Marulić\u27s Tropology in the Light of Patristic Allegoresis (III)

The paper “Marulić’s Tropology in the light of Patristic allegoresis (III)” is the third part of a text of the same name already published. It analyses Marulić’s allegorising of Biblical events in the prose conclusion to the poem entitled Tropologica Dauidias exposition accompanying Cantos VII and VIII of the Davidiad. The allegorised Biblical events that related to David’s reign in Hebron, the move to conquered Jerusalem after the ending of the war among the tribes of Israel and the sequence of great victories over the neighbours are compared in this work with the Latin texts of church teachers who were also occupied with these events from the viewpoint of the methodological approach mentioned above. From this angle, the sources on which the author relied are identified, the nature of allegoresis in the said part of the text is explained, and the biblical loci that were not allegorised before Marulić are registered. Along with church fathers and teachers Rabanus Maurus, Walafridus Strabo and Angelomus Luxoviensis, who were engaged with the interpretation of the same biblical contents, Marulić’s Tropology shows points of contact with other authors and texts in which the psalms and other items from the Bible are interpreted. However, the author of the Davidiad endeavours to be independent, and his allegorical solutions are clearly close to or coincide with the church authorities only if they correspond to the ideas of the whole of his Tropology. The endeavour to be as independent as possible, within the framework of the genre and the approach, can be seen in the sequence of new allegorically treated contents, in the reinterpretation of traditional etymologies and the search for new solutions, as well as the desire for the whole of the text of the Tropology to be as tightly composed as possible. Also to be seen is the wish to surpass the traditional procedures of allegoresis, based on words and sentences, by deduction of the spiritual meaning at the level of supra-sentential units. A special feature of the markedly moralistic approach is the idealism in those solutions in which the historical sense is relativised as if it were derived from the spiritual. The paper also draws attention to those places that in the hexameters differ from the Biblical model or restylise it, but which can be contextualised in the tradition of Christian exegesis in the Latin and illuminated from this angle. Among other things, the paper points out that Marulić’s reminiscence annales vetusti from Canto VII related to the Latin translation of the work Jewish Antiquities of Flavius Josephus. Several examples from the Tropology and the two cantos mentioned are used to draw attention to the very fruitful encounter of Marulić with this historian, whom the church writers appreciated, consulted and quoted. Particular attention is devoted to the establishment of the presence and in-tensity of the allegorical discourse in the poem from the beginning to the end of Canto VIII, bringing out the most transparent places. From this point of view it is established that the key contents from several of the proems of Davidiad, such as opus arcanis sacratum mysteriis; e puris sacrati fluminis undis or colitis Iordanis fluminis undas, which support the topos of the contrast of ancient and Christian poetry, are not of a formal nature. After they are authenticated in the texts of the Patristic tradition in the range of their meanings, the work determines that they are first-rate statements of the allegorical discourse and signals of a different determination of the kind of the poem. From this perspective, an analysis is given of several sections of the text in which the secret is clearly derived after the explication of the historical sense, as in Canto IV, where in the place name that can be translated as the Rock that splits (Petra diuidens) the poet sees Christ on the judgement day or on the basis of the etymology of Jerusalem at the end of Canto VII reads a vision of the Catholic Church. He moralises the scene of the mutilation of the Assyrian horses as the repression of physical urges in Canto VII. There are also the places in which the replacement of the historical by the mystical code can be seen, as ain the scene of David’s emissaries with the men of Jabesh in Canto VII and the depiction of Ebal and Gerizim, mountains of damnation and blessedness, in Canto I