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Politics and literature in elegies written by Mihovil Vrančić in 1528 / György Palotás

“The literary and historical study of the humanistic circle around Ivan Zapolja (1487-1540) and, after his death, around Izabela Jagelović (1519-1559) is often ignored in Hungarian and international horizons due to the lack of relevant sources or their poor accessibility. The focus of the experts is directed primarily to the literary work of Stjepan Brodarić and Antun Vrančić.
This paper analyzes and publishes the two lesser-known elegies written by Mihovil Vrančić (1513/14? -1571) Querela Hungariae de Austria and Alia querela Hungariae contra Austriam. They were written in Cracow in 1528, when the poet was only fifteen years old and can be considered a kind of school exercise. The second elegy is actually a refined version of the first one: respecting the wish of his teacher Stanisław Hozjus (Stanislaus Hosius, 1504-1579) young Vrančić softened the fiery tone of the first composition. But the scope of his assignment was probably exceeded by the fact that, despite the genre conventions, the poem had strong political allusions.
The main purpose of this study is to examine the ways in which the topos querela Hungariae and some commonplaces of the then political literature are intertwined in Mihovil’s elegies. Aiming to explain the literary context of Vrančić’s elegies, the first part of the paper gives an overview of ancient models (most notably Ovid’s Heroides) and features of the genre and the political metaphors of the time (e.g. propugnaculum Christianitatis). The second part of the paper explains how the genre of querela was used for political purposes. Mihovil’s elegies contain numerous rhetorical methods of praise and flattery (laudatio and adulatio), but also the accusation speech (delatio), whose polemic tone must have been directed to Ivan Zapolja’s defense and against his rival Ferdinand I of Habsburg. The poet thus turned the most widespread type of lament into political and pamphletistic, even into propaganda literature.
Elegies offer an important insight into the difficulties encountered by Ivan Zapolja in foreign politics, into the ideological background of the 1528 Turkish-Hungarian Alliance and the inner Hungarian conflicts. Their special nature makes them a unique phenomenon in the history of the topos querela Hungariae in the 16th century.”

Summary: Palotás, G. Politics and Literature in the Elegies of Mihovil Vrančić from 1528 // Colloquia Maruliana … 23, 23 (2014), pp. 55-74.