of the relief of a triton on the triumphal arch renovated by Kršava.20 At the turn of the sixteenth century real and virtual collecting came together in Split : Dmine Papalić (ca. 1450–ca. 1525) collected some thirty or so epigraphs from ancient Salona, and his friend, the famed writer and humanist Marko Marulić (1450–1524), at the prompting of his friend, compiled an antiquarian epigraphic treatise called In epigrammata priscorum commentarius (ca. 1503–1510). He included in it the stone monuments from the Papalić collection, as well as copies of epigraphs from the manuscripts of other epigraphists. Marulić’s work is not an ordinary epigraphic sylloge ; around the text of each inscription, he wove a rich web of his own antiquarian commentaries, which makes it one of the earliest commented epigraphic sylloges in European humanism. Marulić also expounded the basic principles of his procedure, and added a short but very substantial description of Diocletian’s Palace, in which he concentrated on the ancient architectural remains (for example, describing Diocletian’s Mausoleum, or the Split Cathedral, he did not mention the bell tower at all, although it was in front of his eyes the whole time).21 An interesting description of the palace was bequeathed to us in a biography of Marulić by his friend Frane Božićević (1469–1542) : the ancient building here gives the impression of being some kind of Piranesian architectural phantasmagoria. Božićević also mentions the ruins of Salona in the poem Spalaeti discessum
19 V. Brunelli, Storia della città di Zara dai tempi più remoti sino al 1815 (Venice 1913), 126–128. 20 For the inscription, see Inscriptiones seu epigrammata Graeca et Latina reperta per Illyricum a Cyriaco Anconitano, ed. C. Moroni (Rome 1747), i (CIL III 2922). For Cyriac’s stay in Zadar, see M. Cortesi, ‘La caesarea laus di Ciriaco d’Ancona’, in Gli umanesimi medievali: Atti del II Congresso dell’Internationales Mittellateinerkomitee, ed. C. Leonardi (Florence 1998), 37–65; Špikić, ‘Razmjene spoznaja o antici’, 70–71. 21 For Marulić’s In epigrammata, see B. Lučin, ‘Jedan model humanističke recepcije klasične antike: In epi grammata priscorum commentarius Marka Marulića’ [One model of the humanist reception of classical antiquity: ‘In epigrammata priscorum commentarius’ of Marko Marulić], PhD Dissertation (Zagreb 2011) (avaliable at ).
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magnifici uiri Iacobi Raynerii, iusti praetoris sui, lugentis consolatio, written in all probability in 1496.22 After the work of Marulić, which is undoubtedly the high point of epigraphic studies in Croatian humanism, the interest in collecting and studying ancient epigraphs almost completely faded in Dalmatia right until the end of the sixteenth century. In the middle of the sixteenth century there were two important antiquarians outside the already established domestic antiquarian tradition. Antun Vrančić (1504–1573) spent his whole life far from his native Šibenik, as diplomat, Archbishop of Esztergom and Primate of Hungary. As an educated humanist and historian, he was interested in antiquity and put Roman epigraphy and history in his debt for finding, together with Aughier Ghislain Busbecq, the famed Monumentum Ancyranum, the best preserved copy of the Res gestae divi Augusti.23 Vrančić transcribed some ten Roman epigraphs in his own work Iter Buda Hadrianopolim (1553),24 and in his letters he expressed several times his interest in Roman epigraphs and other monuments. In one place he mentions his own sylloge of about two hundred inscriptions with drawings of ancient monuments, now lost.25 Marcus Sylvius, a Ragusan notary from 1542 to 1548, published in Rome in 1547 a booklet called In inscriptionem P. Cor. Dolabellae nuper in Illyrica Epidauro effossam M. Sylvii scribae Racusini commentariolus. Almost nothing is known of the author, and his work, one of the earliest printed epigraphic treatises (some twenty pages about an eightline inscription), has still been little studied.26 In the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, we know of several collectors of ancient coins. They are additionally interesting in that they expand the social and geographical coverage of this first period. The Dubrovnik painter Nikola Božidarević (ca. 1460–1518) possessed a casket in which he kept not only ducats (i.e. the currency that was then in circulation) but also 150 medals of silver and three of gold ; since the word 22 N. Jovanović, ‘Marulić i laudationes urbium’ [Marulić and the laudationes urbium], Colloquia Maruliana 20 (2011), 141–163, at 147–148. 23 Z. R. W. M. von Martels, ‘The Discovery of the Inscription of the Res Gestae Divi Augusti’, Studi umanistici piceni 11 (1991), 147–156. 24 First printed in A. Fortis, Viaggio in Dalmazia (Venice 1774), v-xlvii [inserted between vols. 1 and 2], and reprinted in A. Verancsics, Összes Munkái [Collected works of Antun Vrančić], vol. 1, ed. L. Szalay (Pest 1857), 288–334. 25 Antonius Wrancius Christano Pomario salutem, in Verancsics, Összes Munkái, vol. 6 (1538–1549), ed. L. Szalay (Pest 1860), 329–333, at 332–333; Fortis (Viaggio in Dalmazia, 144) mentions his work titled Collectio antiquorum epigrammatum. 26 I. Bojanovski, ‘Ad CIL III, 1741, Obod kod Cavtata (Epidaurum)’ [Ad CIL III, 1741, Obod by Cavtat (Epidaurum)], in Arheološka istraživanja u Dubrovniku i dubrovačkom području: znanstveni skup, Dubrovnik, 1–4. X. 1984 [Archaeological research in Dubrovnik and its surroundings: an academic conference, Dubrovnik, 1–4 October 1984], ed. Ž. Rapanić (Zagreb 1988), 101–110.
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medaglia was then also used for ancient coins, it is assumed that at least a part of his treasure was in fact an antiquarian numismatic collection. This would not have been at all unusual for his time and profession.27 Alas, the information that we command is incomplete, for it derives from a memorandum concerning the theft of valuables from the artist’s workshop.28 We know but little of the antiquarian motives of Juraj Utješenović (1482–1551). This Hungarian statesman and military commander, prior of a Pauline monastery, bishop and cardinal, spent the whole of his life in Hungary and Transylvania. In his court he possessed, according to the sources, 1000 gold coins of King Lysimachus.29 But since he left Croatia while still a boy, his passion for collection, irrespective of his motives and his impressive collection, does not actually constitute an organic part of the antiquarian tradition in Croatia. This also holds in part true for Maffeo Vallaresso (1415–1496), a Venetian nobleman originating from Dalmatia and Archbishop of Zadar, who was a lover of ancient medals and gems. He spent the major part of his life in Zadar, from his election to the office of archbishop in 1449 to his death, and corresponded with learned men on both sides of the Adriatic (amongst others with Pietro Barbo, the future Pope Paul II, who had a huge collection of antique valuables ; with Ermolao Barbaro the Elder ; with Ivan Sobota from Trogir etc.).30 However, we can more easily include him in the domestic tradition ; in his surroundings he most likely found people with similar inclinations whom he inspired to pursue antiquarian interests. In the will of another Zadar man, Ivan de Ciprianis, of 1528, who had a fairly ample collection of books with works by classical writers, there is mention of ‘medaie nove de arzento’ and ‘certi soldi antigi de arzento’.31 27 J. Cunnally, ‘Changing Patterns of Antiquarianism in the Renaissance Medal’, in Perspectives on the Renaissance Medal: Portrait Medals of the Renaissance, ed. S. K. Scher (New York 2000), 115–136. 28 Vujić, Izvori muzeja, 166–167. 29 Vujić, Izvori muzeja, 169; B. Deppert-Lippitz, ‘Thesauro [sic] Monachi – Der große dakische Goldfund aus dem Strei (1543)’, Annales Universitatis Apulensis. Series Historica 14:1 (2010), 9–27. 30 On Vallaresso’s correspondence, see D. Novaković, ‘Epistolarij nadbiskupa Maffea Vallaressa kao vrelo za povijest hrvatskoga humanizma’ [The correspondence of Archbishop Maffeo Vallaresso as a source for the history of Croatian humanism], Colloquia Maruliana 21 (2012), 5–22. On his collection of ancient coins and medals, see S. Kokole, ‘The Silver Shrine of Saint Simeon in Zadar: Collecting Ancient Coins and Casts After the Antique in Fifteenth-Century Dalmatia’, in Collecting Sculpture in Early Modern Europe, ed. N. Penny and E. D. Schmidt (Washington 2008), 111–127; R. Tomić, ‘Prilog proučavanju škrinje sv. Šimuna i pojava renesanse u Zadru (medaljon Apolon i Marsija na reljefu Tome Martinova)’ [A contribution to the research on the chest of St Simeon and the rise of the Renaissance in Zadar (The Apollo and Marsyas medallion on the relief by Toma Martinov)], Radovi Instituta za povijest umjetnosti 29 (2005), 75–92 (for Vallaresso’s Dalmatian origins, see ibid., 83, 89, n. 33). 31 G. Praga, ‘Libri e librerie sec. XIV-XVI’ (manuscript excerpts from the Zadar Archives), Marc. it. VI, 505 (=12299), no. 23, p. 8. On Ciprianis’ library, see A. Stipčević, ‘O knjižnici Zadranina Ivana de Ciprianisa
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On the margins of this overview, several other facts can be mentioned. In the attic of the palace of the Trogir family Statilić, the celebrated early Hellenistic marble relief with a depiction of the god Kairos was found in 1926.32 Among the members of this family in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries were the humanist writers Nikola Statilić and his son Ivan, and in the seventeenth century, the lawyer Marin Statilić (1615–1680), who found in his native Trogir the famed manuscript of Petronius’s Trimalchio’s Feast.33 Although we do not know how or when the precious ancient relief of Kairos found its way into the possession of the family, we may assume that it was not an accidental or sole example of its kind, but part of a former family collection. Antiquities also interested another nobleman of Trogir, Koriolan Cipiko (1425–1493), who noted them in his military memoirs published in Venice in 1477 ; in several places he gives short descriptions of ancient ruins, mentions Homer’s grave, and transcribes a short Greek inscription.34 The remains of ancient buildings and artefacts in their native areas are mentioned by Juraj Šižgorić of Šibenik (ca. 1445–1509) and Vinko Pribojević of Hvar (ca. 1450–after 1532).35 But this kind of humanist interest in antiquity cannot really allow us to count them as antiquarians. In the early seventeenth century there was a renewed interest in epigraphy, but this time the motivation was different. The epigraph now had the function of a source that (XVI. st.)’ [On the library of Ivan de Ciprianis from Zadar], Građa i prilozi za povijest Dalmacije 12 (1996), 293–300. 32 I. Babić, ‘Palača obitelji Statilić u Trogiru’ [The Statilić palace in Trogir], in Ivan Duknović i njegovo doba. Zbornik radova međunarodnog znanstvenog skupa održanog u Trogiru o 550. obljetnici rođenja Ivana Duknovića [Ivan Duknović and his age. Proceedings of the International Academic Conference held in Trogir on the occasion of the 550th anniversary of the birth of Ivan Duknović], ed. I. Fisković (Trogir 1996), 131–138, at 131. 33 For the documentation on the discovery, see S. Gaselee, ‘The Codex Traguriensis of Petronius, Cena Trimalchionis’, in A Collotype Reproduction of That Portion of Cod. Paris 7989 Commonly Called Codex Traguriens Which Contains the Cena Trimalchionis of Petronius Together with 4 Poems Ascribed to Petronius in Cod. Leid. Voss. 111: With Introduction and a Transcript by Stephen Gaselee (Cambridge 1915; repr. 2014), 1–18, at 2–3. 34 Coriolani Cepionis Dalmatae Petri Mocenici imperatoris gesta (Venice 1477), ff. b1v-b2 (ruins), b2 (‘γαξοσ απολλογι’ [sic]), b3v-b4 (ruins), c3 (ruins, ‘Homeri monumentum cum statua et inscriptione gręcis litteris’), [c7v], d4-d4v, e (ruins). For a modern edition of Cipiko’s work, see R. Fabbri, Per la memorialistica veneziana in latino del Quattrocento: Filippo da Rimini, Francesco Contarini, Coriolano Cippico (Padova 1988), 163–230, at 174–175, 177, 186–187, 192, 198, 204. 35 Georgii Sisgorei Sibenicensis Dalmatae De situ Illyriae et civitate Sibenici (written in 1487), in Juraj Šižgorić, O smještaju Ilirije i o gradu Šibeniku [On the location of Illyria and the city of Šibenik], ed. and trans. V. Gortan (Šibenik 1981), 12–59, at 30, 38, 40; Oratio fratris Vincentii Priboevii […] De origine successibusque Slavorum (delivered in 1525, published in Venice, 1532), in Vinko Pribojević, O podrijetlu i slavi Slavena [On the origin and glory of the Slavs], ed. M. Kurelac, trans. V. Gortan and P. Knezović (Zagreb 1997), 45–104, at 88, 89, 90–91.
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can be used for writing works of historiography. Composing the first history of Dalmatia (De rebus Dalmaticis libri octo, 1602, unpublished), Dinko Zavorović of Šibenik (ca. 1540–1608) cited Roman epigraphs to support his claim that the Apennine Peninsula had been a historical threat to Dalmatia and that ‘Illyrians’ was a metaphorical name for Dalmatians.36 This was to be the path of the father of Croatian history, Ivan Lučić from Trogir (1604–1679) : he too was mainly interested in epigraphs as material for his work De regno Dalmatiae et Croatiae libri sex (Amsterdam 1666). It is true that he included here just a handful of typical examples, but in a later separate volume Inscriptiones Dalmaticae (Venice 1673) he published a collection of all known Dalmatian epigraphs. Some of them Lučić culled from the printed corpora of Peter Apian (Inscriptiones sacrosanctae vetustatis, Ingolstadt 1534) and Jan Gruter (Inscriptiones antiquae totius orbis Romani, in absolutissimum corpus redactae, Heidelberg 1603), and some he transcribed himself from the stone originals.37 His epigraphic work was praised by Theodor Mommsen, who describes him as being ahead of his time.38 Lučić is particularly important for building his historical and epigraphic work with the support of a diachronic and synchronic network of antiquarians. On the one hand, he copied out inscriptions from manuscript collections assembled by his predecessors (including the Salona epigraphs of Marulić). On the other hand, in personal contacts as well as in correspondence, Lučić encouraged his countrymen to send transcriptions of inscriptions to him in Rome. His associates at home were two learned men of Zadar, the archdeacon Valerio Ponte (1603–1679) and Šimun Ljubavac (1608–1663), as well as two from Šibenik, Franjo Divnić (1607–1672) and Karlo Vrančić (1609–1689). All four were historians and connoisseurs of local antiquities in their own right.39 Ivan Tomko Mrnavić (1580–1637), also from Šibenik, showed his interest in antiquities in a short description of Split, that is, of Diocletian’s Palace, which he included in his Unica gentis Aureliae Valeriae Salonitanae Dalmaticae 36 I. Kurelac, ‘Dinko Zavorović i njegov rad na staroj povijesti u I. knjizi djela ‘De rebus Dalmaticis’’ [Dinko Zavorović and his work on ancient history in the first book of his work ‘De rebus Dalmaticis’], MA Thesis, 2 vols. (Zagreb 2006), 1:124–128 (I am grateful to the author for allowing me to use and cite her MS); I. Kurelac, ‘Dinko Zavorović i njegova Dalmatinska povijest u kontekstu hrvatske jadranske kulture’ [Dinko Zavorović and his ‘Dalmatian history’ in the context of Croatian Adriatic culture], unpublished manuscript read at the scholarly conference More – hrvatsko blago (Zagreb, 23–25 April 2008), 1–10, at 5–6 (available at ). 37 Lučić lists his sources at the beginning of his book; see Ioannis Lucii Inscriptiones Dalmaticae. Notae ad memoriale Pauli de Paulo. Notae ad Palladium Fuscum. Addenda, vel corrigenda in opere De regno Dalmatiae et Croatiae. Variae lectiones chronici Vngarici manuscripti cum editis (Venice 1673), 3. 38 CIL III, p. 275, XXVI. 39 Especially important is Ljubavac’s epigraphic work; according to Ljubić, ‘O napredku arkeologičke znanosti’, 21, he ‘collected and explained all the Roman inscriptions hitherto known in Zadar and its surroundings’.
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nobilitas (Rome 1628), drawing on Marulić and also on the Split Statutes of 1312. At the end of his description Mrnavić mentions his collection of Roman imperial coins of Diocletian, which he obtained ‘from the various parts of the world’, owing to the help of his friends and antiquarians Lodovico Compagni and Claudius Burgundus.40 An entirely original description of the palace was made by Petar Nikolić (Nicolini, 1622–after 1701) of Split, who recorded his admiration for the beauty, harmony and strength of the ancient building.41 Apart from this interest in antiquities for functional reasons, in the seventeenth century we can also find more naïve examples of collecting fervour : Juraj Dragišić de Caris (1570–1658), the Archpresbyter of Split, built into his palace close to the Peristyle fragments of at least one monumental Roman inscription. In a second palace, Dragišić (or perhaps a later owner from the Geremia family) incorporated a piece of Roman architectural decoration from the surroundings of Salona, a sarcophagus with a relief depiction of the battle of the Centaurs and the Lapiths, and a relief with nymphs and a satyr.42 Such small private collections might have remained unknown, had not contemporary travellers in search of antiquities referred to them. In their travelogue, Jacob Spon and George Wheler mention not only Ponte’s written sylloge but also a small lapidarium with epigraphs in the garden of another member of Lučić’s network, Franjo Dragač of Trogir (died after 1699).43 In the next century, Alberto Fortis found in Osor a mod40 T. Tvrtković, ‘Descriptio urbis Spalatensis Ivana Tomka Mrnavića’ [The Descriptio urbis Spalatensis of Ivan Tomko Mrnavić], Colloquia Maruliana 18 (2009), 303–314. It may be interesting to mention here that Lodovico Compagni (died 1637) was a Roman antiquary and numismatist who corresponded with the famous astronomer, collector and savant Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580–1637); Claudius Burgundus is probably the Jesuit Claude Clément (1596–1642?); see . 41 Written in Italian in 1701, the description remained in manuscript (except for a fragment that was published in Latin by Farlati) until 1994 when it was published by C. Fisković, ‘Nikolinijev opis Dioklecijanove palače u Splitu’ [Nicolini’s description of Diocletian’s Palace in Split], Radovi Instituta za povijest umjetnosti 18 (1994), 29–34. 42 C. Fisković, ‘O splitskom književniku Jurju Dragišiću de Carisu’ [On the Split writer Juraj Dragišić de Caris], in Baština starih hrvatskih pisaca [Heritage of the old Croatian writers] (Split 1978), 319–337, at 329–330. 43 ‘Valerio Ponte was brought to the attention of the European scholarly public as a connoisseur of ancient monuments, inscriptions and a possessor of an interesting epigraphic collection by J. Spon and G. Wheler in their travelogue; in 1675, certainly at the urging of Lučić, they had visited Ponte and found in him a reliable Zadar guide and a man well versed in the history of his region’. M. Kurelac, ‘Suvremenici i suradnici Ivana Lučića’ [Contemporaries and collaborators of Ivan Lučić], Zbornik Historijskog instituta Jugoslavenske akademije znanosti i umjetnosti 6 (1969), 133–142, at 137–38. See also J. Spon and G. Wheler, Voyage d’Italie, de Dalmatie, de Grece, et du Levant, Fait és années 1675 & 1676 par Jacob Spon Docteur Medecin Aggregé à Lyon, et George Wheler Gentilhomme Anglois (Lyon 1678), 1:87 (‘Valerio Ponte’), 97–98
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est epigraphic collection that had been gathered by the late Bishop Nikola Dinaričić (1700–1764).44 On the island of Brač, Nikola Michieli-Vitturi (1654–1721) had a numismatic collection ; according to some reports, he also wrote a small treatise on ancient coins.45 A more comprehensive treatise was written, it seems, by an outstanding native of Vis, Antun Matijašević Karamaneo (1658–1721), who entitled it Epistolae philologicae in quosdam nummos et quaedam marmora litterata Dalmatiae.46 Matijašević was a Latin poet, an archaeologist ante litteram and an author of a copious and still unresearched correspondence, in which he repeatedly discusses the antiquities of Vis and Hvar.47 Among his antiquarian correspondents Jakov Salečić (ca. 1678–1747) from Korčula stands out for his expertise.48 Antiquarianism in inland Croatia in the seventeenth century was marked by a growing interest in numismatics. Collections of ancient coins were owned by two noblemen, Nikola Drašković I (1595–1665) and Nikola Zrinski VII (1620–1664), Viceroy (ban) of Croatia. Both of them received excellent humanist education (they were also poets) and had extensive libraries (the Zriniana in Nikola Zrinski’s palace in Čakovec is particularly important). Their collecting was not just a mark of high social status, but stemmed from a learned need to possess material remains of antiquity. The imperial counsellor Draš ković at a very young age acquired books on numismatics, and, when purchasing copies for his library, he carefully recorded impressions of their beauty and quality, and where and when he had bought a given object.49 Nikola Drašković’s cimeliotheca contained coins of emperors and generals, while his bibliotheca included books about portraits on
(‘Dragatzo’); A. Fortis praised K. Vrančić as a connoisseur of antiquities (‘intelligente d’Antiquaria’); see Viaggio in Dalmazia (Venice 1774), 1:146. 44 A. Fortis, Saggio d’osservazioni sopra l’isola di Cherso ed Osero (Venice 1771), 136–242 [= 142]. 45 Ljubić, ‘O napredku arkeologičke znanosti’, 22. 46 ‘Codex ms. chart. extat apud Capor’. G. Valentinelli, Specimen bibliographicum de Dalmatia et Agro Labeatium (Venice 1842), 61. 47 ‘Matijašević was in his time the leading archaeologist of Dalmatia from Zadar to Kotor. He was asked for expert opinion by people from Zadar and Nin and Trogir and Split and Dubrovnik and Hvar and Perast and Kotor, and he replied to them worthily of a scholar of his time and within the possibilities of his time’. G. Novak, ‘Antun Matijašević Karamaneo’, Anali Historijskog instituta JAZU u Dubrovniku 4–5 (1956), 455–482, at 473. 48 I. Matijaca: ‘Korčulanski kanonik, pjesnik i arheolog Jakov Salečić (oko 1678.–1747.)’ [ Jakov Salečić (ca. 1678–1747), a canon, poet and archaeologist from Korčula], Croatica Christiana Periodica 18 (1994), 131–140. 49 I. Bojničić, ‘Hrvatski starinar u XVII. vieku’ [A Croatian antiquarian in the 17th century], Viestnik Hrvatskoga arkeologičkoga družtva 2 (1880), 77–79; Vujić, Izvori muzeja, 179–180; 247–249; Mirnik, ‘Das Münzsammeln der kroatischen Aristokratie’, 21–22.
