Marulić’s Marginalia on Macario Muzio

The library of the Faculty of Theology, University of Split, holds a book that once belonged to Marko Marulić. It is a copy of Poetae Christiani veteres, printed in Venice by Manuzio in two volumes, 1501-1502. Marulić’s handwritten catalogue of books from his library, annexed to his testament, listed this book as Sedulius, Juvencus, Arator &c. The book from the Faculty of Theology was first identified as Marulić’s in 2000, by Mladen Parlov; Parlov also found that two Manuzio volumes of Poetae Christiani are bound together with a short incunable by Macario Muzio from Camerino, De triumpho Christi poema (Venice: Franciscus de Lucca and Antonius Francisci, 29 March 1499; Muzio’s text was edited by Francesco Consorti, who was later to be instrumental in publishing Marulić’s Institutiones in 1506, Quinquaginta parabolae in 1510, and the Evangelistarium in 1516). Parlov reported that Marulić’s copy of Muzio, as well as the rest of the volume, contains a number of handwritten marginal annotations. Here we propose an analysis of these annotations and follow their traces throughout Marulić’s work, finding readings of Muzio echoed in the epic Dauidias, and connected with Marulić’s painfully mixed feelings about the dichotomy between poetry and theology. Searches in the Croatiae auctores Latini digital collection (www. ffzg. unizg. hr/klafil/croala) prove that Muzio’s short work was carefully read by another Croatian Latin poet as well: Jakov Bunić (Jacobus Bonus) from Dubrovnik (1469-1543), the author of a long Christian epic De vita et gestis Christi (Rome, 1526). Macario Muzio was born in about 1440. In 1476 and 1491 he taught literature in Venice, exchanging letters with Poliziano. Later Muzio served Guidobaldo di Montefeltro as a diplomat and a high official of several Italian cities (Recanati, San Ginesio, Civitanova). Muzio probably died on 21 May 1515 (according to a note from a copy of Martial’s Epigrammata, Bologna 1477, now in Glasgow University Library, Sp Coll Hunterian By. 3. 29). The De triumpho Christi was certainly Muzio’s most influential work, to be published three times in Venice (1501, 1532, 1567), and at least nine times in northern Europe (Strasbourg 1509, Deventer 1510?, Münster 1510, Wittenberg 1513, Strasbourg 1514, Köln 1515, Kraków 1515, Erfurt 1519, Köln 1550). German cathedral schools used Muzio’s short epic in classrooms, humanist followers of the Devotio Moderna movement wrote commentaries on it, and its ideas and motifs inspired authors such as Eobanus Hessus (Epistolae heroidum Christianarum, 1514; Victoria Christi ab inferis, 1517), Erasmus (Carmen heroicum de solemnitate paschali atque de tryumphali Christi resurgentis pompa et descensu eius ad inferos, after 1499), and Matthias Funck (Triumphus christianus, 1514). In 1593 De triumpho Christi was included in the De poesi et pictura, Book 17 of the Bibliotheca selecta de ratione studiorum by Antonio Possevino; this influential reprint ensured further circulation of Muzio’s work. The main part of Muzio’s 1499 edition is taken up by two “theoretical” letters to the reader, which consider the opposition between pagan antiquity and Christian teachings as themes of poetry. In the short poem itself, Muzio, who prefers description to action, uses much of its 317 hexameters for a catalogue of Old Testament figures freed from Hell by Christ. Marulić probably read Muzio’s book at some point between 1502 and 1515. On the pages of the book he left 77 marginal notes (there are two more, written by another hand). Muzio’s first theoretical letter contains 27 Marulić’s notes, the second 35, while the remaining 15 annotate the poem itself. The notes are very short; mostly they repeat names and terms mentioned in the text (33 times, but never in the epic, where such notes were already provided in print). Eleven marginal notes are actually titles such as Sancta Trinitas, Virgo g, de mane sabbatorum. A further 32 notes consist of drawings featuring little vines or tendrils, which mark passages in the text. A passage mentioning the Crucifixion is adorned by a whole cluster of notes -a vine tendril, a repetition of the name Tagus (crucified by Hasdrubal in the Punica of Silius Italicus, 1, 152-168), a Christogram, and the underlined word hierostica (used by Muzio in the text). Marulić just once actually commented on the text he was reading: near Muzio’s complaint of lack of time and leisure necessary for the labor limae the author from Split wrote non est hoc sare se, scusare. For words from the main text repeated in Marulić’s handwritten notes, we propose four categories: 1. exemplary persons and terms from pagan antiquity; 2. Christian authors and works; 3. important religious themes and their parallels from Roman and Greek mythology; 4. titles of Muzio’s works (which are at the same time graecisms, considered elegant in humanistic Latin); 5. interesting Latin words such as erotopaegnion, apotheosis, flexanima. Vine tendril flourishes on the margins mark passages where Muzio 1. defends his literary activities; 2. propounds his theory of the three