Marko Marulić

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Marko Marulić (Split, August 18, 1450 - Split, January 5, 1524) was a Croatian poet and Christian humanist, known as the Crown of the Croatian Medieval Age and the father of the Croatian Renaissance. He signed his works as Marko Marulić Splićanin ("Marko Marulić of Split"), Marko Pečenić, Marcus Marulus Spalatensis, or Dalmata.

Marko Marulić was a nobleman born in Split, Dalmatia, coming from the distinguished aristocratic family of Pečenić. He completed humanist school in Split and then graduated in law at the Padua University, after which he spent much of his life in his beloved home town. In Split, Marko practised law serving as a judge. The central figure of the humanist circle in Split, Marko was inspired by the Bible, Antique writers and Christian hagiographies, and produced vast opus in Latin and Croatian languages. Marko was active in the struggles against the Ottoman Turks who were invading the Croatian lands at that time. He wrote, among other works, an Epistola to the Pope where he begged for assistance in the common fight against the bringers of the new faith.

[edit] Latin

His European fame rested mainly on his works written in Latin which had been published and re-published during 16th and 17th century and translated into many languages. He published Psichiologia de ratione animae humanae containing the earliest known literary reference to psychology. He wrote De institutione bene vivendi per exempla sanctorum, a moralist tractate of Biblical inspiration which he managed to publish in 1506 in Venice. Marko also wrote the Evanglistarium, a systematic discourse on ethical principles that he managed to publish in 1516 and in 1517 - The Davidiad a religious epic which fused Biblical motifs and Antique, Virgilian poetics in 14 verses, the most important being the story on the life of the Bilbical King David. Unfortunately, the Davidiad was discovered only in 1924, only to be lost again and rediscovered finally in 1952. However, Marulić's Latin works of devotional and religious provenance, once adored and envied across Europe, shared the destiny that befell the Humanist genre of those centuries: they vanished into oblivion.

[edit] Croatian

In the works written in Croat, Marulić achieved a permanent status and position that has remained uncontested. His central Croatian oeuvre, the epic poem Judita written in 1501 and published in Venice in 1521, is based on the Biblical tale from a Deuterocanonical Book of Judith, written in Croatian Chakavian dialect. His other works in Croatian are:

• Suzana (Susan)
• Poklad i korizma (Carnival and Lent)
• Spovid koludric od sedam smrtnih grihov (Nun's confession of seven deadly sins)
• Anka satir (Anka the satire),
• Tuženje grada Hjerosolima (Jerusalem's Lament),
• Molitva suprotiva Turkom (Prayers asking to be saved from the Turks).

His works are neither aesthetically nor stylistically superior to the works of his Dubrovnik predecessors. Three puzzling facts tend to raise questions:

• Marulić's Croatian work is aesthetically plainly inferior to the lyric poetry of Hanibal Lucić and the dramatic vitality of Marin Držić.
• His dialectal central-Dalmatian idiom was a rather archaic and did not play an important role in the process of standardization of the Croatian language — unlike the poetry and prose of writers from Dubrovnik, Korčula and Hvar such as Hanibal Lucić and Petar Hektorović.
• Even in terms of chronology, Džore Držić and Šiško Menčetić wrote in an essentially modern Croatian Shtokavian dialect some 3 decades before him.

Marulić's national eminence is due to a happy confluence of some other facts: no one among his contemporaries or predecessors had achieved fame during his lifetime. Further, his deeply patriotic and Catholic verses had assimilated the frequently superficial and imitative poetry of his southern compatriots and transformed it into an epitome of Croatian national destiny. His Judith representing the Croat people defending against the Ottoman Empire invasion – Marulić remained the ineradicable centre of Renaissance Croatian patriotism – of Croathood itself. That is why his stature as the father of Croatian literature is secure and unshakeable.

The picture of Marko Marulić appears on every 500 Croatian Kuna banknote.