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ancient ‘medals’.50 Since the ban was also a famed warrior, a general in the battles against the Ottoman Turks, the portraits of famed men of antiquity were for him very likely exempla virtutis. It is not fortuitous that the motto of Count Adam Zrinski (1662–1692), son of Nikola VII, the last scion of this great feudal family, was Arte et Marte.51 Nikola’s brother, Petar Zrinski IV (1621–1671), also a ban, was a lover of old things too. Although it is not possible to speak confidently about his numismatic collection, it is known that in his residence in Nova Kraljevica he did have a collection of artworks including seven statues of Roman emperors. Unfortunately, the terse information derives from an official report of the confiscation, or seizure, of Petar’s assets after his execution in Wiener Neustadt.52 The polymath Pavao Vitezović Ritter (1652–1713), who lived in Senj, Vienna and Zagreb, was primarily a ‘functional’ antiquarian : ancient monuments were of interest to him inasmuch as they could serve as sources for his historical works, but he was not, as far as we know, a collector. Only a very modest virtual collection is extant : an autograph notebook of limited scholarly value, into which he copied eleven Roman inscriptions.53 The flowering of numismatics at the turn of the eighteenth century was particularly visible in Dubrovnik. We have no information about the period before the great earthquake of 1667, but immediately after it, in a short period of just a few years, four distinguished collectors and scholars of old coins were born in the city. They were connected by familial links and shared common antiquarian interests. The first, Tomo Basiljević (1669–1740), inherited his inclination and the core of his collection from his father, Marko, who had created the collection while he was in Venice.54 Ivan Aletin Natali (1670–1743), brother-in-law of the famed Anselm Bandur, founded a private museum in his house, in which he gathered coins, epigraphs and statues. The family links continued on into the eighteenth century : Antun Aletin Natali (1716–1774), Ivan’s son, inherited his father’s collection and was himself very well versed in antiquities.55 A bit later,
50 J. Tollii Epistolae itinerariae: ex auctoris schedis postumis recensitae, suppletae, digestae; annotationibus, observationibus & figuris adornatae (Amsterdam 1700), 240–241; Vujić, Izvori muzeja, 172–175. 51 Vujić, Izvori muzeja, 24. 52 E. Laszowski, ‘Razgrabljene stvari grofa Petra Zrinskoga i Franje Krsta Frankopana i njihovih pristaša g. 1670–1671’. [Despoiled possessions of Count Petar Zrinski and Fran Krsto Frankopan and their adherents, 1670–1671], Starine 41 (1948), 159–235, at 172. 53 Vujić, Izvori muzeja, 144, 183–184. 54 A catalogue of the collection of Tomo Basiljević is in existence; see Vujić, Izvori muzeja, 187–188. 55 On Ivan Aletin Natali and his collection, see Seraphini Mariae Cervae Bibliotheca Ragusina, in qua Ragusini scriptores eorumque gesta et scripta recensentur, ed. S. Krasić, 4 vols. (Zagreb 1975–80), 2:235–237 (Croatian translation in Vujić, Izvori muzeja, 245–246).
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ten epigraphs from the surroundings of Dubrovnik were copied out by Miho Sorkočević (1739–1796).56 Đuro Baglivi (1668–1707), who worked in Italy as a physician, was the first person among the Croats to use the word musaeum for a space in which he kept his numismatic collection.57 But while his antiquarian passion was only a private learned pastime, Anselm Bandur (1675–1743) became a genuine European authority in the field of numismatics. This Dubrovnik Benedictine had moved to Italy in his youth, and discovered in the Florentine archives hundreds of letters of Coluccio Salutati, Leonardo Bruni and Poggio Bracciolini. But he spent the major part of his career in Paris, to which he was invited by Bernard de Montfaucon. There he discovered manuscripts of the works of Petrarch and gained a reputation as an excellent Byzantinist (Imperium Orientale sive antiquitates Constantinopolitanae, Paris 1711). As early as 1715, he became a member of the Parisian Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. The admirable result of his numismatic work was the two-volume edition Numismata imperatorum Romanorum a Traiano Decio ad Palaeologos Augustos (Paris 1718), in which Bandur gave a catalogue of coins of the late Roman and Byzantine emperors (mentioning the collections of Tomo Basiljević and his brother-in-law Ivan Aletin Natali, but not the one of Đuro Baglivi, with whom he corresponded).58 In the amply illustrated edition he established an exemplary classification, provided detailed descriptions and interpretations, and numerous and diverse indexes ; a special part of it is the Bibliotheca nummaria, an exhaustive bio-bibliographic dictionary of authors who had written of numismatics. Bandur’s is a proto-scientific work, which far surpasses antiquarianism as a love for antiquities ; after all, Bandur himself was not a collector, but a historian who used coins as a primary source – in the same way that Lučić used epigraphs.59 One more celebrated Ragusan is worth mentioning here, even though his interest in archaeology and antiquities was less conspicuous than his scientific work and his poetic oeuvre : Ruđer Bošković (1711–1787), who besides of all his other activities found the time to write on archaeological subjects : D’una antica villa scoperta sul dosso del Tuscolo, 56 For this Dubrovnik person, interesting in so many ways, see V. Rezar, ‘Kratak prilog poznavanju rada Miha Sorga (1739–1796)’ [A brief contribution to the knowledge of work of Miho Sorgo (1739–1796)], Dubrovački horizonti 40 (2000), 38–64. 57 In the work De fibra motrice et morbosa (Perugia 1700); see Vujić, Izvori muzeja, 38. 58 Vujić, Izvori muzeja, 190. 59 On T. Basiljević, A. Bandur and I. Aletin Natali, see Vujić, Izvori muzeja, 186–191, 218. On Bandur, see S. Impellizzeri and S. Rotta, ‘Bandur, Matteo’, Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, vol. 5 (1963), available at ; I. Mirnik, ‘Anselm Bandur’, in Croatica.©HR – hrvatski udio u svjetskoj baštini [Croatica.©HR – Croatian contribution to the world heritage], ed. N. Budak (Zagreb 2007), 368–373.
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d’un antico orologio a sole e di alcune altre rarità (Rome 1746).60 When the so-called Obelisk of Augustus was found on the Field of Mars in Rome, Bošković wrote three letters about the event (1750). Particularly interesting is his 1761 visit to the place where ancient Troy was supposed to be located according to tradition (close to the real site of the city). Bošković described the visit in a brief titled Relazione delle rovine di Troia esistenti in faccia a Tenedo (published in his travelogue Giornale di un viaggio da Costantinopoli in Polonia, Bassano 1784).61 An interest in epigraphy continued in the eighteenth-century Dalmatia, greatly encouraged by the activity of Filippo Riceputi and Daniele Farlati, researchers and authors of the historical work Illyricum sacrum. The Salona epigraphs in Split were now copied out almost exclusively by priests such as Mate Bogetić (1676–1763), Canon Jeronim Bernardi (1688–1773),62 Archbishop Pacifik Bizza (1696–1756) and Canon Petar Aleksandar Bogetić (1718–1784). In 1750, Bizza set up a museum in the atrium of the archiepiscopal palace, in which he had the epigraphic monuments deposited. As his assistant he engaged Petar Aleksandar Bogetić, who drew up the manuscript Inscriptiones antiquae e marmoribus Salonitanis, and was also engaged in numismatics.63 Another associate of Farlati at work in Trogir and Split was the Archbishop of Split, Ivan Luka Garanjin (Garagnin) the Elder (1722–1783). He was a lover and collector not only of antiquities, but also of rare manuscripts and printed books. In his house in Trogir he 60 Bošković’s fellow citizen Ivan Luka Zuzorić (1716–1746), another Jesuit and an astronomer, also wrote of this villa with its sundial. See Ž. Dadić, ‘Ivan Luka Zuzorić i problemi povijesti astronomije’ [Ivan Luka Zuzorić and the problems of the history of astronomy], Dubrovnik 6:1/2 (1963), 55–57; E. Castillo Ramírez, Tusculum I: humanistas, anticuarios y arqueólogos tras los pasos de Cicerón: historiografía de Tusculum (siglos XIV-XIX) (Rome 2005), 140; I. Martinović, ‘Arheolog’ [The archaeologist], in Ruđer Boš ković ponovno u rodnom Dubrovniku: Hrvatska slavi svoga genija povodom 300. obljetnice rođenja [Ruđer Bošković again in his native Dubrovnik: Croatia celebrates the 300th anniversary of the birth of its polymath] [exhibition catalogue], ed. P. Vilać and I. Martinović (Dubrovnik 2011), 98–105, at 99. 61 The diary (not including the visit to Troy) was first published without Bošković’s consent in Lausanne in 1772 and entitled Journal d ’un voyage de Constantinople en Pologne. On Bošković’s archaeological work, see A. Stipčević, ‘Ruđer Bošković kao arheolog’ [Ruđer Bošković as an archaeologist], in Zbornik radova Međunarodnog znanstvenog skupa o Ruđeru Boškoviću, Dubrovnik, 5–7. listopada 1987. [Proceedings of the International Academic Conference on Ruđer Bošković, Dubrovnik, 5–7 October 1987], ed. Ž. Dadić (Zagreb 1991), 167–174; Castillo Ramirez, Tusculum I, 133–153; Martinović, ‘Arheolog = Archaeologist’. 62 Bernardi sent the epigraphs he collected to Farlati’s associate Francesco Antoni Zaccaria; Zaccaria put them together with Salona epigraphs from other sources, classified them into 12 groups and accompanied them with commentaries and published them under the title Marmora Salonitana at the end of volume two of Illyricum sacrum (Venice 1753). 63 This manuscript is said to be lost; a copy of it was located and published by A. von Domaszewski, ‘Eine zweite Handschrift der Inschriftensammlung des Peter Alexander Boghetich’, Archäologisch-epigraphische Mitteilungen aus Österreich-Ungarn 12 (1888), 26–38. Bogetić’s sylloge contains 82 inscriptons.
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opened a little museum that was already renowned in the eighteenth century for its collection of paintings, archaeological monuments, numismatic and natural historical objects. His nephew Ivan Luka Garanjin the Younger (1764–1841) can be called a real antiquarian. A renowned physiocrat, Francophile and Freemason with wide-ranging interests, he enlarged and expanded his uncle’s collection. It held not only epigraphic monuments and coins but also stone sculptures (statues and busts), Etruscan vases, and ceramics from ancient Issa (on the island of Vis). In 1805, when Garanjin the Younger was appointed the first conservator in Dalmatia, he undertook two excavations in Salona. His love for farming, botany and antiquities was made visible in one place in the famed Garanjin-Fanfonja park in Trogir, where even today some of the stone monuments from the family collection are kept.64 The most important collection of antiquities not only in Dalmatia but also in the whole of Croatia belonged to the Zadar physician Antun Danielli (or Danieli) Tommasoni (died after 1782). His father Jakov (1687– ?) had already created a collection of ancient monuments from Nin, but Antun, his son, systematically acquired and bought stone sculptures, coins, epigraphic monuments from Zadar, Nin, Vis and other localities, without sparing labour or money. He himself supervised excavations in Nin,65 and distinguished himself not only for his persistence and investment of major financial resources but also for his aesthetic criteria, so that in him we have a true example of an impassioned antiquarian. His collection – a real museum in the family house in Zadar – is huge even for today’s standards : according to the printed list from 1818 (and 1839), it contained, as was to be expected, mostly coins (about 6000), but it also comprised 300 works of sculpture (including eight giant statues of Roman emperors), Greek and Roman inscriptions and so on.66 Antun Danielli Tommasoni made a big impression on Fortis, who in 1772 called him ‘a fervent lover of antiquities’.67 His collection was described by two more travellers, Louis-François Cassas (1782) and, after the owner’s death, Giacomo Concina (1804), who was already able to witness its dispersal. The collection was inherited by the Pellegrini family, who sold it in Udine in 1859, only to be resold in 1900/1901 at auctions throughout Europe (Copenhagen, Vienna, Milan, Aquileia) ; the 64 Vujić, Izvori muzeja, 226–231. 65 L. Jelić, ‘Spomenici grada Nina’ [Monuments of the city of Nin], Vjesnik Hrvatskoga arheološkoga društva, n. s. 4 (1900), 156–171, at 168–169. 66 ‘Finally [C. F. Bianchi] was able to find a list printed in 1839 at Demarki’s printing office in Zadar and offering Dr Kazimir de Pellegrini’s collection for sale. Although this list gives only the main outlines of the picture of this invaluable collection, nonetheless it is at least helpful, and I am happy to append it here’. Š. Ljubić, ‘Naš nemar u sačuvanju starih spomenika’ [Our negligence in the conservation of ancient monuments], Viestnik Hrvatskoga arkeologičkoga družtva 4 (1881), 58–59. 67 ‘questo zelante Amatore dell’Antiquità’; see Fortis, Viaggio in Dalmazia, 16.
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Archaeological Institute in Vienna bought some of the material for the Archaeological Museum in Zadar.68 The eighteenth century was a period of antiquarian treatises : this was the time of the appearance of proto-scientific archaeology, linked with classicism in art and the Enlightenment in cultural and intellectual history. Ancient coins, domestic and foreign epigraphic monuments and sites were written of by the Zadar-born professor of mathematics at Padua, Šimun Stratik (1733–1829),69 the Korčula-born Jesuit living in Poreč and Rome, Petar Barnaba Ferro (1729–1777),70 and Radoš Ante Michieli Vitturi of Split (1752–ca. 1822), to whom we are indebted for one of the first attempts at a monographic treatment of ancient Salona (Saggio sopra l’antica città di Salona, Venice 1779).71 Particular importance is claimed by Ivan Josip Pavlović Lučić (1755–1818), canon of Makarska and one of the most important antiquarians of his day in Dalmatia.72 He managed to publish a number of antiquarian works : the collections of epigraphs Marmora Macarensia (Venice 1789 ; enlarged ed. Dubrovnik 1810), De supplicio aedificiorum sub Diocletiano Imperatore excursus historiographo-criticus (Venice 1796), Marmora Traguriensia (with a description of the Garanjin collection, Dubrovnik 1811) and Romanarum antiquitatum analecta quaedam (Zadar 1813).73 Pavlović Lučić corresponded with Adam Alojzij Baričević from Zagreb (1756–1806), to whom he sent ancient coins as gifts, and personally met him in Zagreb, where they discussed numismatics.74 Baričević, known as the owner of a fine library, possessed a copious collection of antiquities as well. But we learn of it, alas, only at the moment of its disappearance. In a let68 M. Kolega, ‘Rimska portretna plastika iz zbirke Danieli u Arheološkom muzeju u Zadru’ [Roman portrait plastics in the Danieli collection in the Archaeological Museum in Zadar], Diadora 11 (1989), 159–222; Vujić, Izvori muzeja, 219–226. 69 [Simone Stratico], Dell’antico teatro di Padova (Padua 1795); [Simon Straticus,] De duabus formis archetypis aeneis ad antiquum numisma majoris moduli disquisitio (Verona 1799). 70 A. Stipčević, ‘Ferro, Petar Barnaba’, Hrvatski biografski leksikon [Croatian biographical lexicon], 8 vols. so far (Zagreb 1983-), 4:188–189. 71 M. Špikić, ‘Dekadencija i ideal: Principi rekonstrukcije antičkih spomenika u Dalmaciji od Adama do Andrića’ [Decadence and the ideal: The principles of the reconstruction of ancient monuments in Dalmatia from Adam to Andrić], Adrias 13 (2012), 183–198, at 192. 72 ‘In contrast to Michieli’s boldness in imagining the beautiful and majestic Salona, the Makarska antiquarian Pavlović Lučić in his very first edition of Marmora macarensia of 1789 wrote of the impossibility of precisely reassembling some of the Narona monuments that had been ‘barbarically smashed into many tiny fragments so that the parts were scattered everywhere and can no longer be put together again’ (mo numentum incolarum barbarie illico in plura ac minuta frusta diffractum ita fuit, ut partes hac illac dispersae nullo modo coaptari amplius queant)’. Špikić, ‘Dekadencija i ideal’, 192–193. 73 M. Špikić, ‘Život i djelo antikvara Ivana Josipa Pavlovića-Lučića’ [Life and career of Ivan Josip Pavlović-Lučić, antiquarian], Peristil 51 (2008), 47–70. 74 Špikić, ‘Život i djelo antikvara’, 54.
Antiquarianism in Croatia: An Overview |
ter to his friend Abraham Penzel (1795) he describes the theft that had befallen him : he mentions coins, lamps, stamps, keys and other monuments of antiquity ‘which among the very ruins of Siscia came to hand, which I brought out into the light of day and arranged in my house for the enjoyment of the curious’.75 Baričević personally toured the remains of Siscia and Sirmium in search of artefacts, and tried to create a virtual collection as well. And yet, nothing came out of it but a small unpublished work Nummorum qui in agro ad Sisciam reperti sunt succinta explicatio (1787). Adam Baltazar Krčelić (1715–1778), a historian, theologian and lawyer, an exponent of the idea of enlightened absolutism, was active in Zagreb, Vienna and Čazma. From the vantage point of the present it might seem symbolic that Maria Theresa, the sovereign of Austria, Croatia, Hungary, Bohemia etc. handed Krčelić the manuscript bequest of Pavao Vitezović Ritter. But one should bear in mind that at the same time he was given the task of defending the right of the Crown of St Stephen to Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Bosnia and Serbia, which he did in the treatise De Regnis Dalmatiae, Croatiae, Sclavoniae notitiae praeliminares (Zagreb 1770). Above all a historian, Krčelić considered numismatics and epigraphy auxiliary branches of history. He wrote of numismatic issues in the historical work mentioned above and in a lost manuscript treatise Inscriptio reperta Sisciae occasione errectionis templi Sellensis 1760 ac nummorum veterum notitia submissorum d. Festetich.76 His antiquarian impulses were also reflected in a significant numismatic collection of about 250 coins, mainly from the time of the Roman Empire.77 The Jesuit Andrija Blašković (1726–1796) in a number of works dealt with the history and archaeology of northern Croatia at the time of the Romans, particularly with the precise location of Andautonia (the Roman settlement near modern-day Zagreb). Blaš ković possessed a collection of Roman coins from the late Empire, which he described in a book of collected papers Historia universalis Illyrici ab ultima gentis et nominis memoria (Zagreb 1794).78 75 ‘Numismata ostenderem, a me nullis hortationibus, nec precibus impetrare potuit. Non deest caussa negandi. Sapere didici. Ante hos annos octo, quo auctore, incertum, non leve illorum accepi detrimentum. Sunt, qui autument servuli perfidia, qui ut auro et argento, quod saepe rogantorum amicorum patere observavit, potiretur perscrutatus arculam, cui confidi, etiam aenea rapuit ad se, profugit. Lucernae, sigilla, claves, aliaque antiquitatis monumenta, a me Sisciae inter rudera ipsa obruta, manu veluti porrecta, in lucem extracta, et domi mea ad curiosorum oblectationem collocata, eodem illo tempore periere’. L. Vukušić, ‘Korespondencija Adama Baričevića i Abrahama Penzela’ [Correspondence between Adam Baričević and Abraham Penzel], BA Thesis (Zagreb 2013), 37 (available at ). 76 T. Smičiklas, [Introduction], in Balthasari Adami Kercselich Annuae, ed. T. Smičiklas (Zagreb 1901), i-lxx, at lv. 77 I. Mirnik, ‘Baltazar Adam Krčelić kao numizmatičar’ [Baltazar Adam Krčelić as a numismatist], Numizmatičke vijesti 19 (1972), 39–49. 78 Vujić, Izvori muzeja, 154, 192.
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Antiquarianism in northern Croatia reached its culmination in the work of Matija Petar Katančić (1750–1825). This scholar of many talents, translator and poet, was a university professor of antiquities (archaeology and ancient geography) and numismatics at the Faculty of Philosophy in Pest. He was interested in fieldwork, as well as in writing theoretical disquisitions and reference works ; his antiquarian treatises show a remarkable combination of historiographic and geographic knowledge, ethnographic interests and philological competence. He was moved by the finding of a Roman milestone near Osijek (ancient Mursa) to publish a discussion entitled Dissertatio de columna milliaria ad Eszekum reperta (Osijek 1782), in which he provided a lengthy interpretation of the inscription on the milestone as well as the first catalogue of Roman epigraphs from the Mursa area and a catalogue of selected Roman coins.79 In his work Specimen philologiae et geographiae Pannoniorum, in quo de origine, lingua et literatura Croatorum, simul de Sisciae, Andautonii, Nevioduni, Poetovionis, urbium in Pannonia olim celebrium et his interiectarum via militari mansionum, situ disseritur (Zagreb 1795), he describes the sites of Andautonia, Neviodunum, Poetovio and Siscia, discussing literature and sources, and giving a short inventory of moveable monuments, primarily epigraphs and coins (making use of the works of the local antiquarians Blašković and Krčelić as well).80 He translated from German into Latin the numismatic manual of the Austrian Joseph Hilarius von Eckhel and published it as Elementa numismaticae veteris (Buda 1799). The posthumously published historical and geographical treatise Istri adcolarum geographia vetus e monumentis epigraphicis, marmoribus, numis, tabellis eruta et commentariis illustrata (Buda, I : 1826, II : 1827) provides, on more than 1,100 pages, a thorough introduction to epigraphy, a corpus of inscriptions with commentaries and a catalogue of coins. The work was praised by Theodor Mommsen himself.81 Katančić was not a collector, but in his works he constructed huge virtual collections. He is with good reason considered the originator of modern archaeology in inland Croatia. It is worth mentioning, at the end, that Pavlović Lučić, Blašković and Katančić were the first antiquarians who managed to publish at least some of their writings at home instead of abroad.82
79 D. Pinterović, ‘O Katančićevu naučnom prvijencu’ [On Katančić’s first scholarly publication], Arheološki vestnik 19 (1968), 393–401. 80 B. Kuntić-Makvić and M. Šegvić, ‘Katančićev opis Siscije’ [Katančić’s description of Siscia], Opuscula archaeologica 16 (1992), 165–181. 81 CIL III, p. 414, XIV. 82 Late 18th- / early 19th-century collectors, mainly numismatists, in inland Croatia: Antun Mandić (Đakovo), Adam Frank (Karlovac), Juraj Petković (Zagreb), Andrija Sabadoš (Osijek), Ivan Nepomuk Labaš Blaškovečki (Varaždin), the uncle of Ivan Kukuljević Sakcinski.
Antiquarianism in Croatia: An Overview |
In the first decades of the nineteenth century the institutional period of collecting, preserving and processing antiquarian material began – the period of museum institutions. At the instigation of Marshal Auguste de Marmont a lapidarium was set up in the Temple of Augustus in Pula (1802) ; in 1820 Emperor Francis I ordered the Archaeological Museum to be founded in Split (for which a special little building alongside the eastern wall of Diocletian’s Palace was put up). In 1830 in Zadar, on the orders of the Austrian governor, Count Wenzel Vetter von Lilienberg, an archaeological collection was founded.83 All of these institutions were able to draw on the rich antiquarian heritage that has already been discussed.
3
Can we draw any conclusions going beyond the mere chronological listing of biographical and bibliographical information presented in the previous section of this paper ? In other words, is it possible to systematize these individual data in such a way as to show us some kind of typology of, or the dominant trends in, or the impact of external factors (historical and social circumstances) on antiquarianism in Croatia during the period from the thirteenth to the end of the eighteenth century ? Here we shall offer two models of systematization, which, for brevity’s sake, we shall call chronological and statistical, and historical and sociological. Both are aimed at a review of the key data and relations, and the analysis does not claim to be exhaustive. 3.1
The chronological-statistical model is shown in Table 1, which classifies Croatian antiquarians by century, and also shows how many of them there were in any given century. After their names are listed in chronological order, the territorial distribution is shown, that is, how many of them were at work in Dalmatia, Dubrovnik, inland Croatia (here, for simplicity’s sake, central Croatia and Slavonia are combined) or outside the borders of Croatia. Then, for each century, the table shows how many antiquarians were engaged in describing, collecting or studying the individual kinds of antiquities (archaeological remains, epigraphs, coins, objects of plastic art, i.e. statues, busts, bas-reliefs and so on). The final column shows the presence of individual antiquarian genres. 83 V. Humski, ‘Pregled povijesti muzeja u Hrvatskoj: 19. i 20. stoljeće (do 1945) s bibliografijom’ [Historical overview of the museums in Croatia: 19th and 20th centuries (up to 1945), with bibliography], Muzeologija 24 (1986), 65–285, at 20, 24, 35; I. Maroević, Uvod u muzeologiju, 36.
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N.
