THE SECULAR
ASPECT OF THE CROATIAN VERNACULAR IN THE PERIOD OF LATE
MEDIEVAL HUMANISM*
OLGA NEDELJKOVIĆ
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Journal
of Croatian Studies, XXVIII-XXIX, 1987-88 – Annual Review of the Croatian Academy of
America, Inc. New York, N.Y., Electronic edition by Studia Croatica, by
permission. All rights reserved by the Croatian Academy of America.
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The introduction of
vernaculars into neo-Latin literatures was a product of late medieval humanism,
the Renaissance, and the Reformation periods. An important instance occurred
among the Slavic nations: the Croatians created their vernacular in the late
Middle Ages, when Roman-Latin humanism found its distinct expression in the
Italian peninsula and its neighboring Adriatic coastal belt. The cradle of
Croatian vernacular literature and culture was on the Adriatic coast where the
Slavic tribes settled down next to the preserved Roman population in the
seventh century, creating a Roman-Slavic symbiosis in subsequent centuries.
Thus, the Roman-Slavic inhabitants of the eastern Adriatic coast came to belong
to the narrowest common area of Roman-Italian civilization, that is, Italian
peninsula. Both the Italians and the Dalmatians, as well as the other
inhabitants of the eastern Adriatic regions, had similar backgrounds in Roman
Christianity, in the Latin language, scholasticism, and feudal and bourgeois
societies; they shared the motivations of humanism, the Renaissance, eloquentia
vulgaris, and vernacular literature. Both societies had the same goals and
effects. They both wanted to establish a national language and a secular
literature as a cultural medium of communication. Our concern here is to
explain how secularism became the dominant feature of Dalmatian-Dubrovnik
culture at the dawn of the Renaissance and how, by assimilating new secular
aspects of culture as one of its essential characteristics, what we call the Croatian
vernacular gradually assumed the role and function of a common national
language in most regions of Croatia in the late Middle Ages and the
Renaissance.
The
independent city-states, villages, and islands of the eastern Adriatic coast
(Dalmatia, the Croatian Littoral, Istria, at the head of which was the Republic
of Dubrovnik) displayed a social and economical structure similar to that of
Italy, where after centuries of economic stagnation in early Middle Ages there
was a boom in manufacture and trade. (One finds a similar process at work in
later periods of the Middle Ages, in the urban centers of Italy and those of
the eastern Adriatic coast). As their Italian contemporaries, the Dalmatians
were engaged in the same task of reconciling the classical culture with the new
Christian one. For both groups ancient Rome was an inescapable model. The
political institutions of the Roman Republic, the privileged status of her
leading citizens, their characteristic virtues, the atmosphere of a society in
which liberty and eloquence dominated, the rational temper of the Roman spirit,
the wealth and the prudent moneymaking: all these aspects had manifest
attractions for the progressive merchants of Italy and Dalmatia, and those on
the other parts of the eastern Adriatic coast. All of these inhabitants of
numerous Italian and Dalmatian city-states could see their prototypes in Roman
citizens and their political and social activities. Their prime goal became to
adapt and apply to their own culture Roman politics, law, administration,
learning, philosophy, and business, as well as the values of justice and
freedom. These medieval successors of the Roman Empire were eager to imitate
all the virtues of ancient Rome. They were aware that in the Roman tradition
they could find solutions for their everyday life, as well as aspirations to
reshape earthly conditions and to create a profoundly humanistic respect for
human life.
The Roman Republic
represented the most attractive corpus of ancient models and patterns to be
imitated in both Italy and the eastern Adriatic coast; the best proof of this
lies in the existence of an autonomous parliamentary system both in the
medieval Dalmatian cities and in the Republic of Dubrovnik. In the eleventh
century one finds already in all Dalmatian cities the "priors" (heads
of the autonomous city administrations) and the "tribunes" (military
leaders). The prior was elected from among the city noblemen or patricians. He
was the head of a city council consisting of judges, tribunes, and notaries,
acting as a steering committee or originating body for the enactment of laws
and decrees, which in due course were submitted for approval to the Municipal
Assembly by way of Conlaudation populi. The parliamentary system enabled
the citizens (common people and nobility) to take an active part in politics
and social life, because municipal assemblies were attended by the bishop,
clergy, nobility, and other citizens. This body of people's representatives,
which in most city-states consisted of about 300 members, gradually evolved
into a Senate. The Republic of Dubrovnik best displays this development
(Gelcich 1884; Foretić 1980:52-4).
In these Italian-Dalmatian city-communes the
essential antinomy was between public and private commitment; the commune or the
republic was cherished as providing an opportunity for the exploiting of human
potential to the full. Similarly, individualism is not at all characteristic of
the Italian and Dalmatian humanists who adopted the classical Roman ideal of
freedom. For them the vital core of liberty is not found within the individual,
but only within society; history is the history of communes, not of individuals
and their connection with "publicity" (Baron 1966:414). As already
noted, the population of the Dalmatian cities and Dubrovnik was a relatively
important factor, because of the part played by popular assemblies in making
policy decisions. Especially during the earliest period of city-communes,
internal relations within the city tended to be democratic, and documents speak
of the people, resolutions made by "all citizens”, or made "with the
prior, the clergy, and the entire population”. However, it must be borne in
mind that by the age of Thomas the Archdeacon (1201-68) the author of the Historia
Salonitana (first half of the thirteenth century), the difference between
the nobility and the plebeians was already established (Klaić
1976:154-77).
In their external relations the
citizens of Dalmatian communes demonstrated very early their great concern for
the freedom of the Dalmatian cities. Or, more precisely, civic patriotism
tended to preserve the independence of the cities themselves from ancient or
invented feudal claims. One of the most conspicuous examples, described by
Thomas the Archdeacon, is the episode that tells how Koloman, king of Hungary,
and his dignitaries were "offended when Split refused to yield voluntarily
and when the people closed the gates before the Hungarian army and prepared to
fight. "Then the king and his dignitaries”, continues Thomas, "felt
that they had been insulted by the people of Split and they threatened to
destroy the city. They set up their camp not far from the city and began to
devastate the fields and to loot." Under such conditions, negotiations
began and "three imperial cities”, Zadar, Split and Trogir, opened their
gates to Koloman (between 1105 and 1107; Šišić 1914:603-19; Klaić
1971:517-32). In return for their willingness to negotiate Koloman left the
cities with a high degree of local autonomy and allowed them to develop quite
freely. Koloman's privileges, given to Zadar, Split and Trogir, became a vital
issue for all medieval communes in Dalmatia. Koloman seems to have accepted all
the conditions set by the citizens and to have signed the texts prepared by
them. Only the text of privileges given to the commune of Trogir has been
preserved, but the autonomous rights of other communes were established along
the same principles (Šišić 1944:17 f.).
As a unique city among the eastern
Adriatic city-communes, Dubrovnik had always kept it balance in politics. As a
mediator of commerce and of civilization, faithful by sentiment to Catholicism
and to the pope, Dubrovnik was pushed by practical necessity to look for help
of the Turkish and Christian powers. The history of this republic was not
distinguished by strongly individual enterprises. Dubrovnik evolved under
tenacious control for reasons of state, and in the common interest of all its
citizens. Thanks to its constant internal independence Dubrovnik created a
brilliant culture which also radiated to the rest of Croatia. This culture, and
especially its Renaissance language and literature became the basis for
national unity.
However, the Dubrovnik
and Dalmatian Renaissance humanists and Latinists, as well as fifteenth and
sixteenth century writers in the Croatian vernacular, were indebted to the
earlier humanists for the great variety of literary styles, techniques, and
attitudes they cultivated in their prose and verse. Likewise the development
and establishment of the Croatian vernacular and its literature owed more to
the rhetorical and scholastic writings of the eleventh-twelfth century
Renaissance than to the later development which we usually call
"Renaissance". This in itself suggests that the period of the late
Middle Ages should be more fully studied, in sharper detail, in order to trace
the beginnings of language and literature among the Croatians. This matter is
of particular relevance to historians of medieval culture because the Croatian
language was the first-born vernacular in the Slavic world, and among the
earliest vernacular codifications in the neo-Latin community.
The
ideological basis for such an early and relatively quick creation of vernacular
literature among the Croatians must be sought within the development of the
same intellectual trends in the Italian, Dalmatian, and Northern Croatian
Littoral communes. Through these trends which the peninsula, including both
Adriatic coasts, had embraced, a new intellectual synthesis and many cultural
achievements made themselves felt. These achievements were not completely
realized until the thirteenth century, but in the eleventh and twelfth
centuries they were already set out in rudimentary forms. The ground was
fertile with the seeds of a cultura Latina which continued the old and
prepared the new humanism. As already stressed, Rome had been a source of
creative vitality in thought and politics, as well as in art and architecture
in various centuries of the Middle Ages; these Roman ideals had experienced a
series of renaissances. The eleventh and twelfth centuries witnessed a new
movement of ideas which gave rise to many undertakings in culture at large. A
new art was born, first Romanesque, then Gothic. A new and scientific method
was developed in philosophy and jurisprudence. A new figure appeared in
literary culture, that of the educated layman. The people were still influenced
by ecclesiastical models and ideals but their whole outlook was slowly turning
toward a more secularized, worldly ideology.
