Original scientific paper
A Booklet of Riddles of Friar Bernardin Mayor. Its Historical Context
Ana Biočić
; Faculty of Divinities, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
More than 250 years ago, Friar Bernardin Mayor’s booklet Aenigmata in suis nobilibus nominibus Croatico-martialium virorum una cum suis solutionibus has been published and it is nowadays extant only in an exemplar under the signature R II F-8°-94 in the Collection of Rarities of the National and University Library of Zagreb. This booklet, which hitherto has not been studied, contains ten thematically related riddles about some significant military and political personages of the early modern age. In the first part of this article, the author shows what she discovered in archival materials about biography of Bernardin Mayor, professor of moral theology, who attempted to write riddles, which were one of the typical expressions of Croatian Baroque poetry in Latin language. The author proceeds by a detailed analysis of the booklet of riddles and gives an overview of the military and political situation of the time when it was written, which she also correlates to the themes of Mayor’s riddles. Namely, she concludes, that turbulent war events probably prompted Mayor to show gratitude to capable military leaders who were ready to give life for their county and Queen Mary Theresa, to whom the author dedicated the booklet. The final part of the article presents short biographical notes on those personages mentioned in the riddles, which give evidence for the thesis that some of these personages, although quite influential in their time, were marginalised in the later historical and professional literature. By this, the author mainly has in mind the less well known members of renowned noble families such as Rauch, Erdődy and Jelačić. The Appendix to the article contains a translation of the booklet Aenigmata with a commentary, which should be helpful in understanding the riddles.
Keywords
Friar Bernardin Mayor; riddles; military history; the eighteenth century
Hrčak ID:
136439
URI
Publication date:
29.12.2014.
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