Colloquia Maruliana ..., Vol. 15 , 2006.
Original scientific paper
New Contributions to the Reception of De Institutione: Alonso de Villegas,Pedro Calderón de la Barca and his Sources
Bratislav Lučin
Abstract
The rich reception of Marulić’s works in Spain in the 16th and 17th centuries can be seen in the translations, manuscripts and numerous specimens of books in public and private libraries. The gallery of writers, humanists, translators, churchmen, missionaries, saints, polymaths and bibliophiles whose names are associated with Marulić is truly impressive. This paper adds to the list three more Spaniards who mention Marulić in their works: Alonso de Villegas, Juan Pérez de Montalván and Pedro Calderón de la Barca. Research into the sources from which the latter two of these found out about the Split humanist takes us away from the Iberian peninsula as far as France, and even further, to Ireland. 1. Alonso de Villegas, reader and translator of De institutione Alonso de Villegas (1534-1603) is the author of the several volume work Flos Sanctorum, a compilation of lives of the saints and other pious works. The fifth volume, which bears the title Fructus Sanctorum y Quinta Parte de Flos Sanctorum (Cuenca, 1594) contains about three thousand six hundred exemplary figures distributed among 78 chapters or discursos. Apart from the Biblical books, Villegas mentions as his sources a vast number of writers, from antiquity onwards, among whom the name of Marko Marulić appears with great frequency. He is mentioned in the very first chapter, and in the whole work (which amounts to almost 1000 printed pages) Villegas refers to Marulić a total of 292 times. Although he never mentions the title of the work on which he is drawing, he clearly must be using one of the editions of De institutione bene uiuendi per exempla sanctorum. In terms of frequency of reference to his Split predecessor, Discurso 49: De martirio is clearly in the lead (with 29 references to Book V of De institutione), then 10: De castidad (23 citations of Book IV) and 59: De la oración (18 references to Book II). In some of the chapters, however, the Split author is not referred to at all (there are a total of 35 such chapters). With all the many resemblances between the two works, which are revealed by a comparison of the titles of the chapters, there are nevertheless certain differences. Thus Villegas, by contrast to Marulić, also considers certain pagan exemplary figures; while the Spaniard structures his work simply in alphabetical order of titles, Marulić instead follows the progress of the Christian from the discovery of faith in Books I and II to eschatological topics in Book VI. In Villegas’ titles there is no trace of Marulić’s polemical titles of Book II of De institutione (II, 6 De fide unius Dei contra gentiles; II, 7 De fide Christi contra Iudeos, and so on). Marulić’s Book VI is totally dedicated to eschatological topics, which are practically absent in the Spanish work. However unrewarding it might be on this occasion to speculate why Villegas in some cases ignored his predecessor, we can makea good guess at it in the case of one chapter at least: this is the topic of lying, to which Marulić devoted the celebrated IV, 4 De ueritate colenda mendacioque fugiendo, and the Spaniard his Discurso 50: Del mentir, in which he failed to refer at all to Marulić. It might be hypothesised that in this case the Spanish churchman did not personally agree with Marulić’s views; however, his decision might have been influenced by the post-Trent reserve about this chapter and, in consequence, about the whole of De institutione. In a more detailed comparison it is established that in several places Villegasnot only mentions Marulić, but also paraphrases the place in the De institutione, and quite frequently straightforwardly translates it into Spanish. The quantity of Marulić text in Fructus Sanctorum allows us to see in Villegas the first translator of Marulić’s prose into Spanish. The fragments of the De institutione printed in this work, that is, precede by some sixty years the complete Spanish text of the Evangelistary and the Fifty Parables that were printed in 1655 in Madrid by Bartolomé Fernández de Revenga. 2. The Hibernian-Iberian connection of Pedro Calderón de la Barca It has not previously been noticed that the major author of the Spanish classical theatre, Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600-1681), in his religious drama St Patrick’s Purgatory (El Purgatorio de San Patricio, 1628) mentions the name of Marulić. In the final verses of the work, Calderón lists the writers who have referred to events that he treated in dramatic form: among them is the name of Marko Marulić. It is well known that the Spanish playwright did not probably directly know the works of all the writers that he mentions, drawing the material instead from the little booklet Vida y Purgatorio de San Patricio (Madrid 1627) of Juan Pérez de Montalván (or Montalbán, 1602-1638). In it Marulić’s name is mentioned among the authorities witnessing to the existence of St Patrick’s Purgatory. The work of Pérez de Montalván is mostly a compilation drawn up according to the large work Florilegium insulae sanctorum, seu Vitae et acta sanctorum Hiberniae printed in Paris in 1624. The author of this is the Irish priest, Thomas Messingham, a member of the Irish College in Paris, and its president (rector) from1621 on. This Irishman added to his work on Irish saints a disquisition on the Purgatory of St Patrick (Tractatus de purgatorio Sancti Patricii Hibernorum apostoli), which he composed as a collage of quotations, a kind of prose cento, of fragments from the works of other writers. The mention of Marulić’s name can be found in the first chapter of the Messingham cento, entitled De nomine, existentia et loco purgatorii, in a fragment taken by Messingham from David Rothe (1573-1650), an Irishman who studied in the Irish College in Douai and at Salamanca University. The most important work of Rothe is his Analecta sacra, noua et mira. De rebus Catholicorum in Hibernia pro fide, et religione gestis in three volumes (1616-1619). Precisely whether Messingham drew his material from Analecta sacra or perhaps from Rothe’s Tractatus… de nominibus Hiberniae (included in the Florilegium) would have to be determined by a direct inspection of Rothe’s works. The Marulić “Irish connection” is backed up by the item of information that Thomas Messingham was in correspondence with Lucas Wadding, an Irish Franciscan, who spent a large part of his working life in Rome, who was also familiar with Marulić’s De institutione (cf. the work of A. Matanić in Colloquia Maruliana X, pp. 216-217). The mere mention of the name of Marulić in the treatise of Pérez da Montalván and in the final verses of Calderón’s St Patrick’s Purgatory does not give sufficient ground for supposing that either of them knew the work of Marulić at first hand. But the information given here could serve as a sign post for further research. For at least two Irish clerics working outside their homeland, Wadding and Rothe, had read De institutione, while a third, Messingham, at least, knew of Marulić indirectly. This circumstance should be sufficient inducement for investigating the possible reception of the “first world-renowned Croatian writer” on their native ground as well, on the island of the saints, which is for Marulić studies still terra incognita.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
2945
URI
Publication date:
22.4.2006.
Visits: 2.317 *