“In about 1528, Michael Verancius wrote two quite long elegies entitled Querela Hungariae de Austria and Alia querela Hungariae contra Austriam. What makes these poems interesting is that these are the first representatives of the Querela-genre in Hungary. Though at first glance they seem to be a simple school exercise, surveying their literary context one can get a more refined impression. These elegies aim to defend the Hungarian king, János Szapolyai, against the accusations of his Habsburg counterpart. In the first poem, Verancius uses a daring picture: he shows the wolf as a positive figure, which defends sheep from the lion’s attack in their sheepfold. Such an approach is very strange given that in the ancient literature there are not many examples in which the wolf appears in a positive role. The question arises as to how the young humanist (who was only a fifteen-year-old student) came to this surprising idea.

The wolf symbolizes the king János Szapolyai, while the lion can be identified as Ferdinand Habsburg. Such identification is based on heraldic indications: wolf is featured in the coat-of-arms of the Szapolyai family. Ferdinand is mentioned in the poem as the king of the Czech Republic, and in the Czech coat of arms there is a lion. But is this the only reason for such Verancius’ action? There are more poems from that time written by pro-Habsburg poets, such as Ioannes Dantiscus from Poland, Georgius Logius from Silesia, or Valentin Eck, a teacher in Bardejov (today’s Slovakia), who strongly attacked king János in their works, and what all these poems have in common is to show Szapolyai as a wild, terrible, bloodthirsty wolf. Can we see Verancius’ model in some of them? Dantiscus wrote and published his poem in 1529, so he should be excluded. Logius wrote and published many poems against Szapolyai ; although they were published in a collection of poems not before May 1529, but were published individually before, so they could have come into the hands of Verancius. But only the third poet, Valentin Eck, put in his verse not only the wolf and the lion but also the third element of Verancius’ imaginarium – a sheepfold. Considering the fact that Eck’s poem – actually an exhortation addressed to Polish nobility – was published in 1527 and again in 1528, in Cracow, where young Verancius was educated at that time, we can safely conclude that this poet influenced the young Croatian and Hungarian humanist.

It should be kept in mind that yet another humanist was born in Croatia, and through his work was related to Hungary, namely Stjepan Brodarić, who created the Szapolyai emblem, which depicts a she-wolf – and this is the only traditionally accepted way to depict the wolf in a positive role. And from this it is clear how many humanists from the circle around king János sought through the word and image to defend the wolf symbol and depict their ruler in a favorable light, in order to oppose propagandists of the pro-Habsburg humanists.”

Summary of the paper: Kasza, P. Kasza, P. Lupus in elegia. About the literary context of Michael Verancius’ Querelae // Colloquia Maruliana…23, 23 (2014), pp. 85-97.