Panthéons de la Renaissance
| , ,Chapitre 1 – Traditions et réinventions biographiques à l’âge de l’humanisme
In the Footsteps of St. Jerome
Dalmatian Humanists on their Renaissance of Letters
Résumé
Le xve siècle a vu l’apparition de la branche dalmate de la République des Lettres. Confrontés à l’affirmation par les Vénitiens de leur supériorité culturelle et politique et à la menace turque, les humanistes de Dalmatie ont répliqué par leurs propres récits, au sein desquels ils ont mis en avant les gloires présentes et passées de leurs villes et de leurs nations. Cette contribution analyse deux chorographies composées dans cette pespective : le De situ Illyriae et civitate Sibenici (1487) de Juraj Šižgorić de Šibenik et l’Oratio de origine successibusque Slavorum (1532) de Vinko Pribojević de Hvar. Elle montre que, bien que les auteurs se soient tous deux lamentés à propos des malheurs qui s’étaient abattus sur leur nation, ils acceptaient l’idée humaniste d’une renaissance des lettres et célébraient les viri illustres contemporains qui suivaient les pas de leur patron national, l’érudit saint Jérôme.
Entrées d'index
Texte intégral
- 1 On Sabellico, see Tateo 1982; on his De latinae linguae reparatione, Baker 2015, p. 184-233 (quote (...)
- 2 Sabellico 1999, p. 155-156: Nec Coriolanus Cipicus parum uno est libro notus, quo ille Petri Moceni (...)
- 3 Sabellico 1504, vol. 2, f. 167v (Enn. 10, lib. 8): Rhetores, poetae et oratores clari, ut ordine ce (...)
1When around 1489 Marcantonio Sabellico wrote what amounted to “one of the first thorough histories of humanism”, the De latinae linguae reparatione (On the restoration of the Latin language), his pantheon of humanists who helped bring back the classical Latin language and refound the ancient Roman civilization was made exclusively of Italians1. Latin was, after all, Italy’s birthright, a divine gift that it once bequeathed to other peoples less inclined to letters. The only name that stood out among Sabellico’s choice group in this regard was that of Koriolan Cipiko, who in 1477 had earned fame in the Venetian intellectual circles for his Petri Mocenici imperatoris gesta (The deeds of commander Pietro Mocenigo). Cipiko was a patrician from the Dalmatian city of Trogir, and, as his work clearly showed, a most eloquent one at that. This fact bewildered Sabellico, since, as he thought, “hardly anyone in this age would have expected eloquence from that, Dalmatian, coast”2 (sc. of the Adriatic). Some ten-to-fifteen years later, however, when he worked on the second tome of his Enneads, Sabellico became aware that there was more to the Dalmatian humanist scene than Cipiko. Indeed, he now included three Dalmatians – Ilija Crijević and Ivan Gučetić of Dubrovnik, and Marko Marulić of Split – in the list of the viri illustres who flourished in the time of pope Sixtus IV (1471–1484), again making them the only non-Italians to appear there3.
- 4 For overviews of Dalmatian humanism, see Budiša 1988; and Goleniščev-Kutuzov 1973, p. 33-151. For t (...)
- 5 Though they continued to participate in the wider national network, the humanists of Dubrovnik incr (...)
- 6 Croatian episcopal sees, under the control of Croatian lords or the Hungarian king, provided talent (...)
2The place that these few Dalmatians earned in Sabellico’s narratives illustrates the privileged position that their region enjoyed in the diffusion of the humanist movement4. Indeed, as a result of the high level of urban development, intense economic and cultural ties to Italy, and, finally, the Venetian conquest of 1409–1420, Dalmatia became one of the first regions outside of Italy to witness the appearance of a critical mass of local followers of the humanist movement. The interests and competences of these pioneers matured alongside the Venetian patrician governors as well as low-level officials and teachers who all circulated across the Adriatic on a regular basis. After the first phase of diffusion (1420s–1470s) that saw an intensive study and copying of the classics, humanist bestsellers, and ancient inscriptions, the second phase (1470s–1520s) was marked by the growing numbers of local literati who, thanks to the arrival of print, began to amass respectable libraries and compose major works and often publish them in Venice. Finally, what had initially been circles of predominantly local character now began to coalesce into a national network across the major centers of Venetian Dalmatia (Zadar, Šibenik, Trogir, Split and Hvar), the independent Republic of Dubrovnik,5 and the most important episcopal centers in Croatia, such as Senj and Modruš6.
- 7 On the nationalist discourse of the Italian humanists, see Fubini 1988; Prosperi 2007. On the diffu (...)
- 8 King 1986; Bowd 2010, p. 42-43; O’Connell 2014; O’Connell 2017; Špoljarić 2018. The recent research (...)
- 9 As Šimun Benja bishop of Modruš put it, when he called on his friend Toma Niger bishop of Trogir to (...)
3The more the Dalmatians found themselves drawn to the humanist movement, the more they were confronted with claims of Italian cultural superiority. When they read humanist bestsellers written by central figures of the movement, such as Biondo Flavio, they were able to read that Italy was the foremost nation of the world and that St. Jerome, whom they considered their national patron saint, had in fact been an Italian7. At the same time, whether in Venice or at the University of Padua, or even at home, they could also read treatises and listen to orations that celebrated Venice as the new Rome, and its benevolent rule that ignited the renaissance of letters and brought a golden age to the subject cities of its burgeoning empire8. On the other end, the Dalmatian cities were confronted with the existential threat of the Ottoman Turks, who soon after their conquest of Bosnia in 1463 began to plunder their territories. Faced with these challenges, Dalmatian humanists began to compose works, in a variety of genres, in both Latin and Croatian vernacular, in which they promoted their own stories that were supposed to rouse the spirits of their fellow countrymen and reclaim the honor of their cities and their nation. The sheer level of their literary activity, whether on local or regional level, ultimately led them to believe that, in spite of hardships that befell their nation, they too experienced a renaissance of letters. Theirs was a story of triumph in the face of adversity9.
- 10 This is not to say that there were no royalist histories that promoted the idea of an independent n (...)