This transformation
was, in part at least, due to the fact that most of these literati and notaries
were lawyers, trained at Bologna, Padua, Ravenna, or Naples, or in one of the
centers of profession rhetoric like Capua (Haskins 1929:146;
Schaller 1958:288). When the revival of Roman law and
academic jurisprudence in Italy initiated the practical needs of notaries for
governmental and administrative purposes, notaries also appeared in Zadar,
Split, and Dubrovnik; these men were schooled in Italy and they introduced all
the innovations which were taking place in Italian schools of civil
jurisprudence. Thus, systematically written juridical records in the Dalmatian
cities are preserved from the second half of the twelfth century, although they
had existed much earlier in the form of court documents (Klaić 1976:233;
Šufflay 1904; Jireček 1903:161-214).
The earliest juridico-historical texts, which were written at the same
time as the notarial business was established in the Dalmatian communes, are
the Cartulary of the monastery St. Peter in Selo, written
in the first half of the twelfth century (Novak and Skok 1952; Pivčević:
1984); the Cartulary of the monastery
St. Maria in Zadar, written in the second half of the twelfth century;
and the Cartulary of the monastery St. Krševan in Zadar, written
in the third decade of the thirteenth century (Klaić 1976:241-4).
These cartularies are written in Beneventan script. The earliest
juridical text written in the Croatian vernacular is an Inventory of the
landed properties of the monastery at Povlje, with a historical review. The
preserved copy is from 1250, written in Cyrillic script. Until
very recently this Inventory has been view as an official transcript of
an older original whose oldest part (Brečko's document) goes back to 1184. In her
thorough and persuasive analysis of the Inventory Dragica Malić has
come to a more precise conclusion about the original from which the existing
transcript of 1250 was copied. In her opinion the original of the Inventory
had been composed only about twenty to thirty years (c. 1228) before
Ivan, a canon from Split, copied it in 1250 (Malić
1988: 7-22).
Just as in Italy, in the Dalmatian
city-states notarial business went to laymen as well as to the clergy. Only
later in the thirteenth century were notarial jobs performed more and more by
laymen. Then the society's needs for the laymen were given greater attention.
Just as in Italy, the administration of justice in all cities, villages, and
islands of Dalmatia, the Croatian Littoral, Istria and the Republic of
Dubrovnik followed the canons of Roman law. On the basis of public Roman law,
which was secular in its conception and outlook, the medieval Christian
communes of Italy and the eastern Adriatic coast released themselves from
ecclesiological encumbrances by secularizing their governments' foundations.
Probably the most interesting juridical sources, not only in Croatian but in
the entire Slavic legal system, are the numerous statutes of cities, villages
and islands of Dalmatia, the Croatian Littoral, Istria and the Republic of
Dubrovnik, which treat primarily the public law but include also some aspects
of the specificities of the private law.[1]
By the 1340s practically all the Dalmatian communes had their own
"books" of statutes (Klaić 1976:248; Bratulić 1976:378).
All of these statutes established the legal protection of citizens and the
defence of their rights and liberties, as well as public order and security,
the growth of commerce, the system of territorial taxes, and international liberty
and peace.
Thus, during the late
Middle Ages, the Republic of Dubrovnik and other city-states of Dalmatia and
the Croatian Littoral assimilated fundamental concepts of Roman Christian
civilization which opened up new dimensions in their politics. These concepts
accorded with the numerous secular manifestations of government detectable in
society at large. Implementing the Roman public law and Roman politics and
ethics (which once more proved themselves vital auxiliary means), the humanists
of Italy and the eastern Adriatic coast strove to create new possibilities for
human progress and to introduce a series of reforms in all spheres of human
activity and spirituality, as they sought for a new vision of man and his
status in the universe. Placing man in the center of the universe, this new
philosophy of life began to create those currents of thought which resulted in
what we call "modern civilization".
It is natural that the clearest
traces of late Roman civilization were strongly present in the coastal belt, where
the immigrant Slavic population lived in the neighbourhood of the preserved
Roman settlements. Although Roman-Slavic bilingualism dominated in the cities,
the bishoprics to which the Slavic population belonged used the Latin language
and were tightly connected to Rome and other centers of Catholicism. In the
ninth and tenth centuries the Croatian princes often sent their sons to study
in Cividale. In subsequent centuries, following the examples of the Romans, the
Dalmatian nobility sent their sons to study in Bologna, Padua, Rome, Firenze,
and other university centers of Italy, and later, in the thirteenth century, to
Paris or Vienna. To understand this educational-literary movement as an
integral part of the twelfth century Renaissance,[2]
it is indispensable to say some words about the development of the school
system in the Italian-Dalmatian communes.
In Italy and on the
eastern Adriatic coast, far earlier than elsewhere in the Middle Ages political
and social life was carried on in independent urban communities and far more
people were involved. In numerous city-communes there was a relatively large
class of urban patricians who took a leading part in public life and were in
need of education. The middle class, the plebeian, also was integrated into the
body politic and gained access to the cultural heritage of society. The general
atmosphere in these city-communes was propitious to the reception of political
ideas and institutions created by the ancient polis (Baron 1938:82 f.; Weiss
1949:53-55; Kristeller 1944-5:346-74). Gradually more and more people became
involved in these new undertakings and awakened to intellectual self-awareness.
In particular, citizens with academic training in law, rhetoric, and ars
notaria played a vital role in the intellectual life of these communes,
stressing the importance of education. This led to the establishment of a
municipal school system, which in its turn produced a large group of educated
laymen, lawyers, and notaries. Though ecclesiastical institutions and the
clergy may have played a considerable part in it, this school system was far
more practical and worldly in character than its equivalent in north European
countries (Seigel 1968:173-225; Zaccagnini 1924:254-301; Davis 1965:415-435;
Tremblay 1933).
Thus
in the eleventh and twelfth centuries the citizens of the eastern Adriatic
communes studied at municipal grammar schools in various cities of the
peninsula. They frequented either the schools conducted for laymen by laymen in
cities, or schools connected with cathedrals and monasteries in which the basic
instruction was grammar and the required reading materials were classical literature. The most
reknowned Italian school was the archgymnasium in Bologna, and its
university, founded in 1088, became famous for the study of Roman
law. It is interesting to note that Thomas Archdeacon of Split, the greatest
Croatian historian of the Middle Ages, studied law and theology in Bologna.
Likewise both a Tuscan Bernard, archbishop of Split and the writer against the
Bogomils and a famous orator, as well as a Tuscan Treguan, later the Bishop of
Trogir, the author of a hagiographic work, studied at the university of Bologna
around 1200 (Katičić 1979:218). Some Dalmatians of the
period went to study in Padua and other Italian centers of learning. A few of
them even went to Paris. The thirteenth century witnessed the growth of schools
into universities in Western Europe. Thus the archbishop of Split, Ugrin (1244-48),
studied at
the university of Paris. He was considered very erudite and a man with rather
secular outlook (Katičić 1979:218-9).
The
connections between the two Adriatic coasts were very lively. In the same way
that the Dalmatians went to Italy to study or work - and some of them even
lived there for the rest of their life - the inhabitants of the peninsula were
visiting Dalmatian cities, and numbers of them settled down for a while or
worked there during a certain period of time. Usually written records give only
the names of well-known notaries, chancellors, or teachers who came from Italy.
For example one reads of Giovanni di Conversini who was the chancellor in
Dubrovnik (1383-87), or of Tideo Acciarini who
was the teacher of Marko Marulić in Split (1427-90), or
Niccolo Roccabonella who was a physician in Zadar, 1449-53 (Bazala
1978:44-8).