Names
Geographic area
Field of interest
13
[1]
[Thomas the Archdeacon]
Dalmatia 1
Architecture 1 Description 1
14
Ø
15
8
Petar Kršava, Juraj Benja, Petar Cipiko, Maffeo Vallaresso, Marin Marinčić, Marin Rastić, Jeronim Trogiranin, Nikola Božidarević
Dalmatia (and perhaps Istria) 6 Dubrovnik 2
Epigraphy 5 Architecture 2 Numismatics 2
Sylloge 5 Num. coll. 2 Corresp. 2 Lapidarium 1 (?) Renovation 1
16
7
Marko Marulić, Dmine Papalić, Ivan de Ciprianis, Frane Božićević, Juraj Utješenović, Marcus Sylvius, Antun Vrančić
Dalmatia 4 Hungary 2 Dubrovnik 1
Epigraphy 4 Numismatics 2 Architecture 2
Treatise 2 Sylloge 2 Num. coll. 2 Description 2 Lapidarium 1 Corresp. 1
17
16
Juraj Dragišić de Caris, Ivan T.Mrnavić, Ivan Lučić, Valerio Ponte, Frane Divnić, Šimun Ljubavac, Karlo Vrančić, Nikola I. Drašković, Nikola VII. Zrinski, Petar IV. Zrinski, Petar Nikolić, Franjo Dragač, Pavao Vitezović Ritter, Nikola Michieli-Vitturi, Antun Karamaneo, Đuro Baglivi
Dalmatia 9 Inland Cro. 4 Italy 3
Epigraphy 9 Numismatics 6 Architecture 2 Plastic art 2
Sylloge 6 Num. coll.5 Corresp. 4 Description 2 Lapidarium 2 Treatise 2
18
26
Jakov Salečić, Marko Basiljević, Tomo Basiljević, Anselm Bandur, Ivan Aletin Natali, Mate Bogetić, Jeronim Bernardi, Antun Aletin Natali, Nikola Dinaričić, Pacifik Bizza, Ruđer Bošković, Petar A. Bogetić, Petar Barnaba Ferro, Jakov Danielli Tommasoni, Antun Danielli Tommasoni, Ivan L.Zuzorić, Baltazar Adam Krčelić, Ivan L. Garanjin, Andrija Blašković, Šimun Stratik, Miho Sorkočević,
Dalmatia 12 Dubrovnik 5 Italy, France 5 Inland Cro. 4
Epigraphy 16 Numismatics 13 Plastic art 6 Architecture 6 Var. objects 4
Treatise 11 Museum 6 Sylloge 6 Num. coll. 5 Corrresp. 3 Lapidarium 3 Excavation 2 Num. cat. 2
Genre
84 Abbreviations and explanations: C. = Century; N. = Number of antiquarians; Corresp. = Correspondence; Inland Cro. = Inland Croatia; Num. cat. = Numismatic catalogue; Num. coll. = Numismatic collection. ‘Sylloge’ here represents a virtual collection (i.e. a collection of transcribed inscriptions), while ‘Lapidarium’ is a collection of real epigraphs.
Antiquarianism in Croatia: An Overview |
C.
N.
Names
Geographic area
Field of interest
Genre
Ivan Josip Pavlović Lučić, Ivan L. Garanjin Jr., Adam A. Baričević, Radoš Ante Michieli Vitturi, Matija P. Katančić
The conclusions indicated by Table 1 are fairly simple, and yet not unimportant. Above all, it can be seen that the number of antiquarians in the sixteenth century is smaller than that in the fifteenth, which might surprise only someone who does not take into account the wretched historical and social conditions in the sixteenth-century Croatia. Because of the incessant inroads of the Turks, the Adriatic communes in the second half of the fifteenth century were already in a state of war, and loss of territory led to economic impoverishment. The dangers to life itself because of the Ottoman encroachments – particularly after the defeat of the combined Croatian and Hungarian armies in the battles of Krbava (1493) and Mohács (1526) – account for the particular themes to be found in Croatian humanism : the frequent political, often anti-Turkish, engagement and the emphasized Christian component.85 In the centuries to come the number of antiquarians suddenly increased, and at the same time the geographical area in which they worked was enlarged, as were the areas of interests, and the genres of antiquarian activity. In the seventeenth century a significant number of lovers of antiquities appeared in inland Croatia. In the eighteenth century we can see a sudden expansion in all categories. In the geographical distribution the lasting domination of Dalmatia can be noted, as well as the late rise of antiquarianism in Dubrovnik, although it was a powerful cultural centre in other respects. In areas of antiquarian interest, the first place was regularly occupied by epigraphy, and then numismatics, while other fields are much less represented.86 Among the genres the sylloge or the numismatic collection dominated down to the eighteenth century, when they surrendered their primacy to theoretical disquisitions (i.e., treatises or monographs). In this, domestic antiquarianism kept up with – even if on a much more modest 85 For more on this topic, see D. Budiša, ‘Humanism in Croatia’, in Renaissance Humanism. Foundations, Forms and Legacy, 3 vols., ed. A. Rabil, Jr. (Philadelphia 1988), 2:265–292, at 265–267; D. Novaković, Latinsko pjesništvo hrvatskoga humanizma [Latin poetry of Croatian humanism], in M. Tomasović and D. Novaković, Judita Marka Marulića–Latinsko pjesništvo hrvatskoga humanizma [ Judith by Marko Marulić–The Latin poetry of Croatian humanism] (Zagreb 1994), 53–117, at 61–62, 64–66, 68. 86 In an individual century, the sum in the penultimate or last column can be larger than the number of antiquarians in the given century, for many of them had multiple interests and practised various forms of antiquarian work. This multidisciplinarity became particularly obvious in the 18h century.
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scale – the general trends in Europe, in which the age of the publication of weighty, opulently illustrated antiquarian volumes had arrived.87 3.2
The sociohistorical model can show the way in which external, or rather supra-individual factors affected the scale and kind of antiquarian work in Croatia, and can also explain some of the only apparently uncommon phenomena revealed by the chronological and statistical model. Consideration of adverse and propitious circumstances allows us to apply the categories of a SWOT analysis – if with a grain of salt – to a cultural historical phenomenon such as the history of antiquarianism. This might seem somewhat unexpected, as the usual aim of SWOT analysis is to evaluate the current position of some organization for the purpose of the optimal strategic planning. It appears, however, that the four basic categories – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats – offer a heuristic framework into which fit various factors that affected the antiquarian activity in Croatia.88 In this tentative SWOT analysis of antiquarianism in Croatia we have slightly adapted the definitions of the four basic categories, and we shall also rather freely classify the pertaining historico-political and socio-cultural entries. They partially belong to the general cultural and political history of Croatia (in this text we cannot explain them in more detail ; instead, the basic bibliographic references are given in the footnotes), and are partly to be found in the chronological framework provided here (section 2 of this paper). The characteristics given in the entries are descriptive and the lists are not exhaustive. Strengths (characteristics helpful to antiquarianism in Croatia) :
87 ‘In the 18th century the leading antiquarian publications were often expensive works with illustrated plates’. Brill’s New Pauly, 1:142. See also G. Cesarini, ‘Antiquarian Transformations in Eighteenth-Century Europe’, in World Antiquarianism: Comparative Perspectives, ed. A. Schnapp et al. (Los Angeles 2013), 317–342. 88 Here is the definition of the SWOT analysis given by Investopedia: ‘A tool that identifies the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of an organization. Specifically, SWOT is a basic, straightforward model that assesses what an organization can and cannot do as well as its potential opportunities and threats. The method of SWOT analysis is to take the information from an environmental analysis and separate it into internal (strengths and weaknesses) and external issues (opportunities and threats). Once this is completed, SWOT analysis determines what may assist the firm in accomplishing its objectives, and what obstacles must be overcome or minimized to achieve desired results’. See .
Antiquarianism in Croatia: An Overview |
• Classical tradition in Dalmatian communes : Latin literacy, Roman law, architectural remains etc.89 • Schooling home and abroad : monastic and communal schools ; students in Padua, Rome, Graz, Vienna, Szeged etc.90 • Antiquarianism as a family tradition : Cipiko, Zrinski, Basiljević, Aletin Natali, Garanjin, Danielli Tommasoni • Formation of local and international networks : Cyriac of Ancona – J. Begna – P. Cipiko – M. Rastić ; M. Marulić – D. Papalić ; I. Lučić – V. Ponte – Š. Ljubavac – F. Divnić – K. Vrančić – F. Dragač ; I. T. Mrnavić – L. Compagni – Cl. Burgundus ; T. Basiljević – A. Bandur – I. and A. Aletin Natali ; A. Matijašević Karamaneo – J. Salečić ; I. J. Pavlović Lučić – A. A. Baričević ; M. P. Katančić – A. Blašković – B. A. Krčelić etc. Weaknesses (characteristics – political, economic and cultural – harmful to antiquarianism in Croatia) : • Absence of any princely courts (instead of them, defensive castles) • Feeble economic base (as a consequence of the above-mentioned political and military situation) • No printing press (until the mid-seventeenth, or indeed eighteenth century)91 Opportunities (elements that antiquarianism in Croatia could exploit to its advantage) : • Geographical position : Croatian lands were formerly Roman provinces ; the coastal area had strong connections with the Apennine Peninsula (the Republic of Venice), 89 V. Gortan and V. Vratović, ‘The Basic Characteristics of Croatian Latinity’, Humanistica Lovaniensia 20 (1971), 37–67; I. N. Goleniščev-Kutuzov, Il Rinascimento italiano e le letterature slave dei secoli XV e XVI, ed. S. Graciotti and J. Křesálková, 2 vols. (Milan 1973), 1:33–51; O. Nedeljković, ‘The Secular Aspect of the Croatian Vernacular in the Period of Late Medieval Humanism’, Journal of Croatian Studies 28/29 (1987/8), 3–37; Budiša, ‘Humanism in Croatia’, 267–269; B. Lučin, ‘Introduction’, in The Marulić Reader, ed. B. Lučin (Split 2007), 7–31, at 7–10. 90 There are no general surveys of the history of schooling in Croatia. See I. Voje, ‘Vplivi Italije na šolstvo in s tem povezan kulturni razvoj v Dalmaciji ter v Dubrovniku v srednjem veku’ [The Italian influence on the education and the cultural development in Dalmatia and in Dubrovnik in the Middle Ages], Zgodovinski časopis 37.3 (1983), 203–212; M. D. Grmek, ‘Hrvati i sveučilište u Padovi’ [Croats and the University of Padua], Ljetopis Jugoslavenske akademije 62 (1957), 334–374; N. Lonza: ‘Dubrovački studenti prava u kasnom srednjem vijeku’ [Law students in Dubrovnik in the late Middle Ages], Anali Zavoda za povijesne znanosti HAZU u Dubrovniku 48 (2010), 9–45. 91 After brief periods of Glagolitic printing in the late 15th and early 16th centuries (in Kosinj, Senj, and Rijeka), the first printing press was established by the Zagreb Jesuits in 1664, while the first printing houses in the coastal area appeared only in the late 18th century (Rijeka 1779, Dubrovnik 1782).
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while inland Croatia was oriented towards the Danube region (Kingdom of Hungary and the Habsburg monarchy)92 • Archaeological locations : Aenona, Iader, Issa, Mursa, Salona, Sirmium, Siscia etc. • Learned guests / travellers and ‘project leaders’ as catalysts of local antiquarian studies : Cyriac of Ancona, W. Lazius, J. Spon, G. Wheler, F. Riceputi, D. Farlati etc. • Working abroad in great centres : I. Lučić in Rome, A. Bandur in Paris Threats (elements that militated against productive antiquarianism in Croatia) : • Long lasting Ottoman expansion (raids and conquests ; wars ; the Military Frontier)93 • Thefts of collections (N. Božidarević, A. A. Baričević) • Family extinction (Zrinski, Danielli Tommasoni)
4: Concluding remarks
In conclusion, we might wonder what is the point of this kind of research. Why is the history of antiquarianism important, and what can we learn from it ? Here are some tentative answers. A survey of the history of antiquarianism in Croatia : • tells of cultural continuity that goes beyond the regional framework and changes in political boundaries ; • witnesses to the lasting and profound connection of Croatian culture with the classical heritage and to the effective endeavours of the prominent figures of that culture to preserve classical intellectual traditions ; • enables a comparison with other European cultures in terms of development and change. The task in the last point is still ahead of us.
92 For an overview of Croatian political and cultural history from the antiquity up to the end of the 18th century (with some useful economic remarks), see M. Tanner, Croatia: A Nation Forged in War (New Haven 2001), 1–65. 93 N. Housley, ‘Christendom’s Bulwark: Croatian Identity and the Response to the Ottoman Advance, Fifteenth to Sixteenth Centuries’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 24 (2014), 149–164; Tanner, Croatia; S. Ćosić, ‘A Survey of Croatian History’, in Croatia: Aspects of Art, Architecture and Cultural Heritage (London 2009), 10–19, at 11–15.
Antiquarianism in Croatia: An Overview |
Response by Lav Šubarić
Although the history of antiquarianism in early modern Tyrol is very different from its history in Dalmatia, it does show clear parallels to developments in the northern part of Croatia, a region with which it shared two important characteristics : the relative scarcity of readily recognizable Roman remains which could arouse curiosity for classical antiquity and the scarcity of the town communes whose patriciate would use those remains as a reference in search for its origins in the Roman times. As in northern Croatia, in Tyrol the collections of antiquities emerged late, only in the late sixteenth century, and antiquarian studies also had their heyday late, in the eighteenth century. Interest in classical antiquity in Tyrol arose first among the aristocracy. The ruler of Tyrol, Archduke Ferdinand II, included Greek and Roman antiquities, coins, statues and reliefs in his famous collection of curiosities and also transported to his Amras Castle Roman milestones from the vicinity to serve as adornment of his courtyard. However, among all other wonders of his court, the antiquities were not the focus of his attention : when he commissioned from his court historian a literary and graphic presentation of his most precious possessions, it concerned his great collection of arms and armour of illustrious historical figures rather than his antiquities. The first traces of antiquarian studies in Tyrol emerge in the seventeenth century in the educational context. The Jesuit Johannes Nies (1583–1634) wrote about Roman measures, banquets, funerals and similar topics in his Capita sex de antiquitatibus Romanorum. This manuscript probably served as a teaching aid for explaining the classical authors to his pupils in the gymnasium in Hall.94 The next study is found only after a long gap, in 1696 : the Cistercian Franz Lachemayr’s commentary on the inscription on the altar of Diana, which was unearthed at one of his monastery’s possessions, shows the beginning of intense interest in local Roman antiquities, soon to become an important trait of Tyrolean scholarship in the eigh teenth century. In as much as it focuses on the local antiquities, Lachemayr’s commentary marks the actual beginning of the antiquarian studies in Tyrol.95 The thriving of history and antiquarian studies in this period profited from the rise of the learned academies, in which scholars could find a like-minded audience for the results of their research. The most important antiquarian of this period was Anton Rosch mann (1694–1760), the director of the Innsbruck university library and the official
94 On Nies, cf. L. Šubarić, ‘Geschichtsschreibung’, in Tyrolis Latina: Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur in Tirol, 2 vols., ed. M. Korenjak et al. (Vienna 2012), 1:481. 95 On Lachemayr, cf. L. Šubarić et al., ‘Geschichtsschreibung’, in Tyrolis Latina, 2:740.
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county historian.96 A prolific author, Roschmann wrote ca. 140 works, most of them in manuscript, on history, epigraphy, numismatics, historical geography, literary history, hagiography, genealogy, archaeology etc. Alongside numerous shorter antiquarian treatises, mostly case studies, which Rosch mann read in the Academia Taxiana in Innsbruck, he also wrote longer systematic works, only one of which was printed : a misguided attempt, motivated by local patriotism, to prove that the Roman settlement of Veldidena near Innsbruck was the capital of the Roman province of Rhaetia.97 Most noteworthy among his antiquarian studies is the comprehensive illustrated and commented catalogue of the Roman antiquities in Tyrol, Inscriptiones et alia diversi generis Romana per omnem Tirolim monumenta (Innsbruck 2009).98 The Inscriptiones is a by-product of his work on a multivolume history of Tyrol, commissioned by the Viennese Court of Maria Theresa in 1751. Although the court, which was mostly interested in documenting the historic rights of the House of Habsburg in Tyrol, urged Roschmann to skip the ‘distant antiquity’ and get to the point, he insisted on working chronologically and focused first on the pre-Roman and Roman periods and never actually came to writing the volumes on the middle ages. Tyrolean archaeologists still to this day use the Inscriptiones as an important source for inscriptions and artefacts that have since been lost. Roschmann was by no means alone in his endeavours. Among others, Jacopo Tartarotti99 and Gian Giacomo Cresseri documented inscriptions of their respective regions, while Simon Pietro Bartolomei100 explored the intricacies of the communal statutes of the Roman Tridentum. The antiquarians of the eighteenth century provided solid foundations for the scholarship of the nineteenth century and much of their work found its way into the CIL and other standard works.
96 97 98 99 100
On Roschmann, cf. L. Šubarić et al., ‘Geschichtsschreibung’, 2:743–752. Veldidena urbs antiquissima Augusti colonia totius Rhaetiae princeps (Ulm 1744). Modern edition by M. Huber, Anton Roschmanns Inscriptiones (Innsbruck 2009). Le più antiche iscrizioni di Rovereto e della valle Lagarina (Rovereto 1737). On Cresseri, cf. F. Schaffenrath and E. Kustatscher, ‘Geschichtsschreibung’, Tyrolis Latina, 2:956, on Bartolomei, L. Šubarić et al., ‘Geschichtsschreibung’, 2:774–777.
III COMPARING THE CORPORA
Florian Schaffenrath
A Comparison of Neo-Latin Epic Poetry in Tyrol and Croatia: A Case Study of Eighteenth-Century Marian Epic Poetry
Textual Foundation
For a long time in literary scholarship no generally applicable statements could be made about entire groups of texts and genres of Neo-Latin literature because no extensive overview of works or literary histories were available upon which such statements might have been based.1 The two-volume Companion to Neo-Latin Studies (1990–1998) by Jozef IJsewijn and Dirk Sacré, still indispensable today, became a standard reference work which carved the first paths in this dense jungle.2 Only recently could three further grand overviews be placed alongside it : Brill’s Encyclopaedia of the Neo-Latin World (2014),3 edited by Philip Ford, Jan Bloemendal and Charles Fantazzi, as well as The Oxford Handbook of Neo-Latin (2015),4 edited by Sarah Knight and Stefan Tilg and A Guide to Neo-Latin Literature (2017), edited by Victoria Moul. They mark a welcome continuation and deepening of the research, but cannot yet be taken as a comprehensive literary history, for which a large amount of detailed groundwork is still necessary. At the 25th Colloquium Marulianum in Split 2015, a comparison of Neo-Latin epic production in Tyrol and in Croatia was presented, entitled Croatica et Tyrolensia – A Digital Comparison of Croatian and Tyrolean Neo-Latin Literature. It found a favourable starting point in the two-volume Tyrolis Latina – Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur in Tirol, edited by Martin Korenjak, Florian Schaffenrath, Lav Šubarić and Karlheinz Töchterle, which is a reliable and comprehensive review of Neo-Latin literature written in the historical region of Tyrol.5 This work represents the first extensive review of this kind and goes much further than comparable projects, such as Minna 1 I want to express my thankfulness to Faith Anderson who was a great help with the English translation. 2 J. IJsewijn, ed., Companion to Neo-Latin Studies, part 1: History and Diffusion of Neo-Latin Literature (Leuven 1990); J. IJsewijn and D. Sacré, eds., Companion to Neo-Latin Studies, part 2: Literary, Linguistic, Philological and Editorial Questions (Leuven 1998). 3 Brill’s Encyclopaedia of the Neo-Latin World, 2 vols., ed. P. Ford et al. (Leiden 2014). 4 S. Knight and S. Tilg, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Neo-Latin (Oxford 2015). 5 Tyrolis Latina: Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur in Tirol, 2 vols., ed. M. Korenjak et al. (Vienna 2012).
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Skafte Jensen’s commendable A History of Nordic Neo-Latin Literature,6 or James W. Binn’s Intellectual Culture in Elizabethan and Jacobean England – The Latin Writings of the Age.7 At the same time, the online collection Croatiae auctores Latini (CroALa)8 provides an overview of the most important Croatian Neo-Latin texts. Compiled by academics at the University of Zagreb under the direction of Neven Jovanović, it not only names and registers individual works in a bibliography but also renders them directly accessible online. The observations below about production of epics in general are based on the foundation of these two overviews, the Tyrolis Latina and CroALa, and are followed by detailed case studies of Tyrolean and Croatian eighteenth-century Marian epics.
General Comparison
In the Tyrolis Latina, we present 21 epic poems, written between 1474 and 1885. Their chronological distribution is quite regular : two were written in the fifteenth century, four in the sixteenth century, four in the seventeenth century, six in the eighteenth century, and five in the nineteenth century. If we compare this result with the worldwide, general production of Latin epic poetry, it is striking that the amount of texts does not decline in the nineteenth century. This is perhaps due to the fact that, in general, the Neo-Latin literature of this century is less well catalogued and studied than earlier periods, so we cannot know exactly what was written in this period.9 The Tyrolean texts are divided relatively equally into the following subgenres :10 (contemporary) historical, hagiographic, genealogical, didactic, sacred epics, poems on the Virgin Mary and translations. There was no large text stressing its Virgilian character e.g.
6 M. Skafte Jensen, A History of Nordic Neo-Latin Literature (Odense 1995). 7 J. W. Binns, Intellectual culture in Elizabethan and Jacobean England: The Latin Writings of the Age (Leeds 1990). 8 ; cf. N. Jovanović, ‘Croatiae auctores Latini: A Paper for the 15th Congress of the International Association for Neo-Latin Studies (IANLS), 05–11 August 2012, session Digital Technology and Neo-Latin Research I’ (available at ). 9 Cf. D. Sacré, ‘Neo-Latin in the Twilight Years (1700-Present)’, in Brill’s Encyclopaedia of the Neo-Latin World, 879–903. 10 The categorical division of the entire epic production follows the overall presentation of H. Hofmann, ‘Von Africa über Bethlehem nach America: Das Epos in der neulateinischen Literatur’, in Von Göttern und Menschen erzählen, ed. J. Rüpke (Stuttgart 2001), 130–182.
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by a division into twelve books. Most of our texts are not divided into books or paragraphs at all, but stay monobibla. Book division is only found in four epics.11 Let us compare this with the collection of Croatian texts provided by CroALa. At first glance it is clear that the Croatian production is much richer. As in Tyrol, the texts were written between the fifteenth and nineteenth century, except for one outlier from the year 1957.12 While in Tyrol texts are spread regularly over the several centuries, Croatia shows fluctuations : There are two texts from the fifteenth century, ten from the sixteenth, five from the seventeenth century, fourteen from the eighteenth, and two from the nineteenth century. We can outline the following thematic distribution. Both of the poems from the fifteenth century are mythological poems (a subgenre which does not exist in Tyrol at all). Janus Pannonius’s Diomedis et Glauci congressus (1447) is actually a translation out of Homer’s Iliad (7,119ff.).13 More substantial is Iacobus Bonus’s De raptu Cerberis : three books, composed after Seneca’s Hercules, printed 1490 in Rome and dedicated to cardinal Oliviero Carafa.14 This poem stands in the tradition of mythological poems which were very popular in fifteenth-century Italy, represented for instance by Basinio da Parma and his Meleagris (1447).15 This strong Italian influence on the Croatian literature of the fifteenth century has no counterpart in contemporary Tyrol ; there, small humanist circles only begin to appear, but they do not reach the literary and artistic level required for the production of mythological poems. Let us turn to historical epics, which in Tyrol tend to be the earlier texts, and which are also (with 12 examples) a very strong group in Croatia. Many of these texts are short epyllia, e.g. the poems written by Antun Matijašević Karamaneo at the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century, respectively : In Budae a Turcarum tyrannide libertatem (1686), Nauplia vindicata (1686), and Ferocia Turcarum per Christianos compressa (1716), which consist of ca. 240 lines each. We also find works struc11 The epics divided into several books: Johannes Matthias Tiberinus, carmen 96 in Codex Fuchsmagen (Innsbruck, Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Tirol, Cod. 664; 2 books); Ubertino Pusculus, Symonis (Augsburg 1511, 2 books); Johann Engerd, Madrucias (Ingolstadt 1583, 3 books); and possibly Maximilian Heuffler, Vita beati Hartmanni episcopi Brixinensis (Neustift, Archive Cod. 38, 2 books, although they are not necessarily named as such). 12 Namely Ivan Baković’s Latin translation of Ivan Mažuranić’s nineteenth-century epic Mors Smail-Agae Čengić, published in Split in 1957. 13 Cf. P. Šoštarić, ‘Ianus Pannonius’ Diomedis et Glauci congressus and its Literary Nachleben’, Colloquia Maruliana 24 (2015), 49–64. 14 Cf. V. Gortan and V. Vratović, eds., Hrvatski latinisti-Croatici auctores qui Latine scripserunt [Croatian Latinists-Croatici auctores qui Latine scripserunt], 2 vols. (Zagreb 1969–70), 1:463–489. 15 Cf. A. Berger, ed., Die Meleagris des Basinio Basini: Einleitung, kritische Edition, Übersetzung, Kommentar (Trier 2002).