4By promoting these stories the Dalmatian humanists were not trying to topple down the Venetian rule over their cities. The narratives they promoted were usually more depoliticized than those produced by humanists in the service of stable European monarchies, the English, French, or Castilian for example10. They were also much more varied. Thus some humanists promoted visions of their nation that more or less corresponded to the extent of the national branch of the Republic of Letters, writing works in praise of Dalmatia in Latin or hrvacki jazik (Croatian language/ nation) in the vernacular. Others set their sights farther, imagining Dalmatia as the most noble province of the wider “Illyrian” of “Slavic” nation, which extended across the Balkans covering all the South Slavs or, in some variations, even the entire Slavdom. One key idea, still dominant in this period, was that, even if the barbarian tribes had come from the north and mixed with the local population, these slavophone peoples of Dalmatia, Croatia and the wider area of the Balkans were in fact indigenous to the lands they inhabited, the very same Dalmatians, Illyrians, Moesians mentioned by the ancient authorities. This underlying belief was important for providing them with a hallowed antiquity and ancient viri illustres of their own.
- 11 Though the only ones preserved today, the works of Šižgorić and Pribojević were not the only chorog (...)
- 12 Blažević 2008, p. 115-136.
5To show then how humanists who lived in Dalmatian cities under the Venetian rule wrote about the renaissance of letters and emergence of modern-day viri illustres, this paper brings into focus two well-known chorographies: the De situ Illyriae et civitate Sibenici (1487) by Juraj Šižgorić of Šibenik and the Oratio de origine successibusque Slavorum (1532) by Vinko Pribojević of Hvar. Since chorography was a genre that presented the geography, history and character of a given place, it perfectly served humanists who, having mined a wide range of ancient authorities, wanted to highlight the glories of their patria11. The two works have so far been studied mostly in the context of the early modern nationalist discourse12. This paper, however, focuses on the passages on the renaissance of letters and analyzes these in the context of Venetian panegyrical literature, socio-political backgrounds of the authors, and the development of the humanist movement in Dalmatia.
Juraj Šižgorić of Šibenik and the Venetian Spark of a Local Renaissance
- 13 The following account of Juraj Šižgorić’s life and his family is based on Jovanović 2015, p. 31-32; (...)
- 14 On Vidali, see Segarizzi 1903; and Revest 2015, p. 127.
- 15 Šižgorić 1966.
6Juraj Šižgorić was born around 1445 into one of the most influential patrician families of Šibenik that enjoyed great confidence and protection from the Venetian regime. The Šižgorićs owed this status to Juraj’s grandfather, Radič, who played such an important role in the Venetian conquest of Šibenik in 1412 that he and his male children were awarded life-long stipends from the state13. Juraj Šižgorić seems to have been the first in his family to develop a deeper interest in the humanist movement. He was part of the generation of patrician children that attended the communal school during the late 1450s and early 1460s, when the teaching of grammar was entrusted to the communal chancellor, a humanist and former graduate of Padua, Caroto Vidali14. Though, per his own admission, Šižgorić began composing poetry during his school years, the earliest preserved poems of his date from the late 1460s, the period of his studies at the University of Padua. After he had earned his doctorate in canon law in February of 1472 and returned to Šibenik, he took a vow and soon became the canon of the cathedral and the bishop’s vicar. He continued to compose poems to various local officials, but also to the afficionados of the humanist movement among the local patricians. In 1477, Šižgorić finally organized these poems into a collection, the Elegiarum et carminum libri tres (The three books of elegies and poems), and arranged for its printing in Venice15. He thus became, together with Koriolan Cipiko, whose Petri Mocenici imperatoris gesta were printed in the same year, the first humanist from the Dalmatian communes who used the new medium in an attempt to make a name for himself within the Republic of Letters.
- 16 For the modern edition of the work, see Šižgorić 1981; quote on p. 14: Cum ergo patriae debeamus, p (...)
- 17 Šižgorić 1962. The sole copy of the cycle of hymns is also preserved in the same manuscript as the (...)
- 18 Šižgorić 1981, p. 16-24, 24-32, and 32-56, respectively.
7As the most prolific local humanist and canon of the cathedral church Šižgorić soon began to develop an interest in the history of his patria. The main – though, as will be seen, not the only – fruit of these interests was the De situ Illyriae et civitate Sibenici (On the location of Illyria and the city of Šibenik). Šižgorić composed this work “out of debt to [his] homeland” and dedicated in August of 1487 to the Venetian governor of the city and humanist, Antonio Calbo16 – whom a few months earlier he had already presented with a cycle of hymns in honor of the apostles17. The De situ Illyriae is a short work in 17 chapters that offers a brief summary of the history, geography, and past and present glories of the Illyrian nation (chapters 1-5); of Dalmatia, the most noble of Illyrian provinces (chapters 6-8); and, finally, of the city of Šibenik (chapters 9-17)18. Building on earlier Dalmatian traditions, Šižgorić identifies the slavophone people of the Balkans, including Dalmatia and his hometown, with ancient Illyrians and presents them as indigenous to their land. At the same time, he explicitly rejects the Slavic name imposed on them by foreigners and does not connect them to the Bohemians, Poles, or Russians.
- 19 Ibid., p. 46: Est quoque […] basylica, quae miro artificio, ut arbitror, nostro saeculo surgit Iaco (...)
8Šižgorić was effectively the first Dalmatian humanist to talk about the renaissance of letters in his city. He mentions the modern-day eruditi at the end of a brief chapter in which he describes Šibenik’s newly erected or restored buildings. Here he lists the citadel, the cathedral built in modern age “with wonderful skill,” and the patrician palaces, “fairly distinguished and respectable given the Dalmatian surroundings”19, and then ends the chapter:
- 20 Ibid., p. 46: Fuerunt et nostra memoria concives qui eruditione claruerunt theologiae, philosophiae (...)
There were even in my time fellow citizens who have earned fame for their knowledge of theology, philosophy, poetry, oratory, canon and civil law. Italy herself, which is touted the mother of knowledge and teacher of character, often admired their minds20.
- 21 The only local humanist whom Šižgorić mentions in the entire work is Jakov Naplavić, but, as will s (...)
9The emergence of illustrious men of letters thus testifies to the city’s renaissance just as much as the erection of new monumental buildings and private palaces. Šižgorić, however, does not mention any of his learned fellow citizens by name here – not even those to whom he had dedicated poems that were printed as part of his Elegiarum et carminum libri tres in 147721. Though in line with the summary nature of his work, one can perhaps interpret this as motivated by Šižgorić’s desire to highlight his own unique status as the only humanist in the group who had seen his work printed in Venice.
10A few chapters later we discover the force driving the city’s renaissance:
- 22 Šižgorić 1981, p. 50: Quintum supra decimum perficitur lustrum, quo Illustrissimus Venetorum senatu (...)