Although the
information about early education and its representatives on the eastern
Adriatic coast is extremely scarce, and our knowledge about some facts of
schools and curricula is scant, we do know that a grammar-rhetoric
school had been founded in Dubrovnik by the thirteenth century. On the basis of
its name, one can conclude that the school authorities were occupied with
teaching the trivium. In 1434 the humanist Filippo de Diversis de Quartigianis from
Lucca became the head of the school and reformed it. He was a master of grammar
and philosophy, and he taught at the school until 1444. Later, in 1557, the school was transformed into a studium
generale (Bazala 1978:28 and 45 Franičević 1974:47). In the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
several such independent municipal schools were established as permanent
institutions in other localities on the eastern Adriatic coast and in the
innerland of Croatia (Klaić 1976:582-6). Thus a school program, on the one
hand, and vulgarization of both literature and knowledge among the citizens of
the Italian and Dalmatian communes, on the other, created a new boom of
classical studies in both the Italian and the Dalmatian centers of humanist
learning. This fresh approach to stylistic and linguistic problems quickly
spread among the early generations of Italian and Dalmatian humanists, who were
notaries and jurists, the first champions of humanistic studies there in the
twelfth century.[3]
In
the thirteenth century a new change set in. There appeared a new flowering in
the ars dictaminis which dominated the prose of the Italian
chancelleries, and this was soon adopted by the medieval rhetoreticians from
the eastern Adriatic coast and found expression in their writings in Latin. In
particular chronicles were written by city officials, notaries and chroniclers
against the backdrop of city life. Such are the already mentioned Historia
Salonitana, the history of the Church in Split, written by Archdeacon
Thomas in the middle of the thirteenth century, and Obsidio Iadrensis by
an unknown author from the fourteenth century. In the fourteenth century there
appeared several municipal historiographies. Miha Madijev de Barbazanis wrote
the history of Split: De gestis romanorum imperatorum et summorum
pontificium. Tracing the descent of the inhabitants of ancient Salona from
the Trojan immigrants, Madijev tried to stimulate their patriotism and pride. A
historian from the Split family of Cutheis also wrote a history about his own
city: Summa historiarum tabula: De gestis civium Spalatinorum. In the
same fourteenth century the chronicle of Dubrovnik was composed by Milecij.
Giovanni Conversini de Ravena (1343-1408) wrote
his Historia Ragusina. In the fifteenth century Giovanni Maria Filelfo (1398-1481)
wrote an interesting history of Dubrovnik, the Raguseida.
Also Drža Melicjak, Bishop of Kotor, wrote a church history, the Album
capitulare in 1334 (Nodilo 1883:92-128;
Bazala 1978:105-131; Klaić
1976:206-21; Klaić-Petricioli 1976:337-50;
Katičić 1979:220-1). Having
the city documents at their disposal these chroniclers and historians addressed
a public not highly educated. In their writings they tended to use rhetorical
devices of the type that were in current practice of ars dictaminis and ars
notaria. The language and style these thirteenth and fourteenth century chronicles
and historical writings in Latin merit further investigation. At present it is
impossible to draw conclusions as precise or clear as we would wish.
This unbroken chain of
revivals which sprang from a common source, Roman-Latin Christianity, took
place first in Latin letters starting from the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
At the same time this literary movement had not only a clearly-pronounced
secular outlook, but a marked tendency to spread knowledge and education to as
broad a strata of society as possible. Thus it brought about the rise of
vernacular languages in neo-Latin Europe. And ultimately, in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, this development transformed the vernacular tongues, both
Italian and Croatian, into independent literary vehicles.
Enough has been said
to show that these autonomous city-communes of the eastern Adriatic coast
actively participated in a cultural union with Italy; they formed an integral
part of Roman-Latin humanism with all of its characteristics. Not only the
cultural-historical but also the linguistic framework of the Dalmatians
paralleled that of the Italians. Thus, just as the citizens of these communes
were imbued with a strong enthusiasm for reviving Roman universal authorities
and virtues, they also adopted the Latin language which became the language of
Christianity in the West. Actually, Latin was not imposed by the Church or by
the law, but by Roman traditions of universalism and international order, both
of which the Church inherited from the Empire. Once the decision was taken to
extend the "pastoral care" of the Church to the new barbarian
peoples, its inherited Latin, so masterfully adapted to the needs of
Christianity by St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, and St. Augustine, was immediately
transformed into a "mission" language. Thus classical Latin was
transformed into Christian Latin, with a new spiritual purpose and a new social
function that ensured its survival and its transmission to the new peoples. In
Dalmatia, the Croatian Littoral, Istria, and the Republic of Dubrovnik, the
Roman-Slavic culture met the Latin tradition of the Church on relatively equal
terms, and it was there that a synthesis of the two elements was achieved which
resulted in the formation of both a Croatian Christian and a Croatian secular
literature and culture.
The earliest beginnings of vernacular literature
descend from the eleventh century (Inscription of Baška), and were associated
with missionary activities. In the period from the tenth to the thirteenth
century, the Benedictines first organized the work of monastic schools, scholarship, and
other cultural achievements among the Croatians (Ostojić 1963, 1964 and
1965; Klaić 1971:225-31; Krstić 1975:11-20; Katičić
1979:218 and 1982:39-51). Following the Benedictines' example, other orders
also were founded, first in the coastal belt and gradually extended to other
Croatian provinces, becoming the champions, guardians, and bearers of knowledge,
enlightenment, and culture to all parts of Croatia. It is interesting that very
early, or at the latest between 1089 and 1140, the Croatian chronicle,
well known under the title Ljetopis popa Dukljanina (Presbyteri Diocleatis
Chronica) was translated from the Slavonic language into Latin (ex
sclavonica littera verterem in latinam) by a priest or a Benedictine monk
in the region of Bar. Actually, the translator wrote the preface and added all
the even that had taken place along the Adriatic coast from the arrival of the
Slavs to his own time. Likewise he elaborated on the la chapters of the
Chronicle. Unfortunately the text is preserved only in its later copies
(Šišić 1928; Mošin 1950; Štefanić 1969:73-81).
It must be stressed at once that in
the coastal belt texts coexisted in Latin and the Croatian vernacular. The
latter appeared in Glagolitic script in the eleventh and twelfth century. By
that time the Slavic liturgy was firmly rooted in Byzantine Dalmatia. In the
eleventh century the center of the Glagoljaši was and remained the
Byzantine Krk (island) and surrounding it islands: Cres, Lošinj and the
Quarneri islands. Nada Klaić recently explained the exceptional eleventh
century flourishing of Glagolitic literature not only in Byzantine Dalmatia
where the Slavic liturgy had started its existence, but as seen in a constant
extending of Glagoljica and its quick conquering of new areas, former
domains of the Croatian kings, namely, the northern Croatian coast, the area of
Zadar and Lika. A great number of these dioceses adhered to the antipope
Honorius II (1064-1071) who supported the liturgy in Slavic and probably
consecrated Cededa as a bishop (Klaić 1965:258-66; Banac 1984: 194-6). The
movement against the feudalization and corruption of the Church, and against simony,
led to the investiture conflict and the related crisis, which in turn provoked
the beginnings of political thought not only in Italy but also in the Easters
Adriatic provinces. All this agitation was reflected in a strengthening of the
Slavic liturgy and Glagolitic writings, as well as in a broadening of the
cultural and economic horizon. The movement of Croatian Glagoljaši was
so strong that Glagoljica became the foundation of native literature in
Croatia from 1060 to the middle of the thirteenth century. Likewise the Glagoljica
penetrated into the Aquileian Patriarchy, into Istria and Carinthia. Its push
towards Posavina (the Sava valley) was stopped by the establishment of the
bishopric of Zagreb in 1093 as a branch of the Hungarian Latin church. On the
coast, Glagoljica entered the cities themselves with the growing tide of
Slav immigrants (Štefanić 1969:10; Banac 1984:201). But only in the
Quarneri-Istria region did the Glagoljica and the Croatian vernacular
dominate and make inroads in all fields of literacy and literature, becoming
almost the only official language of the period (Štefanić 1969:29;
Klaić 1976:223, 401). In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the
Croatian vernacular made its appearance in a more systematic way and rose to
maturity. During that period it attained its full completion and elaboration,
and it achieved wide currency throughout all the eastern Adriatic regions,
penetrating into the innerland of Croatia. Thus the number of extant vernacular
texts increases appreciably when we come to the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries.
The
writings in the Croatian vernacular were not part of any conscious effort to
have Croatian replace Latin. Latin had been and remained for a long time the language
of culture. As in all countries under the Roman Church, medieval Croatia was in
principle bilingual (Latin-Croatian), and Adriatic Croatia was even trilingual
(Latin-Italian-Croatian). Owing to its Roman traditions and the political
associations of the city-communes in Dalmatia and the Croatian Littoral, which
favored and fostered both medieval and classical Latin language and literature,
Latin remained the major and unmatched vehicle of expression for many centuries
of the Middle Ages and up to modern times. The function of Latin as the
language of administration, theology, science, art and international
communication was not challenged among the Croatians during the entire
medieval, Renaissance and post-Renaissance periods. It was the Croatian official
language until 1847, which means that Latin was used longer here than in any
other European country (Gortan-Vratović 1969:13). It would be difficult to
exaggerate the importance of the Latin tradition for the development of the
Croatian vernacular. Latin exerted not only one of the main formative
influences upon the creation of the Croatian literary language and its
literature, but it also laid the foundations of the edifice of Croatian culture
in its entirety.