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tured in several books, for instance Ignjat Đurđević’s Eugenii a Sabaudia […] epinicium (1717), celebrating the deeds of Prince Eugene of Savoy in two books. The genealogical poems, for which we find several examples in the Tyrol, seem not to exist in Croatia.16 Croatian epic poetry comes into its own when we turn to sacred and hagiographic poetry ; of course, we will find also here more moderate works, such as the epyllion on the death of Stanislaus Kostka, written by Đurđević. Most of the texts here, though, consist of several hundred or thousand lines : Marcus Marulus’s Davidias (1510) is today one of the best known Neo-Latin texts from Croatia. It tells the story of King David as a prefiguration of the life of Christ in 14 books and uses thereby the hermeneutic tools of Late Antique bible exegesis. There are several modern critical editions of this poem, which is exceptional for Neo-Latin epic poetry.17 For the epic on Mary, published by Kajetan Vičić under the title Jesseis in 1700, vide infra. Sacred epics of this format cannot be found in the Tyrol. The same has to be said when we look at didactic poetry : as early as the end of the seventeenth century, Croatia had an exceptionally gifted poet, Benedikt Rogačić, who wrote Euthymia sive de tranquillitate animi carmen (Rome 1690). Yasmin Haskell dedicates a long passage of her authoritative book on didactic poetry to this very author.18 Approximately half a century later, Benedikt Stay and Roger Bošković would achieve international fame with their voluminous philosophical poems.19 We have the same kind of production in Tyrol – for example Franz Graser’s didactic on logic poetry20 – but these texts never reached the level of their Croatian counterparts, and therefore never had the wide reception of Stay or Bošković. Finally, I want to consider the field of translations out of the vernacular. For the Tyrol, we can only mention the exotic case of Pruner’s translation, or better, transformation of Sannazaro’s De partu Virginis (vid. inf.). Croatia has at least four relevant texts : There is Marulus’ translation of the beginning of Dante’s Divina Comedia. These 138 lines were
16 One could mention in this section Johannes Policarpus Severitanus’s (1472–c. 1526) epic poem Feretreis (Venice 1522). The poet celebrates the life and the deeds of duke Francesco Maria I della Rovere of Urbino (1490–1538) and his son Guidobaldo, but integrates in his three books also the story of the duke’s whole family. 17 Cf. J. Badalić, ed., Marko Marulić: Davidias (Zagreb 1954); M. Markovich, ed., M. Maruli Davidiadis libri XIV (Mérida 1957); V. Gortan, ed., Maruli Dalmatae Davidias (Zagreb 1974). 18 Cf. Y. A. Haskell, Loyola’s Bees: Ideology and Industry in Jesuit Latin Didactic Poetry (Oxford 2003), 252–258. 19 B. Stay, Philosophiae versibus traditae libri VI (Venice 1744); Philosophiae recentioris versibus traditae libri X (Rome 1755–92); R. Boschovich, De solis ac lunae defectibus (London 1760). 20 Cf. I. Walser, ed., Im theresianischen Zeitalter der Vernunft. Giovanni Battista Graser: De praestantia logicae, mit einer Einleitung, Text, Übersetzung und Anmerkungen (Innsbruck 2013).
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published in Split in 1510.21 The really important translations, however, were written in the 1760s and 1770s : Rajmund Kunić started in 1760 with a translation of passages of Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata – a tradition going back to the sixteenth century and Scipione Gentili. Then, Kunić turned to Homer’s Iliad, publishing an 18,330-line translation in Rome in 1776. This translation is said to be the best Latin version of the Greek epic.22 Shortly afterwards, in 1777, Bernard Zamagna published his translation of Homer’s Odyssey – and so Croatia is one of the few countries in the world that can say that it had exemplary Latin translations of both of Homer’s works as early as the eighteenth century.
Eighteenth-Century Marian Epics
After this general and superficial comparison of total production we can now direct our attention to specific works, epic poems about the Virgin Mary, which were written in both Tyrol and Croatia. Mary was a favourite topic of Neo-Latin epic poets. Giovanni Battista Spagnoli (Baptista Mantuanus, 1447–1516) dedicated the three books of his Parthenice Mariana to her, printed in 1481 in Bologna.23 His first book describes Mary’s Immaculate Conception through her mother Anna and her service in the temple, the second the Annunciation and the Visitation, and the third the events from the birth of Jesus until the death of Mary and her Assumption into Heaven.24 Spagnoli’s text met with great success and was reprinted multiple times until 1576 ; it is therefore not improbable that he was known to the Marian poets discussed below. The same can be said of another great and well-known author of Neo-Latin literature, who wrote an epic poem about Mary : Jacopo Sannazaro (1457–1530). In the three books of his De partu Virginis (Naples 1526) he describes the events from the Annunciation until the birth of Jesus.25 The poem quickly became a classic of the genre and remains one of the more intensively researched texts from the sixteenth century even 21 Cf. Gortan and Vratović, eds., Hrvatski latinisti, 1:314–317. 22 Cf. Šostarić, ‘Ianus Pannonius’ Diomedis et Glauci congressus’, 59–61. 23 Cf. W. Ludwig, ‘Die humanistische Bildung der Jungfrau Maria in der Parthenice Mariana des Baptista Mantuanus’, in Ovid: Werk und Wirkung. Festgabe für Michael von Albrecht zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. W. Schubert (Frankfurt 1999), 921–942; reprinted in A. Steiner-Weber, ed., Walther Ludwig: Miscella Neolatina. Ausgewählte Aufsätze 1989–2003, 2 vols. (Hildesheim 2004), 1:463–485; Hofmann, ‘Von Africa über Bethlehem nach America’, 171–172. 24 Critical edition of the text: E. Bolisani, ed., La Partenice Mariana di Battista Mantovano (Padua 1957). 25 Cf. R. G. Czapla, ‘Jacopo Sannazaros De partu Virginis - eine erotische Dichtung? Zur Poetisierung der Empfängnis Mariens in der Bibelepik der italienischen Hochrenaissance’, in Sannazaro und die Augustei sche Dichtung, ed. E. Schäfer (Tübingen 2006), 231–247.
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today.26 Alongside these two well-known works from Spagnoli and Sannazaro, an array of smaller Marian epics can also be listed, which together form the backdrop for the Tyrolean and Croatian Marian epics, for example Domenico di Giovanni da Corella’s Theotokon seu de vita et obitu beatae Virginis Mariae (1468). In the case of Tyrol, two occasional poems must be mentioned to begin with : the first is by Michael Winepacher (1656–1742), of the village St. Martin im Passeiertal, who had enjoyed a thorough education from the Jesuits and was later ordained a priest.27 He dedicated his spare time to Latin poetry, as testified by his 1729 work Antiquis eruta ex litteris historia Mariae a solatio dictae, quae in vineis Maisensibus dolorosa Christiano populo est propitia. The 18-page print, published in Augsburg, is dedicated to the abbot of the Cistercian monastery Stams in the upper Inntal, Augustin Kastner,28 marking the occasion of his nameday.29 In vineis Maisensibus in the title points to the South Tyrolean village Mais next to Merano, home to a subsidiary of the Cistercians of Stams known particularly for wine production.30 The content of the 480-verse epic can be quickly summarized : the poet asks his Muse to sing of the origins of the Mater dolorosa (Our Lady of Sorrows) icon found 400 years previously in Mais, of how it went missing and was later found (1–18). He asks Heaven, and Mary in particular, to aid him (19–27). In 133231 the image first appeared in the fields around Mais (28–56). Some 40 years later it was lost during a catastrophic storm (57–78). After a long period of mourning the inhabitants’ prayers were answered and the image resurfaced (79–98) : it appeared again during renovations of the church in 1624 (99–130). At the instigation of the parish priest of Mais, Bartholomaeus Winter, the statue was erected in the church and proved extremely attractive to the locals (131–162). In 1728 the abbot of Stams, Augustin Kastner, decided to display the image in a more prominent position in the church and entrusted Jakob Millbeck with the task of moving it (163–198). On the 8th of August a well-attended inauguration ceremony 26 In his grand overview of Neo-Latin epics, Craig Kallendorf singles out Sannazaro’s De partu Virginis as an important example of Christian epic poetry, cf. C. Kallendorf, ‘The Neo-Latin Epic’, in Brill’s Encyclopaedia of the Neo-Latin World, 449–460, at 456–457. 27 For Winepacher’s biography cf. C. Wurzbach, Biographisches Lexikon des Kaisertums Österreich, vol. 57 (Vienna 1889), 71–72; S. Prem, Geschichte der neueren deutschen Literatur in Tirol (Innsbruck 1922), 15–17; M. Enzinger, Die deutsche Tiroler Literatur bis 1900 (Innsbruck 1929), 39. 28 The dedication is printed not only on the reverse side of the title page, but is also integrated into the text of the epic itself. See v. 166 Augustinus erat proavorum a stemmate Castner. For his biography cf. P. Lindner, Album Stamsense seu catalogus religiosorum sacri et exempti ordinis Cisterciensis archiducalis monasterii beatae virginis Mariae et sancti Joannis Baptistae in Stams 1272–1898 (Salzburg 1898). 29 Cf. M. Korenjak, ‘Dichtung’, in Tyrolis Latina, 2:620–659, at 646. 30 Cf. M. Laimer et al., 500 Jahre Stamser in Mais: Geschichte, Kunst, Architektur und Seelsorge (Lana 1994). 31 The exact years are integrated into the poem by way of chronogram verses (verses 28, 99, 163).
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took place (199–207). The image was first placed in a small garden (208–220), and the Guardian of the Capuchins of Meran, Theodoricus, delivered the sermon for this occasion (221–235). Then the statue was formally brought from the garden (236–250) and installed in its new place (251–291). A holy mass was then celebrated (292–325). Thus Mary began anew her acts of benevolence in the region (326–339). The poet asks the inhabitants of Mais to remain forever committed to the Mother of God (340–349). He asks Fama to fly to Stams with news of the joyful events (350–364). When Abbot Augustinus heard the news he was deeply moved (365–378) and travelled to Mais himself (379–393). Early in the morning he came before the new altar (394–412), where Mary appeared to him in a heavenly vision (413–442). The poet implores St Joseph to grant the abbot a long life (443–450), and asks his muse to let the poem be and to lay the lyre at the feet of the statue (451–461). He asks for Mary’s mercy, should something in the poem have gone awry, offers up the poem to her and asks that she protect it from mockery (462–480). With this text it is clear that whilst Mary is an important background theme, the poem concerns itself first and foremost with then-current events in Mais and their connection with the Cistercian monastery in Stams. It is therefore occasional poetry which uses certain elements of an independent Marian poetry. Likewise for our second example, Joseph Wolff,32 priest in the Tyrolean parish of Nauders, published with Michael Anton Wagner in Innsbruck his Triumphus Marianus in 1750, the more detailed subtitle of which contextualizes the 22-page work :33 Triumphus Marianus seu festum jubilaeum b[eatae] v[irginis] Mariae in imagine sua Oeniponti auxiliatricis in templo parochiali s[ancti] Jacobi octiduana pompa, nono autem die mensis Augusti publica processione celebratum a devota urbe Oenipontana et heroico carmine descriptum.
The church referred to in this text (in templo) is the parish church of the town of Innsbruck, St Jakob’s, now a cathedral.34 Displayed in this church is the religious image Mariahilf (Mary of Succour, Mariae […] auxiliatricis), painted in 1537 by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553). Originally intended for Dresden, the painting came via Passau 32 For Wolff ’s biography cf. G. Tinkhauser and L. Rapp, Topographisch-historisch-statistische Beschreibung der Diözese Brixen, vol. 4 (Brixen 1889), 328; A. Haidacher, ed., Die Matrikel der Universität Innsbruck, vol. 1: Matricula philosophica, part 3: 1736–1754 (Innsbruck 1961), no. 2805; A. Falkner, Geschichte der theologischen Fakultät der Universität Innsbruck 1740–1773 (Innsbruck 1969), 186. 33 Martin Korenjak offers a general overview of the work: Korenjak, ‘Dichtung’, 647–648. 34 As a result of the political developments of the early twentieth century in 1964 the Tyrolean Diocese of Brixen was divided and Innsbruck became the episcopal see for the North Tyrol.
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to Innsbruck in 1623, where it was finally installed in St Jakob’s in 1650.35 This installation was duly commemorated 100 years later with a week’s festivities and a concluding procession. Wolff created his work as a tribute to the celebrations of 1750. In a praefatio authoris ad Oenipontanos (fol. A1v–A2v) he reveals the reasons for his publication to the citizens of Innsbruck : he wanted to express his deep reverence for the Mother of God and to kindle a burning flame for Mary in the hearts of others. This is followed by a description of the eight days of celebrations, the special church decoration inside and out, and the procession, which is especially praised by Wolff. The painting’s escape from Dresden and its welcome in Innsbruck under Archduke Leopold V (1586–1632) are described, followed by an account of one hundred years of blessings and wonders. In the face of these developments, Wolff considers it a sin (nefas) to remain silent in Parnassus (muto in Parnasso haerere), and decides to recount the fortunes of the painting in poetic form : arripui iterum tubam poeticam dudum depositam,36 quamvis rauco eam gutture sciverim ani mare, praemisi initio rei seriem atque originem, qua nempe ratione amabilissima haec imago ex urbe Dresda in vestram fuerit translata, etsi hoc in aliis scriptum libellis breviter sit legere, nihilominus (quantum quidem poetae licuit) carmine complecti et benevolis lectoribus offerre non dubitavi. (fol. A2v)
Concluding, Wolff asks the citizens of Innsbruck to continue their adoration of Mary ; this will yield rich fruit. Wolff himself was not from Innsbruck, as demonstrated by his addressing the citizens with vos. He maintained a connection to Innsbruck through his study of theology and canon law, as he indicates on the poem’s title page. On the one hand, the fact that he was still in Innsbruck in order to take classes in theology, explains his strong interest in the celebrations in the cathedral ; on the other hand, his distanced position, established in the preface, can be explained by the fact that he was not a native of the town. Turning to the 866 hexameter poem itself, in the proem (1–25) the poet distances himself from other themes of epic poetry such as animal baiting, hunting, garden art and war. Whilst military epic content was fairly common, for the other themes he could reference poems such as Pietro Angeli da Barga’s Cynegeticon libri VI (Lyon 1561), René Rapin’s Hortorum libri IV (Paris 1665), or many others. In any case he situates his poem from the outset in the heroic-didactic poetry tradition. Mary is to be the poet’s 35 Cf. N. Möller, Das Mariahilf-Bild im Dom zu St. Jakob in Innsbruck. 1650–2000, 2 vols. (Innsbruck 2000). 36 Here Wolff alludes to his poem Nativitas Petri Leopoldi atque natalis Theresiae, which he published in 1747 to mark the birth of Leopold II and the 30th birthday of Maria Theresia, cf. Korenjak, ‘Dichtung’, 623–624. V. 715 (desuetasque diu […] artes) also alludes to this earlier composition.
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subject, and he also calls her the sole37 recipient of his entreaties at the beginning of his text : to start the poem, he must renew an unspeakable sorrow – this a reference to the introduction to Aeneas’s story of Dido at Carthage (cf. Wolff 25 sed prius infandum cogor renovare dolorem ; Virg., Aen. 2.3 Infandum, regina, iubes renovare dolorem). The actual story begins with a depiction of the Lutheran iconoclasts, who are wreaking havoc all over Saxony (26–36). When they draw near the image of Mary in Dresden’s Kreuzkirche, the poet turns to them and in a spirited apostrophe asks them to abandon their plans (tantis desistite coeptis, 39). The image is thereby spared (audior, 45) and transferred to the Elector’s castle residence, where in an unworthy place it collects dust (37–57). This state of affairs, however, is short lived. The poet asks Calliope to reveal to him how the image eventually made its way to Tyrol (58–65) : Archduke Leopold V of Austria at one time visited the Elector of Saxony, Johann Georg I (1585–1656), in Dresden, who as a gesture of friendship allowed him to choose for himself an object from his treasure chamber ; Leopold scorned all the valuable weapons and objects from exotic lands (66–103), because the dust-covered painting miraculously appeared to him from under all the treasure, which he immediately requested from the Elector and received as a gift (104–143). An underworld scene follows : in Hell the Devil worries that the image might succeed in leaving Dresden. He sends all his Hell-spirits out against Leopold, but they are unable to harm him (144–188). Leopold brings the image to Passau and from there to Innsbruck, where he ensures, together with his wife Claudia de’ Medici (1604–1648), that it is treated with due reverence (189–195). Under Leopold’s successor, Ferdinand Karl (1628–1662), the painting is erected in a church and called upon to deliver protection from the chaos of war raging in Germany (198–218). On the 3rd of July 1650 the painting is transferred with a grand procession to St Jakob’s church and put on display, from where it provides aid in times of need on countless occasions (219–261). Exactly one century later the citizens of Innsbruck decide to celebrate the anniversary of the painting’s relocation and adorn St Jakob’s with resplendent external decoration, a process described in detail (262–319). The interior of the church is equally resplendent (320–407). An emblem is described in detail (408–422), but words fail the poet when describing the splendour of the eight-day festivities (423–456). This is followed by a description of the procession on the last day of the celebrations (457–463). Those present assemble behind the different flags of the procession (464– 489). Scenes from the story of the painting are depicted on different carried frames 37 Contrary to the statement made in the proem (cf. vv. 12–14 non Castalis unda canentis / arida labra riget nec docto e vertice Pindi / turba novena suo veniat cum praeside Phaebo), Calliope is then called upon for aid in v. 63, that she might reveal to the poet how the image made its way from Dresden to Tyrol.
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(490–566). After these come the Eternal Light (567–571) and the dignitaries (572– 579). In an apostrophe addressed to citizens of Innsbruck, the poet asks that they hail the painting (580–598). Further images form part of the procession : Esther, Deborah, Count Palatine Karl Philipp, Solomon, Joseph II (599–665). The image helps all those who are in need (666–684). The Cross Group follows with the clergy (685–709). The poet confesses that he has already grown weary, but that he must report further objects of interest (710–716) ; the image returns triumphantly after the procession to its place in the church ; the specially built triumphal arch is described (717–846), before the Bishop concludes the celebrations (847–853). Finally, the poet extols Innsbruck as a veritable Marian town (854–866). This poem, too, includes many elements of standard Marian poetry, above all with the detailed descriptions of individual pictures in the procession, which depict scenes from Mary’s life. In essence, though, Winepacher’s work is an occasional poem, which has as its focal point the event for which it was written, the anniversary celebrations of the Mariahilf image. Another eighteenth-century Marian epic from Tyrol presents us with very different characteristics : in Trento in 1744 Giuseppe Pruner (ca. 1695–1779)38 published an epic in three books entitled De partu Virginis.39 The similarity to the title of Sannazaro’s Marian epic mentioned above is not accidental, as Pruner’s poem is an artistic reworking of Sannazaro : the plot and the general train of thought are retained but the wording has been changed where possible. In light of this, Pruner’s text must be viewed in the context of translation literature, even if it has not been translated from one language into another, but rather has been transformed in a different way. Let us now turn to thematically comparable Croatian output. Among the numerous epic texts in the CroALa database, the most extensive is dedicated to the Holy Mother Mary : Kajetan Vičić’s Iesseidos libri XII (Prague 1700).40 Vičić, a Theatine monk from Rijeka, had already produced a major epic : in 1686 he had published the six books of his Thieneis, in which he tells of the life of St Cajetan of Thiene (1480–1547), the cofounder of the Theatine order.41 Towards the end of his life Vičić directed his attention to the life of Mary, as the long title of his epic indicates :
38 For Pruner’s biography, cf. G. Tovazzi, Biblioteca Tirolese o sia memorie degli scrittori della contea del Tirolo (Library of the Franziskanerkloster Trient, MSS 49–51), MS 51, 404. 39 The text was edited by F. Schaffenrath, ‘Karl Joseph Pruner, De partu Virginis (1744)’, Grazer Beiträge 28 (2011), 160–232, cf. Korenjak, ‘Dichtung’, 648–649. 40 Gorana Stepanić redacted the text in the appendices of her MA thesis submitted to the University of Zagreb. Her edition is based on the online edition I have used, available in CroALa. 41 For Vičić’s biography cf. G. Stepanić, ‘Jišajida Kajetana Vičića: Najdulji ep hrvatskoga latinizma’ [Kajetan
A Comparison of Neo-Latin Epic Poetry in Tyrol and Croatia |
Libri XII Iesseidos, hoc est admiranda s[ancti]s[simae] matris Dei ex regia stirpe Jesse oriundae virginis Mariae vita ob heroice toleratam sui dilectissimi filii mortem heroicis conscripta versibus et in duodecim divisa libros a r[everendo] p[atre] d[omino] Cajetano Vicich clerico regulari, vulgo Theatino, immoriente huic vix compositae vitae et ideo tanquam opus posthumum posita.
This work, presenting the life of Mary chronologically in over 13,000 verses, seeks by its division into twelve books to situate itself among the successors of Virgil’s Aeneid. In some ways it fails to achieve this, for example with the simple, linear narrative structure (e.g. Book 2 : Jewish history up to the birth of Mary, Book 3 : Mary’s birth, Book 4 : Mary’s service in the temple, Book 5 : the Annunciation etc.), but in others fares better, for example with the inclusion of allegories and speeches. To the Thieneis, Vičić had added a lengthy praefatio ad lectorem in which he justified his choice of subject matter and reflected on his poetic oeuvre. Iesseis is without any paratext ; one explanation for this could be that Vičić no longer had time at the end of his life to furnish his work with the expected additional material. It could also be the case that a twelve book epic poem about the Virgin Mary does not require any explanatory or apologetic paratext, because it is not a text firmly anchored in a specific historical-political situation, but a text enshrined sub specie aeternitatis in a long poetic tradition. It is exactly this which, in my opinion, constitutes the biggest difference between this Croatian epic and the Tyrolean Marian epics. Whilst the Tyrolean epics are easily distinguishable occasional poems (Winepacher, Wolff ) or protracted stylistic exercises (Pruner), Vičić aims higher and transforms the Virgin Mary into a heroine of the epics of classical antiquity. Even if the fundamentals of the works seem very different, certain passages of the Tyrolean and Croatian works are comparable, above all those which belong to the stan dard technical inventory of epic literature, such as proems, ‘Zwischenprooemia’, the invocation of the Muses, underworld scenes, Councils of the Gods etc. Three examples are identified here : It is standard practice in literature of classical antiquity for the poet to integrate references to his own earlier works. One of many possible loci classici of this technique can be found at the end of the Georgica (cf. Geo. 4.559–66), when Virgil references the Eclogues (cf. the famous alternative outset of the Aeneid: Ille ego qui …). Right at the beginning of the poem, in the proem, Vičić mentions that he has already produced epic poetry (Iess. 1,1–5) : Vičić’s Jesseid: The longest Latin epic in Croatian literature], in Hrvatska književna baština [Croatian literary heritage], vol. 1, eds. D. Fališevac et al. (Zagreb 2002), 531–574.
