Marko Marulić Add a review

Marko Marulić Splićanin (pronounced [mâːrko mǎrulitɕ splîtɕanin]; Latin: Marcus Marulus Spalatensis; 18 August 1450 – 5 January 1524) was a Croatian poet, lawyer, judge, and Renaissance humanist. He is the national poet of Croatia. According to George J. Gutsche, Marulić's epic poem Judita "is the first long poem in Croatian", and "gives Marulić a position in his own literature comparable to Dante in Italian literature." Marulić's Latin poetry is of such high quality that his contemporaries dubbed him "The Christian Virgil." He has been called the "crown of the Croatian medieval age", the "father of the Croatian Renaissance", and "The Father of Croatian literature."

Marulić scholar Bratislav Lučin notes that he was well-versed in both the Christian Bible and in the Fathers of the Church. At the same time, Marulić also attentively read the Pre-Christian Greek and Latin Classics. He read and interpreted Latin epigrams, wrote glosses on the erotic poetry of Catullus, read Petronius' Satyricon, and admired Erasmus of Rotterdam. Marulić also composed humanist elegies, satirical poetry, erotic epigrams inspired by Ovid, and Latin Christian poetry inspired not only by the epics of Homer and Virgil, but also by Lucan, Statius, Faltonia Betitia Proba, Juvencus, Venantius Fortunatus, Cyprianus Gallus, Coelius Sedulius, and many other both Pagan and Christian writers in the same language.

According to Franz Posset, Marulić aspired to the Renaissance humanist ideal of the uomo universale ("universal man"). To this end, he was interested in painting and drawing, local and national history, languages, and poetry. His overall goal always remained renovatio Christiana ("The Renewal of Christianity") as represented by the future Counter-Reformation. Accordingly, like many other Renaissance humanists who shared his views, Marulić denounced simony and immorality among Catholic priests and members of the hierarchy in often violent language throughout his writings.

Although Marulić and Martin Luther lived at the same time and were published by two of the same Basel printers, their collected writings make no mention of each other. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, it must be assumed that both theologians were simply unaware of the other's existence. At the same time, both men shared a common belief in Evangelica Veritas ("Gospel Truth") and "theology for piety". They both built their differing theology upon the similar training they received in scholasticism, Renaissance humanism, and Devotio Moderna. Like fellow Renaissance humanists Johann Reuchlin, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Thomas More, John Fisher, Juan Luis Vives, and Paolo Riccio, however, Marko Marulić remained committed to an internal renewal of Catholicism and loyal to the Holy See, while Martin Luther and his adherents did not.

Marulić's work was admired both by many of the greatest and most influential Catholic saints of the Counter-Reformation and also, since much of Marulić could be read without violating sola scriptura, by generations of believers in Protestantism.

His writings in Renaissance Latin, once adored and envied across Europe, shared the destiny that befell most Renaissance Humanist literature and faded into obscurity. According to Lučin, however, the passage of time has slowly revealed the important web of influence that the poet and writer wove all over Europe and far beyond its borders. Marulić's writings were admired by churchmen such as Saints Francis Xavier, Francis de Sales, Peter Canisius, and Charles Borromeo, by monarchs and statesmen such as King Henry VIII, Thomas More, and Emperor Charles V, emulated by poets like Jan Dantyszek, Conrad Peutinger, and Francisco de Quevedo, and translated into vernacular verse by still other poets; including Fray Luis de León, St Philipp Howard, Rhina Espaillat, and Edward Mulholland. Furthermore, manuscripts of Marulić works previously thought lost, such as his Christian epic poem the Davidiad in 1952, his Latin-Croatian literary translation of Thomas à Kempis' The Imitation of Christ in 1989, and the Glasgow Codex in 1995, continue to resurface and to belatedly see publication for the first time.

One of Marulić's books published in the 1510s is also the first time a literary work used the term "psychology". More recently, Pope John Paul II quoted from a Marulić poem during his 1998 apostolic visit to Solin, Croatia.