Marulić De novissimis

The swelling political and religious crisis in Marulić’s time culminated in the conviction that humanity had arrived at a watershed of its history, to a renewal that was not just yearning or expectation of the golden age. On the contrary, this was a time that engaged many, from the sermon writers who announced the coming of the end of the world to the humanists who were drawing up new models of educational and intellectual formation. In such an atmosphere, Marulić too, as aconvinced humanist, was involved in man’s engagement for the perfection of his own being via virtue. He attempted to motivate his readers by offering them heartening examples of the saints; he concluded his De institutione with a sixth book in which he dealt with the last things. He also dealt with the same topic in Parables 47-50 and in Sermon about the Last Judgement of Christ. Basing his address only on citations from the Holy Scriptures, he followed the basic Christian doctrine de novissimis (the resurrection of the dead, Christ’s coming to judge the quick and the dead, to give some eternal bliss, others eternal damnation). Avoiding certain topics that had been much in evidence in the tradition and were even at that time in fashion, Marulić improved on the framework of his time and his teaching is universal. He does not talk of the intercession of the saints or the Blessed Virgin at the judgement, of the remission of temporal penalties, does not encourage people to look for salvation via this or that penitential practice, or pilgrimages or sacraments. There is no trace of millenarian hopes: he does not talk of the liberation of the Holy Land, the conversion of the Muslims, the appearance of the pastor angelicus or a new Charlemagne, nor of the unification of the world in peace and harmony. When he does in fact talk of general phenomena, it is always the individual that is at the centre, and the individual fate, which depends on the virtuousness of the life lived before the Judgement Day. At bottom, his speech is essentially characterised by optimism: no one outside man himself determines his eternal fate. Every virtuous deed will be valued and rewarded, even those done in retirement, which have experienced no recognition on earth