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| Florian Schaffenrath Ille ego, qui Veneto solita stagnare Timavo Euganea cecini Phrygii positoris in urbe Vota fidemque viri nec non Venusina coëgi Barbita Dircaeum carmen resonare patronis Gratum caelicolis, Tuscum nunc missus ad Arnum […]
With these to some extent complicated geographical references, Vičić alludes to St Cajetan of Thiene, who in Venice (Phrygii positoris in urbe) rendered a great service in founding a new religious order, the Theatines. The tenses are clear : the poem about St Cajetan came before (cecini), whilst now (nunc) another topic is the subject. Wolff also integrates a reference to his earlier poetry into his Marian poem ; already in the praefatio authoris ad Oenipontanos he has alluded to an earlier work (arripui iterum tubam poeticam dudum depositam) – namely his 1747 poem celebrating the birth of Leopold II and Maria Theresa’s 30th birthday. However, a hidden reference to an earlier composition can also be found in a metapoetical interjection integrated into his description of the procession (Triumphus 710–716) : Sed quo fervor agit? quorsum spectacula vatem Abripiunt? fragilis refugit se credere ponto Pinus et adstrictos excurrere longius horret Fessa pedes mea Musa. Novos sed pompa poetae Dat nova torpenti stimulos; mea plectra resumo Desuetasque diu studiis audacibus artes Tentandi Aonias urget me justa cupido.
The last time, when Wolff published a long epic poem, was in 1747. But now, three years after this masterly performance, he is no more accustomed to (desuetas) the composition of such a long poem which he describes as bold and audacious efforts (studiis audacibus). One aspect the poems mentioned above have in common is that they feature Mary not only as the focal point but also invoked as a muse for help and poetic support : Winepacher, Historia, 19–25 Jam vos, o Superi, coelestia Numina, coeptis, Quaeso, favete meis tenuemque beate laborem! Praecipue pulchri pulcherrima mater amoris Virgo Maria, Dei genitrix sine labe creata, Praecipue mea Musa tibi, sanctissima Pallas, Supplicat, auxiliatricem prece supplice dextram
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Maternamque implorat opem, succurre petenti! Wolff, Triumphus, 15–20 Tu caeli regina potens et Numinis alti Immaculata parens, in qua sapientia sedem Ipsa suam fixit, tuque omni Pallade maior Huc ad me nitidos e caelo vertito vultus, Dirige mentis iter magnasque in carmina vires suffice, facundam fac facundissima linguam. Pruner, De partu Virginis, 1.28–46 Tu quoque spes Mundi, Columen, Reginaque Coeli, Sancta Dei Genitrix, stipant quam plurima Divûm Agmina, Virgineas coetu comitante catervas, Castraque cui clypeis, Aciemque parare sarissis, Et currus ornare vagos, lituísque, tubísque Plaudere, et omnigenis satagunt gestire choreis Felix angelicis quotquot scatet Aether Ephoebis; Si tua millenis Amplissima Templa coronis Cingimus, et sacras tot in urbibus, aedibus, aulis, Littoribúsque Aras attollimus; undique nomen Si celebrare tuum, laudes, palmásque, decúsque Centum sub titulis (toto, quà panditur, orbe) Atque Sodalitiis gaudemus; sique triumphos, et nova festa damus, quando Cunabula Nati Commemorare tui contingit, Amabilis, oro, Atque benigna rudem vena meliore poetam Foecunda, pressúmque gravi modò pondere, dotes Qui narrare tuas, licet impar, nititur (ecquis Has tamen appositè memoret?) rege, Diva, canentem! Vičić, Iesseis, 1.19–30 Alma nurus materque sacrae non innuba prolis, Virgo, mone, si dicendi mihi copia veri Illimi de fonte fluit, si laurea dignâ Fronte viret; Cirrhaeus eris cui maior apertus Fama latex, praesente tuo si Numine rebus Consona Pimplaeo vox purior exeat antro,
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| Florian Schaffenrath Laeta adsis caleatque mei tibi gratia plectri! Aura, sub Aoniis qua nulla beatior umbris, Afflatu spem vince tuo! Caelo orta decebat Virginei solam postquam te laurea partûs, Es laurus spes una meae: tibi, suave canorae Iste meus gaudet supplex labor esse columbae.
At the beginning of Sannazaro’s De partu Virginis with heavenly beings, muses and Mary three different entities are invoked ; because of this the poet incurred the criticism of none other than Erasmus, who took exception to the mixing of the heathen and the Christian.42 In our texts the invocations of the proems are limited to appeals to Mary for protection, with the exception of Pruner, who in this respect, too, takes his lead from Sannazaro. Finally, I would like to underline an interesting similarity between Wolff and Vičić : both epics contain underworld scenes in which the Devil gathers his minions and delivers an impassioned speech calling them to action against Mary. In both epics the call is without consequence as the storyline involving the demonic world is dropped. Vičić, Iesseis, 3.764–782 Hic ferus umbrarum tali fremit ore Tyrannus: ‘Illa ergo nata est mulier, cui subditus orbis Dicitur observantque suos caelestia nutus Pectora, quae nostros voluit quoque subdere fasces? Nam memini cum starem altus sortitus Olympum Lucifer, illa suis iurata ea lumina sceptris Necdum nata habuit. Sed me illa meosque sodales, Indociles servile regi, sua iura sequentes Non meruit vernas. Quamvis hostile minantem Sint mea regna ortam semper sensura puellam, Persequar hanc etiam, nec enim loca segnis Averna Occupo, nec nostros evadet femina casses. Quare agite, o comites, superas properate sub auras Et socias, vacuum quae replent aëra, turmas Imperiis armate meis, immitis ut ista Ambitiosarum suprema creaturarum, Imbellisque animi crudeles femina poenas 42 Cf. J. Blänsdorf, ‘Sannazaros De partu Virginis und Vergil’, in Schäfer, Sannazaro, 193–206, at 197.
A Comparison of Neo-Latin Epic Poetry in Tyrol and Croatia |
Adverso Plutone ferat. Ruat illius alto Reginae titulo temere insignita potestas.’ Wolff, Triumphus, 153–174 Jupiter infernus loca nocte silentia late Horribili mox voce ciet solioque tremendus Sic ait: ‘O sociae Stygis irremeabilis umbrae, Nuntia maesta fero: nostri modo gloria Regni Et spes praedarum, quas nigra in Tartara lapsas Conspexi semper, jam concidit: unica nostris Faemina se sceptris opponit et horrida nobis Bella movet totumque parat subvertere Regis Taenarii solium; manet alta mente repostum, Quas clades haec una meis, quae vulnera rebus Saepius intulerit, sed nunc a sedibus imis Pro dolor! aeternos est evulsura penates, Ni mora rumpatur, ni totis viribus ausa Impia frangantur. Tantam spectare ruinam Num segnis potero? num tanta injuria famae Infligenda meae poenarum immunis abibit? Non ita, non patiar: fixum est propellere vim vi. Per Stygios ego juro lacus, per sceptra meumque Juro thronum, justis haec proba ulciscier armis Aggrediar: cito ferte faces, cito scandite terras, Invisaeque viam cultori Virginis omnem Claudite, vel saeva praedonem morte necate!’
Both poets have recognized the poetic effect of the definite portrayal of a superhuman adversary, and allow this figure a vehement speech. In both cases, however, the plotline is not followed any further – contrary to Juno’s constant campaign against Aeneas in Virgil’s Aeneid, for example, the powers of Hell cannot harm Mary, protected by Heaven. We can therefore conclude that similarities exist between the Tyrolean and the Croatian Marian epics concerning the technical style of the poems : the employment of typical devices of epic poetry, the dual usage of Mary as theme and muse etc. However, whilst the Tyrolean texts then remain bound to the specific occasion for which they were written and put this at their centre, Vičić’s epic strives for more, because he his writing in a spirit of aemulatio with his great predecessors.
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| Neven Jovanović Response by Neven Jovanović
To Schaffenrath’s stimulating comparison of Tyrolean and Croatian Neo-Latin epic poetry, I want to contribute two supplemental points. The first one will be more specific, the other more general. My specific addition builds on the interpretation and categorization of the Croatian Neo-Latin epic suggested by Schaffenrath. As usual in Neo-Latin philology, those who enjoy the privilege of access to rare texts can make other scholars’ hypotheses fuller and more precise. The only example of the Croatian Marian epic Schaffenrath mentions is the monumental Iesseis (1700) by Kajetan Vičić. During the ‘long seventeenth century’, however, Marian piety can be seen to have influenced two more Croatian texts. Each is in its own way atypical for the genre, reminding us that the poems by Winepacher and Wolff also diverge from the ideal epic. The first poem I would interpret as Marian is the Partheniados seu De cultu virginitatis liber I by Ivan Lukarević (1622–1709), a Jesuit, who spent his career as a teacher at the Roman College. Preserved fragmentary and, until recently, accessible only in a single manuscript (Dubrovnik, Archives of the Franciscan Monastery, MS 1307), the poem may be considered to follow not a Virgilian, but an Ovidian model. The 399 existing hexameters by Lukarević weave together exemplary stories of Biblical heroes, saints and martyrs who have defended their virginity, or who have lost everything after succumbing to the lust of the flesh. The main figures of Lukarević’s extended episodes are Joseph, Samson, a certain Nicetas43 and an anonymous young contemporary of the narrator. The Virgin Mary is invoked at the beginning of the text, as the first one in the long list of the poem’s holy, immaculate patrons : Si te marmoream templis, si ponimus auream, Huc ades, et uotis iamdudum assueta uocari, Virgo, meis da felicem mihi carminis ortum, Da cursum facilem, teque ac tua dona canentis, O bona diua, pium uatis ne despice carmen.
43 Nicetas seems to be the anonymous martyr mentioned in Jerome’s Vita sancti Pauli primi eremitae: this youth was laid on a bed, bound with garlands, while ‘a harlot of great beauty’ tried to rouse ‘the lusts of his flesh’. The young man, ‘unconquered by tortures but being overcome by pleasure’, suppressed his arousal by biting off the end of his tongue.
A Comparison of Neo-Latin Epic Poetry in Tyrol and Croatia |
The other atypical Marian poem is the Plorantis Croatiae saecula duo carmine descripta by Pavao Ritter Vitezović (1652–1713), a layman thirty years Lukarević’s junior. Vitezović composed two cantos (2768 hexameters) on Croatian history in the period 1463/1501– 1699. He published the poem in Zagreb, in the first printing house in the Habsburgruled Kingdom of Croatia (Vitezović was also the manager of that printing house). The Plorantis Croatiae saecula duo […] puzzles modern literary historians because the work does not display ‘any device characteristic of the epic genre’ (Pavao Knezović) ;44 some consider it a ‘versified chronicle’, others a ‘lyric-epic poem’, while Knezović and Gorana Stepanić45 point out the influence of the lament (querela, lagrime) genre. For our purposes, however, the most interesting interpretation is the one put forward by Zrinka Blažević :46 the mother Croatia personified, who tells her own sorrowful history, is a mater dolorosa, whose love and suffering are absolute and universal. In Vitezović’s verses Croatia thus becomes equivalent to the Virgin Mary, and the amor in patriam transforms into the pietas (just as the fidele corpus Croatorum turns into a corpus mysticum, a mystical union of all their mother’s children). This leads to my general remark. Although Schaffenrath does not define epic poetry, his working hypothesis seems to be that an epic text is ‘any narrative poem, regardless of length’. Such an interpretation is standard, for example, in Croatian literary history when it categorizes texts written in the vernacular. The interpretation has obvious heuristic merit – it can be used to build a corpus which we will then describe, analyse and, where necessary, criticize. But the motley collection of texts brought together by this very general qualification will, sooner or later (and, as someone who himself has produced one such motley collection, I can guarantee that this will happen), bring up the question : under such a wide umbrella, is there any use any more for the very term ‘epic’ (or even for ‘narrative’) ? Does the term still distinguish anything that can lead to more knowledge ? The bafflement of scholars who were not sure how to categorize the Plorantis Croatiae saecula duo carmine descripta suggests that the really interesting problem lies precisely there, in that very instability and insecurity of the genre. In that way Neo-Latin literary 44 P. Knezović, ‘Plorantis Croatiae saecula duo carmine descripta P. R. Vitezovića (žanr?) [P. R. Vitezović’s Plorantis Croatiae saecula duo carmine descripta (Genre?)]’. In Pavao Ritter Vitezović i njegovo doba (1652– 1713) [Pavao Ritter Vitezović and his age (1652–1713)], eds. A. Jembrih and I. Jukić (Zagreb 2016), 229–241. Knezović usefully reviews and analyzes previous literature on the topic. 45 G. Stepanić ‘Hrvatsko pjesništvo na latinskom u sedamnaestom stoljeću: stilske tendencije i žanrovski inventar’ [Seventeenth-century Croatian poetry in Latin: Stylistic tendencies and genre inventory], PhD Dissertation (Zagreb 2005). 46 Z. Blažević, ‘Plorantis Croatie saecula duo: Diskurzivne adaptacije i performativne funkcije marijanskog toposa’ [Plorantis Croatiae saecula duo: Discursive adaptations and performative functions of the Marian topos], Umjetnost riječi 49:1 (2005), 37–47.
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history encounters the same problem that Fredric Jameson noted in the early development of the modern Japanese novel : ‘the raw material of Japanese social experience and the abstract formal patterns of Western novel construction cannot always be welded together seamlessly’.47 For me, it is significant that the generic instability in the NeoLatin epic appears simultaneously in two regions which are only indirectly related. It is as if it were the baroque itself which has ‘loosened up’ the classical form, even in the case of writings in Latin. Note, also, that the same instability causes different realizations. The local priests Winepacher and Wolff produce narratives occasioned by very concrete, easily reconstructed local situations. Lukarević, an expatriate Jesuit teacher, and Vitezović, a layman who is considered to be the first professional writer of his homeland, experiment more boldly and on a more general level (Lukarević addresses all young people who try to be chaste, Vitezović speaks to members of an imagined community in the making). Franco Moretti concludes his extrapolation of Jameson’s observations by saying that ‘world literature [is] indeed a system – but a system of variations’ ; such a system opens ‘a fantastic field of inquiries for comparative morphology (the systematic study of how forms vary in space and time)’.48 By putting Croatian and Tyrolean epic texts side by side, Schaffenrath has indeed opened such a field of inquiries for Neo-Latin studies. I hope we will use this opening.
47 Quoted in F. Moretti, ‘Conjectures on World Literature’, New Left Review ser. II, no. 1 ( January-February 2000). 48 Moretti, ibid.
Neven Jovanović
Quadrata rotundis? Lexical Comparison of Two Sets of Neo-Latin Texts
Suppose we have two sets of Neo-Latin texts which can be manipulated computationally – that is, every word in every text can be accessed by a computer programme. Suppose further that there are basic bibliographic data supplied for both sets, and that the texts have a consistently marked structure (chapters, paragraphs, verses). Finally, suppose that one of these sets is relatively familiar to us, while the other is unknown. How do we go about comparing them ? The devil’s advocate immediately disapproves : ‘And why would we want to compare ?’ In order to discover similarities and differences ; to start the journey towards saying something about features, about nodes in a cultural network, which the texts share or do not share. ‘But what if the sets are incomparable, if they are too different for comparison ? What if one text group consists, for example, of Baroque sermons, and the other of nineteenth-century botanical treatises ?’ This I will counter with three arguments. First, the lowest common denominator of both sets always remains the language ; we can always expect that the comparison will teach us something about Latin usage in the sets. Second, the negative outcome – a conclusion that the sets are incomparable, or comparable to a negligible degree – is itself of some epistemic value (though less enlightening than a discovery of a significant level of comparability). Remember, we are comparing a familiar set with an unknown one ; in such situation any conclusive evidence is worthwhile, even when it is complementary to what we already know, or guess.1 Third, computational manipulation promises that a comparison of two sets will be done, even for a large number of texts, in a fast, reliable and reproducible way. ‘Fast’ means that testing of even the wildest and most complicated idea will take only hours or days (certainly not months or years). ‘Reliable’ means that our claims will be supported not by impressions, or by our personal authority, but by concrete, publicly accessible evidence. ‘Reproducible’ means that our procedures can be repeated, by others or by ourselves, on the same material, or on different textual sets ; in this way our methods have become equally testable as our findings. What I am saying may sound as if ‘computational manipulation’ is the same as human reading. It is not. Concordancing, text statistics, clustering, classification, topic 1 M. L. Jockers, Macroanalysis: Digital Methods and Literary History (Urbana–Champaign 2013), vii.
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modeling – all these procedures only crudely approximate only certain aspects of what is going on when people read. Any kind of automatic text analysis, processing or ‘mining’ is neither a substitution for reading nor its equivalent. Nevertheless (though perhaps surprisingly), when we are dealing with historical texts outside the classical canon, humans are not that far superior to machines. Confronted with documents from the past, which not many of our predecessors and contemporaries have read or interpreted, we are missing a lot of context – just like the computers usually do. The missing context comprises not only a larger part of the past extratextual world, which is irrecoverable, but also a lot of texts that authors and their readers have read, known, assimilated somehow into their writings. Many of these ‘hypotexts’ are today accessible to computers. In fact, lately some of us – philologists especially – have come to routinely rely on computers and digital textual collections to function as a kind of ‘prosthetic memory’.2 The digital provides an equivalent of textual bits and pieces which constituted the copia verborum of a Hellenistic poet, a Renaissance humanist or a nineteenth-century improviser of Latin epigrams. It is my goal here to demonstrate a more or less orderly chain of procedures for basic computational comparison of sets of Neo-Latin texts. ‘Basic’, because the procedures will not involve sophisticated transformations, mathematically advanced statistics or elaborate visualizations ; also, no far-reaching, definitive conclusions will be offered. Rather, I intend to show building blocks for such conclusions : how to quickly locate the points in which the sets may be similar or dissimilar, how to direct readers toward passages and patterns which could repay close attention. In other words, this digital comparison highlights textual aspects which could stimulate building of hypotheses about the profiles of two sets, or of their particular texts. The demonstration will be presented as a series of questions and answers. Each question will also be a request for information from a computer database (called, in programmers’ jargon, a query). Each answer will be information retrieved from the database, followed by our comments, findings and observations. All queries and results are recorded and accessible on the website accompanying this paper.3
2 G. Crane et al., ‘ePhilology: When the Books Talk to Their Readers’, in A Companion to Digital Literary Studies, ed. R. Siemens and S. Schreibman (Oxford 2013), 29–64. 3 N. Jovanović, ‘Quadrata rotundis? Lexical Comparison of Two Sets of Neo-Latin texts’, Internet (Zagreb 2015), .
Lexical Comparison of Two Sets of Neo-Latin Texts |
1 Methods and Materials
The sets that we will be comparing are, on the one hand, the collection Croatiae auctores Latini (CroALa), comprising writings by Croatian authors from 976 until 1984 ; on the other hand, it is the pilot collection Latinitas Tyrolensis (LatTy).4 In this paper, CroALa will be the familiar, and LatTy the unfamiliar collection.5 Both collections consist of modern or historical editions turned into a machine-readable format, with added digital markup. The markup language used is XML, and the standard followed is TEI XML.6 In encoding CroALa and LatTy, we chose to rely on the TEI because it is already an accepted standard, and because it was suited to our needs. The standard enabled us to mark certain features of both Croatian and Tyrolean texts in a consistent way even when separate teams were doing the markup. The planned comparisons were thus facilitated.7 The collections were explored using two tools : PhiloLogic, a system for full-text search, retrieval and analysis of documents, and BaseX, an XML database management system and XQuery processor.8 In both systems, what we want to find in the collections – what we query – can be recorded (written down as a set of instructions), published on the internet as a ‘live’ search, and repeated in real time by clicking on a hyperlink. 4 N. Jovanović et al., ‘Croatiae auctores Latini’, Internet (Zagreb 2009), ; J. Luggin et al., ‘Latinitas Tyrolensis’, Internet (Innsbruck 2014), . 5 Both collections are freely available for research and other uses, published under an Open Source license (CC-BY); both are accessible for searching over the Internet, and also as source code (on the hosting site and distributed version control system Bitbucket). 6 ‘P5: Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange’, Internet (2015), . TEI XML specifies a set of annotation elements which are primarily semantic rather than presentational. This means that the marks added to a text annotate not how it looks like on the page (e.g. by specifying margins, indentation, font size and weight), but what meaning is conveyed by the layout and other textual features. When a text is first transcribed using text editing software, it becomes a stream of characters with very little layout information retained. However painstakingly we later copy or add details of layout and formatting – e.g. when we strive to produce a camera-ready copy for print – this presentational formatting will always be hard to analyse and manipulate consistently, especially on a large scale (as anybody involved in desktop publishing is well aware). This is the problem that the TEI XML is intended to solve for any number of texts and their features, by defining semantics and interpretation of some 500 elements and attributes for textual components and concepts. 7 As an example, combining Latin genre terms (used by CroALa) and German ones (in LatTy) was possible because the terms were found in the same place in Croatian and Tyrolean documents. 8 The ARTFL Project, PhiloLogic, the University of Chicago Full-Text System, 3.2 release (Chicago 2010). C. Grün et al., BaseX, the XML database, version 8.2 (Konstanz 2015). XQuery is a programming language designed to query and transform XML data, which usually are structured differently than data in usual relational databases.
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| Neven Jovanović 2 Questions
Here I present the questions that were asked of the two collections, as well as the first findings and observations made while studying the results. I do so very summarily, and invite readers to explore both queries and results for themselves.9 2.1 How Many Texts Are There in the Two Collections?
In LatTy there are 20, in CroALa 451. But note that they are better called ‘documents’ than ‘texts’, because some consist of many smaller units, varying in levels of independence (e.g. collections of poetry by Ilija Crijević ; correspondence of Benedictus Stephani ; paratexts in other authors’ books), and other contain parts of larger, or potential, wholes (two parts of Clavis Scripturae Sacrae by Matija Vlačić Ilirik ; the dispersed correspondence by Fran Trankvil Andreis). 2.2 How Many Authors?
Short answer : in LatTy there are 13, in CroALa there are 190. Again, however, the numbers are not definite, for several reasons. First, both collections contain anonymous documents. There are five such in LatTy, 21 in CroALa. Moreover, three documents in CroALa include texts whose authors are on the verge of anonymity : we know only their name and nothing else (nothing can even be inferred from the texts themselves). Such authors are marked as ignoti. There are further special cases. Some documents contain many texts by many authors ; some texts were written by foreigners. Both categories are not so difficult to account for bibliographically, as they prove to be alien to the accepted framework of a national (or regional) and authorial literature. To illustrate this with Croatian examples : we consider Juraj Šižgorić’s Elegiarum et carminum libri tres (1477) the first printed book of poems ‘by a Croatian author’, though it actually contains texts by several authors, quite a few of them not of Croatian origin (admittedly, these texts were shaped into a book by Šižgorić’s authorial intent). Furthermore, it is not easy to decide to which literature belong, or should belong, migrants such as foreign teachers and clergymen resident in Dalmatia, who addressed texts to local citizens ; some are included in national literary histories (Didacus Pyrrhus), others are mentioned, but their texts are not regarded as part of literary history (Tideo Acciarini), still others again were simply ignored (Marcus Sylvius, the Dubrovnik scribe and notary ; cf. Lučin’s paper in this volume). These devi9 The queries on the internet page are keyed to numbers in this paper.
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ations, as well as what we know about construing and perceiving identities in different historical periods and contexts, suggest that the whole question of nationality should be carefully reconsidered, at least in the Croatian literary history.10 Finally, in CroALa there are two instances of documents whose Croatian authors have not written in Latin : Nikola Dimitrović and Ivan Gundulić are present because others translated their poems from Croatian into Latin (Antun Sivrić, Vlaho Getaldić). 2.3 When Were the Texts Written?
