Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.21857/9e31lhn5xm
Catherine, Queen of Bosnia and the Humanists, Part One: Leonardo Montagna and his Epigrams
Luka Špoljarić
; Department of History, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
This is the first of two articles that explores the relationship between Queen Catherine of Bosnia (1425-1478) and Renaissance humanists. The purpose of the two articles is to show that Catherine, as the queen of the destroyed Bosnian kingdom who spent fifteen years in exile, in Dalmatia and Rome, enjoyed regular contact with intellectuals of high profile and that some of them composed classicizing works in her honour. The first article thus analyzes the four epigrams composed by the Italian humanist Leonardo Montagna (1426-1485). Two of the epigrams were already known in Croatian and Bosnian historiography but were never analyzed; two, however, were completely unknown, and are published here for the first time. On the basis of these epigrams, a number of conclusions was reached. First, the epigrams (as well as other evidence of Venetian provenance) are used to present a new reconstruction of the queen’s life during the two critical years before she moved to Rome (September 1465-October 1467). The article thus shows that it was Catherine who was the unnamed “former queen of Bosnia” who stayed in 1466 in the Benedictine abbey of St Stephen under the Pines near Split, and not Queen Mary, the wife of the last King of Bosnia, Stephen Tomašević, as was commonly held in historiography. Second, the epigrams are used to challenge the traditional accounts of Catherine’s life which tend to focus on her piety and her concern for her abducted children. Instead, the article shows that from St Stephen’s Abbey as her base of operations in 1466, Catherine was still very much hopeful of pushing the Ottomans out of Bosnia. During this time the Queen supported the ultimately unsuccessful resistance of her brother Vladislas Kosača, and brokered his contacts with Naples, Buda and the papacy. Third, the article explores the relationship between Catherine and Leonardo Montagna, arguing that during her time in Split the humanist acted as her counsellor. In addition, some light is shed here on Catherine’s contacts with Philippa Cipci, who served as hers and Montagna’s translator, as well as on Philippa’s young son Jerome.
Keywords
Queen Catherine of Bosnia; Leonardo Montagna; Humanism; Split
Hrčak ID:
220279
URI
Publication date:
27.12.2018.
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