Almost fifteen lustra have passed since, on the fifth day before the kalends of November, in the year of salvation 1412, the most illustrious Venetian Senate took over Šibenik and raised in it the banner of the winged and crowned lion. It seemed then that the golden age has returned, that a sewer, as it were, became a city, that barbarity was laid aside and Latin culture began to flourish. It is then that everyone, to the best of their abilities, began to imbibe virtue, nourish letters at all time, perform praiseworthy feats, and remove the bad from good, like dross from gold22.
11The physical transformation of the city and the emergence of the men of letters and virtue described a few pages earlier is thus defined here as the city’s golden age, which began with the establishment of the Venetian rule. Šižgorić thus resorts to the widely used trope of Venetian panegyrists and applies it to the history of his hometown. In doing so, however, Šižgorić has his own axe to grind. By connecting the beginning of Šibenik’s golden age with the establishment of Venetian rule – in which the role of his grandfather Radič was still publicly recognized – he implicitly presents the past actions of his own family as foundations of the city’s prosperity.
- 23 For an overview of epigraphic pursuits of first Dalmatian humanists, see Lučin 2014.
- 24 Šižgorić 1981, p. 32-34 (c. 8 De nomine Sibenici): Apud Ptolomeum et alios antiquos Siccum appellat (...)
12The problem that Šižgorić faced as he digged deeper into the history of his hometown was that, unlike the neighboring Dalmatian cities of Zadar, Trogir, Split, or Hvar, Šibenik was founded during the rule of Croatian kings and had no ancient origins to speak of. Since he could not find any ancient inscriptions in his city, as neighboring humanists had been successful in doing in theirs23, he was forced to resort to creative philological reinterpretations of ancient authorities. Reading the description of Dalmatia in Pliny’s Natural History, he found there a mention of a colony of Roman veterans by the name of Siculi that had been founded by Emperor Claudius. Arguing that Siculi was a textual corruption, Šižgorić emended it to Siccum and then identified it with Šibenik, providing his city with Roman pedigree. But this was only half the story, for, as he immediately continued, Siccum was in fact established on the foundations of an earlier Illyrian settlement, a pirate haven enclosed initially by a palisade of twigs and branches that gave the city its vernacular name of Šibenik – šiba meaning “twig” in Croatian24. Thus, in a typical humanist fashion, Šižgorić is able to provide a cyclical intepretation of local history: Šibenik was an ancient Illyrian settlement that was expanded and civilized thanks to Roman conquest, and that now experienced its second golden age under the rule of the Venetians as the new Romans.
- 25 The Dalmatian cult of St. Jerome is the subject of the ongoing doctoral research of Ines Ivić of Ce (...)
- 26 Šižgorić 1981, p. 22-24: Quid dicam de Hieronymo, qui omnes ecclesiae doctores praestitit elegantia (...)
- 27 Biondo Flavio 2005-2017, vol. 2, p. 172-173; Foresti 1490, f. 143v-144r and 155r. Had Šižgorić know (...)
13Šibenik thus not only draws prestige from association with Rome, but also shares in the glories of Illyria’s first golden age, the age which saw the emergence of the nation’s first viri illustres. The three ancient viri illustres, to whom Šižgorić dedicates a separate chapter, are Emperor Diocletian, Pope Caius, and St. Jerome. It is, however, St. Jerome whom he discusses the most. This was hardly a surprise. Though Pope Caius and Emperor Diocletian (for all his issues) were certainly thought to be illustrious associations, by the time Šižgorić composed his work, Jerome had already been adopted as the national patron saint, celebrated in cities and churches across Dalmatia and Croatia as well as national confraternities in Italy25. Šižgorić, too, praises Jerome for his saintly piety, but, approaching the saint from a humanist perspective, he stresses even more his eloquence, his understanding of Greek and Hebrew, and his vast theological learning. Moreover, though a strong partisan of the Venetian political rule and firm believer in the power of Roman literature and Latin language, Šižgorić is nevertheless keen to oppose Italian humanists for claiming that St. Jerome was an Italian26. This claim – made first by Biondo Flavio and then widely disseminated through the work of Giacomo Filippo Foresti, though probably known to Šižgorić as common opinion27 – would later on provoke far more aggressive responses from Dalmatian humanists, but it was Šižgorić who first addressed it. For Šižgorić and those who followed his suit, Jerome was not only a patron saint of the Illyrians but a model to be imitated and proof that they had the ability to rival Italians in learning and eloquence.
- 28 Šižgorić 1981, p. 52-54: Siquidem proverbiis Illyricis utuntur [sc. nostri cives], quae nos dicteri (...)
- 29 Naplavić’s and Šižgorić’s Dicteria Illyrica can be compared to the Proverbia Germanica (The German (...)
- 30 Similarly, in his De bellis Gothorum (see n.10) Nicholas of Modruš went to some lengths to make the (...)
14Though St. Jerome flourished during the golden age of Roman rule, his Illyrianness in itself was not devoid of cultural value. Further in the text, in the chapter in which he describes the customs of the people of Šibenik, Šižgorić draws attention to their Illyrian proverbs. This was clearly an important point for Šižgorić, for, as he informs his dedicatee, he and a fellow humanist from Šibenik, Jakov Naplavić, had earlier even assembled a collection of these proverbs and translated them into Latin, giving the title to this collection the Dicteria Illyrica (The Illyrian sayings)28. Not much can be said about this lost work, but it is clear that the two humanists believed these proverbs rivalled the wisdom of the ancient Romans and Greeks, and that they amounted to an indigenous Illyrian tradition of popular philosophy29. For Šižgorić, therefore, St. Jerome and the modern humanists of Illyrian Šibenik did not achieve virtue merely by their education in Roman authors, but also by their grounding in autochthonous traditions30.
- 31 Aside from the cycle of hymns he presented to Antonio Calbo in January of 1487 (to which he appende (...)
15In sum, the De situ Illyriae was a landmark in Šižgorić’s own dialogue with men of the ruling regime and in the development of Dalmatian humanism in general. Šižgorić had dedicated the work to a Venetian governor of Šibenik, and this was not the first time he had done so31. Indeed, by now there were plenty of provincial humanists across Dalmatia who presented the doges and local governors with classicizing orations and poems, in which they often heaped praise on their dedicatees and the Venetian state, regurgitating much of the official myths promoted by the Venetian patriciate. Šižgorić was the first to turn this relationship around. Though politically orthodox and circumspect, in line with his family’s politics, still he became the first Dalmatian to use his pen to lecture the same Venetian elites on the glories of his city and his nation — among these being the learned Jerome and the emerging literati of the city of Šibenik who followed in his foosteps.