Preparing for analysis which could be at the same time fine-grained and comprehensive, we have annotated the documents by the thirds of centuries in which the texts were created (periods of 33 years correspond roughly to generations).11 Texts in LatTy originate from 1566 to 1799. They appear continuously : there is not a single third of century without a Tyrolean work. The largest group, of seven texts, belongs to the period 1566– 1599, while there is only a single text for periods 1633–1666 and 1700–1732. CroALa has been in development longer, but its coverage is not systematic. In the medieval period there are gaps where we do not have any texts : 1166–1232, 1366–1399. Moreover, bibliographical examinations suggest that the period 1866–1932 (where we have two generations with only a single text) is seriously underrepresented. This is caused by the common belief that Croatian writing in Latin more or less ceases after the year 1848, which was the cutoff point for the seminal bibliography by Jurić, Čučković and Herkov.12 There are, however, indications that Latin was written after the fatal year.13 A chart (Illustration 1) makes clear that the two collections differ in peaks of literary production ; period 1566–1765, to which texts in LatTy predominantly belong, 10 Contrast the seemingly systematic and ultimately unsatisfactory reflections on shifting national identities in the canon by P. Pavličić, ‘Po čemu su hrvatski latinisti naši?’ [What makes the Croatian Latin writers ours?], in Dani Hvarskog kazališta: hrvatski humanizam-Dubrovnik i dalmatinske komune [Days of Hvar Theatre: Croatian Humanism-Dubrovnik and the Dalmatian communes], ed. N. Batušić et al. (Split 1991), 44–54, with the approach in Tyrolis Latina: Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur in Tirol, 2 vols., ed. M. Korenjak et al. (Vienna 2012), which is thoughtful, but restrictive in a different way. For some ideological constraints of Croatian literary history, see N. Ivić, ‘Conceiving of the Croatian Literary canon 1900–1950’, in History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe: Junctures and Disjunctures in the 19th and 20th Centuries, ed. M. Cornis-Pope and J. Neubauer (Amsterdam 2007), 395–404. 11 Cf. F. Moretti, Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for Literary History (London 2007). 12 Š. Jurić et al., Iugoslaviae scriptores Latini recentioris aetatis, part 1: Opera scriptorum Latinorum natione Croatarum usque ad annum MDCCCXLVIII typis edita: bibliographiae fundamenta, vol. 2: Index systematicus (Zagreb 1971). 13 I. Galić Bešker, ‘Latinsko prigodno pjesništvo sjeverne Hrvatske u 19. stoljeću: fond prigodnica u Nacionalnoj i sveučilišnoj knjižnici’ [Latin occasional poetry in nineteenth-century northern Croatia: The corpus of occasional poems in the National and University Library], PhD Dissertation (Zagreb 2010).
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Illustration 1: Documents in CroALa and LatTy (by thirds of centuries).
Illustration 2: Authors in CroALa (black) and authors listed in a digital bibliography of Croatian Latin (CroaLaBib)
is comparatively less populated by texts of CroALa. This is another symptom of traditional interpretation of Croatian literary history. According to this interpretation, Croatian Latin literature peaks once during the Renaissance, and again in the eighteenth century – with not much in between.14
14 This interpretation was recently decisively refuted by D. Novaković, ‘Croatian Latinism in the Seventeenth Century’, Croatia in the Baroque Period and the Age of Enlightenment, ed. I. Golub (Zagreb 2015), 509–519; and G. Stepanić, ‘Hrvatsko pjesništvo na latinskom u sedamnaestom stoljeću: stilske tendencije i žanrovski inventar’ [Croatian Latin poetry in the 17th century: stylistic tendences and generic inventory], PhD thesis (Zagreb 2005), as well as by our bibliographical data, which suggest that a decrease in Croatian Latin literary activity happened only in the first third of the 17th century (Illustration 2).
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2.4 To Which Types and Genres Do the Texts Belong?
Under the heading of ‘types’ we understand prose and poetry. But not even this distinction is simple in our collections. There are many poetic documents which include prose passages and paratexts, just as there is prose with poetic paratexts (or even prose intermingled with passages in verse). Therefore we decided to calculate whether the texts are predominantly in prose or in verse.15 Of 20 texts in LatTy, there are eight (40 per cent) containing only verses, and four more (20 per cent) where verses prevail ; three texts are completely prosaic, four have smaller amounts of verse. A special case is Engerd’s Madrucias, whose rich annotations (in 407 paragraphs)16 make it predominantly prosaic, though the work is a three-book, 1854 verses long historical and encomiastic epic.17 Madrucias suggests that the makeshift formula needs to be improved. LatTy also has five dramatic texts, identified by dialogue divisions (though these texts are predominantly in verse ; only the anonymous Spes aurei saeculi from 1646 is in prose), while CroALa lacks drama (20 of its documents contain Platonic or bucolic dialogue). In all, CroALa has 165 exclusively poetic textual units (30 per cent of total 552), and 303 exclusively prosaic (54 per cent). Prose predominates in 36 units, and in 48 the verses outweigh the prose. In LatTy poetic documents prevail (12 and the Madrucias), while seven documents are prosaic. As for genre, it is a notoriously fuzzy category, useful more as a heuristic than as an analytic tool. Texts in LatTy were marked as belonging to seven different genres : four poetic categories (including the general ‘Dichtung’ and only slightly less general ‘Gelegenheitsdichtung’), two categories of prose (letter and historiography), and drama. Classification in CroALa was more complex, consisting of 76 categories (35 poetic, 41 in prose). In LatTy, most frequent categories besides ‘poetry’ are historiography (5 ; CroALa has 19) and drama (6). The leading poetic genres in CroALa are epigrams (84) and elegies (54) ; in prose the most numerous are letters (295) and speeches (26). CroALa also includes examples of functional genres, texts which do not belong to belles lettres (official documents, charters, wills). A look at the documents themselves indicates that criteria of individual editors may be subjective. For example, in CroALa the Iter Buda Hadrianopolim by Antun Vrančić is classified as ‘itinerarium’, while in Latty Anton Roschmann’s Iter Bulsanense 1740 confec15 The calculation was extremely crude: we compared the number of paragraphs in a text with the number of verses in it divided by 10. 16 The body of annotations and its special role is highlighted in the description in W. Kofler and M. Korenjak, ‘Dichtung’, in Tyrolis Latina, 1:243: ‘eine ungewöhnlich hohe Zahl von Marginalien […] die den Leser an eine Fülle von Spezialliteratur weiterverweisen’. 17 Kofler and Korenjak, ‘Dichtung’, 1:242–243.
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tum, integre descriptum 1743 (described as one of Roschmann’s ‘kunsthistorisch-archäologische Reiseberichte’18) is annotated more generally as ‘historiography’. 2.5 How Are Genres Distributed Chronologically?
Periodization is a less subjective category, and easier to annotate consistently. When we combine it with genre, we find that our LatTy set shows most generic variety in the last third of the sixteenth century (at least four different genres, with seven documents) and in the second third of the eighteenth century (three genres with four documents). Documents in CroALa belong to 33 different genres in the period 1500–1532 (which includes 247 documents) and to 25 genres in 1766–1799 (97 documents). Generic variety in CroALa is also notable in period 1733–1765 : the period ranks as fourth in number of genres (21), but it has 22 documents, implying either that practically each document belongs to a different genre, or that some of the documents comprise very different texts. 2.6 How Many Words, Tokens, and Types in Documents?
There are several approaches to counting words in documents. We can simply count words (in natural language processing, ‘tokens’), or we can count their unique forms (‘types’). We can count words in documents as a whole, or in their constituent parts. At the level of constituents, we can count in sections (individual texts, books, chapters – all passages marked as divisions, div, in TEI XML) or descend even deeper, to the level of paragraphs in prose, speeches in plays or lines in poetry. Counting only tokens of the texts (and excluding the markup and the bibliographic data, which in the TEI XML are part of the document’s header), in LatTy we find six documents with more than 10,000 words. The largest, the collection of letters by Benedikt Stephani from 1640–1671 (228,293 words), is almost ten times longer than the next largest, the De partu virginis by Giuseppe Pruner (1744 ; 24,921 words). There are only two documents in LatTy with less than 1,000 words, and the shortest one (the anonymous Applausus ad principem Eugenium from 1669) is significantly shorter than the rest – it has only 362 words. Excluding these extremes, the average document in LatTy is about 5,200 words long. In CroALa there are ten documents with over 100,000 words (the longest are two parts of Matthias Flacius Illyricus’ Clavis scripturae sacrae, 1581 ; together they are 1,231,915 words long), and 58 documents between 100,000 and 10,000 words. On the other hand, there are 50 documents with less than 100 words. The shortest, an inscrip18 L. Šubarić et al., ‘Geschichtsschreibung’, in Tyrolis Latina, 2:745.
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tion by Janko Alberti (1455), has six words. Average length of document in CroALa (again excluding the three with more than 300,000 words) is c. 7,600 words. CroALa has 13,743 div sections, LatTy 859 (6 per cent of divs in CroALa). The longest section in CroALa is almost 97,700 words long (again in Flacius), the shortest are empty (a number of placeholders where digital text is not yet supplied). In LatTy, the longest section has ten times less than in CroALa – the 8,907 words in Arcensis comitatus descriptio by Ambrogio Franco (with additions by his son, written at the end of the sixteenth and in the first half of the seventeenth century),19 while the two shortest sections comprise just one word each (‘venatio’ as description of a scene in Catharinias, a 1577 Jesuit play by Johannes Sonhovius, and a ‘finis’ in the Epitome rerum Oenovallensium by Ignaz Reydax, 1606). Average section lengths (again excluding the extremes) are roughly the same : 400 words for LatTy, 390 words for CroALa. Contrary to tokens, different words occurring in a text are called types. Ratio of tokens to types (the number of types divided by the number of tokens, usually shortened to TTR) is considered to provide quick information on lexical variation.20 Again, we have to decide on which level do we want to compare TTRs in CroALa and LatTy : on the level of texts, or below. We did a little bit of both. TTRs in LatTy texts span a range from 0.82 (Applausus ad principem Eugenium) to 0.15 (Stephani’s letters). As can be expected, in the longest document there is least lexical variation.21 But Stephani’s letter collection, outstanding by its length, is also an outlier in TTR value ; there is a noticeable gap between it and its immediate neighbours on the TTR rank.22 CroALa, with its several hundred documents, unsurprisingly shows a wider spectrum of TTR values ; 10 texts have a TTR of 1 – which means that there is no repeti-
19 F. Schaffenrath, ‘Geschichtsschreibung’, in Tyrolis Latina, 1:319–320. 20 Lexical variation tells us whether in a text fewer types are repeated more often, or is there less repetition of more types. The TTR range falls between a theoretical 0 (a single type is repeated infinitely many times), and 1 (there are as many types as there are tokens). TTR varies with the size of the text – in longer texts there is usually less variation. 21 Note, however, that for individual letters in Stephani’s correspondence (enclosed in TEI div elements) TTR ranges from 0.89 (very close to the Applausus) to 0.68 (far removed from the 0.15), with the majority of sections in range 0.8-0.75. The same would hold for other texts – findings can dramatically change as we analyse smaller segments. 22 Stephani’s first neighbours are Roschmann’s Reliquiae aedificii Romani ad oppidum Tyrolense Lienz detectae vulgo das Zwergengebäu (1746; 0.41), the two epic poems – Giuseppe Pruner’s De partu virginis (1744) and Johann Engerd’s Madrucias (1583; both 0.38) – as well as Sonhovius’ play Catharinias (0.37).
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tion of types23 – and five documents have TTR 0.15 or less (Stay’s Philosophia recentior and Marulić’s Repertorium 0.15, Kunić’s epigrams and Getaldić’s Promotus Archimedes 0.14,24 Flacius’s Clavis Scripturae Sacrae 0.11 for part 2, 0.08 for part 1). A rough comparison of TTR’s in two collections shows that in LatTy more than 50 per cent of texts (11 in all) are in the 0.4-0.59 range, while in CroALa the same is the case in the 0.7-0.89 range (233). This would suggest that in CroALa lexical variation is somewhat greater. The hypothesis is corroborated by comparing TTR’s of div sections.25 In itself, such word-counting analyses are not especially enlightening. Afterwards, we can do some elementary statistics, or use a list of sections ordered by size as a finding aid for passages with similar TTR value. But TTR itself, as a textual phenomenon, opens further questions. Does this feature have an actual effect on readers, or is it just a construct, a byproduct of counting ? We would be inclined to claim that the difference between TTR 0.2 and 0.9 is noticeable in reading ; but what about difference between TTR 0.8 and 0.9 ? This kind of questions should be explored experimentally, using the texts and passages identified by the queries. 2.7 How Many Verses? Which clausulae Are Repeated, Which Co-Occur?
A well-marked unit in our collections is a line of poetry. In LatTy there are 17 texts (parts of documents) comprising 13,043 verses, and in CroALa 237 texts comprise 241,829 verses ; poetic lines contain roughly 30 per cent of words in CroALa, and 20 per cent in LatTy. A chronological comparison – a query on ‘how are verses distributed by periods’ – reveals that, though LatTy is a much smaller collection than CroALa, in the last third of the sixteenth century the number of verses is quite similar (LatTy 6,959 : CroALa 7,998). Moreover, the first third of the seventeenth century is the only period for which there
23 Here it is important to have in mind that in this analysis the words were not lemmatized. Each inflected form was regarded as a separate type. Therefore, in the ten documents mentioned, there could be some repetition of lexical words, though not of their forms. 24 With only 20,000 words, Promotus Archimedes is a surprising intruder in the company of much longer documents (Flacius has over a million, Marulić’s Repertorium over 300,000, Philosophia recentior over 184,000, Kunić’s epigrams 170,000). Getaldić’s lexical variation must be extremely limited. Something similar can be noticed in LatTy for Anton Roschmann’s Reliquiae: a little over 5,500 words long, its TTR of 0.41 brings it between the 18,200 words long Madrucias (TTR 0.38) and both Tragoedia De fortissimo S. Catharinae certamine (TTR 0.44, c. 13,600 words) and Wolfgang Starck’s Catharina Tragoedia (TTR 0.44, c. 14,250 words). 25 In LatTy, the majority of sections (550, in 11 documents) is in the TTR range 0.8-0.89, while in CroALa the majority (5,117 sections in 198 documents) is in the range 0.9-0.99 (with additional 2,986 sections in 143 documents with the TTR value of 1).
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are more verses in LatTy than in CroALa (2,127 : 314).26 This is another indication that the two Neo-Latin literatures – or at least our corpora and our canonical selections of their works – developed with different dynamics (cf. above, 2.3). Historical conventions of Latin versification have turned the verse ending, the clausula, into a locus especially stimulative for poetic memory and susceptible to text reuse, ‘sia come luogo di squisiti richiami, sia come deposito di passive imitazioni’, as noted by Paolo Mastandrea.27 For this occasion, our large-scale exploration of lines of poetry in CroALa and in LatTy also focused on the clausulae.28 Excluding verses which are not in Latin (there are some in German) and those which are in textual notes, in LatTy there are 12,692 lines of poetry ; of their clausulae, 11,786 occur in LatTy only once, 410 are repeated.29 The sets of unique and repeated clausulae in LatTy were then used to query clausulae in CroALa.30 It turned out that 236 unique and 25 repeated verse endings (about 2.1 per cent of all distinct endings) from LatTy occur also in CroALa ; in all, there are 320 lines (about 2.5 per cent of all lines) in LatTy ending with the same clausula as lines in CroALa.31 Here we offer a tentative categorization of matching clausulae, and some further thoughts.
26 For all other periods the number of verses in CroALa is much larger than the number of verses in LatTy. 27 P. Mastandrea and L. Tessarolo, De fine versus: repertorio di clausole ricorrenti nella poesia dattilica latina dalle origini a Sidonio Apollinare (Hildesheim 1993), vii. 28 In neither collection was the orthography normalized; in such cases, digital comparisons can use the so-called ‘fuzzy’ searching (where volitare is considered the same as uolitare), which may return false positives (numine and nomine are recognized as a repetition), or literal searches (which would return more false negatives, as volitare is there considered different from uolitare). A thorough analysis would compare fuzzy and literal results. 29 The clausula dies venerata secundos occurs no less than eight times, as a part of a versus intercalaris in Sonhovius’s play Catharinias. This play contains other frequent clausulae, or even whole verses: curvis in vallibus Oeni (6 times, once in the apparatus), Audite et acclamate fausta milites (6 times), dii gentium sunt daemones (repeatedly occurring also in an earlier version of the same play, the anonymous Tragoedia De fortissimo S. Catharinae certamine; in all, occurring 17 times). In general, repetition in drama is a prominent feature of LatTy texts. 30 The query was simple and restrictive. I took into account three final words (not, for example, two), and only their literal matches (excluding partial matches, i.e. strings in which some letters are different). The orthography was not normalized. The results therefore include some false positives – e.g. those caused by one-word clausulae – and some false negatives, omission of clausulae which we would have included. But this is just a quick demonstration of possibilities. 31 The number of matching clausulae (320) is larger than the sum of unique and repeated matching clausulae (236 + 25), because repeated clausulae occur more than once in the corpus. All lists of clausulae, with indices to verses in which they occur, can be consulted in full on the webpage accompanying this paper.
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The first group may be called ‘expected echoes’. These consist of poetic tags, phrases easily recognized by readers familiar with Roman poetry, especially Virgilian and Ovidian, often interpretable as allusions, in consistence with what we know about conventions of Neo-Latin poetry. Some such echoes are :32 ab origine mundi (Lucr. rer. nat. 5, 548; Ovid. met. 1, 3; trist. 2, 559; Stat. Theb. 3, 242 etc – LatTy: Sonhovius, Catharinias 3, 1; Leucht, Epithalamium 180 – CroALa: Bunić, De vita et gestis Christi 11, 78; 13, 694; 14, 82; Vičić, Thieneis 2, 7; Stay, Philosophiae versibus traditae 5, 94; Bošković, De solis ac lunae defectibus 2, 324; Zamanja, Hesiodi Deorum generatio 128) delapsus ab alto (Ovid. Trist. 3, 4, 19 – LatTy: Pruner, De partu virginis 1, 111 – CroALa: Janus Pannonius, Consultatio Dei Patris et Filii, 143; Bunić, De vita et gestis Christi 11, 262; Zamanja, Homeri Odyssea 7, 225 and 19, 40) fama per urbes (Verg. Aen. 4, 173 and 7, 104; Ovid. Met. 8, 267; Sen. Herc. f. 193; Stat. Theb. 2, 205 and 3, 10 – LatTy: Engerd, Madrucias 64 – CroALa: Marulić, Dauidias 11, 164; Zamanja, Homeri Odyssea 14, 259; Getaldić, Osmanides 8, 38) in carmina vires (Ovid. epist. 15, 197; fast. 1, 17 – LatTy: Engerd, Madruciados poema paraeneticum 575; Anonymus, Helicon Oenipontanus 43 – CroALa: Jan Panonije, Cuidam ardua suadenti 11; Marulić, Dauidias 1, 2; Beneša, De morte Christi 1, 61; 3, 625; F. T. Andreis, Antonio Verantio 3; Paskalić, Ad Marcum Grimannum 61) primus ab oris (Verg. Aen. 1, 1 – LatTy: Engerd, Madrucias 18 – CroALa: Marulić, Principium operis Dantis, 75) terque quaterque beati (Verg. Aen. 1, 94 – LatTy: Graser, De praestantia logicae 2, 448 – CroALa: Bunić, De vita et gestis Christi, 7, 347; Zamanja, Homeri Odyssea 5, 333; Baričević, Ecloga nautico-piscatoria in adventum Pii VI) The next group contains less expected echoes – clausulae which have parallels in Roman poetry, but which are not in itself memorable expressions (or have not to this day remained commonplaces), e. g: 32 In following lists we cite, first, lines from Roman poetry according to the Musisque Deoque database (see P. Mastandrea et al., ‘Musisque Deoque’, Internet (Venice 2007), ), then authors, short titles, and lines from LatTy and CroALa. We suggest that the readers check the contexts themselves searching the respective digital collections on the internet.
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diversus ab illo (Stat. Theb. 7, 706 – LatTy: Anonymus, Helicon Oenipontanus 42 – CroALa: Marulić, Dauidias 9, 387; Zamanja, Homeri Odyssea 4, 287 and 16, 199; Epistola ad Catharinam Ragninam 52) mole sua stat (Verg. Aen. 10, 771 – LatTy: Engerd, Madrucias 2, 345 – CroALa: Rogačić, Euthymia 6, 394; Kunić, Homeri Ilias 15, 776) omnis in unum (Verg. Aen. 9, 801; 10, 410; Ovid. met. 3, 715; 8, 112; Val. Fl. Argon. 5, 68; 6, 371; 6, 684 – LatTy: Engerd, Madrucias 1, 362 – CroALa: Bunić, De vita et gestis Christi 13, 496; 15, 82) quorum indiget usus (Verg. ecl. 2, 71 – LatTy: Engerd, Madrucias 1, 56 – CroALa: Kunić, Homeri Ilias 13, 892) rerum fortuna mearum (Lucan. Phars. 7, 250 – LatTy: Sonhovius, Catharinias 2, 6 – CroALa: Ferić Gvozdenica, Periegesis orae Rhacusanae 2, 7) velle necesse est (Lucan. Phars. 1, 372; Mar. Victor. aleth. 2, 366; Prosp. ingrat. 567 – LatTy: Sonhovius, Catharinias 2, 3 – CroALa: Đurđević, B. Stanislai Kostkae obitus 195; B. Aloisius Gonzaga 106; D. Francisco Xaverio 71; Stay, Philosophiae versibus traditae 1, 1568) versat in orbem (Ovid. met. 8, 416 – LatTy: Pruner, De partu virginis 3, 134 – CroALa: Đurđević, Paraphrasis epigrammatis ex Martialis lib. 3 61; Kunić, Homeri Ilias 18, 612)
While the correspondences in the first two groups are easy to understand according to what we know about the craft of a Neo-Latin poet (who learns to compose poems by studying intensively Roman poetry and assimilating its verses), the third group presents puzzles. Its clausulae lack counterparts in ancient Latin literature (even in an extended corpus of Roman poetry which includes Christian poets of late antiquity, as it is the case in the Musisque deoque database) – and yet, we find them in both collections. For some of such endings, but not all of them, parallels can be found in Italian Neo-Latin poetry ;33 some are shared with other European Neo-Latin works ; for some, it was not possible to identify parallels elsewhere. Moreover, just as in the case of clausulae found in Roman poetry, some of the endings seem memorable – and some less so. A handful of examples : 33 Our comparisons relied on the database P. Mastandrea et al., ‘Poeti d’Italia in lingua latina’, Internet (Venice 2001), .
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| Neven Jovanović et gloria tollit (Musisque Deoque: none, Poeti d’Italia: Rocco Boni [d. 1574], Austriados 2, 442 – LatTy: Engerd, Madrucias 2, 441 – CroALa: Bunić, De vita et gestis Christi 10, 633) et magna voluptas (Musisque Deoque, Poeti d’Italia: none – LatTy: Engerd, Madruciados poema paraeneticum 475 – CroALa: Zamanja, Homeri Odyssea 19, 611) mihi semper honore (Musisque Deoque, Poeti d’Italia: none; LatTy: Sonhovius, Catharinias 3, 7 – CroALa: Zamanja, Homeri Odyssea 4, 703) partem totius esse (Musisque deoque, Poeti d’Italia: none – LatTy: Graser, De praestantia logicae 153 – CroALa: Stay, Philosophiae recentioris 2, 1697) per gramina guttae (Musisque Deoque: none, Poeti d’Italia: Sannaz. part. Virg. 2, 362 – LatTy: Pruner, De partu virginis 2, 530 – CroALa: Zamanja Echo 2, 164; Kunić Ilias 14, 400) quae miracula cerno? (Musisque Deoque: none, Poeti d’Italia: Salutati Phill. 71 – LatTy: Sonhovius, Catharinias 5, 9 – CroALa: Vičić, Jesseidos 5, 24; Čobarnić, Dioclias 2, 650) sacrosque intrate penates (Musisque Deoque, Poeti d’Italia: none [Mantov. Parth. 2, 3, 198 sanctosque intrate penates] – LatTy: Sonhovius, Catharinias 4, 2 – CroALa: Vičić, Jesseidos 3, 8) studiosus ab annis (Musisque Deoque, Poeti d’Italia: none [except for Šižgorić l. c.] – LatTy: Leucht, Epithalamium 127 – CroALa: Šižgorić, Ad Symonem Diphnycum 39)34
34 This is an example of a clausula which enjoyed surprisingly lasting popularity in Neo-Latin poetry. Though without parallels in current digital Latin corpora, a cursory internet search locates it in poems by Paolo Spinoso (d. 1481, a scriptor et referendarius in Rome, composed poetry from 1460 to 1479; R. Bianchi, Paolo Spinoso e l’umanesimo romano nel secondo Quattrocento (Rome 2004), 60: quam vivens teneris colui studiosus ab annis), by Andreas Osiander the Elder (1498–1552; A. Osiander d.Ä., Gesamtausgabe, vol. 8: Schriften und Briefe April 1543 bis Ende 1548 (Gütersloh 1990), 308: quid, quod avaritiae nimium studiosus ab annis), by Petrus Lotichius Secundus (Carmen, in nuptias […] Ioannis Guilielmi, ducis Saxoniae […] et Susannae Dorotheae, 1560, 128: filius huic, primis nemorum studiosus ab annis; cf. Petri Lotichii Secundi Opera omnia (Heidelberg 1603), 205; available in W. Kuhlmann, ‘CAMENA - Lateinische Texte der Frühen Neuzeit’, Internet (Mannheim 2008), ); by Silvio Giuseppe Mercati (1877–1963; Nicolao Marini […] elegi, 9: Qui verbo et calamo multis studiosus ab annis; cf. A sua eminenza Niccolò Marini reverente omaggio (Rome 1923), 37).
