Janus Pannonius
Janus Pannonius (Latin: Janus Pannonius, Croatian: Ivan Česmički, Hungarian: Csezmiczei János, or Kesencei; 29 August 1434, Čazma – 27 March 1472, Medvedgrad castle, nearby Zagreb)1 was a Croatian and Hungarian Latinist, poet, diplomat and Bishop of Pécs. He was the only truly significant poet of the Renaissance in the Kingdom of Hungary and one of the better-known figures of Humanist poetry in Europe.
Life
He was born in a small village near the Drava river in a corner of Slavonia. Janus's nationality has been an ongoing argument between Croatian and Hungarian scholars.2
Janus’s father was a Croatian3 whose social status and belongness to the nobility is unclear.4 His mother, Borbála Vitéz, was Hungarian.3
His mother, Borbála Vitéz came from a lower ranked noble family on her mother's side (the Garázda genus,5 originally Bosnian6 ancestry) and she was originated from Pilis county on her father's side (the surname of her family "Vitéz" is a latter name, they were originally called "Csévi").7 The Garázda family was related to the Szilágyi and Hunyadi families. She was the sister of Archbishop Vitéz.
Pope Pius II wrote that he was of Slavonian origin (de origine Slavonica). His biographer and friend Vespasiano da Bisticci said that he was of Slavic nationality (di nazione Schiavo). According to Ronsano of Palermo, he was of the Dalmatian nation (di natione Dalmata). M. Franičević, in citing Ronsano, notes that many Italians saw all “Croats” as Dalmatians. Ludovik Tuberon Crijević, writing of Pannonius, says that he was born a Slav (genere itidem Sclavenum) in that part of interior Dalmatia that lies between the Sava and Drava8
Pannonius was brought up by his mother; then in 1447 his uncle sent him to Italy for a humanist schooling. He attended the School of Guarino da Verona at Ferrara where the pupils were educated in Latin and Greek authors under the guidance of a noted teacher of the Italian Renaissance. The young boy was considered the brightest pupil of his generation by both his teachers and fellow-students. He soon revealed his ability to write poetry according to the rules of classical prosody; he was around thirteen when he wrote his first epigrams. His higher education was completed at the University of Padua in canon law, and after making an educational tour of Rome, he returned to the Kingdom of Hungary in 1458, the year of Matthias’s accession to the throne. For a time, he worked at the Royal Chancery, and soon became the Bishop of Pécs and later Vice-Chancellor of the country. Janus Pannonius was thus an influential intellectual in the kingdom, and one who never severed his connections with some of the leading philosophers of his time.
References
- ^ Di Peter G. Bietenholz, Thomas Brian Deutscher, Desiderius Erasmus, Contemporaries of Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and Reformation, University of Toronto Press, 2003, pp. 233-234 ISBN 978-0-8020-8577-1
- ^ [1]
- ^ a b Ádám Makkai, In quest of the 'miracle stag': the poetry of Hungary : an anthology of Hungarian poetry in English translation from the 13th century to the present in commemoration of the 1100th anniversary of the foundation of Hungary and the 40th anniversary of the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, University of Illinois Press, 1996, p. 41
- ^ [2]
- ^ Tibor Kardos, Sándor V. Kovács, Janus Pannonius, Akadémiai Kiadó, 1975, p. 73
- ^ http://www.kislexikon.hu/garazda.html
- ^ Vince Bunyitay, A VÁRADI PÜSPÖKSÉG TÖRTÉNETE ALAPÍTÁSÁTÓL A JELENKORIG, Nagyvárad, 1883
- ^ [3]
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