Colloquia Maruliana ..., Vol. 8 , 1999.
Original scientific paper
Reading Nikola of Modruš Through Marulić: De consolatione and Evangelistarium
Neven Jovanović
Abstract
I first of all compared the biographies and oeuvres of Nikola of Modruš and Marko Marulić, and then Modruški’s work De consolatione with Marulićs Evangelistarium. The first comparison was not particularly fruitful: we know of no direct relationship between the two. The less well-known humanist, Nikola, Bishop of Modruš (ca1427– ca 1480) is a generation older than Marulić. Nikola, hailing from Boka Kotorska, spent his life in the service of the Papacy, mostly in Italy. Only one work of Nikola of Modruš was printed: this was the Funeral Speech for Cardinal Pietro Riario. The first edition of this speech, of 1474, is the oldest prose incunabulum of any Croatian author.
De consolatione was written in 1465-6. Two manuscripts are preserved in the Vatican Library (Cod. Vat. lat. 5139 = V1 and Cod. Vat. lat. 8764 = V2. Evangelistarium has been printed some twenty times since 1516, and, with the Institutione (and in recent times Judita) is the most popular of Marulić’s works. This work in seven books talks of how to live in the spirit of Christianity and the Bible.
The best-seller Evangelistarium is linked with the unpublished De consolatione by belonging to the same genre, to didactic literature. Both texts are compared with the medieval summae; in both we meet the characteristic signals of the didactic genre as described by Gian Biagio Conte.
Starting off from this similarity, I analysed four aspects of De consolatione and Evangelistarium: their layout, their literary procedures, their intertextual strategies and the model reader inscribed into both texts.
De consolatione and Evangelistarium organise their material into books and chap-ters. De consolatione emphasises the systematicness of its approach, while Evangelistarium relies on additional aids to assist reader orientation: table of contents and chapter numeration. These information techniques were made possible by the expansion of the press.
De consolatione and Evangelistarium employ the same topoi; in both texts, the authors speak of their other works, and similar themes (for example the state of mind of a man overtaken by the emotion of anxiety or wrath) are described in a similar style, modelled on the same author (Seneca, De ira). These congruities can be interpreted as usual for a didactic text of the 15th and 16th centuries, or as a sign that Nikola of Modruš and Marulić learned how to write in the same way, that they share a single rhetorical background.
De consolatione and Evangelistarium represent themselves as mediators of valuable truths. But these truths are found by the texts in different places. De consolatione acknowledges the ancient, the Bible and the patristic; Evangelistarium limits itself to the Bible, expressly relinquishing pagan antiquity. These stances have an influence on the way in which the texts present the mediated knowledge. Nikola of Modruš does not disguise the heterogeneous origins of his quotations, which make up about fifty percent of De consolatione. Evangelistarium however documents only Biblical refer-ences, though these are not the only quotations in the text. Among the small deviations of Marulić’s text, I have analysed the naming of Herodotus, Strabo and Josephus Flavius. These writers were generally acknowledged authorities in the 15th and 16th centuries; we can find them in De consolatione (with the exception of Strabo). Herodotus and Josephus Flavius are ideologically neutral, because the first transmitted secular knowledge, and the second explicated the Bible. Quotations from Herodotus and Josephus Flavius are an innovation in the tradition of the consolation; this innovation was dictated by the rhetorical interests of Nikola of Modruš.
In De consolatione there are almost no allegorical interpretations, which are omnipresent in the Evangelistarium. The absence of allegory is additional confirmation that the public of De consolatione differed from that of Evangelistarium. I further investigated the relationship between these two audiences, drawing on Umberto Eco’s theory of the model reader. This construct is the result of interpretative strategies that are provided by every text, fiction or non-fiction, artistic or non-artistic.
The model reader of De consolatione belongs to a specialised, professional group that has mastered oratorical skills; as opposed to this, Evangelistarium addresses ev-eryone (a more detailed analysis shows that everyone here means all Christian people, primarily male Christians). The audience of Evangelistarium is thus heterogeneous, and Marulićs text only occasionally addresses given sub-groups. I interpreted the monk (monachus) as a special addressee: places in E. 2.3, 2.5 and 2.6 show that for Evangelistarium a monk is everyone who has chosen a more perfect form of the Christian life; a monachus can be a layman as well.
In several places, Evangelistarium directly addresses God, using the second per-son singular. These places are prayers; this type of discourse can be found nowhere in De consolatione. Evangelistarium uses elements of devotional literature, while De consolatione, even when it has the chance to approach this genre (citing, for example, the Synonyma of Isidore of Seville) and still adapts the text to the needs of the orator.
I conclude then: De consolatione and Evangelistarium are linked by the didactic intention, and by certain stylistic procedures. The two texts are separated by the way in which they choose and treat their hypertexts other works that they quote or adapt. De consolatione lays bare its intertextual procedures; what is more, it makes them its main trump. As opposed to this, the only authoritative text necessary to Evangelistarium is the Bible; all others either only explicate biblical truths, or are nothing but decoration.
The difference in the two books attitude to their hypertexts is closely linked with the audiences that the texts expect and, in a certain way, actually produce with, then, the model reader inscribed into the two texts. De consolatione, which explicitly accepts many hypertexts, addresses a homogeneous, and Evangelistarium, which accepts the authority of only one text, speaks to a heterogeneous group of addressees. Because of the mixed composition of its addressees, Evangelistarium uses certain strategies that are not necessary to De consolatione.
As guides to new research, I pinpoint two questions. With reference to Evangelistarium: if individual parts of the text address different addressees, how does this affect Marulić’s style? And with reference to De consolatione: could the fact that this text was not printed have been affected by the strategy through which the text presents its material, did Nikola of Modruš, stressing the systematic and drawing a clear border between his text and other peoples quotations, make an error of judgement? Answers to these questions would contribute to the understanding of De consolatione and Evangelistarium as well as to the whole of the didactic genre and the sociology of humanist writing.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
9039
URI
Publication date:
22.4.1999.
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