Lexical Comparison of Two Sets of Neo-Latin Texts |
verbis hortatur amicis (Musisque Deoque: none, Poeti d’Italia: no literal parallels35 – LatTy: Engerd, Madrucias 2, 240 – CroALa: Mladinić, Vita beati Ioannis 1, 66; Kunić, Homeri Ilias 6, 127)
In LatTy there are also three poetic texts in which clausulae do not match any in CroALa. These texts are all plays, and all in meters other than hexameter (iambic trimeter, anapests, other lyric meters) : the anonymous Tragoedia de fortissimo Sanctae Catharinae certamine (1576), Jakob Pontanus’s Ludus de instauratione studiorum (1580 ; in the style of Plautus), and the Catharina tragoedia (after 1605, probably by Wolfgang Starck, in the style of Seneca).36 The importance of meter and metrical conventions is revealed also by the fact that practically all matching clausulae are located in hexameters.37 Our examination of matching clausulae shows, first, importance of text reuse at the end of Neo-Latin hexameter ; furthermore, it shows that Neo-Latin poets studied, and learned from, not only the ancients, but from their temporally closer predecessors and contemporaries as well. The matching clausulae from our third group do not point at sources or direct quotations ; rather, they provide material for a European collection of poetic commonplaces. To us, for whom poetry strives to be original, such collection may seem frighteningly dull, evidence of unoriginality and triteness. But it can tell us which clausulae became commonplace, and which did not, so we can ask ourselves why. It can also direct us toward individual realizations of commonplaces – offering evidence that some poets reused the common material better (more movingly, more creatively, more evocatively).
35 Naldi eleg. 3, 3, 311 and Bargaeus Syrias 11, 428 have verbisque hortatur amicis; Naldi eleg. 3, 24, 221 and Vida Christ. 4, 418 have verbis earlier in lines ending with the clausula hortatur amicis. The clausula verbis hortatur amicis (without -que) was used by Joannes Barzaeus, ‘De legitima possessione quarundam Helvetiae regionum’ (Heroum Helvetiorum epistolae, liber secundus (Fribourg 1657), 108; also in Kuhlmann, ‘CAMENA’), by Franciscus Noel, ‘Angelus custos in juventute S. Ignatio aegrotanti sanctorum exempla proponit’ (Francisci Noel Opuscula poetica (Frankfurt 1717), 185), and by Bartholomaeus Mancini, Eustachiados libri sex (Romae 1726), 115. 36 For the Tragoedia, S. Tilg, ‘Theater’, in Tyrolis Latina, 1:278; for Pontanus, Tilg, ‘Theater’,1:269; for Starck, S. Tilg, ‘Theater’, in Tyrolis Latina, 1:438–9. Sonhovius’s Catharinias shares the subject matter with the Tragoedia and Starck’s Catharina, but its 78 clausulae with matches in CroALa suggest that Sonhovius’s form and style are quite different. 37 The only matching pentameter clausula we have so far identified is the brief, very common (and semantically rather neutral) ending tua est; in LatTy in Starck, Catharina 4, 4 – in CroALa used by Janus Pannonius, Šižgorić, Crijević, Božićević, Gravisius, Didacus Pyrrhus, Kunić.
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| Neven Jovanović 2.9 How Are Latin Particles Distributed in Both Collections?
Finally, to explore another kind of lexical approach, we turned to a phenomenon which is, in its simplicity and triviality, the opposite of verse endings. We examined a number of common, unmarked words, which authors must use almost instinctively – though the quality of their instincts may differ – and which usually escape both readers’ and researchers’ attention. These words are Latin particles, both modal (scilicet, videlicet, quippe, nempe and nimirum), and discourse particles (nam, igitur, enim, autem, ergo).38 To begin with, we needed to know how often do these words appear in the two collections. A standard linguistic approach in comparing corpora of different sizes is to normalize frequency scores using the formula normalized = ( frequency / word count) * 1,000. But again a decision must be made which word count to use : number of words in a collection, in a document, in sections of document ? There is also a question of where will we be counting the words ; while for LatTy we took into account all documents, for CroALa we limited searches to texts in range 200–295,000 words (yielding 408 texts), closer in length to texts in LatTy. Maximum values for particles in individual texts can be compared in Table 1 (of course, they are not from the same document). Its correlative is Table 2, displaying for the same sets the number of texts in which there are zero occurrences of a certain particle per 1000 words.
nam
enim
autem
igitur
ergo
nempe
quippe
videlicet
scilicet
LatTy
3.24
4.34
3.74
3.33
3.7
0.67
1.26
0.23
0.75
CroALa (selection)
15.11
10.99
8.98
6.62
6.57
3.69
4.67
4.29
5.12
DB
Table 1: Maximum values for particles in LatTy and CroALa (range 200–295,000 words)
Table 1 implies that there is more variety in CroALa, where maximum values range from 15.11 for nam to 3.69 for nempe (in LatTy maximum the span is much tighter, between 4.34 for enim and 0.23 for videlicet). The variety probably results from the fact that CroALa includes more texts, of more varied length and genre.
38 J. Schrickx, Lateinische Modalpartikeln: Nempe, Quippe, Scilicet, Videlicet und Nimirum (Leiden 2011); D. R. Langslow, ‘Latin Discourse Particles, ‘Medical Latin’ and ‘Classical Latin’’, Mnemosyne 53:5 (2000), 537–560.
Lexical Comparison of Two Sets of Neo-Latin Texts |
DB
LatTy CroALa (selection)
nam
enim
autem
igitur
ergo
nempe
quippe
videlicet
scilicet
3
5
6
3
2
11
11
15
12
136
128
146
225
239
283
292
319
294
Table 2: Number of texts in LatTy and CroALa with no occurences of particle per 1000 words
More homogeneity (if we disregard the different ranges) is found in Table 2. Rankings of absence are almost the same for videlicet, scilicet, quippe and nempe (the last two switch places between collections). On the other hand, least absent from LatTy documents are ergo, igitur and nam (the fact that enim, which in Table 1 shows a high maximum value of 4.34, is not on this list, suggests that the particle is intensively used only in some documents and some authors), but in CroALa the least absent are enim, nam and autem (this complements data in Table 1). Just the particle nam appears in both CroALa and LatTy lists.39 According to Langslow 2000, distribution of enim and nam in Latin between Plautus and Quintilian seems to have been dictated first by pragmatic rules (enim more interactional, nam more presentational), and later by grammatical features of the context (nam favoured in clauses both subordinate and coordinate, enim avoided there). At the moment we cannot say what caused different distributions of these particles in CroALa and LatTy ; but a starting point for further research is readily provided.
Conclusion
Literary history, and perhaps humanities in general, usually work with examples, especially with those works which constitute highlights and peaks. The story of a literature is told by concentrating on the few cases which we, or the tradition, pronounces the best, or most important, or characteristic. We readily accept such approach not only because of human cognitive limitations (who can read and synthesize all works of a literature ?), but also because we expect clear and conclusive results : tell us what is important, tell us what we need to know. 39 This finding is to some extent confirmed by the identical test on div elements (sections of texts). In LatTy, particles absent from most divs are nempe, videlicet and quippe (but not scilicet, which is replaced by the previously much lower ranking igitur), while nam and ergo are the least absent. In CroALa, however, the ranking is almost the same for texts and for divs. For statistical inquiries, LatTy should include more texts of different length and genres.
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| Neven Jovanović
The need for conclusiveness and the pull of the exemplary caused a lot of the unease I felt during this experiment, because our approach was just the opposite. The computer did not analyse some Croatian and Tyrolean texts, but all texts in our collections. Works of national heroes and classics received same treatment as non-literary documents or occasional poems by long-forgotten schoolteachers and parish priests. Moreover, both collections were very obviously constructs, and imperfect at that : they certainly represented themselves, but not the reality of the two literatures – and the amount and completeness of results made it painfully clear how much our syntheses have to simplify and disregard (e.g. in case of definition of ‘text’ as a homogenous whole, which becomes problematic in the case of a collection of letters or poems, or in a text with many paratexts ; in case of definition of ‘author’, which becomes problematic in cases of anonymity, translation or joint authorship). But several points of similarity and dissimilarity between the collections were definitely identified. CroALa is larger (over five million words, 191 authors, 450 documents ; LatTy, in this experimental stage, had 20 documents, 13 authors, over 370,000 words). CroALa has wider coverage of authors, periods and genres. Documents in LatTy belong to no more than seven genres, while in CroALa there are 76 different genre labels. In CroALa there is more textual units in prose (61 per cent), in LatTy 60 per cent of texts are dominantly poetic. In CroALa there is no drama, of which LatTy has a significant corpus. Diachronically, for periods covered by both collections, a shift in intensity is noticeable : the years 1566–1765, when texts in LatTy were predominantly being written, are comparatively less populated by texts of CroALa, whose best coverage belongs to periods before and after LatTy’s focus (years 1500–1565 and 1766–1799). In LatTy, one document stands out by its length : the collection of letters by Benedikt Stephani from 1640–1671 (228,293 words), almost tenfold the length of the next longest document. The shortest document (Applausus ad principem Eugenium, 1669) had 362 words. Apart from these extremes, documents in LatTy are on the average about 5,200 words long. In CroALa, if we exclude the three documents with more than 300,000 words, we will find the average text length somewhat larger than in LatTy : c. 7,600 words. But average lengths of text sections (again excluding the extremes), divs, are roughly the same in both collections : 400 words for LatTy, 390 for CroALa. A survey of type-token ratios (lexical variation) for texts and their divs finds in LatTy a TTR range of 0.82-0.15 for 20 texts and a much tighter 0.8-0.89 for 859 divs. In CroALa, ranges are 1-0.08 in 518 texts and 1-0.18 in 13,740 divs. Our queries produced several indices of passages with similar TTR values, but a more detailed investigation is necessary to find out which differences in lexical variation are noticeable in reading or significant in stylistic analysis. A useful further step would be to combine TTR with
Lexical Comparison of Two Sets of Neo-Latin Texts |
other criteria, such as periods, authors, genres, and to concentrate on very clear cases (queries which produce few results and strong contrasts). Moving from sheer numbers to actual words, a large-scale search for completely identical clausulae in 13,043 lines of verse in LatTy and 241,829 verses in CroALa turned up 25 cases of clausulae repeated in LatTy and present in CroALa as well, and 236 clausulae appearing only once in LatTy, but again present in CroALa. This is an excellent task for computers ; but an inquiry into causes of these similarities – how to categorize them ? do they reflect common models and conventions ? – seems quite promising for humans as well. A large-scale search that enabled us to compare the usages of nine Latin modal and discourse particles brought out a further interesting methodological moment. ‘Macroscopic’ analyses encourage us to think not only about positive, but also about negative results, ones which the researchers usually do not even consider. Sets of text sections from which certain particles are absent suggest that in both collections the ‘most missing’ particles are the same (videlicet, scilicet, quippe and nempe), but the ‘least missing’ rankings correspond only for nam–enim, autem and igitur are distributed differently in the two collections. Our culture moves towards the point where we will be able, even for an exotic language such as Latin, to access not just a few texts, and not after a long process of demanding manipulation, but where all texts (or definitely too many to read in a lifetime) will be instantly accessible. What shall we do at that point ? I hesitate to propose that we all become statisticians, because this is not what we do best, not what we enjoy most, and, finally, not what these texts were written for. But I also hesitate to propose that we go on interpreting texts and narrating the literary history the way we were taught to ; such partial approaches disregard much of what is now within our reach. What I certainly want to do is to invite the readers to explore further similarities and differences of CroALa and LatTy. Nascitur hic nobis alius, non desinit orbis.
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| Florian Schaffenrath Response by Florian Schaffenrath
Jovanović’s contribution to this volume shows us in general that the fundamental challenges for Neo-Latin Studies in textual philology consist in more than modern critical editions, online editions or annotated anthologies – Neo-Latinists also have to consider the latest developments in computer linguistics and combine them with the texts in which they are interested. In formulating several open questions and hints, Jovanović shows that our participation in this discourse can also produce interesting answers to literary questions. In this short response, let me make some general remarks on two issues brought up by Jovanović : 1) which part of a scholarly investigation computers can and should do, and when is a human scholar needed ; and 2) starting with the clausulae passage of the paper, what are our ideas about a Neo-Latin canon and why do we need such a canon. 1) Principally, Jovanović’s contribution compares different features of two text corpora, CroALa und LatTy. Certain comparisons made me doubt their commensurability and thus which comparative questions make sense for computers. Several comparisons were based not on the texts themselves, but on the metadata provided for each single text of the collections, for example, which collection contains higher number of Latin texts in a given 30-year period. If the editors of a text collection provide metadata for computer manipulation, the computer can answer this question in an easy and reliable way. But when it comes to the appropriate interpretation of the figures provided by this query, a scholar needs further information, ideally given by the general introduction to a database or text collection. Comparing CroALa with LatTy is an excellent case study. The Croatian collection tries to include all Croatian Neo-Latin texts and make them accessible in electronic form (cf. this statement of the introduction : Collectio […] continet opera quae auctores Croati, sive alii cum Croatia aliquo nexu coniuncti, scripserant). LatTy, on the other hand, offers only texts in an electronic form that were edited as a kind of side product or parergon to the major project on the history of the Latin literature in Tyrol, Tyrolis Latina. These Tyrolean Neo-Latin texts were collected unsystematically and only occasionally, which stands in sharp contrast to the systematically built CroALa collection. This knowledge about the formation of a collection, its criteria, its claim to comprehensiveness etc., is crucial for a correct interpretation of figures provided by a computer comparing the collections. The result of a query comparing, for instance, the number of historiographical works in the period 1700–1732 would have a different significance, if both our corpora were attempting full completeness, than if one corpus does (CroALa) while the other offers just an accidental selection (LatTy). A computer will not be able to evaluate the figures and results because it cannot take into account the different criteria of these text collections.
Lexical Comparison of Two Sets of Neo-Latin Texts |
If we look at the two last examples of Jovanović’s paper, we get a completely different idea of the computer’s impact on literary research : Studying clausulae and particles is a marvellous example for philological processes to be done by a computer in a faster, more efficient, and more reliable way. Data provided by such a query, for example the statistical appearance of the particle nam, is a reliable basis for further linguistic or stylometric studies. 2) In the passage, where Jovanović studies the clausulae, which appear in both collections, he addresses another dilemma or challenge of Neo-Latin Studies. As long as he compares these clausulae with classical models, there are no methodological problems : we know that classical authors like Virgil or Ovid were always part of the European education system and that they were certainly known to every Neo-Latin author. If a Neo-Latin author uses a phrase that does already exist in Virgil or Ovid, it is not too speculative or bold to understand this passage as an intended intertextual reference. The situation is totally different if the same clausula also appears within another Neo-Latin author. In such cases, Jovanović cannot say with certainty whether or not such a case is intended intertextuality. The reason for his uncertainty is that we do not have a reliable idea of a Neo-Latin canon ; which Neo-Latin authors were certainly known to other authors, and whether this group of known authors changes for different regions, periods of time or literary genres. For all these questions we do not have valid data. But at least, some points can be made. For the clausula with wording per gramina guttae used by Pruner, Zamagna and Kunić, Jovanović found a possible model in Sannazaro’s epic poem De partu Virginis. We can show that in the eighteenth century Sannazaro had become a modern classic of Latin literature ; for example, if we look at commentaries of this period, Sannazaro is quoted as an important reference author on the same level as Virgil, Ovid or Lucan. In such a case, it is more probable to see the clausula as a marker for an intertextual relationship than if we find matches with almost unknown and ephemeral poets. Jovanović’s contribution invites the broad Neo-Latin community not to leave unexploited the rich possibilities that computer linguistics offers for text manipulation. But the contribution shows too that for a reasonable use of these technologies a fruitful dialogue between IT experts and scholars of literary studies is necessary – the latter ask the questions that perhaps can be answered with the help of the former.
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Index Academia Taxiana 159, 188 Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres 175 Accademia degli Agiati 159 Accademia dell‘Arcadia 121, 145, 148, 152–153, 157 Accademia Romana 66, 69 Acciarini, Tideo 65, 99, 212 Adam, Robert 164 Adriatic 38–39, 65, 74, 76, 81, 138, 146, 164, 166, 169, 183 Aegean 89–90, 99 Aeneas 199, 205 Aenona see Nin Agamemnon 126, 128 Aicher, Otto 36 Albania 37 Alberti, Zanci 91, 217 Albertini, Beninj 120, 148–149, 152 Alessandrini, Giulio 54, 80 Aletin, Petar Frano 145–147, 153–154 Alexander III (pope) 98 Alexander the Great 99, 112–113 Aliprandi, Biagio 51 Alps 13 Amalia Wilhelmine of Braunschweig-Lüneburg 117 Amsterdam 57, 166, 171, 174 Ancona 146, 164, 167, 185–186 Andreis, Franjo Trankvil 62, 212, 220 Andreis, Jakov 88, 89–90, 92, 95, 103 Andreis, Kristofor 89 Andreis, Pavao Petrov 89–90, 92 Andrović, Nikola 120, 149, 152 Andrović, Rafo 148 Antenor 85 Apian, Peter 171 Apollo 67, 113, 117, 169 Appendini, Francesco Maria 77, 140, 146, 151– 152, 157 Appendini, Urbano 120, 148–151, 154, 156–158
