Original scientific paper

The Funeral Oration of Nicholas of Modruš for Pietro Riario

Neven Jovanović orcid.org/0000-0002-9119-399X ; Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu

Abstract

The funeral oration of Nicholas of Modruš (1427-1480) for the cardinal priest of St Sixtus and the nephew of Pope Sixtus IV Pietro Riario (1445-1474), Oratio in funere reverendissimi domini d. Petri cardinalis Sancti Sixti (after January 18, 1474), is known from seven printed editions (1474-1484) and seven more manuscript copies. It is an exceptionally popular example of the funeral rhetoric of papal Renaissance Rome. Although the work is also the first known printed book by a Croatian author, Nicholas’ speech has never been a subject of study in the history of the national literature. Establishing the chronology of the repeated editions of the oration, we can recognise two phases. While the first is directly connected with the death of Riario, we are inclined to locate the second in 1482, in which year the only dated edition appeared, that from Padua (Matthaeus Cerdonis). At that time Nicholas of Modruš was already deceased (he was dead by May 29, 1480). We consider the historical and cultural context of the second phase of the printing of this oration: for Sixtus IV, 1482 was a year of vigorous political and cultural activity. It was the year of the great Italian war, and of the conflict with the Dominican Andrija Jamometić [Andreas Croatus] (who in Basel presented himself actually as cardinal priest of St Sixtus, appropriating the title of the late Riario), who, having convened the council, attacked not only the pope but also Pietro’s brother Girolamo Riario. In that same year, 1482, Sixtus proclaimed the Franciscan Bonaventura a saint (both Pietro Riario and the pope were Franciscans), and the interior decoration of the renovated Sistine Chapel was completed, to symbolize the cultural, religious and ideological programme of papal dominance.
In its thematic structure, Nicholas’ speech follows the ancient tradition of laudatio funebris; we discern the exordium, narratio (with twelve sub-units) and the peroratio. The piece creatively interweaves proofs of Riario’s virtues (pietas, magnitudino animi, munificentia, prudentia, modestia, iustitia) with a narration of his life and death. Numerous thoughts and expressions of ancient authors, both pagan and Christian (Cicero, Plato, Justin, Suetonius, Solinus, Aristotle, Pliny, Aurelius Victor, Seneca, Plotinus, Propertius, Horace, Terence; Minucius Felix, Augustine, St Bernard of Clairvaux, Innocent III, Abbot Guerric of Igny) are included in the work, but without being particularly featured. Nicholas was not apt to be prodigal of his learning and reading.
Nicholas’ oration presented a justification of Riario’s (and implicitly thus of the papal) policy and propaganda, as well as an ideal image of the »good cardinal« in an age when the loss of the real power of this position was compensated for by increments of outer show. Some thirty five years after Nicholas, Paolo Cortesi was to formulate a didactic work containing instructions for cardinals (De cardinalatu, published in 1510); Cortesi, like Nicolas, built the ideal figure of a cardinal around a set of moral virtues particularly defending the most problematic aspects of the work of the cardinal (wealth and opulence) – the same that Nicholas had had to defend in his portrait of Riario.

Keywords

Nicholas of Modruš (1427-1480); Pietro Riario (1445-1474); Sixtus IV (pope 1471-1484); cardinal; papal curia; Rome; 15th century; Renaissance humanism; rhetoric; laudatio funebris; printing; virtues; didactic writing

Hrčak ID:

199399

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/199399

Publication date:

22.4.2018.

Article data in other languages: croatian

Visits: 2.411 *