From
the very beginning of its existence the Croatian vernacular came under the sway
of Christian Latin and later of Humanistic Latin. It was on the foundation of
Latin-Italian culture, rather than that of the Old Church Slavonic literary
tradition, that a Croatian vernacular literacy and literature emerged in the
eleventh and twelfth centuries. This does not mean that there were no
connections with the Cyrillo-Methodian mission to Moravia and there was no
traces of the Old Church Slavonic literature, which was especially fostered and
to a certain degree preserved in Glagolitic liturgical texts (Hamm 1963:11-40;
Nazor 1963:68-86; Tandarić 1978:115-124). Nevertheless the major
characteristics, standards, and ideals of the Croatian vernacular and its
literature stand in sharp contrast to the Old Church Slavonic and later Church
Slavonic literary tradition of the Orthodox Slavs, which was based on Byzantine
linguistic and literary models. And indeed, the Byzantine-Slavic tradition
differed from Roman-Latin culture. In contrast to Roman-Latin monolingualism,
and the linguistic universalism of Latin, there appeared under the strong
influence of Byzantine literary models various linguistic levels of diglossia,
constantly present in the texts of the Orthodox Slavdom during the entire
period from the Slavs' adoption of Christianity from Byzantium in the ninth
century to the final formation of their national languages in the nineteenth
century (Nedeljković 1988). However, the description of the linguistic
differences between the Roman-Latin and Graeco-Byzantine traditions exceeds the
scope of this paper.
Medieval Croatian placed
itself alongside Christian Latin in full dignity, both because it had acquired
its own right to be regulated by the strict norms and rational rules of Latin
grammar, and because it had grown ornate through literary embellishment, as
proven by late medieval Croatian writings. Undoubtedly, the Croatian vernacular
owes to Christian Latin some of its most distinctive features. First, it became
an "ordinary person's language" from the very outset, accessible to
all social strata. Democratic in both its form and its spirit, literary
Croatian also attained simplicity, practicality, clarity, and sophistication,
retaining at the same time its natural characteristics as a mother tongue. Even
more importantly, it followed Christian Latin as a universalizing, “missionary”
vehicle. In spite of the political disunity in the Croatian provinces, the
regional dialects (Čakavian, Kajkavian, and Štokavian) were themselves
developing organically towards a common, higher, supradialectal language. All
levels of language diffusion and diversification were already far advanced in
Medieval Croatian (Nedeljković 1986:59-61). Interference of Čakavian
and Kajkavian elements is seen in the earliest Glagolitic texts, written in the
northern regions of Croatia, as well as in the mixture of Čakavian and
Štokavian features present in the first southern Dalmatian and Dubrovnik texts.
This phenomenon of dialectal interference clearly indicates the tendency
towards the creation of a common literary vehicle, acceptable and
comprehensible to all the Croatian dialects (Hercigonja 1974:169-245,
1983:166-7; Kombol 1945:196; Damjanović 1984:40-1).
Croatian
did follow the Latin-Italian model of literary development as outlined by Dante
in his De Vulgari Eloquentia. As with the Italian envisioned by Dante,
the Croatian vernacular was formed by extensive lateral borrowing, drawing on
the actual usage of the various native classes and dialects, and sampled over
as wide an area as possible. And that in turn was eventually supplemented by
steep vertical borrowing, which meant drawing on Latin grammar to raise the
horizontally - broadened basic speech to heights worthy of the sublime message
of the Christian Gospels and of the elaboration and sophistication of Latin
secular literature. Furthermore, the Croatian vernacular adopted the major
criteria Dante laid down for a worthy Italian national vernacular. To qualify
as a popular national language, Dante said, volgare would have to be
illustre, cardinale, aulicum, and curiale ("Hoc autem
vulgare, quod illustre, cardinale, aulicum esse et curiale ostensum est,
dicimus esse illud quad vulgare latium appellatur, De Vulgari Eloquentia I,
XVII-XIX). As luminous, that is illustrious in itself, Croatian gave
the power of illumination to others. It was at the same time cardinal
because it was capable of carrying all the other vernaculars around it, as on a
turning door. By aulic Dante means "courtly" in the royal
sense, suggesting the sort of language people would use at a national monarchic
capital such as Paris or London. Actually, as the best realization of the
Dubrovnik Renaissance language, the Croatian vernacular was to become a
national language in all Croatia since it was widely understandable means of
communication over a large geographic area. Like Dante's Toscan, the language
of Renaissance Dubrovnik had enough time in two and a half centuries of free
competition to achieve undisputed primacy over all other competing literary
dialects in Croatia and to become the Croatian national language. In the period
of the Croatian National Awakening (1830-50) the
language of Dubrovnik played the same role in the process of unifying Croatian
lands as did Dante's Toscan for the final unification and resurgence of Italy
at the end of the nineteenth century. Finally, curiale, Dante's fourth
criterion, which means "courtly" in the juridical sense, was also
adopted and developed by the Croatian vernacular. In other words, it became a
language that is "fair to all”, giving all the other vernaculars their
due, or justice, like a true court of law.
In Italy, the
juridico-political possibilities of the language stimulated the Italian
rhetoreticians to look to texts of classical rhetoric and grammar, as well as
to the doctrines of Cicero, one of the best sources by which politics was
nourished. In the final development of medieval rhetoric a new tone of
engagement and vitality characterized the ars dictaminis of the Italian
communes; this stemmed from the political ferment in the new city-states and
represented a fusion of secular ideology and almost sacramental religious
purpose. Historians of Italian rhetoric emphasize an obvious continuity between
Brunetto Latini's fresh and concrete restatement of the Ciceronian tenets of
"civic eloquence" and the political rhetoric of the late fourteenth
and fifteenth-century humanist chancellors. Dante himself had an admiration and
profound esteem for Latini's rhetoric, which he expressed in the Divine Comedy:
"m'insegnavate come l'uom s'eterna" (Inferno, XV, 85; Marzi 1910: chap. II; Seigel 1968:200-225).
Dante considered rhetoric
of great importance for political life. The further cultivation of the forms of
medieval rhetorical culture by humanists from the thirteenth century on brought
about an important political development, the laicization of politics, which
would find its most complete statement in the works of Machiavelli in the age
of the Renaissance. The impact of political rhetoric upon Dante resulted in a
profound change of his linguistic consciousness, a transformation which could
serve as the basis of a “modern” political consciousness (Pagliaro 1963:238).
Therefore he
transformed his Florentine volgare into an instrument for contemporary
political affairs and juridical debates. It served as a secular medium of
communication and became the basis of the Italian national language.
As a creation of the late
medieval humanism of Latin Christendom, patterned after the Latin-Italian
model, Croatian emerged as a product of the great age of medieval humanism and
classical scholarship, a time when the new social and juridico-political
conditions that had begun to develop in the eleventh century tender to raise
the level of secular culture. Therefore, it is clear that from its first
literary developments the Croatian vernacular was designed to help secularize
medieval culture. Lingua vernacula reveal its secular character not only
in its rhythmical movement of clauses, used freely and organically, in its rich
vocabulary and complex: sentence structure, in a new style of poetry and prose,
but also in the new forms of social life and new ideals of moral conduct it
depicts.
In
this attempt to briefly illuminate the secular aspect of the Croatian
vernacular, the focus must be highly selective. I shall try to illustrate with
some examples of profane secular songs, as well as examples of religious ones
in which secular and spiritual elements coexist. I will confine myself to a few
poetical writings, first because lyrical effects and rhymed and unrhymed verse
structure often allow a more succinct consideration of evidence than is
possible with examples from the epic, romance, prose fiction, or drama of the
time. Secondly, I deliberately do not consider secular prose manifestations of
medieval Croatian literature because the rise of religious and secular lyrics
is of much earlier date than that of prose works. We can postulate with
certainty the existence of primordial bilingual (Latin-Croatian) lyrics whose
tradition goes as far back as the outset of Christianity among the Croatians in
the eighth century.
For this occasion I have
selected some songs from the most precious collection of spiritual songs
preserved in the Code Slave 11 of the Bibliotéque Nationale in Paris, or
the so-called Paris codex of 1380 (Vajs 1905:258-75; Malić 1972;
Štefanić 1969:364-73,377-8, 385-7, 397-9, 421-26). Comparisons and
contrasts with the songs of earlier centuries are peculiarly difficult because
so little has come down to us in writing in the vernacular. Nevertheless, these
songs in the Paris codex must be qualified by attempts to fathom the
lost literature and, even more, the lost oral compositions of the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries. The levels of grammatical correctness, formal control,
technical precision, and stylistic flexibility present in this glagolitic
collection of popular songs and verses are significant not only for themselves
but for what they may be able to tell us indirectly about earlier vernacular
compositions that have not survived.