Apuleius 107 Aquileia 177 Aristotle 78 Artus (King) 133 Asia 37, 73 Atlas 113–114 Augsburg 53–54, 80, 126, 130, 193, 196 Augustine 102 Augustinian Canons (OSACan.) 124, 128–129 Augustus 168, 176, 181 Austria 12–15, 18, 24–26, 30–31, 36–41, 49, 51, 61, 105, 111–112, 114–115, 133, 138, 144, 147–148, 160–161, 179–181, 199, 222 Avancini, Nicolaus 36, 49 Axams 131–132 Baden-Württemberg 49 Baglivi, Đuro 150, 165, 175, 182 Bakhtin, Mikhail 108 Baković, Ivan 193 Balde, Jacob 53–54, 59 Balkans 33–34, 37, 98 Bandur, Anselm 165, 174–175, 182, 185–186 Banjvarić, Ilija 99 Barbarigo, Agostino 86 Barbarigo, Marco 86 Barbaro, Ermolao 169 Barbazanis, Micha Madius de 166 Barbo, Pietro see Paul II Barga, Pietro Angeli da 198, 223 Baričević, Adam Alojzij 178–179, 183, 185–186, 220 Bartolomei, Simon Pietro 188 Barzaeus, Johannes 223 Baseljić, Tomo 66 Basiljević, Marko 174 Basiljević, Tomo 174–175, 182, 185 Basini, Basinio 193 Bassano 141, 176 Báthory, Stephen 76
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| Index Bavaria 12, 25, 37, 45, 49, 57, 131, 159–160 Bažaj, Petar (Petrus Baxai) 41 Beçikemi, Marin 65 Belgium 24, 36 Benedictines 76, 103, 124, 175 Beneša, Damjan 16, 66, 68, 73–77, 220 Beneša, Frano 66 Beneša, Matej 78 Benja, Juraj 166–167, 187 Benja, Nikola 89 Benja, Šimun Kožičić 62 Bergamo 83, 86 Bernardi, Jeronim 176, 182 Bettera, Petar Alojzije 156 Bion 142 Bizza, Pacifik 176, 182 Blašković, Andrija 179–180, 182, 185 Bobaljević, Vuk 66 Bogetić, Mate 176, 182 Bogetić, Petar Aleksandar 176, 182 Bohemia 25, 37, 117, 179 Bologna 31, 71, 139, 195 Bolzano 54, 79, 80 Bonus, Iacobus see Bunić, Jakov Borgia, Francis IV 41 Bosdari, Ivan 146 Bošković, Baro 140 Bošković, Ruđer 17, 121, 139–144, 147, 150, 152– 153, 156–158, 164–165, 175–177, 182, 194, 220 Bosnia 30, 33, 77, 98–99, 179 Božićević, Frane 91, 167, 182, 223 Božidarević, Nikola 168, 182, 186 Brač 97, 173 Bracciolini, Poggio 96, 175 Bratislava 153 Brera 141 Brescia 83, 84, 93–94, 104 Brigljević, Martin 41 Britain 73 Brixen 14, 50, 53, 55, 59, 79–80, 109, 111–113, 124–126, 197 Bruni, Leonardo 175 Brunner, Andreas 124 Bučinić, Miho 78
Budapest (Buda, Pest) 38, 67, 168, 180, 215 Bulgaria 36 Bunić, Jakov (Iacobus Bonus) 62, 66, 71, 73, 193, 220–222 Bunić, Marin 69 Bunić, Serafin 66 Buoncompagni, Ippolita 148 Burgenland 25 Burgundus, Claudius 172, 185 Busbecq, Aughier Ghislain 168 Caesar, Julius 76 Cajetan of Thiene, St 200, 202 Calliope 199 Canada 37 Canal, Nicolò 89 Capodilista, Francesco 83 Capuchins 197 Carabello, Antonio 83 Carafa, Oliviero 193 Carinthia 25 Carli, Gianvigilio 161 Carpani, Giuseppe 129 Carthage 126–127, 199 Casaubon, Isaac 109 Cassas, Louis-François 177 Cassian, St 125 Castelli, Giacomo 83, 94 Castner, Andreas 51 Catherine of Alexandria 121 Catullus 75, 80 Caussin, Nicolas 129 Cega, Petar Andrijin 90, 92 Ceriziers, René de 133 Chalcondyles, Demetrius 65 Charles II (Archduke of Austria) 41 Charles V (Holy Roman Emperor) 75 Charles VI (Holy Roman Emperor) 110–111, 113, 115–116 Chiudi, Mate 90, 92 Christ 71–75, 97–98, 100, 110, 161, 194, 220–222 Cicero 55, 81, 88, 93, 101–103 Cicogna, Pasquale 82, 102 Cipiko, Koriolan 86, 95, 170
Index | Cipiko, Marko 90, 92 Cipiko, Petar 166, 182, 185 Ciprianis, Ivan de 169–170, 182, Cirta 126 Cistercians 160, 187, 196–197 Clario, Daniele 65 Claus, Anton 126–128, 130 Clement VII (pope) 71 Clesio, Bernardo 105 Collenucio, Pandolfo 105 Comenius, John Amos 51 Commenduno, Leonardo 86 Compagni, Lodovico 172, 185 Concina, Giacomo 177 Conversini, Giovanni 65 Copenhagen 177 Cordara, Giulio Cesare 141 Corella, Domenico di Giovanni da 196 Corneille, Pierre 126 Corvinus, Matthias 76 Cranach, Lucas the Elder 114, 197 Cremona 66 Cresseri, Gian Giacomo 188 Crete 103 Crijević, Ilija 62, 66, 69, 71, 73, 212, 223 Crijević, Ludovik see Tuberon, Ludovik Crijević Croatia 11–18, 23–24, 27–31, 34–36, 38–40, 44, 45, 49, 61–62, 77, 85–87, 104, 119–120, 137– 138, 153, 156, 163–166, 169, 173, 176–177, 179–187, 191, 193–195, 207, 213, 228 Curtius, Quintus 99 Cusanus, Nicolaus 53–54 Cyriac of Ancona 164, 167–168, 185–186 Częstochowa 42 Čakovec 173 Čazma 179 Čulić, Inocent 120 DalMaino, Giasone 105 Dalmatia 12, 16, 28, 30–31, 33, 38–41, 43–45, 50, 61, 79–82, 85–87, 89–92, 94–105, 153, 165– 166, 168–160, 171, 173, 176–179, 181–183, 185, 187, 212–213 Dante Alighieri 91, 194
Denis, Michael 36 Descartes, René 140 Despotović, Ivan the Elder 40–41 Detriko, Lujo 102 Diana 111, 187 Dido 199 Dimitrović, Nikola 213 Dinaričić, Nikola 173, 182 Diocletian 166–167, 171–172, 178, 181 Dioscurides, Pedanius 54 Diversi, Filippo 65 Divnić, Franjo 171, 182, 185 Divnić, Juraj 62 Dominicans 72, 149 Domjanić, Adam Sigismund 41 Dragač, Frano 172, 182, 185 Dragišić, Juraj 69, 73, 77, 172, 182 Drašković, Nikola I 173, 182 Dresden 197–199 Dubrovnik 12, 16–18, 28, 30–31, 38, 40, 61, 65–73, 76–79, 87, 120, 139–156, 159–160, 164, 167–168, 173–176, 178, 181–183, 185, 212 Đamanjić, Petar 66 Đurđević, Ignjat 38, 194, 221 Džamanjić, Mato 156, 158 Džamanjić (Zamanja), Bernard 17, 62, 121, 139– 144, 146–158, 220–221 Eckhel, Joseph Hilarius von 180 Egypt 71, 131 Ehrenburg 110, 112, 113 Eichstätt 134 Elisabeth Christine of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel 110–111, 113 115–116 Engerd, Johann 193, 215, 217, 220–223 England 24, 30, 39, 192 Erasmus, Desiderius 51, 107, 204 d’Este, Ercole I 105 Esztergom 168 Eugene, Prince of Savoy 38, 194 Europe 22–23, 25, 27–30, 33, 36–37, 39–40, 44– 45, 50–53, 55–58, 61–62, 71, 74–78, 85, 107,
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| Index 115–116, 118, 129, 139, 145, 156, 158–159, 167, 175, 177, 184, 186, 221, 223, 229 Eustachius 132, 223 Faella, Gian Nicola 83 Farlati, Daniele 172, 176, 186 Farnese, Alessandro see Paul III Feltre 66 Ferdinand I (Holy Roman Emperor) 75 Ferdinand II (Archduke of Tyrol) 79, 187 Ferdinand IV (King of the Romans) 117 Ferdinand Karl (Archduke of Tyrol) 199 Ferić, Đuro 120, 144, 149, 151, 154, 157–158, 221 Ferra, Filip 89 Ferrara 105 Ferro, Petar Barnaba 164, 178, 182 Ferrucci, Michele 139 Filelfo, Francesco 65, 87 Filelfo, Senofonte 65 Flacius Illyricus, Matthias see Vlačić, Matija Ilirik Florence 52, 74, 93, 148, 175 Flori, Luko 149 Forgách, Ferenc 76 Fortis, Alberto 164, 172–173, 177 Foscari, Francesco 83, 87 France 18, 23, 30, 34, 37, 40, 66, 143–145, 148– 151, 160–161, 182 Francis I (Holy Roman Emperor) 148, 150, 181 Francis I (King of France) 75 Franciscans 72, 77, 149, 161 Franco, Ambrogio 217 Frankapan, Bernardin 38, 82 Frankapan, Ivan VII 82 Frankopan, Fran Krsto 174 Franković, Sebastijan 149 Frederick I Barbarossa (Holy Roman Emperor) 98 Freiburg im Üechtland 126 Friburgk, Ludwig of 105 Frye, Northrop 108 Galatino, Pietro 72 Galjuf, Marko Faustin 18, 62, 145, 150, 155 Garanjin, Ivan Luka the Elder 176, 182, 185 Garanjin, Ivan Luka the Younger 177–178, 183
Garázda, Peter 88 Genova 145 Gentili, Scipione 195 Gerloni, Bartolomeo Carlo 161 Germany, German lands 13, 23–25, 34, 36–37, 49, 115, 124, 199 Getaldić, Marin(Marino Ghetaldi) 149–150, 154–155 Getaldić, Vlaho 154–157, 213, 218, 220 Ghetaldi, Marino see Getaldić, Marin Giuriceo, Antun see Jurić, Antun Giusti, Lelio 83, 88, 95 Giustinian, Leonardo 101–102 Goa 11 Gonzaga (family) 112, 114 Gradić, Junije 66 Gradić, Miho 77 Gradić, Stjepan 76, 153 Graser, Franz 194 Graser, Giovanni Battista 160–161, 194, 220, 222 Graz 25, 31, 40–41, 185 Grgurević, Miho 149 Gries im Wipptal 134 Gruter, Jan 171 Gruž 149–150 Gučetić, Ivan 66–67, 72, 157 Gučetić, Stjepan 66 Gundulić, Frano Lucijan 67, 69 Gundulić, Ivan 143, 154, 213 Gvozdenica, Đuro Ferić 221 Habsburg Empire 12–14, 24, 30, 38, 45, 61, 82, 109, 112, 123, 144, 148, 159–160, 186, 188, 207 Hades 71 Hadrian VI (pope) 38, 76 Hall in Tyrol 56, 79, 123–124, 132–134, 161, 187 Hector 112–113 Heimfels 133 Heinsius, Daniel 109 Herberstein, Sigismund von 36 Hercules 67, 71, 113–114, 193 Hermenegild 129 Hesiod 142, 154, 220 Heuffler, Maximilian 193
Index | Hidža, Đuro 120, 145, 148–149, 151–152 Hinderbach, Johannes 79 Holberg, Ludvig 59 Holy Roman Empire 24 Homer 65, 142, 154, 170, 193, 195, 220–223 Horace 55, 75, 151 Horváth, Ödön von 49 Hötting 133–134 Hungary 12–13, 24–25, 30, 36–37, 39, 45, 58, 61, 67, 76–77, 85, 87, 98–99, 168–169, 179, 182–183, 186 Hvar 120, 170, 173, 213 Iader see Zadar Iberian Peninsula 37, 126 Iceland 11 Illyricus, Matthias Flacius see Vlačić, Matija Ilirik Imst 133–135 Ingolstadt 25, 130, 133, 171, 193 Inn Valley 56, 79 Innsbruck 11, 14, 18, 15, 50, 53, 55–56, 79–80, 105, 109–110, 112, 114–119, 123–126, 129– 134, 159–161, 187–188, 197–200 Intrepidi Arcades (Ragusan academy) 152 Ireland 15, 26 Issa see Vis Istria 12, 27, 61, 182 Italy 12–13, 17–18, 23–26, 28–29, 31, 35, 38–39, 45, 50–52, 54, 58, 61, 65–66, 69, 71–72, 74, 76, 78–83, 85–86, 89, 93, 104, 115, 123, 140, 145, 150–153, 156, 175, 182, 193 Ivellio, Nikola 149, 152 James, St 76, 114 Jasna Góra 42 Jelić Dražoević, Matej 38 Jenbach 131 Jenner, Edward 153 Jerome, St 104, 140, 206 Jerusalem 98 Jesuits 14–15, 17, 25, 40–41, 49, 55–56, 79, 109– 110, 115–118, 120–121, 123–126, 127–138, 140–142, 144, 148, 153, 159, 172, 176, 178–179, 185, 187, 196, 106, 208, 217
Johann Georg I (Elector of Saxony) 199 Joseph I (Holy Roman Emperor) 117 Joseph II 159, 200 Joseph of Nazareth, St 197, 206 Jugurtha 126–127 Jurić (Giuriceo), Antun 120, 149 Juvenal 151 Kaboga, Bernard 155 Karl Philipp (Count Palatine) 200 Kastner, Augustin 196 Katančić, Matija Petar 180, 183, 185 Kauns 133 Kaznačić, Antun 120, 149, 153, 155–156 Kaznačić, Ivan August 146 Khuen von Belasi, Johann Franz 110 Kiefersfelden 131 Kloštar Ivanić 47–48 Kolonich, Leopold Karl von 46 Koper 33 Korčula 73, 173, 178 Kosinj 185 Kostka, Stanislaus 121, 194, 221 Kotor 173 Krbava 183 Krčelić, Baltazar Adam 62, 179–180, 182, 185 Krk 82 Krša, Antun 120, 145, 148–149, 152, 156, 158 Krša, Tomo 145, 148 Kršava, Ivan 88–89, 92, 99, 102–103 Kršava, Petar 167, 182 Kružić, Juraj 77–78 Kunić, Rajmund 17, 121, 139–148, 150, 152, 154, 156–158, 195, 218–223, 229 Künigl, Kaspar Ignaz von 109–114, 118 Laas 133 Labin 166 Lachemayr, Franz 187 Lampredi, Urbano 148–149, 152 Lando, Alvise 95 Lanfranchino, Cristoforo 83 Lascaris, Janus 74 Lausanne 176
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236
| Index Lazius, Wolfgang 164, 186 Lazzari, Pavo 150 Leopold I (Holy Roman Emperor) 159 Leopold II (Holy Roman Emperor) 159, 198, 202 Leopold V (Archduke of Tyrol) 198–199 Leucht, Johannes 220, 222’ Lichtenstein 37 Lienz 131, 217 Liepopilli, Antun 120, 149, 152 Lilienberg, Wenzel Vetter von 181 Linjičić, Juraj 88 Lipsius, Justus 108–109 Livy 76 Ljubavac, Šimun 171, 182, 185 Loredan, Leonardo 86 Loreto 31 Lotichius Secundus, Petrus 222 Lučić, Ivan Josip Pavlović 77, 143, 165, 171–172, 175, 178, 180, 182–183, 185–186 Lukarević, Ivan 120–121, 206–208 Lyon 73, 172, 198 Lysimachus 169 Madruzzo, Cristoforo 79 Mais 196–197 Makarska 178 Malipiero, Pasquale 83, 86–88, 93–94, 96 Mancini Bartholomeo 223 Manincor, Anton 56 Mantovano, Battista (Giovanni Battista Spagnoli) 88, 195–196 Manuzio, Aldo 65, 73 Marcello, Maria 91 Marcello, Nicolò 83, 86, 90–91, 104 Marcello, Pietro 91 Maria Anna of Austria 117 Maria Theresa 130, 148, 159–160, 179, 188, 202 Marienberg 124 Marinčić, Marin 166, 182 Marius, Gaius 126 Marmont, Auguste de 144, 148, 181 Marsigli, Luigi Fernando 164 Marulić, Marko (Marcus Marulus) 34, 38, 62,
65, 67, 71, 90–92, 97, 103–104, 164, 167–168, 171–172, 182–183, 185, 194, 218, 220–221 Mary Stuart (Queen of Scots) 121, 133–134 Mary, Virgin see Virgin Mary Maslać, Anđeo 149 Matijašević Karamaneo, Antun (Matthiasaevius Caramanaeus Issaeus) 38, 43, 173, 185, 193 Matthew the Apostle 72 Mattioli, Pietro Andrea 54 Maximilian I (Holy Roman Emperor) 105 Mažuranić, Ivan 193 Medici, Claudia de’ 199 Medo, Antun 78 Menčetić, Petar 66–67 Meran 124, 196–197 Michele, Agostino 82, 102 Michieli-Vitturi, Nikola 173, 182 Michieli-Vitturi, Radoš Ante 164, 178, 183 Mihetić, Ambroz 88–89, 91–92, 94–99, 101, 103–104 Milan 105, 112–114, 177 Milašinović, Franjo 120 Millbeck, Jakob 196 Mils 132 Minerva 71 Mitarelli, Giovanni Benedetto 103 Moar, Francesco 161 Mocenigo, Giovanni 86 Mocenigo, Pietro 86 Modruš, Nicholas of 85 Moeris 115 Mohács 183 Mommsen, Theodor 171, 180 Mondegaj, Miho 121 Monico, Jacopo 158 Montagna, Leonardo 89 Montenegro 33, 144, 148 Montfaucon, Bernard de 175 Monti, Vicenzo 152 Morcelli, Stefano Antonio 150 Mori 54 Moro, Cristoforo 82–83, 86, 89–90, 93–94 Mosca, Giuseppe 160 Moschus 142
Index | Mrnavić, Ivan Tomko 38, 171–172, 182, 185 Muermester, Henricus 89 Munich 25, 53, 129 Mursa see Osijek Mutters 133 Napoleon 12, 148, 159–161 Nassereith 133 Nassi, Rafael 89–90, 92, 94, 103 Natali, Antun Aletin 174, 182, 185 Natali, Ivan Aletin 174–175, 182, 185 Nauders 197 Negroponte 89, 99, 101 Neptune 117 Nestor 143 Netherlands 15, 26, 52, 80 Nicolini, Petar see Nikolić, Petar Niedermühlbichler, Bernhard 161 Nies, Johannes 187 Nikolić (Nicolini), Petar 164, 172 Nin (Aenona) 173, 177, 185 Noel, Franciscus 223 Nova Kraljevica 174 Oedipus 113 Omiš 38 Orbini, Mavro 76 Osijek (Mursa) 180 Osimo 146 Osman II 154 Osor 172 Ottenthaler, Paul 53 Ottoman Turks see Turks Ovid 65, 67, 69, 195, 200–221, 229 Padua 31, 38, 71, 83, 85, 88–91, 95–97, 99, 143, 150, 178, 185 Pag 92 Pannonius, Janus 36, 62, 193, 195, 220, 223 Papalić, Dmine 91, 167, 182, 185 Papalić, Matej 91 Paris 52, 76, 128–129, 141, 143, 175, 186, 198 Parma 65 Passau 114, 197, 199
Paul II (pope, Pietro Barbo) 169 Paul III (pope, Alessandro Farnese) 69, 140 Paul of Thebes 41–43 Paulines 40, 42, 169 Paulus Eques see Vitezović, Pavao Ritter Pellegrini, Kazimir de 177 Penzel, Abraham 179 Perast 173 Pest see Budapest Petančić, Feliks 66 Petrarch 51, 65, 68, 175 Petronius 107, 112, 170 Petrović, Nikola 73 Petrović, Paskal 73 Philipp IV (King of Spain) 117 Piarists 143–144, 148, 151 Piccolomini, Enea Silvio see Pius II Pilate 75 Pincio, Giano Pirro 105 Pindemonte, Ippolito 152 Pinelli, Gian Vincenzo 78 Pius II (pope, Enea Silvio Piccolomini) 53–54, 58 Pizzelli, Maria 142 Plato 74, 101–102, 215 Plautus 69, 223, 225 Pliny the Elder 97 Poland 13, 23, 42, 154 Poliziano, Angelo 16, 65–66, 74 Pomponio Leto, Giulio 66, 69 Pontano, Giovanni 74, 223 Pontano, Lucio 74 Pontanus, Jakob 223 Ponte, Valerio 171–172, 182, 185 Porcellinis, Albertus de 90 Poreč 178 Porée, Charles 128–129 Porphyry 78 Požega 138 Pribojević, Vinko 170 Primisser, Cassian 160 Prodić, Marko 97 Propertius 67, 69 Pruner, Giuseppe 160, 194, 200–201, 203–204, 216–217, 220–222, 229
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238
| Index Prussia 37 Pucić, Karlo 67–69, 73 Pula 165, 181 Pusculus, Ubertinus 193 Putsch, Christoph Wilhelm 53, 80 Putsch, Ulrich 59 Pyrrhus, Didacus 77, 149, 212, 223 Quintilian 225 Quirini, Lauro 96 Rab 92 Rabelais, François 108 Radelja, Rafo 120, 147–150, 152, 157 Ragusa 16, 28, 38, 43, 65–66, 71, 77, 79–80, 120– 121, 139–141, 143–158, 168, 175 Ramirus 132–133 Ranjina, Orsat Kujo 147 Rapin, René 198 Rastić, Džono 151, 157 Rastić, Marin 167, 182, 185 Rastić, Nikola 66 Rastić, Paskal 66 Rattkay, Juraj 38, 41, 76 Ravenna 65, 83–84, 95 Regini, Giovanni Lorenzo 66 Regio, Raffaele 65 Resch, Joseph 125–128 Rettenbacher, Simon 36 Reydax, Ignaz 57, 217 Rezzonico, Abondio 148 Rhaetia 188 Riceputi, Filippo 176, 186 Rigler, Josef Anton 51 Rijeka 49, 138, 185, 200 Ritter Vitezović, Paul see Vitezović, Pavao Ritter Rogačić, Benedikt 153, 194, 221 Roman Empire 85, 179 Rome 31, 43, 69, 71–72, 96, 129, 139–145, 147, 152, 157, 168, 171–172, 176, 178, 185–186, 193–195 Roo, Gerard de 80 Roschmann, Anton 187–188, 215–218 Rovereto 53–54, 159–160
Rumania 37 Russia 75, 144, 148–149 Sabolović, Martin 120, Sagredo, Nicolò 103 Salečić, Jakov 173, 182, 185 Sallust 76–77 Salona 97, 167, 171–172, 176–178, 186 Salutati, Coluccio 175, 222 Salzburg 24, 196 Samson 206 Sannazaro, Jacopo 74, 160, 194–196, 200, 204, 229 Sansovino, Francesco 82 Savoy, Gaspare 59 Saxony 199, 222 Scaliger, Joseph 109 Scandinavia 37 Schwaz 79, 105, 124 Scipio Africanus 126–128 Seneca 107, 112, 193, 223 Senj 174, 185 Severitan, Ivan Polikarp 72, 194 Seville 129 Sfondrati, Bartolomeo 66 Sforza, Bianca Maria 105 Sforza, Ludovico 105 Shkodër 65, 120, 149 Sidon 96 Siena 54, 142 Sigismund (Archduke of Austria) 105 Sigismund of Luxembourg (Holy Roman Emperor) 87 Silius Italicus 73 Simandi, László (Ladislaus) 40, 42–43, 47–48 Sirmium 179, 186 Sisak (Siscia) 179 Sisyphus 68 Sivrić, Antun 120, 149, 213 Sixtus IV (pope) 99, 105 Slavonia 12–13, 30, 44, 61, 179, 181 Slovakia 34, 37 Slovenia 33, 36–37 Sobota, Ivan 169 Società Patriottica (Ragusan academy) 152
Index | Society of Jesus see Jesuits Soderini, Antonio 164 Solomon 97, 200 Sonhovius, Johannes 217, 219–223 Sorkočević, Luko Didak 145, 157 Sorkočević, Mato 149, 152 Sorkočević, Miho 150, 152, 175, 182 Sorkočević, Niko Pucić 148, 157 Sorkočević, Pjerko 146 Spain 40, 57, 110, 115–118, 121, 159 Spagnoli, Giovanni Battista, see Mantovano, Battista Split 14, 18, 34, 65, 71, 89–91, 97, 99, 166–167, 171–173, 176, 178, 181, 191, 195 Spon, Jacob 164, 172, 186 Spyri, Johanna 55 St. Martin im Passeiertal 196 Stams 79, 160, 196–197 Stanislaus I 147 Starck, Wolfgang 218, 223 Statilić, Marin 170 Statilić, Nikola 170 Stay, Benedikt 17, 139–141, 143–148, 150–153, 156–158, 194, 218, 220–222 Steixner, Leopold 56 Stephani, Benedictus 212, 216–217, 226 Stephen, St 114, 179 Sternbach, Franz Xaver von 159 Stojanović, Ivan 156–157 Stratik, Šimun 164, 178, 182 Strobl, Joseph 131 Stulli, Luko 139, 144–145, 148–149, 153, 157– 158 Stulli, Vlaho 143, 145, 150, 152–154 Styria 25 Swift, Jonathan 108 Switzerland 15, 25–26, 37, 133 Sylvius, Marcus 168, 182, 212 Szeged 185
Tasso, Torquato 195 Terence 88 Theatines 200–202 Theocritus 142 Thomas (Archdeacon of Split) 166 Tiberinus, Johannes Matthias 193 Tibullus 67 Tityrus 115 Tomai, Pietro Francesco 83–85, 95, 100 Tommasoni, Antun Danielli 177, 182, 185–186 Tommasoni, Jakov Danielli 177, 182, 185–186 Torino 145 Tösens 133 Transylvania 76, 169 Trento 14, 49–50, 53–55, 59, 79–80, 105, 109– 111, 114–119, 123, 134, 160–161, 200 Trentino 12, 25, 51, 159 Tritonius, Petrus 54, 80 Trnava 40 Trogir 86, 88–90, 92, 95, 99, 166–167, 169–173, 176 Trogiranin, Jeronim 166 Tron, Luca 95, 99 Tron, Nicolò 82–83, 86, 88, 99–100 Troy 176 Tuberon, Ludovik Crijević 62, 76–78 Turchetto, Antonio 83–85, 100 Tyre 96 Turks (Ottomans) 13, 30, 38, 61, 75, 78, 85–86, 89–90, 98–101, 103–104, 154, 174, 183, 186 Tyrol 11–17, 22, 25–26, 29, 33, 49–56, 58–62, 79–80, 105, 107–111, 114, 116, 119, 123, 128–131, 134–137, 159–161, 187–188, 191, 193–197, 199–200, 228
Šibenik 72, 88, 92, 95–99, 168, 170–171 Šižgorić, Juraj 88, 97, 99, 170, 212, 222–223
Vallaresso, Maffeo 164, 169, 182 Vannetti, Clementino 54 Varaždin 138, 180 Vendramin, Andrea 86
Tartarotti, Jacopo 188
Udine 177 Upper Austria 25 USA 37 Utješenović, Juraj 169, 182
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240
| Index Venice 12, 16, 28, 30–31, 38, 43, 53–54, 65, 67, 78–96, 98–104, 140, 146, 154, 156, 168–171, 173–174, 176, 178, 185, 194, 202 Venus 68, 202 Vergerius, Petrus Paulus the Elder 33 Vergerius, Petrus Paulus the Younger 33 Verona 79, 83, 88, 95, 178 Vičić, Kajetan 194, 200–206, 220, 222 Vida, Girolamo 73–74, 223 Vienna 24–26, 31, 37–41, 111, 117, 141, 155, 160, 174, 177–179, 185 Vigilius, St 114 Virgil 69, 154, 229 Virgin Mary 17, 59, 68, 71, 114, 132, 135, 142, 160, 191–192, 194–202, 204–207 Vis (Issa) 38, 43, 173, 177, 186 Višnjica 76 Vitezović, Pavao Ritter (Paulus Eques) 38, 40–41, 46, 62, 76, 119, 174, 179, 182, 207 Vitturi, Zuane 89 Vlačić Matija Ilirik (Matthias Flacius Illyricus) 212, 216–218 Vladislas II 67 Vojvodina 33 Volantić, Ivan Luka 147 Vorarlberg 15, 24–25, 49 Vrančić, Antun 62, 168, 182, 215 Vrančić, Karlo 171, 173, 182, 185 Wagner, Michael Anton 132, 197
Wattens 134 Wesselényi, Ferenc 13 Wheler, George 164, 172, 186 Wiener Neustadt 174 Wilten 53, 79 Winepacher, Michael 196, 200–202, 206, 208 Winter, Bartholomaeus 196 Wolff, Joseph 159, 197–199, 201–204, 206, 208 Xenophon 77 Yugoslavia 35–36 Zaccaria, Francesco Antoni 176 Zadar (Iader) 87–92, 94, 99, 101–104, 146, 151, 155, 164, 166–167, 169–173, 177–178, 181, 186 Zagreb 12–13, 18, 34–35, 40, 138, 140, 155, 174, 178–180, 185, 192, 200, 207 Zamanja, Bernard see Džamanjić, Bernard Zavorović, Dinko 171 Zeno, Antonio 43 Zeno, Carlo 101–102 Ziani, Sebastiano 98 Zlatarić, Marin 120, 152, 157 Zrinski (family) 13, 185–186 Zrinski, Adam 174 Zrinski, Nikola VII 173–174, 182 Zrinski, Petar IV 174, 182 Zurich 54