- 32 For instance, even though today only one, autograph, copy of Šižgorić’s cycle of hymns in honor of (...)
- 33 Gudelj 2018 analyzes the building of the new loggia and the public inscriptions that evoked the Sic (...)
16The De situ Illyriae et civitate Sibenici was Šižgorić’s last work that we know of. He lived out the rest of his days as a canon of the Šibenik cathedral until his death in 1509. Šižgorić’s writings, however, circulated both in the city and across the region exerting strong influence on his younger contemporaries32. Not least, the identification of Šibenik with the ancient city of Siccum became the commune’s official narrative which was, with support of Venetian governors, celebrated in public inscriptions and proudly promoted by many of Šižgorić’s fellow Sicenses33. As the following section will show, the De situ Illyriae also proved inspiring to a Dominican friar from the island of Hvar who eventually decided to write his own chorography – although with a rather different view on the modern-day renaissance of letters and the role Venice played in it.
Vinko Pribojević of Hvar and the Autochthonous Renaissance
- 34 The scant sources on Pribojević’s life and his family background are discussed by Kovačić 2000; and (...)
17We know far less about Vinko Pribojević than we do about Juraj Šižgorić34. What we do know is that Pribojević did not come from a family connected to the Venetian regime. He was not even a patrician. Rather, he was a commoner, born, it seems, around 1480 in the island city of Hvar in a family that immigrated from the small nearby town of Vrboska. Whereas Šižgorić studied in Padua and then seemingly spent the rest of his life in his hometown, Pribojević joined the Dominican order and embarked on a peripatetic career that saw him travel across Europe. In 1511, at the time when the rich but disenfranchised commoners of his island were in the midst of a major uprising against the patrician elite that was soon crushed by Venice, Pribojević was in Florence, teaching Latin and Bible at the convent of Santa Maria Novella. A few years later he moved to Poland, where he stayed for three years, perhaps attending the University of Krakow. Finally, he returned to Hvar from where he seems to have occasionally visited the friaries of the provinces of Dalmatia and Croatia, like that of Senj in 1521.
- 35 For the editio princeps of the oration see Pribojević 1532. I will quote here the modern edition of (...)
- 36 Gortan 1959.
- 37 Pribojević achieves this by adapting the medieval Polish legend of three brothers, Czech, Lech, and (...)
- 38 Ibid., p. 55-75, 75-87 and 87-103, respectively.
18The Oratio de origine successibusque Slavorum (Oration on the origin and feats of the Slavs), held in Hvar in 1525 and printed in Venice seven years later, is the only work of Vinko Pribojević known today35. Pribojević’s oration follows the structure of Šižgorić’s De situ Illyriae, though in an uninterrupted narrative, without division into chapters. He also uses a lot of Šižgorić’s arguments, but he adds a wealth of new sources, ultimately presenting a longer and more elaborate vision of local and national history that differs in a number of key aspects from that of his model36. Pribojević thus starts his work by discussing the national history, and though he, like Šižgorić, insists on the indigeneity of Illyrians, he places them within the larger Slavic world extending to Bohemia, Poland and Russia37. He then describes Dalmatia as the most noble province of Illyria and entire Slavdom, and, finally, in place of Šibenik, discusses the history of his Hvar as the most glorious city in all of Dalmatia38.
- 39 Ibid., p. 63.
- 40 Ibid., p. 80-81: Hinc maximus ille peritorum decor divus fulsit Hieronymus, cuius (ut Augustinus co (...)
- 41 Ibid., p. 81: Is enim, ut patrum idioma (Sabellico teste) illustraret, nova litterarum elementa com (...)
19Like Šižgorić, Pribojević too reflects on the emergence of learned men in the modern age. He does so, however, not in the local, but in the Dalmatian part of his oration. This allows him to make from the start a direct connection between the modern-day literati and their hallowed model, St. Jerome. Pribojević had already attacked in an earlier part of the oration the claims of Italian humanists that Jerome had been an Italian, becoming thus the latest in a string of Dalmatian humanists who after Šižgorić were far less circumspect in asserting that Jerome was one of them39. Here he thus confirms Jerome’s credentials as one of the most learned theologians whose eloquence and erudition earned him praise from all corners of the world, including Greece40. However, Pribojević also adds a third element to his portrait of Jerome by mentioning the well-known local tradition that, as a Dalmatian and Slav, Jerome was the inventor of the Slavic letters (the Glagolitic alphabet) and that he also translated the Divine office into his native language. While Šižgorić chose to omit this legend, Pribojević was able to call on the authority of Biondo Flavio, who, though insisting that Jerome was Italian, accepted the legend as true41. For Pribojević, Jerome was thus not only the most famous Dalmatian vir illustris and man of learning, but also the founder of national ecclesiastical traditions.
20What follows immediately is the list of the modern-day men of letters from Dalmatia:
- 42 Pribojević 1997, p. 81-82: Fulsit et aliud lumen nostra hac tempestate ex Dalmatia: Marcus Marulus, (...)
In this age a new light has shone in Dalmatia. Marko Marulić has composed many volumes of Christian piety. Sabellico dedicated a consolatory poem to Koriolan Cipiko of Trogir after his home had burned down. From Dubrovnik there are Ilija Crijević and Ivan Gučetić, mentioned in particular by Sabellico; the Dominican Ivan Stojković and the Franciscan Juraj Dragišić. Then there is Ivan Štafilić of Trogir and the two Dominicans, Ivan Polikarp of Šibenik and my own brother, Jerolim Pribojević of Hvar. The Benedictine Ivan of Rab and Pavao Paladinić of Hvar who earned eternal fame with their literary works. There are still in our time men of great renown in the humanities, Toma Niger of Split and Šimun Benja of Zadar, as well as Vinko and Dominik Buća, the Dominicans from Kotor who have unravalled the numerous mysteries of the Catholic faith. Then there is Fridrik Grisogono of Zadar, and the four poets from Hvar: Jerolim Atik, Hanibal Lucić, Petar Hektorović – who among other things has translated Ovid’s Remedy of Love into Illyrian in elegant verse – and Mikša Pelegrinović. There are also Trankvil Andreis of Trogir, Juraj Bizanti of Kotor, Frane Nigretić of Korčula, and many others whose virtue and learning shines brighter by each day42.