The
birth of a popular religious and a profane vernacular lyric was not a sudden
event. It had its previous relatively long tradition, and it developed within
the church and in a medieval clerical milieu. Outside the liturgy with its
hymns in Latin, popular religious songs were sung and performed at various
occasions connected with religious cults and contemplation. Those are Christmas
carols, Easter canticles, and many hymns celebrating the Virgin Mary, saints,
and feasts of the church. Although their existence is attested to only in the
thirteenth century in Dubrovnik, Zadar, Korčula (Gelcich 1882:17;
Zaninović 1923:1-8; and 187-9; Novak 1957:61), as well as in other
Dalmatian cities and the innerland of Croatia (Kniewald 1944:339-408;
Boranić 1897:294; Bujas 1960:509-535), these songs must have been
definitely the earliest literary expression in the Croatian vernacular. From
the earliest times of Croatian Christian life there must have been a most urgent
need for a popular Christian literature in the vernacular. In order to get the
people involved in liturgy, public worship, and recital, these religious
popular songs and hymns were translated in Croatian for ordinary worshipers who
did not understand Latin. In time, the number of songs in the Croatian
vernacular increased. It may be presumed that the transmission of these popular
religious songs remained largely oral, because they were addressed exclusively
to listeners who actively participated in the ritual singing. There was no need
to write them down and record for posterity. Moreover, they were intended and
designed to be memorized and learnt by heart, and used in immediate
performances. Even in the twelfth century and later, a good deal of the poetry
composed and sung was never written down.
The Latin tradition often
preserves records of songs of which we have found as yet no written examples in
the vernacular. The earliest evidence that such a popular chant in Croatian
existed derives from 1177 when Pope Alexander III arrived in Zadar. The church
historian Baronius has found a highly interesting document describing the
welcoming ceremony. It says that, while the pope rode a white horse from the
harbor to the church of St. Stošija, the priests and the people of Zadar
greeted him with songs in the Slavonic language: cum immensis laudibus et
canticis altisona resonantibus in eorum sclavica lingua (Novak 1957:61).
Through careful study of the document, A.M. Strgačić confirmed that
this singing was in the Croatian vernacular (1954:153-88).
The further development
of the religious lyric in the city-communes of the eastern Adriatic coast
continued to parallel that of Italy. In early thirteenth-century Italy,
testimonies of such a popular devotional lyric are also scarce. However, new
movement towards popular religious songs in the lay orders and confraternities
gathered strength in the generation after St. Francis (1182-1226). These groups
(Disciplinati or fragellants, Laudesi, Serviti, and others) adopted a
characteristic popular religious lyrical form, the lauda, perhaps from
profane dance-songs current at the time. Jacopone da Todi, a Franciscan poet,
brought the lauda to its perfection (Ageno 1943-48:7-51). The direct
links between these thirteenth century Italian creators and performers of
popular religious lyrics and the Croatian ones are not established. Although
the number of attested lauda songs in the Croatian vernacular is rather
limited, the lauda existed and was included in the repertoire of the
Franciscan redaction of the Missal and Breviary in the thirteenth century
(Hercigonja 1975:157-8). And it seems very probable that the oldest preserved
songs in the Paris codex of 1380 owe their innovations, especially their
secular, realistic, and human content, to the influence of the above-mentioned
Latin-Italian trend of popular, devotional songs.
The
examples that follow are only fragments of what would be, ideally, a more
extended inquiry. The first selection, which I have selected for this occasion
is a spiritual song: Zač mi tužiš ("Why are you grieving, my
soul"), a song imbued with deep lyricism. It is written with end-rhymes
and lines of various length, and was sung. Originally it was created in the
Čakavian-Ikavian dialect and later it was transmitted to the Dubrovnik
region. Its free-verse structure and its skillful elaboration of content
suggest a
previously long standing tradition. Actually the song belongs to a group of
medieval Latin lyric poems of human love such as the Song of Solomon which was
adapted to Christian spirituality. Thus the ancient motif of human love was
transformed into divine Love, by assuming that mystical symbolism is involved.
The song Zač mi tužiš can be regarded as one of the well known
versions of the so-called the Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The song and
its variations circulated in Roman Catholic Europe in the Middle Ages. As such
the song Zač mi tužiš seems to be best interpreted as symbolizing
the intimate experience of divine Love in the individual soul. Before the song
was translated into the Croatian vernacular from its Latin original, it must
have been adapted and synthetized in regard to its subject matter, language,
style, and possibly worship. As the song Zač mi tužiš proves, the
anonymous creator of this spiritual song adapted it to the Christian audience
and achieved an admirable unity of both erotic, sensuous and graceful imageries
of human love present in ancient pre-Christian songs and Christian allusions
and allegories presented in full accordance with the theological teaching of
the Church. Both elements are in full harmony in this song. Although the
traditional motif of human love relationships are couched in theological
concepts, they are still quite explicitly stated and recognizable as such. The
language of the song in the Croatian vernacular has a sparkling freshness, as
if it grew spontaneously out of praise and litanies:
Davori
ljubvo moja Isuse,
ne hodi
daleko ot mene ...
....
Hvalite
ljubav moju, Isusa, nebo i zemlja i vse tvari
ki vse lĕpo krasi svojimi dari.
Hvalite, gore, polja i vsa
drĕva
jere vas vsako lĕto lĕpo
odĕva.
Hvalite,
lĕto s cvĕtjem
i
ptičice s željnim pĕtjem.
A nadasve vinu hvali
ti, človĕče, prepodobna tvari.[4]
The song Tu mislimo, bratja,
ča smo ("There we think, brothers, what we are") was
intended to be sung at the grave in the process of putting the sepulchral stone
in place. The song is preserved in the same Paris codex, dated 1375. It is not so much a macabre vision
of death as it is a very real, earthly picture of human death with all its
consequences of the body's disintegration:
To smrt nosi ostru kosu,
otpasti je s lica nosu.
Ocĕre se naši zubi
vsi ležemo tamni, grubi.
Ognjiti hote naši skuti,
a ostati gnjila i šćuti.
Smrt nas, bratja, moćno žanje,
a mi lĕ zli nišće manje.[5]
The author casts light
on the this-worldly conditions after a man's death. The picture is strikingly
realistic:
Kad človĕka smrt postigne
tada ot njega vsak pobigne.
sam ostane bes pomoći
v tamnĕ grobĕ, v tamĕ noći.
….
Čemu ljubiš sa svĕt, brate,
ki na smrti mrzi na te.
Žena, deca, rod i mati
ne dadu ti s sobu stati.
Ostave to sama v grebi,
tvoje blago vazmu k sebi.
Tada ne bude nigdar blizu,
tvoje tĕlo črvi grizu.[6]
Every detail
serves to present reality and concrete human feelings. No picture can be more
real in any purely secular poetical description of a corpse falling apart in a
closed coffin, in a grave. The language which conveys such a degree of reality
is not only precise, highly articulated, and controlled, but at the same time
elaborated to the level of a new secular instrument of thought.
In this
song, alongside the profane and human, eschatological elements coexist. The
anonymous poet includes the Last Judgement, Paradise, and the Inferno:
Ot smrti se probudite,
vsi pred Boga postupite.
Poslušajte božja suda
ot krivine i ot bluda.
Otvore se tada grebi
misliti će vsak o sebi.
Vsi hoćemo oživiti,
duša s tĕlom văzda biti.
Stati hote ljudi nazi,
priti hote s pakla vrazi.
Dĕla se hote vsa otkriti
ne moći se kdĕ ukriti.[7]
As do all the Croatian spiritual songs of the period, Tu mislimo,
bratja ča smo contains impulses towards profanity and impulses towards
piety, and it is these conjunctions that we must accept and try to understand
as the direct result of historical existence with the kingdom of God. This is a
significant, if not the most significant, aspect of Roman Christianity, which
never was a mere doctrine or myth, but was always deeply involved with concrete
historical situations and human existence. For the sake of illustration I will
quote a few verses from a Christmas carol, Bog se rodi v Vitliomi
("God was born in Bethlehem"), from the same Paris codex. This
popular song which was sung throughout all the regions of Adriatic Croatia
displays the same unity of human and divine that creates a concrete this
worldly situation:
Diva sina povijaše
ki vsim svitom obladaše.
Travicu mu prostiraše,
Bog v jasalceh počivaše.
Mladenac je slaji meda
ki na pravih slatko gleda.
Volak zimu odgonjaše,
oslak mu se poklanjaše.[8]
In the
same collection of spiritual songs in the Paris codex one finds a song
based mostly on a secular, profane motif. This is the Pisan svetoga Jurja,
a chivalric-hagiographic legend about St. George, a dragon-killer, one of the
most attractive and exploited subjects of medieval literature and iconography.
Although St. George had been born as a knight, in order to fulfill God's will on
earth, he played the role of the saint. God sent St. George to the city of
Solin where he killed a horrible dragon and saved the life of the king's
daughter. The culmination of the dramatic action of the song is the moment when
St. George is killing the dragon who has just come out of the lake:
Sveti Juraj poče tako
reči:
"ne mozi se, gospodična,
bojati!"
V tom časĕ drakun iz
jezera se isklonjaše.
Sveti Juraj ga zagledaše.
