Original scientific paper

Antun Vrančić and His Physician Gabriel Leporinus Pharensis

Vlado Rezar ; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb

Abstract

The correspondence of Antun Vrančić and his brother Mihovil reveals numerous details of a personal nature, including those relating to the state of health
of the famed diplomat and humanist from Šibenik, which was much undermined
in the last years of his life. Not only do their letters contain descriptions of the
unpleasant conditions that were a constant physical drain on Antun Vrančić but
they also provide the names of at least some of the physicians who were at that time
by his side in the attempt to give him assistance. The biographical and intellectual
profiles of these men have on the whole been outside the scope of interests of
Vrančić scholars, even when people from our national areas are concerned. Not
very much, then, has been known to date about the physician Gabriel Leporino,
Hvar aristocrat, beyond what is provided by Mihovil Vrančić in a letter recommending him to Antun as personal physician in 1558, or by Antun himself, when,
in 1568, discontented with his treatment of the advanced illness, he dismissed
him from his service.
Gabriel Leporino, a student of Padua, with a doctorate in medicine and philosophy (conferred in 1552) has not been noticed at all in local or foreign literary history, although during his time in the service of Vrančić he managed to compose
two lengthy treatises in Latin. Both were printed in Vienna by Caspar Stainhofer
(active 1565–1576). The treatise Dialogus de immortalitate intellectiuae animae
secundum Aristotelem was published in 1566, and In primum et secundum Aphorismorum Hippocratis librum commentarius in 1568. These treatises reflect to a
large extent the learning Leporino had acquired from eminent scholars in Padua.
It is particularly interesting that he managed to weave uncommon plaudits to his
distinguished patient, and probably, at that time, patron, Vrančić, into the first
mentioned of these works.
This paper introductorily presents a bio-bibliographical overview of the forgotten Hvar humanist Gabriel Leporino. It goes on to analyse a fictitious scene
of a banquet that Bishop Vrančić laid on for prominent intellectuals. This served
Leporino as a stage-setting for his philosophical treatise of 1566. A reconstruction
of the real circumstances behind it draws the outlines of the life of the mind in
Vrančić’s Vienna residence on Parisergasse during the years when Leporino was
a regular visitor. With an appropriate interpretive key, this humanist frolic turns
at the end into an interesting testimony to the incontestable literary talent and intellectual contours of the long-forgotten Hvar humanist Leporino while providing
an unexpected glimpse into the private life of Vrančić’s Viennese home.

Keywords

Antun Vrančić; Gabriel Leporinus Pharensis; Renaissance humanism; history of medicine; commentaries on Aristotle

Hrčak ID:

352789

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/352789

Publication date:

2.11.2026.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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