- 43 The fact that Pribojević includes Ivan Štafilić, who died in 1528, into the first group is a tellin (...)
21Pribojević thus presents a list of people from across Dalmatia who followed in the footsteps of St. Jerome and achieved fame with their literary works. He does not list the titles of these works: he only singles out Sabellico’s poem dedicated to Cipiko and Hektorović’s vernacular translation of Ovid’s Remedia amoris precisely because they do not fit this pattern. Though Pribojević at first seems to distinguish two groups of the viri docti – the first group headed by Marko Marulić, and the second by Toma Niger and Šimun Benja – this division simply differentiates those who were living at the time when he prepared his oration for printing from those who were not43.
- 44 Marko Marulić (1450–1524) not only earned European fame for his works of Christian piety, as mentio (...)
- 45 Pribojević 1997, p. 80: Sed nec Dalmatis, quamvis bellorum semper fuerint studiosissimi, dulcia def (...)
- 46 Ibid., p. 48-49, 47 and 104.
22But this is not to say that Pribojević did not put any thought into this list. Unsurprisingly, there is some favoritism shown towards his fellow citizens and Dominicans – not to mention his own brother Jerolim, who is the only person here of whose life and works we otherwise know nothing –, and the name of Juraj Šižgorić is significantly passed over. Yet, there is a conscious attempt to include here men of letters from all corners of Dalmatia, while at the same time a special place is reserved for Marko Marulić, who is listed, fitting his exceptional status, first after Jerome44. Drawing direct inspiration from Sabellico’s pantheon of humanism and responding to its Italy-centered narrative, Pribojević thus presents the Dalmatian pantheon. Pribojević’s passage thus stands as a testament not only to the vitality of the Dalmatian branch of the Republic of Letters — which had substantially increased since Šižgorić’s time — but also to its self-consciousness. The sheer multitude of these men serves to prove that the propensity for the study of letters, both in Latin and in the vernacular, is ingrained in the Dalmatian character45. After all, even the printed copy of the oration serves to reinforce the identity and triumphal narrative of the group. The work was dedicated not to a foreigner, like Šižgorić’s, but to Petar Vitaljić, a patrician of Hvar, and it includes encomiastic epigrams composed by Toma Niger of Split and Nikola de Dominis of Rab, which both praise the service Pribojević has rendered to the nation46.
- 47 Ibid., p. 70-71.
- 48 Ibid., p. 82-83.
- 49 Ibid., p. 96-103.
23To be sure, the letters are not the only thing that was revived in Dalmatia in the modern age. Ancient Dalmatia was a land of numerous holy men and women martyred under the Emperor Diocletian — celebrated elsewhere in the oration as one of many Roman emperors of Slavic origins47 — and to prove this ancient piety was revived in modern age Pribojević draws attention to the fact that thirty-two Dominicans who were recently martyred by the infidels in Ottoman Bosnia48. Even more prominence is given to modern-day men of arms. Though he treats military virtue as another essential trait of the Dalmatian character, Pribojević provides concrete examples of this when discussing the local history of Hvar. Here he presents in detail the feats, on both land and sea, of seven modern-day local heroes, both patricians and commoners, which recalled the ancient virtue of Demetrius of Hvar (i.e. Demetrius of Pharos), the most important vir illustris of Hvar’s antiquity, who as king bravely led all Illyrians in their epic struggle against the Roman invaders49.
- 50 Ibid., p. 92-94.
- 51 Ibid., p. 98-99: Emilius Pharo potitus, ammissa apud Illyrios, quemadmodum Petrus Marsius dicit, no (...)
- 52 Ibid., p. 99: Pharenses extrema quaeque, ne quid servile eis accideret, experiri parati, anno Domin (...)
24How does then Pribojević explain the modern-day renaissance and reemergence of great men? Like Šižgorić, he answers this question when discussing local history. Having presented first the beautiful and lavishly decorated churches, and public and private buildings of his city50, he proceeds to narrate the ancient history of Hvar. In Pribojević’s view, the city witnessed its apogee during the reign of Demetrius of Hvar, who was ultimately tricked and defeated by the Romans, with Hvar razed to the ground in the process51. History repeated itself centuries later, after the collapse of the Roman Empire, when the people of Hvar opposed the Venetians under Doge Pietro Orseolo, who during their conquest of Dalmatia once again razed their city to the ground. Dalmatia, Pribojević continues, then suffered because of the Venetian-Genoese rivalry, and it is only after the Venetians grew too powerful that the people of Hvar signed an eternal peace with them. This, however, happened, he makes sure to mention, only after they first restored their city on their own52. Thus Pribojević too adapts the cyclical interpretation of local history, construing the Venetians as the new Romans, but the role he has them both play, especially when compared to Šižgorić’s work, is striking. Indeed, there is no civilizing effect, no golden age brought by Rome and Venice. In fact, the only thing that both had both brought to Hvar was destruction. As Pribojević presents it, not without an impressive degree of self-delusion, Hvar had been, and still was in some sense, a free respublica that joined Venice in an alliance, that had its own senate and treasury, and its own virtuous citizens, who were the true spark that ignited the local renaissance. For Pribojević, the local renaissance of letters and the appearance of learned men, the heirs of St. Jerome, was thus an autochtonous phenomenon that took shape before the Venetians established their control over their city and the rest of the region.
- 53 On the Hvar rebellion, see Gabelić 1988; and O’Connell 2009, p. 140-149.
25Again, the way the humanist presented the modern-day renaissance and the role Venice might have had in it was conditioned by his socio-political background. As mentioned, Pribojević was a commoner from a Hvar family that hailed from the smaller island town of Vrboska, the very center of the 1510–1514 popular uprising against the Hvar patricians, which was sacked in 1512 by the Venetian commander Sebastiano Giustinian during his attempt to pacify the island53. Though Pribojević was presumably not present in Hvar during Giustinian’s expedition, his family and friends were, and it clearly had an impact on his work. Pribojević, however, directed his resentment not towards the local patricians, many of whom became his friends, but towards the Venetian regime. His response was to appeal for concord between patricians and commoners and present the ancient and medieval history of his city in a way that cast the Romans and Venetians as its true enemy. Giustinian’s expedition was thus supposed to be interpreted as yet another episode in this story of aggression and destruction brought by the imperial invaders from Italy.
- 54 Pribojević 1997, p. 46.
- 55 Alhough Pribojević knew and quoted at a couple of places Marko Marulić’s Regum Delmatiae atque Croa (...)