Znamenijem svetago križa on se
znamenaše,
šćita i sulice
rukarna potresnjaše,
tr drakuna v grlo probodjaše.[9]
The
medieval author uses this secular motif to lyrically express the relation
between mankind, the saint, and God, who initiated St. George's deed. The song
is written in verses of rhythmic prose rich in assonance and rhyme, which were
widely in practice in medieval secular poetry all over Europe. The versified
form of this popular medieval legend in the Croatian vernacular points to its
very early existence in Croatia, where it most probably was adopted and adapted
from an older Italian version of the legend (Fancev 1943:631; Štefanić
1969:369).
Certainly
the most powerful manifestation of profane, secular aspects in early Croatian
poetry is the song Svit se konča[10]
("The light is dying away"), which recently has attracted great
attention among Croatian medievalists (Hamm 1959:91-9 and 1970:93-98;
Štefanić 1969:370-3; Hercigonja 1975:175-7; Krešić 1984-85:78-83;
Malić 1972:27-8 and 56-60). The song has been preserved in the same group
of ten in the Paris codex, and it too is written in Glagolitic letters.
Its author expresses the most progressive and revolutionary ideas of the time.
In it an anonymous Glagoljaš sternly attacks the corrupt ways of the
clergy. He accuses all the monastic orders: the Dominicans, the Franciscans, the
Cistercians, and the Carmelites all, he claims, strive to amass money and the
riches of this world:
Grdinali, biskupi i opati
misle, Boga ostavivše, lĕ o zlati.
Duhovna rĕč ot njih se ne
more imati
ako im se pénezi prije ne plati.
Simuna v tom nasléduju ki to
zače.
Kako mnoga duša v mukah plače,
nijedan to ne razmišlja, ji, pje,
skače.
Gdo bi rekal: zlo činite! - zlo
ga vlače.
Mala bratja i koludri, predikavci,
remetani, karmeliti,
kavčenjaci,
vsi popove, koludrice i vsi
djaci,
vsi se nazad obratiše kako raci.
. . . .
Licemĕri, vražji posh, svĕtom hine,
zlato, srebro i čto mogu moćno pline.
Antihristu put gotove, zlo v tom čine.
Se su oni kĕmi duš mnogo gine.[11]
The
criticism of the corrupt clergy and the highest church hierarchy reveals the
diffusion of anticlerical ideas among the Glagoljaši. The stylized
poetical form of the Svit se konča proves that these ideas must
have been spread much earlier than the end of the fourteenth century when a
copy of this satirical text was written. The song Svit se konča has
the literary verve of the finest twelfth-century satires. In twelfth century
Europe anticlerical satires, inspired by the preceding investiture conflict,
became numerous, pressing and violent. The authors of poetical satires attacked
on the avaricious, gluttonous pope and cardinals striving for luxuries and
political power in the highest religious hierarchy. It seems very probable that
the Svit se konča continues the same literary trend of the twelfth
century European moral satires created in numerous centers of disaffection and
severe criticism of the corrupt clergy. Actually, these twelfth and thirteenth
century centers became the hot-beds of new-Reformist ideas which would
culminate in the works of John Wycliff, Jan Hus and others. Since in his
accusations the author of the Svit se konča includes the order that
were founded in the thirteenth century (The Franciscans and the Dominicans),
the earliest version of this versified satire could have appeared only at the
end of the thirteenth century. With it exposures of the human frailties of the
clergy, this anticlerical song reflects a new historical situation and casts
more light on the wide range of secular impulses in the Croatian literature of
the time. The satire, irreverently mocking and fervently attacking corruption in the Church's rites, demands
direct expressions and precise use of the language in order to penetrate to the
essence of the problem. Thus the words of the Svit se konča are not
intended to ornament but to create concrete meaning and present the real,
existing situation - the truth.
The last lyrical song belonging to
the same period of Croatian late medieval humanism illustrates a number of
remarkable linguistic-literary features; these features cannot be accounted for
by anything in the poetic tradition or written records up to its time. This is
the earliest preserved Croatian translation of the Song of Songs. As one
of the world's oldest and most beautiful hymns of love, the Song of Songs was included in the vesper service
celebrating the birth of the Mother of God (September 8). It is found in a
number of fourteenth and fifteenth century Croatian breviaries. The oldest text
is found in the Breviary of Vrbik No 4, from the middle of the fourteenth
century, and in the Vatican Breviary Illyr. 6 from 1379. This text has been analyzed for its translational technique,
and carefully compared with the Song of Songs in the Vulgate and the Old Latin
Bible. These methods, as well as the determination of its
stylistical-rhythmical structure, have shown that the Croatian translation of
the Song of Songs is a startlingly free creation and stylization of a preeminent
classical poem (Hamm 1957:195-230; Hercigonja 1975:145-154). However, one should bear in mind that already in the
Carolingian period the Latin language of the Song of Songs with its obvious Solomonic
background began to be freely adapted and amplified in verse. Verse paraphrases
of the Song of Songs became a well-established genre in Roman-Latin Christianity
(Schwietering 1957:264-94). Therefore this "authentic" or
"spontaneous" elaboration of the Song of Songs in the Croatian vernacular could be
at least partially based on one of its freely paraphrased Latin sources.[12]
At the same time, the
Croatian author of the Song of Songs was most probably inspired by the
beauty and uniqueness of the deep feeling of love which the Latin text
presented to him. He tried, on his part, to elaborate and interpret this highly
poetical and touching text according to his own feelings. Moreover, in spite of
its verbal borrowing from the Song of Songs, this song was clearly written with
the vernacular love-dialogue in mind, and it shows how close and yet how
indefinite the relation between learned and vernacular verse might be (the
problem of the origin of such popular spiritual and secular poetry is discussed
below). In the
process of creatively adapting this text of idealized love, the Croatian poet
masterfully rendered the Latin language of the Song of Songs into a refined and subtle speech of
tender love, increasing emotionalism of this poetical subject whenever
possible:
Vsa krasna esi, priĕtelnice moĕ;
i skvrnĕ nĕstĭ v tebĕ.
Pridi ot Livana nevĕsto moĕ;
pridi ot Livana.
Pridi da vĕnčaeši se ot glavi amanskie;
ot vrha sanir'skago i ermonskago;
ot lica l'vov'; ot gorĭ pard'skihĭ.
Ob'ĕzvila esi srĭdce moe
sestro moĕ i nevĕsto moĕ;
ob'ĕzvila esi srĭdce moe
v' edinomĭ pozrĕn'i očiju tvoeju;
v' edinomĭ vidĕnii vlasĭ tvoihĭ
šie tvoee.
Kolĭ krasna esta s'ska tvoĕ
sestro moĕ i nevĕsto moĕ.
Krasnĕe sutĕ prsi tvoe vina;
i vona rizĭ tvoihĭ
pače vsĕhl
aromatĭ
Sat' kapae; ustnĕ tvoi
nevĕsto moĕ.
Medĭ i mlĕko pod' ĕzikomĭ tvoim';
i vona rizĭ tvoihĭ
pače vone t'm'ĕna.[13]
The quoted passage clearly demonstrates that for the first time the
Croatian author recast his Latin original in an already existing language of
exalted human love, which must have existed as "institutionalized" in
literary modes and fashions in the preceding period before the Song of Songs was
written down. Undoubtedly, the Song of Songs had been
familiar and widely popular among the people. As such it must have been
translated orally into Croatian much earlier than it had been recorded in
writing.
The theological allegory of the human soul and Christ, or of Christ and
His Church is clearly presented in both of the oldest preserved texts. The
shepherdess Sanamica (Sunamitis) is the bride and Christ is her
bridegroom.[14] Nevertheless,
the passion and the excitement which the words of the Song of Songs convey
above all else are bound up with the human way in which the Glagolitic poet
experienced this song, and imbued it with the feeling of inspiring love. The
bride charms her beloved by her physical beauty. And with touching directness
the bridegroom invites his bride to come to him:
Vstani i pripravi se
priĕtelnice moĕ
Krasnaĕ moĕ;
i
pridi priĕtelnice
moĕ
po okancu ot kamene
meju gramaču;
i
ĕvi
m'nĕ
lice tvoe.[15]
In a series of lyrical celebrations of love, the Glagolitic poet also expresses a strong sensuality which achieves its climax in the moment when the bride is expecting the meeting with her bridegroom:
Otvori
ti mnĕ
ses'tro moĕ.
nevĕsto golubice. neporočna moĕ
ĕko glava moĕ plna estĭ rosi.
i krai vlas' moihĭ kapalĭ noćnihĭ.
Svlĕkoh'
se is' sukne moee.
kada oblĕku se va nju.
Umihĭ nogi moe kako oskvrnju e.
Vzljubleni moi po okancu vnide.
i utroba
moĕ vstrepeta v' prikosneni ego
Vstahĭ da otvrzu vzljublenomu moemu.
i rucĕ moi kapati načesta mir'roju.
i prĭsti moi plĭni mir're
iskušenoe.
Stežar' vrat' moih.
otvorih' vzljublenomu moemu.
on že uk'lonil se bĕše ot mene i otstupilĭ.
i duša moĕ rastaĕ se
egda vzljublenikó bist' mnĕ.
