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Marulić's Oration Cencerning Sanctity and the Saints
Mladen Parlov
Sažetak
In the first part of the article, the author shows that the adjective sanctus gradually moved from pagan into Christian terminology. From its original meaning of something reserved for God, it arrived at the features of persons who by their moral or sanctified way of life had come particularly close to God. Then the author out-lines the development of the cult of the saints in the Catholic Church from the beginnings to the late Middle Ages. Martyrs were the first saints with a cult in the Catholic Church, and after the period of martyrdom, the attention of the congregations was drawn by ascetics, monks, holy bishops, kings and so on. At the end of the Middle Age in the Christian consciousness there was a prevailing view that sanctity was achieved exclusively by withdrawing from the world, living the life of monastic spirituality Not even Marko Marulić was able to avoid this concept.
In the second part, the author expounds Marulić’s concept of sanctity. In essence this is the attempt of the Split Humanist to reply to the anthropological issue raised by other contemporary Humanists. Some contemporary Humanists in the attempt to answer the question of the achievements of human life resorted to Greek philosophy or classical thinking. Greek culture proposed the model of Hero and Sage to Western civilisation as the greatest ideal of human perfection. We can find them both in the figure of Socrates, initiator of the intellectual morality that had its peaks in the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle. A being is happy if it works in accordance with its essence. Human essence lies in the reason, and hence intellectual virtues are elevated above moral. The greatest ideal is contemplation of the logos, the highest reason - the nous. Human perfection is rooted in philosophical wisdom, according to which the human being, in and of itself, by the strength of a certain moral and intellectual ascetic exercise, is cognitively modelled on the Highest Being. Of course, this kind of perfection is reserved for the few: for the intellectually gifted and the rich. For the others, there is no hope. With this kind of aristocratic morality of the ancient sage, we can find a morality based on the figure of the hero, the leading representative of whom is Hercules. To live means to work as man. Heroic courage and strength often leads to death for a certain value, which holds true only for itself, for example, to die for one’s friends, for the homeland, for glory and so on. In both cases, sage and hero must achieve their own perfection alone and their fortune depends on themselves. God plays no role in their lives. God is just a final cause, the end of it all, but remains indifferent to the success or failure of hero or sage.
At the time of the flowering of Humanism and the Renaissance, in learned circles the said ideas of the classical revival came to the fore. Poets dreamed of bay wreaths and Parnassus, which was to be climbed at any cost. In the foreground came the teachers of earthly wisdom, the pupils of Socrates and Plato. As never before, men discovered themselves and were amazed at their own (particularly intellectual) capacities.
In his works, Marulić was a part of what we refer to as Humanism and the Renaissance. But at the same time it seems that in his works he detects the dangers that derive from the project of flman without God«. On the basis of his own experience he knows how strong is the power of sin in mankind, which cannot in fact do anything without God. In his works, particularly in the De institutione and the Dialogue on Hercules, he draws attention to the path via which it is possible to lead an authentically Christian and human life. In a word, he shows the path of virtue that leads to Jesus Christ and that has its source and model in Christ. Marulić’s saints are first of all witnesses of the living of a given virtue, and hence are spurs to readers to imitate them. In the Dedication to Jerolim Cipiko, which he appended to the De institutione, he says: "May there be silence concerning the power of the once wealthy kings and the strength of mighty heroes! Our paupers were more capable. May there be silence about the acuteness of the philosophers. The truth has been investigated only by those who believed in God." Marulić wishes to put forward, as he says in the Foreword to the De institutione, "evangelicarum virtutum, id est, Christianae perfectionis exempla".
In the third part of the article, the author speaks of the topicality of Marulić’s talk of sanctity and the saints. Since Christian sanctity consists in the imitation of the Christian life and Jesus Christ, source and model of all sanctity, and it is this that Marulić focuses on, it is clear that his discourse about sanctity is current. The same thing goes for his talk about the saints. A certain difficulty is created by his uncritical adoption of historical sources about given saints, but he does not act as historian, rather as Christian Humanist occupied by the desire to encourage his contemporaries and readers to live as virtuous a life as they can. He does not speak of reverence for saints’ relics, which might have led and in fact did lead to various abuses and superstitions. To him the example of a saint is useful to put for-ward Christian virtues, i.e., the perfection of Christianity, or in other words, Christian sanctity. His speech is contemporary, because he primarily bases his explanations on the Scriptures, references to which abound in all the chapters, some of them indeed being composed almost entirely of excerpts from the Bible.
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Hrčak ID:
11876
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Datum izdavanja:
22.4.2007.
Posjeta: 1.684 *