26It might seem surprising then that the printing of Pribojević’s oration was approved by the Venetian Council of Ten54. However, unlike in 1510, when Venice stood at the brink of annihilation at the hands of the League of Cambrai, in 1532, after the collapse of the Kingdom of Hungary under the Ottoman expansion, there were no longer any threats to its rule in Dalmatia from other Christian powers. And Pribojević did not take his views too far. He was well aware of political realities, and as a result he was less interested in celebrating Dalmatian kings and the national kingdom than Dalmatian men of learning and the national branch of the Republic of Letters55. He presented his most subversive ideas while discussing the ancient history of his city and the Council of Ten, seemingly recognizing this as nothing more than local pride, was willing to tolerate it.
Conclusion
27What makes any comparison between Juraj Šižgorić’s De situ Illyriae et civitate Sibenici and Vinko Pribojević’s Oratio de origine successibusque Slavorum so rewarding is the underlying dialogue that Pribojević establishes with Šižgorić, adopting his work as a model and using his ideas and sources, but expanding and indeed adapting them to his purposes. Thus both humanists spoke of their renaissance of letters, praising the modern-day fellow countrymen who revived the learning that the region witnessed in antiquity in St. Jerome, their model and proof that they could rival the Italian humanists. They both celebrated the Latin learning, Šižgorić perhaps more so than Pribojević, but they also insisted on their own indigenous Illyrian traditions that drew their origins from antiquity, whether their own popular philosophy or liturgical rites and sacred letters. The difference in how they presented the scope of this renaissance was not an ideological choice, but a question of timing and the development of Dalmatian humanism. Šižgorić, one of the very first humanists who saw their works printed in Venice, who wrote the De situ Illyriae before the intensification of the national network, perhaps unsurprisingly saw it as a local phenomenon. Pribojević, on the other hand, his learned connections much broader, the number of printed works by Dalmatian authors by now much greater, was able to recognize its true scope and present himself and the growing network of friends across the region as a pantheon of national learning, drawing inspiration from, and responding to, the first histories of Italian humanism. Where they disagreed sharply was when discussing the origins of this renaissance of letters. Was it, as Šižgorić put it, the Venetian rule that triggered the renaissance, or did it spring from local roots before and in spite of the rise of Venetian power, as Pribojević saw it? The answer to this question had much to do with local politics and social background of the two humanists. Šižgorić’s and Pribojević’s works thus offer a perfect cross-section of views that were shaped in the nascent Dalmatian branch of the Republic of Letters, where humanists were developing a group identity based on their education and common national myths and traditions, but still had opposing views towards Venice which were based on how entangled their own personal and familial interests were with that of the regime.
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Notes
1 On Sabellico, see Tateo 1982; on his De latinae linguae reparatione, Baker 2015, p. 184-233 (quote at p. 187).
2 Sabellico 1999, p. 155-156: Nec Coriolanus Cipicus parum uno est libro notus, quo ille Petri Mocenici, qui postea princeps fuit, gesta est complexus: vix ex dalmatica illa ora dicendi facultatem hac quisquam tempestate expectasset. Cipiko’s work has recently been translated into English; see Cippico 2014.
3 Sabellico 1504, vol. 2, f. 167v (Enn. 10, lib. 8): Rhetores, poetae et oratores clari, ut ordine censeantur, floruerunt Syxto pontfice: Delmatici nominis Helius Cervinus Rachuseus poeta insignis et Ioannes Gotius orator eius municeps, Marcus Marullus Spalatrensis.
4 For overviews of Dalmatian humanism, see Budiša 1988; and Goleniščev-Kutuzov 1973, p. 33-151. For the earliest period of the diffusion of humanism, see Novaković 2014; Lučin 2018; and Špoljarić 2017.
5 Though they continued to participate in the wider national network, the humanists of Dubrovnik increasingly closed themselves off in their own world, with its own pantheon of viri illustres; see Kunčević 2015, p. 16-17 and Bogdan 2017, p. 223-249. The literati from Venetian Dalmatia often looked up to Dubrovnik as the only city that enjoyed true freedom from foreign rule; see Bogdan 2017, p. 129-151.
6 Croatian episcopal sees, under the control of Croatian lords or the Hungarian king, provided talented Dalmatian priests with opportunities for advancement that they often found lacking in Venetian Dalmatia; see Špoljarić 2016. With the exception of Senj, they were by the 1520s largely desolated or destroyed under the Ottoman advance.
7 On the nationalist discourse of the Italian humanists, see Fubini 1988; Prosperi 2007. On the diffusion of humanism and humanist nationalism, see Hirschi 2012; Helmrath – Muhlack – Walther 2002; and Münkler – Grünberger – Mayer 1998. On the Italian-Dalmatian polemics on St. Jerome, see below.
8 King 1986; Bowd 2010, p. 42-43; O’Connell 2014; O’Connell 2017; Špoljarić 2018. The recent research of Clémence Revest on the orations delivered by local humanists before provincial governors – presented at the Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America held in Chicago in 2017 – shows that these were standard tropes of the genre.
9 As Šimun Benja bishop of Modruš put it, when he called on his friend Toma Niger bishop of Trogir to finish his vernacular chorography of Croatia, Od hrvacke zemlje i hvali njeje (On the Croatian land and its glory), “even though she [i.e. Croatia] is now enslaved by the pagan hand, she nonetheless has its glories”; see Kožičić 2007, 2, f. 2v: Jaže akos porabljena jest ninje od poganske ruke, imat ona ničtože manje svoje hvali.
10 This is not to say that there were no royalist histories that promoted the idea of an independent national kingdom free of Venetian and Hungarian rule. One powerful example is Nicholas of Modruš’s De bellis Gothorum (On the wars of the Goths), written in 1472/1473 in the service of the exiled Bosnian Queen Catherine in Rome; see Špoljarić 2019.
11 Though the only ones preserved today, the works of Šižgorić and Pribojević were not the only chorographies composed during this period. Judging by its title, Toma Niger’s lost Od hrvacke zemlje i hvali njeje (see n.9) seems to have belonged to this genre also.
12 Blažević 2008, p. 115-136.
13 The following account of Juraj Šižgorić’s life and his family is based on Jovanović 2015, p. 31-32; Dukić – Grgin 2010-2014, p. 98-101; and Galvani 1884, p. 188-190. The Venetian confidence in the family was so great that Radič’s brother, Juraj’s namesake great-uncle, was even elected the bishop of Šibenik (1437–1451) with their blessing.