Vziskahĭ i i ne obrĕtoh' i.
vĭzvah' i i ne otvĕća mnĕ.
Obrĕtu me straže strĕguće grada.
poraziše me. ĕzviše me.
i vzeše m'nĕ
plaščĭ moi.
strĕguće
stĕnĭ.
Zaklinaju
vi
dešćere
erusolimskie
ašče obrĕćete
vzljublenago moego.
da vĭzvĕstite emu
ĕko ljub'voju
iz'nemagaju.[16]
These
quoted lines from the Croatian text of the Song of Songs justify
the way that in rendering one of the most powerful and touching love songs, the
Croatian author stylizes and refines his own language with extraordinary
artistry. He fully and forcefully articulates one of the highest human emotions
- love - through rich and precise, yet poetic and subtle words; his language
serves for both concrete, human feelings and lyricism.
In this
regard the Croatian version of the Songs of Songs is, no
doubt, a forceful evidence of the existence of a "literary",
elaborated vernacular lyric with natural simplicity and refined technical
accomplishments in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This popular lyrical poetry
must have existed from the most primitive times. In the process of rendering
the Song of Songs into Croatian, its authors must have borrowed and
adapted certain verse-forms (and even in some other cases tunes) from the
vernacular. On the other hand, the high poetic qualities of the songs of the Paris
codex move the reader with realistic scenes, strings of poetic clichés,
well-elaborated rhytmical patterns, witty and succinct vocabulary, and
sophisticated range of lyrical expressions in Croatian. This quality is so
marked that the formative poetic influence of the Latin language is here
unquestionable. In regard to the development of medieval Croatian lyrics within
the sphere of nonliturgical popular religious poetry, one cannot but agree with
Vjekoslav Štefanić who maintains that the Latin language exerted constant
influence upon the Croatian vernacular and that the patterns of Latin church
hymnody with its six-, eight-, and twelf-syllabic verses influenced the
development of Croatian popular spiritual songs (1969:49). Scholars also have
pointed to the similarities between a number of the earliest popular religious
songs in the Croatian vernacular with the same songs in Latin, from which the
Croatian songs had evidently been translated (Rešetar 1902:218; Fancev
1943:631). The Latin popular lyrics that grew up alongside the liturgy provides
the indispensable basis for understanding the evolution of medieval and
Renaissance lyrical forms in the Croatian vernacular. The vernacular
accomplishment is too great to have been achieved in vacuo; we can here
say with certainty that these songs presuppose both Latin and vernacular
traditions that have not survived in writing.
One should bear in mind
that the clerics (not necessarily priests, but whoever had received a clerical
education) were involved with creating popular religious songs. They composed
first in Latin, and then translated and adapted in the Croatian vernacular. As
already mentioned, from the earliest time the clergy must have developed an
interest in popular religious songs in the vernacular. Doubtless they were the
first creators and first artistic performers on every kind of lyric. Later, the
medieval clerical world which was trained in Latin produced a popular
repertoire of both religious and secular poetry for their own entertainment and
usage at Church or public celebrations. As Štefanić correctly insists,
these non-liturgical songs of popular devotion and secular impulses were
intended primarily for brotherhoods and monastic circles (1969:50). Thus, the
development of popular lyrics with strongly-expressed secular motifs and
tendencies was the result of ancient and scarcely separable popular religious
poetry.
The comparison of Latin and Croatian
vernacular lyrical forms in some cases, however, provides no simple solution to
the problem of origins. Various scholars have different interpretations of the
presence of symmetrically rhymed octosyllabic verses in seven of the ten songs
in the Paris codex collection (Hercigonja 1975:158-186; Slamnig
1970:25). No doubt the achievement of fully developed, mature lyrics in the
Croatian vernacular, present in these songs, points to the existence of a
previous long and vigorous tradition, both sacred and profane, in Latin and in
the vernacular. Generations of clercs before these songs were written down must
have known vernacular songs and at times adapted them. The symbiosis of
religious and profane seems to have been made gradually over a number of
centuries. In some cases, no doubt, religious poetry borrowed from the
vernacular songs certain elements and vice versa. Therefore, in some cases the
bilingual lyrical songs (Latin-Croatian) of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries prove nothing about the priority of either Latin or vernacular song.
On the contrary, their similarity and closeness in structure and melody point
to that these songs had coexisted in each language in medieval Croatia from the
first and that from the earliest time they had inspired each another.
The vital historical
importance of these songs in the Paris codex lies in the fact that they
prove the existence of an accomplished poetry in the Croatian vernacular
(Čakavian-Ikavian dialect) at the end of the fourteenth century, but a
poetry the originals of which had existed much earlier. If we compare these
songs to the Renaissance ones, the similarity in the whole range of lyrical
modes and techniques is so striking that we can conclude that already in the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries practically all the basic types of medieval
and Renaissance lyrics had evolved. The well-established syntactical patterns,
regularized rhytmical forms, and rich vocabulary in which these songs are
written convincingly demonstrate that the Croatian vernacular was firmly
codified and that it had established its strict literary norms by the end of
the fourteenth century, if not earlier. This same process of development
appears in moral-didactic texts, in secular novels (the Aleksandrida,
the Rumanac trojski), apocryphal legends and hagiographies, and church
drama, as well as in diplomatic and juridico-legal texts and various kinds of
correspondences and treatises. It occurs to the texts written in Croatian, in
all the three scripts: Glagolitic, Cyrillic, and Latin. As stressed by Julije
Derossi, the whole corpus of the Croatian literature proves that the Medieval
Čakavian literary language played the role of a nationally functional and
communicative means of expression (1978:81-7).
The Croatian vernacular assumed the role and function of a national
language in its formative period, emulating its unrivalled model, Medieval
Latin. From its outset this language created to serve the needs and spiritual
ideals of the new secular culture, assimilated the essential aspects of late
medieval humanism inherent in Latin, among which the secularization of culture
was chief. Unlike the other Old Slavic literatures with exclusively
ecclesiastical culture, the Old Croatian literature and language, with its
clearly implicit spirit of late medieval humanism, belonged to the new world of
the Italian city-states. This world was already outgrowing the strict religious
traditions still dominant in most of Europe. It was this new type of world
which was developing new forms of social life and secular culture that were to
find their most forceful, mature and exquisite expression in the age of the
Renaissance. In this sense, the first literary works, especially the first
artistic lyrics in fourteenth century Čakavian Croatian, approach the
level of the Italian Trecento. These same artistic lyrics, viewed poetically and
humanly, display their own internal coherence and high level artistry.
Therefore the Croatian vernacular and the Old Croatian literature are of great
cultural-historical importance for medieval Slavic and neo-Latin studies.
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* The nucleus of this article was presented at the 19th
National Convention of the AAASS in Boston, on November 8, 1987, sponsored by
the Association for Croatian Studies.
[1][ One finds,
for example, the Liber statutorum civitatis Ragusii (1272), one of the oldest
constitutions in history; Liber omnium reformationum civitatis Ragusii, which
includes the regulations until 1358, and its later appendices the Liber Viridis
(1358-1460) and the Liber Croceus (1460-1803); the Statute of Split
(1240-1312), the Reformationes of Split (1385), the Liber consiliorum of Split
(1347), the Statute of Zadar (1305), the Statute of Trogir (1322), the Statute
of Šibenik (1305-1322), and some other city statutes. There exist also the
statutes of the islands of Korčula (1214), Brat (1305), Hvar (1331),
Lastovo, Mljet, and some other islands along the eastern coast. Paralleling
these statutes, written in Latin, there appeared the statutes, written in the
Croatian vernacular in the area where the Glagoljica dominated: the Istarski
razvod (1275), the Law of Vinodol (1288), the Statute of Krčko (1362), the
Statute of Senj (1388), the Kozljački razvod (1395), the Statute of
Poljica, which was written before the year of 1444, the Statute of Kastav
(1490), the Statute of Veprinac (1507), the Statute of Mošćenice (1501),
the Statute of Trsat (1640), and some other-city statutes (Klaić
1976:244-50 and 402-6; Hercigonja 1975:118-125 and 403-4; Bratulić
1976:363-82; Katičić 1979:220).
[2] In
historical thought, when one identifies a century with a movement, the boundaries
of the century (like those of any historical period) must be seen as flexible
and relative. Charles Homer Haskins aptly stressed the problem as follows:
"By 1200 the medieval renaissance is well advanced, by 1250 its work is
largely done. In a phrase like 'the renaissance of the twelfth century', the
word 'century' must be used very loosely so as to cover not only the twelfth
century proper but the yeas which immediately precede and follow, yet with
sufficient emphasis on the central period to indicate the outstanding
characteristics of its civilization. For the movement as a whole we must really
go back fifty years or more and forward almost as far" (1927:10).
