Resistence and Surrender: Marulić\u27s Views on Authority and Obedience

It is well known that the whole of Marulić’s oeuvre is rooted in the Scriptures and in the tradition in which there is universal acceptance of the view that everyone should submit to higher authorities “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.” (Rom. 13, 1) Theological thinking opposes Adam’s disobedience (the consequences of which are sin and the fall, damnation and death) to Christ’s sub-mission to the will of the Father (which led to salvation and grace). Submission is promoted as a supreme virtue: the rich monastic and conventual tradition provides many examples of the realisation of this ideal. Marulić works on the lines of this tradition; for him too the Christian ideal is to form the self according to Christ, and obedience is “virtue itself”; obedience to elders is the same as obedience to God. But this is a viewpoint that exists at the ideal and intellectual level. And he does have encomiastic passages on the bearers of authority, such as the doges and the popes, and yet, when he aggrandises some person in a position of authority, he sees in this person some value and contribution made to the common good. When this is not the case ‡ and in his time the Renaissance spirit had taken hold of Split, and secularity had worked its way into the Church ‡ as an enlightened Humanist he was wont, as writer of satirical epigrams (pasquils or squibs) or in prose too, to direct sharp and minatory words. Thus to the Split gentry: Gather at the council, care for the general good / Respect the laws, order, honour, justice and your word… and to the Christian rulers who were at war with each other: Come to your senses at last, dolts. It is true that he wrote exhortatively that priests should be shown the greatest honour, for they are Christ’s vicars, but from them he sought that they should they should show themselves above others in virtues to the same extent they excelled them in respect and honour. With paternal severity he condemned and reproved religious because of the way they conducted themselves according to the usages of the world. And those who entered the clerical estate in order to appropriate the goods of the church and to live at their ease and licentiously he compared with the hypocrite Judas, and to shepherds who, taking the wool and the milk from the sheep, stole from their masters. He would also use his sarcasm against persons in high position and unmask feigned piety. Marulić most often finished his ironical accounts and lessons with a prophetic warning and condemnation, saying that both subordinates and superiors had to be at the service of universal values, and his views even today reveal their freshness and strength