14 On Vidali, see Segarizzi 1903; and Revest 2015, p. 127.
15 Šižgorić 1966.
16 For the modern edition of the work, see Šižgorić 1981; quote on p. 14: Cum ergo patriae debeamus, patriae fines et dulcia scripsimus arva; cf. Verg., Ecl., 1.3. The sole surviving manuscript of the work is located in Venice, Biblioteca del Museo Correr, MS Cicogna 2218, fols. 1-9. On Calbo, see Olivieri 1973; and King 1986, p. 345-347.
17 Šižgorić 1962. The sole copy of the cycle of hymns is also preserved in the same manuscript as the De situ Illyriae (see the previous note), on f. 13-24.
18 Šižgorić 1981, p. 16-24, 24-32, and 32-56, respectively.
19 Ibid., p. 46: Est quoque […] basylica, quae miro artificio, ut arbitror, nostro saeculo surgit Iacobo maiori, Christi apostolo, dicata. […] Sunt et aedes nobilium civium pro Dalmatica conditione satis amplae et honestae.
20 Ibid., p. 46: Fuerunt et nostra memoria concives qui eruditione claruerunt theologiae, philosophiae, poeticae, oratoriae, iuris pontificii et iuris caesarei, quorum ingenia saepius ipsa etiam fuit admirata Italia, quae mater studiorum dicitur et magistra morum.
21 The only local humanist whom Šižgorić mentions in the entire work is Jakov Naplavić, but, as will soon be seen, he introduces him in a later chapter when discussing the city’s customs, not to illustrate the city’s renaissance of letters.
22 Šižgorić 1981, p. 50: Quintum supra decimum perficitur lustrum, quo Illustrissimus Venetorum senatus Sibenicum habuit et in eo vexillum erexit volitantis et coronati leonis anno salutis 1412 quinto Kalendas Novembres. Tunc aurea saecula redire visa fuerunt, tunc quasi ex cloaca civitas effecta, tunc barbarie postposita Latina vigere coepit humanitas, tunc virtutem sugere, aetatem litterarum alimento pascere, laudabilem rem navare, probitates improbitatibus tamquam aurum scoria purgare pro virili sua omnes contendebant.
23 For an overview of epigraphic pursuits of first Dalmatian humanists, see Lučin 2014.
24 Šižgorić 1981, p. 32-34 (c. 8 De nomine Sibenici): Apud Ptolomeum et alios antiquos Siccum appellatur, apud iuniores et vulgares Sibenicum. […] Siccum itaque dictum, ut opinor, quod civitas intra muros vivi fontis careat aqua. Et praetermittendum non duco pro declaratione Plinii hac in parte ambigui et depravati libro III Naturalis historiae, c. XXI dicentis: “Tragurium civium Romanorum marmore siculi” […]. Ego vero sic legere non vereor: “Tragurium et civium Romanorum marmore notum Siccum.” In quem locum, ut dicit Plinius, divus Claudius veteranos misit. Sibenicum autem dictum lingua vernacula eo, quod viminibus fuerit circumseptum. Pyratae enim primi huius loci in secessu accolae fuerunt in suburbio, ubi signa murorum antiqua apparent. Siculi has been identified by modern archeologists with the site of Bijaći near Trogir.
25 The Dalmatian cult of St. Jerome is the subject of the ongoing doctoral research of Ines Ivić of Central European University; see Ivić 2016, for some of her initial findings. The orations of the Istrian Pier Paolo Vergerio the Elder in honor of the saint seemingly did not have any direct influence on the Dalmatian humanists. On the Renaissance St. Jerome, see Rice 1985.
26 Šižgorić 1981, p. 22-24: Quid dicam de Hieronymo, qui omnes ecclesiae doctores praestitit elegantia Graecam callens literaturam et Hebraicam et omnium divinarum rerum tenens scientiam? Vir profecto eximia vitae sanctimonia et divinis clarescens miraculis […], quem Itali praesertim Illyriis auferre conantur, consyderata gentium modernarum infoelicitate arbitrantes fortasse Dalmatiae spinam non potuisse huiusmodi produxisse rosam pulcherrimam.
27 Biondo Flavio 2005-2017, vol. 2, p. 172-173; Foresti 1490, f. 143v-144r and 155r. Had Šižgorić known which Italian humanists made the claim, he would have probably called them out by name, as he has done, for instance, when reporting that Galeotto Marzio calls the Dalmatians and Liburnians as Slavs; see Šižgorić 1981, p. 54-56.
28 Šižgorić 1981, p. 52-54: Siquidem proverbiis Illyricis utuntur [sc. nostri cives], quae nos dicteria diximus et ex lingua vernacula in Latinum vertimus cum Iacobo Naupleo, viro docto et diserto. Illis namque nec leges Solonis nec Numae Pompilii excogitationes nec ipsa Picthagorica praecepta videntur acutiora.
29 Naplavić’s and Šižgorić’s Dicteria Illyrica can be compared to the Proverbia Germanica (The German proverbs) of Heinrich Bebel from 1508, which similarly sought to respond to Italian claims of their cultural greatness; see Hirschi 2012, p. 159-160.
30 Similarly, in his De bellis Gothorum (see n.10) Nicholas of Modruš went to some lengths to make the point that the ancient Goths, construed as ancestors of the modern-day Illyrians, had their own philosophers; see Špoljarić 2019, p. 468-469.
31 Aside from the cycle of hymns he presented to Antonio Calbo in January of 1487 (to which he appended a longer encomiastic poem in praise of the governor, for which see Šižgorić 1962, p. 197-198), Šižgorić had in 1473 dedicated poems to Marco Bollani on the occasion of his wife’s passing, and to Paolo da Riva on his arrival in the city; see Šižgorić 1966, p. 114-115 and 119-120.
32 For instance, even though today only one, autograph, copy of Šižgorić’s cycle of hymns in honor of the apostles is preserved, Novaković 1993 shows that this work too circulated in Dalmatia.
33 Gudelj 2018 analyzes the building of the new loggia and the public inscriptions that evoked the Siccum roots of Šibenik.
34 The scant sources on Pribojević’s life and his family background are discussed by Kovačić 2000; and Kovačić 2004.
35 For the editio princeps of the oration see Pribojević 1532. I will quote here the modern edition of the text (Pribojević 1997), though with some minor corrections. Aside from Blažević 2008, p. 125-136, Madunić 2010 also provides an in-depth analysis of the text.