[3] The
eleventh and twelfth century notaries and jurists and the thirteenth century
rhetoreticians, the Italian dictatores,
were the ancestors of the fourteenth century humanists (Kristeller 1944-45:560
and 563-4), but these medieval intellectuals themselves were also the
humanists. The viewpoint of this study is that the long history of humanism
began in Antiquity. It revealed itself most forcefully in Roman politics,
ethics, philosophy and jurisprudence. Roman humanism sustained an unbroken
evolution from Antiquity through the medieval centuries and into modernity. The
Renaissance humanism evolved out of medieval humanism. There is boundary
between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Gilson 1944:337-43; Kristeller
1955; Cantimori 1959:340-65 - to quote only the names of a few scholars, for
some further reflections on the problem see: the New Cambridge Modem History
The Renaissance, I, 1975).
[4]
Štefanić 1969:368-9. See also the interpretation of Zlatko Posavac
(1986:38) My literal translation of the quoted verse into English is:
"Praise, my love, Jesus,
do not go far away from me .. .
. . .
Heaven, Earth, and all creatures!
Praise my love, Jesus, for He
embellishes all with His gifts!
And you, mountains, fields, and all trees!
Thank and praise (Him), because He dresses
you beautifully every summer! And you,
Summer with flowers! Give thanks and praise!
And you, little birds with longing song,
and above all, you, man, a Godlike creature,
(all of you) thank and praise (Him) . . .
[5]
Štefanić 1969:424. John Thorp translated the song Tu mislimo, bratja,
to smo ("The Lament over a tomb") into English verse; the quoted
verses in Thorp's translation are:
Its
swinging scythe comes on apace
And chops
our noses off our face.
The worms
their ugly work begin;
Our skulls
take on a ghastly grin.
When
putrification ends its reign
'Tis only thighbones
will remain.
And yet
despite this horrid fate
Our wickedness does not abate (Krešić 1984-85:85).
[6] Štefanić
1969:424. The English translation of the quoted fragment is:
All other men will promptly shun
The man whom death has overcome.
Friendless, helpless, must he lie
In darkness wrapped eternally.
. . . .
You love this world? My brothers, why?
For it will
loathe you when you die.
Nor mother,
wife, nor child, nor kin
Will let
you stay among them then.
They will
consign you to the grave,
And all
your treasure they will have.
No friend will come your corpse to greet,
Except the worms that come to eat (Krešić 1984-85:85).
[7] Štefanič 1969:425. The English translation of the
quoted verses is:
From
death's long sleep at last awake!
Before your
God in trembling quake!
For He as judge will arbitrate
Upon your
sins, and fix your
fate.
The tombs
that day will surely
gape,
And none
his judgement will escape.
For all at
once will resurrect,
Their souls and bodies intersect
Naked will we stand in fear
While
devils out of hell appear.
Our deeds
of life will open
lie
And none
escape God's searching eye (Krešić 1984-85:87).
[8] Štefanič 1969:386.
My literal translation
of the quoted verse into English is as follows:
The Virgin
swaddled her Son
Who was
Lord of all the world.
She
smoothed for Him the hay
And the
Lord lay in the manger.
The infant is sweeter than honey
who regards
the just with tenderness.
The ox dispelled the cold of winter,
The donkey
bowed adoringly.
[9] Štefanič 1969:367.
My literal translation
of the quoted verses into English is:
St. George
began to speak:
"Do not fear, my lady!"
At that
moment the dragon emerged from the lake
St. George
caught sight of him.
With the
sign of the cross he
signed himself,
He roused
his shield and lance
and pierced
the dragon in the neck.
[10] Since I have accepted Josip Hamm's
interpretation of the word svit as 'light' (1959:98), my
translation of the first sentence Svit se konča is "The light is dying away". Although the word svit
has two meanings: 1) light
and 2) world, I have chosen the former for the
following reason. Namely, the first sentence Svit se konča
("The light is dying
away") is closely
connected with the second sentence i sunce jur zahodi ("and the sun
already declines"). It seems more probable that the author of the song had
in mind the sun light since he immediately continues to speak about the sun
set. The sun light itself has its metaphorical meaning of everyday life on
earth which exists during the sun light, that is life, the world. Therefore both
interpretations are acceptable for they convey basically the identical idea.
Štefanić and other Croatian medievalists prefer the interpretation of svit
as 'world'. Therefore, John Thorp translated the first sentence svit se
konča into English as "the world is coming to an end"
(Štefanić 1969:371; Krešić 1984-85:78-81).
[11] Štefanić 1969:372. John Thorp translated the song Svit
se konča ("The World is coming to an end") into English verse; the quoted
verses in Thorp's translation are as follows:
Cardinal,
archbishop, bishop, abbot, priest,
All worship
gold for God: their cure - their gold increased.
You want
to hear one holy word from them at least?
It all
depends, my friend, how well their palms are greased.
Devotedly
they dance the dance of simony.
While
wretched souls in
sore distress cry 'confort me!'
They dance
and guzzle on the round of perfidy,
They dance
and muzzle those who would cry infamy.
Dominicans,
Franciscans, dirty eremites,
Cistercians
and both calced and discalced Carmelites,
The nuns
and priests, the deacons and the acolytes,
All go
contrariwise, like crabs or catamites.
. . . .
They're
wolf-paid shepherds, devil-priests, and hypocrites,
Who for the
plunder of the faithful train their wits;
They pave
the way for Antichrist by digging pits,
Down which
we fall straightway to where the Devil sits (Krešić 1984-85:81)
[12] This
possibility in no way diminishes the value of the Croatian poetical text.
Medieval and Renaissance literature lived by its own rules and poetics which we
are only now beginning to understand and have sympathy for. We need not only to
"suspend our disbelief" with respect to the content and form of such
literature (as being "true" or "false" in our experience),
but also with respect to its originality. Imitation was a governing principle
in medieval and Renaissance poetics, which stressed: 1) the value of literary
traditions over that of originality (certainly in opposition to our own age); 2) the
desirability of making ancient texts and indeed all literary sources available
to a wide circle (the tendency had started already in the period of late
medieval humanism, as discussed above; see pp. 9-12; and 3) the
healthy educational value of translating texts from prose to poetry and vice
versa, as well as from one language to another: translation was a frequent and
respectable literary occupation in that age. This problem of evaluation of
medieval and Renaissance writings from the viewpoint of our modern standards is
especially acute, for it is too easy to produce a distorted view of Croatian
medieval and Renaissance literature by applying criteria more appropriate to
Romanticism and to the age of Positivism, ages whose linguistic-literary standards
are unfortunately carried on and still preserved all the way down into the
present.
[13] Hamm 1957:219. The English
translation of the quoted fragment reads as
follows:
You are all fair, my love; there is
no flaw in you.
Come with me from Lebanon, my bride;
come with me from Lebanon.
Depart from the peak of Ama'na,
from the peak of Senir and Hermon,
from the dens of lions, from the
mountains of leopards.
Tou have ravished my heart, my
sister, my bride,
you have ravished my heart with a
glance of your eyes,
with one jewel of your necklace.
How sweet is your love, my sister,
my bride!
how much better is your love than
wine,
and the fragrance of your oils
than any spice!
Your lips distil nectar, my bride;
honey and milk are under your tongue...
(The New Oxford Annotated Bible
with the Apocrypha, revised standard version, ads H.G.
May and B.M. Metzger, New York - Oxford Univ. Press, 1977,
815-21, esp. 818).
[14] Instead of
the voice of Jesus Christ one finds the denomination: Milosti Hrista,
i.e., "Love of Christ," in the Breviary Vatican Illyr. 6; see Hamm 1957:198.
[15] Hercigonja 1975:152. The English
translation of the quoted verse is:
Arise,
my love, my fair one,
and
come away.
O my dove, in the clefts of the rock,
in the covert of the cliff,
let me see your face ...
[16] Hamm
1957:221-2. The English translation of the quoted fragment is:
"Open to me, my sister, my
love,
my dove, my perfect one;
for my head is wet with dew,
my locks with the drops of the
night."
I had put off my garment,
how could I put it on?
I had bathed my feet,
how could I soil them?
My belowed put his hand to the
latch,
and my heart was thrilled within
me.
I arose to open to my beloved,
and my hands dripped with myrrh,
my fingers with liquid myrrh,
upon the handles of the bolt.
I opened to my beloved,
but my beloved had turned and gone.
My soul failed me when he spoke.
I sought him, but found him not;
I called him, but he gave no
answer.
The watchmen found me,
as they went about in the city;
they took away my mantle,
they beat me, they wounded me,
those watchmen of the walls.
I adjure you, O daughters of
Jerusalem
if you
find my beloved,
that you tell him
I am sick with love (pp. 818-819).
In
comparison with the songs of the Paris codex the language of the oldest
translation of the Song of Songs in Croatian is more archaic than the language
of the songs of said collection. The language of the Song of Songs is replete
with a number of Church Slavonic elements typical for the fourteenth and
fifteenth-century Croatian breviaries in which the Song of Songs was included.