triumphs of Christ; 3. shows how formal and thematic obstacles for Christian poetry could be overcome, and 4. finds pagan parallels for Christian teachings (on monotheism, the Trinity, the transformation of the bread and wine). On the margins of the poem, flourishes bring out its structure: they mark new narrative turns. The first half of Muzio’s poem (Christ’s descent into hell) is set clearly apart from the second (Christ’s return to heaven) by a combination of flourish and marginal title (de mane sabbatorum). It is hard unambiguously to identify Muzio’s ideas in Marulić’s own work, and we did not want to undertake a typical Quellenforschung; similarities seem to us rather an invitation to reconsider certain passages and themes in Marulić. On the level of words and expressions, the terms written out in Muzio’s margins rarely resurface in Marulić’s texts; more often we encounter Muzio’s verse endings, especially in the Dauidias. Another poem by Marulić, the Hymnus ad Deum (LS 169) shares with Muzio’s poem the motif of ineffability: both in the De triumpho Christi (106-108, 302-317) and in the Hymnus ad Deum (6-9, 101-117) God is presented as ultimatively unreachable by poet’s descriptions (however boldly undertaken). In passages on ineffability Marulić also uses a hexameter ending echoing Muzio’s (De triumpho Christi 108: mihi dicere fas est; Hymnus ad Deum 106: nec Tibi dicere fas est). The wording of this ending is unattested elsewhere in Latin poetry (we searched in the digital collections Musisque Deoque and Poeti d’ Italia in lingua latina). The motif of Christ’s triumphal procession, central to the second half of Muzio’s poem, is used by Marulić in the third book of De humilitate et gloria Christi (1519). Christ’s triumph is again presented as inexpressible, and the theological problem of how Christ can return to the throne he has never left can be related to Muzio’s ambiguous description of heavenly light coming from the Father, but also from the Son. Note, however, the change of genres: from De triumpho Christi poema to Hymnus ad Deum to De humilitate et gloria Christi. Some fifteen years after reading Muzio, Marulić, a gifted poet with strong humanistic interests, finally concluded that poetry is, from an epistemological perspective, inferior to theology; therefore he presented Christ’s triumph in moralizing prose, still, however, combining theological question-and-answer format with poetic amplifications. -Lesser motifs from Muzio encountered in Marulić’s work are the idea of lexical difficulty in poetic treatments of Christian themes (used by Marulić in his introduction to the Dauidias), and the topic of music-making (De triumpho Christi 262-284; Dauid. 2, 209-214, 253-269 and 8, 193-199): here a characteristic verse ending (tympana bombo - tympana bombos) invites us to read Marulić’s descriptions of music and musicians as an emulation not only of ancients, such as Catullus, but of Muzio as well. A systematic search for Muzio’s verse endings in the CroALa collection returns literal parallels for 67 clausules; 13 are encountered in texts by Marulić (a list is given in the Appendix 1) - nine of them in the Dauidias, one in the Hymnus ad Deum. At least two clausules - foeda uoluptas, cęli terręque potentem - have no parallels either in Musisque Deoque or in Poeti d’Italia in lingua latina. In our search for traces of Muzio in Marulić even negative results were not completely fruitless. Some annotations in Muzio seem to have reinforced Marulić’s knowledge gained elsewhere (e. g. Marulić knew Diagoras as the archetypal atheist also from Cicero, nat. 1, 23, 63); other notes reveal things which Marulić knew, learned, and probably absorbed, but had not had the chance to use in his own writing (these were words such as apotheosis, flexanimus, erotopaegnion, hierostichon; exempla of Eunus, Zoilus, Ausonius, Xerxes seeing wine turn to blood). Finally, we proved that Muzio was read by another Croatian Latin writer: Jakov Bunić, from Dubrovnik. Bunić’s short epic De raptu Cerberi (Rome 1490) preceded Muzio’s work, which was later followed by Bunić’s monumental De vita et gestis Christi (Rome 1526, 16 books, more than 10, 000 verses). Muzio’s criticism of Hercules and Cerberus as themes of Christian poetry (cur poetae christiani christi iter ad inferos, uictoriam et spolia illa sanctissima non canunt? non belluam hic trifaucem eduxit sed patres illos amplissimos antiquae legis ab umbris Erebi liberauit) seems directed primarly at Bunić; the poet from Dubrovnik, in his second edition of the De raptu Cerberi (published together with the long epic in 1526), changed the title to sub figura Herculis Christi praeludium, in this way ensuring the allegorical side of his poem would not go unnoticed. Bunić’s change is usually interpreted as a reaction to Marulić’s Dialogus de Hercule a Christicolis superato (1519, published 1524), but we see that a third, Italian, party was also involved. Moreover, in the De vita et gestis Christi there are 14 verse endings identical with Muzio’s (listed in Appendix 2), which proves that Bunić read Muzio as closely as Marulić