36 Gortan 1959.
37 Pribojević achieves this by adapting the medieval Polish legend of three brothers, Czech, Lech, and Rus, the progenitors of the Bohemians, Poles, and Russians, respectively, and exiles from Dalmatia; see Pribojević 1997, p. 64.
38 Ibid., p. 55-75, 75-87 and 87-103, respectively.
39 Ibid., p. 63.
40 Ibid., p. 80-81: Hinc maximus ille peritorum decor divus fulsit Hieronymus, cuius (ut Augustinus contra Iulianum dicit) elloquium ab oriente in occidentem instar solis refulget. Tantae auctoritatis vir, ut (quemadmodum Erasmus Rotherodamus inquit) eruditam quoque Graeciam, totius orbis semper magistram, post tot eximios scriptores ab homine Dalmata discere non puduerit, unius Hieronymi ex omnibus auctoribus commentarios in suam linguam transferendo.
41 Ibid., p. 81: Is enim, ut patrum idioma (Sabellico teste) illustraret, nova litterarum elementa commentus est, quibus in sacris et prophanis rebus regionis accolae nostra tempestate utuntur. Sed et officium quoque divinum, quo catholici utuntur christiani, in id novum idioma (ut Blondus et Philippus Bergomas referunt) traduxit, quod Eugenius Quartus romanus pontifex approbavit. On the origin and diffusion of this legend, see Verkholantsev 2014.
42 Pribojević 1997, p. 81-82: Fulsit et aliud lumen nostra hac tempestate ex Dalmatia: Marcus Marulus, qui plurima christianae pietatis volumina compilavit; et Cypicus Coriolanus Tragurita, ad quem consolatorium carmen exstat Sabellici de domus deflagratione in Dalmatia; ac Haelius <Cervinus> et Ioannes Gotius, quorum utique meminit Sabellicus, et Ioannes Stoicus ordinis praedicatorum Georgiusque Benignus minorita Ragusei; et Ioannes Staphileus Tragurita; ac Ioannes Policarpus Sibenicensis Hieronymusque Priboevius Pharius, germanus meus, ambo praedicatoriae familiae; cum Ioanne Arbensi ordinis divi Benedicti ac Paulo Paladino Phario, de quo infra mentio fiet, qui litterarum monumentis perhennem sibi gloriam vendicaverunt. Exstant nostra hac tempestate in humanis magni nominis viri: Thomas Nigro Spalatinus et Simon Begnius Iaderita; ac Vincentius et Dominicus Bucchii Catharenses ordinis praedicatorum, qui plurima caholicae fidei archana suis scriptis illustraverunt; necnon et Federicus Grisogonius Iaderita; et Hieronymus Atticus Hannibalque Lucius, Petrus Hectoreus, qui inter caetera eleganti metro Nasonem De remedio amoris in Illyricum idioma cum magna omnium admiratione transtulit vel minium iota non ommittens, et Michael Peregrinus, hii quatuor Pharii; cum Andronico Tranquillo Tragurita et Georgio Bixantio Catharensi ac Francisco Niconitio Corzulensi, multique alii, quorum virtus et eruditio in dies elucescit.
43 The fact that Pribojević includes Ivan Štafilić, who died in 1528, into the first group is a telling sign that at least here he revised his oration between the initial composition in 1525 and printing in 1532.
44 Marko Marulić (1450–1524) not only earned European fame for his works of Christian piety, as mentioned by Pribojević; he also enjoyed local recognition for his patriotic works, his biography of St. Jerome (with a polemical appendix on his origin) and a translation of the fourteenth-century chronicle that narrated the deeds of the kings of Dalmatia and Croatia, both works quoted by Pribojević at other places. He also composed Judita (Judith) the first national epic in the vernacular, on account of which he famously styled himself as the “Croatian Dante.” Marulić was recognized as primus inter pares even during his lifetime and he became the only Dalmatian humanist to receive a humanist biography of his own, composed not long after his death by his friend Frane Božićević. On Marulić’s life and works, see Lučin 2008.
45 Pribojević 1997, p. 80: Sed nec Dalmatis, quamvis bellorum semper fuerint studiosissimi, dulcia defuerunt litteraria oblectamenta, cum famosissimos litterarum cultures hoc solum edat.
46 Ibid., p. 48-49, 47 and 104.
47 Ibid., p. 70-71.
48 Ibid., p. 82-83.
49 Ibid., p. 96-103.
50 Ibid., p. 92-94.
51 Ibid., p. 98-99: Emilius Pharo potitus, ammissa apud Illyrios, quemadmodum Petrus Marsius dicit, notabili sui exercitus portione, ipsum funditus evertit, praecavens (ni fallor) ne Pharenses, patria eorum incolumi proprias ulturi iniurias, vendicato sibi iterum maris imperio Romanorum in Illyrium et Graeciam navigationes impedirent.
52 Ibid., p. 99: Pharenses extrema quaeque, ne quid servile eis accideret, experiri parati, anno Domini nongentesimo octuagesimo septimo ab Urseolo, duce Venetiarum, eversa funditus eorum urbe, quam pro moenibus fortissime quamdiu licuit tutati sunt, victi fuere. Variis posthaec universa Dalmatia ob inextinguibiles inter Venetos et Ligures inimicitias casibus agitata, aucto mirum in modum Venetorum imperio, reedificata prius per vos urbe vestra, inito cum eis perpetuae pacis foedere, praecipuis ornati privilegiis (nam et senatum habetis et quaestores ipsi deligitis vestrique iuris est aerarium), multis donati immunitatibus, gratissima potiti libertate Venetis usque ad hoc tempus fidelissime coiungimini.
53 On the Hvar rebellion, see Gabelić 1988; and O’Connell 2009, p. 140-149.
54 Pribojević 1997, p. 46.
55 Alhough Pribojević knew and quoted at a couple of places Marko Marulić’s Regum Delmatiae atque Croatiae gesta, a translation of a fourteenth-century fanciful account of the early medieval kingdom of Dalmatia and Croatia under its national dynasty, he did not make much of it. As for the Hungarian kings, who after 1102 were also kings of Dalmatia and Croatia, he does not mention them even once in his oration. The only modern-day ruler Pribojević celebrates is Sigismund I king of Poland for his victories against the Turks, but this was no more than an example of the service-record of Slavs in defending the Christendom from the barbarians; see ibid., p. 72.
© Publications de l’École française de Rome, 2021