Antikvitás & Reneszánsz

Francesco Petrarca: A vallásos élet nyugalma fordítása (részlet)

2025-06-05T10:51:13+02:00

Szörényi László Petrarcával kapcsolatos munkássága előtt tiszteleg az alábbi fordításrészlet, amely elsőként adja vissza magyarul az erkölcsfilozófus Petrarca egyik legmélyenszántóbb művének kezdő oldalait. A De otio religioso a szerzetesek életének egyik legfontosabb mozzanatát járja körül, a vallásos szemlélődést. Mivel azonban fejtegetéseit nemcsak a szerzetesek, hanem a ma világi emberei is haszonnal forgathatják, sőt a lelkiségtől kiüresedett, rohanó világunkban éppen a világi embernek van a legnagyobb szüksége a Petrarca által körüljárt elcsendesedésre, ezért döntöttem úgy, hogy Antonietta Bufano példáját követve a fenti módon fordítom a címet.

Hétköznapok Valchiusában

2025-06-05T10:57:34+02:00

Francesco Petrarca a magányos, visszavonult életről két értekezést is írt: a De vita solitariát a „tudós magányról”, és a De otio religiosót a „szerzetesi magányról”. Ezeken túl életműve más darabjaiban is több alkalommal beszél arról, hogy számára a vidéki visszavonultság lenne az ideális életforma, szemben a város (elsősorban Avignon) nyüzsgő, zajos környezetével. Az ideális lakhely a valóságban is létezik: Valchiusa. A Valchiusában megvalósult életmódjának előnyeiről a Rerum familiarium libri több levelében is ír barátainak. Az alábbiakban közölt levél részletesen szól valchiusai mindennapjairól, és (Petrarcától megszokott módon) számos egyéb kérdést is felvet.

Dino Buzzati: Betiltották c. novellájának fordítása

2025-06-05T11:06:17+02:00

Dino Buzzati (1906–1972) 1958-ban adta ki Sessanta racconti (Hatvan elbeszélés) c. kötetét. Az Era proibito (Betiltották) c. novella a Corriere della Sera 1955. december 4-i számában jelent meg először. Cselekménye egy olyan elképzelt társadalomban játszódik, ahol a kormányzat betiltotta a költészet művelését és olvasását abból a megfontolásból, amely szerint veszélyt jelent az emberek közérzetére. Egy nap azonban az így kialakított rend misztikus módon, természetfeletti erők közreműködésével megbomlik; ennek következményeit a szerző éppen csak sejteti, a tanulságot az olvasó maga vonhatja le.

The four corners of Africa and the “other” elephants (Juv. 10, 148–150)

2025-06-04T10:12:56+02:00

Even all of Africa was not enough for Hannibal, says Juvenal in his Satire 10. The satirist then describes the borders of Africa, stretching from the Moorish Ocean to the Nile, the Aethiops people, and the other... elephants. How did the elephants get here? The question is a fair one. Or is the text corrupt? I aim to answer these questions in the following article.

A chivalric romance about Attila, troubadour poems and ars amandi in the codex of Joannes de Scepus, Bishop of Zagreb (c. 1361–1410)

2025-06-04T10:33:07+02:00

According to a 13th-century chivalric romance written in Padua in a mixed French- Venetian language, Attila, King of Hungary – said to be born from the union of a princess and a dog – invaded Italy with the intent to destroy Christianity. However, after burning several towns, he was killed at the end of a chess game in Rimini. This story, transmitted in numerous variants, shaped the image of Attila in northern Italy for centuries. The works written in French or in a language that mixes elements of French and Veneto dialects were once dismissed as corrupt imitations of French literature. Today, however, they are recognized as a distinct corpus of northern Italian chivalric literature and have become an important subject of study. The codex preserving the earliest version of this Attila romance also includes other examples of French-Venetian chivalric literature, such as a collection of troubadour poems and an ars amandi. This codex was once owned by Joannes de Scepus (Joannes de Gara, János Szepesi), Bishop of Zagreb and later Archbishop of Naples. It is believed that other Hungarian intellectuals who studied in the Veneto region over the centuries were also familiar with this Attila tradition and the local literature, which was strongly influenced by French models. It would be worth examining the potential role of northern Italian chivalric culture as a mediator in spreading French chivalric traditions to Hungary.

Candida rosa, or poetry beyond the limits of space-time and the human mind (Paradise 30)

2025-06-04T10:51:16+02:00

The main argument of this thesis is that the 30th canto of Paradise can be seen as a kind of „dimension change” in poetry and poetic experience. The basic ideas behind this argument can be summed up like this: the canto is a story about Dante’s mystical experience, a series of visions; the levels of the poe’s mystical experience can be related to the mystical theory of St. Bernat („anticipated” from the following canto); and finally, having bid farewell to his old poetry, Dante announces a new poetic „program”, which, with its powerful imagery, is able to narrate the ineffable, based on the language of mystical raptures.

The Latin translation of Dante and a commentary dedicated to King Sigismund (1417).

2025-06-04T11:17:57+02:00

The present article deals with the Dante Codex in the Archdiocesan Library of Eger, which contains the complete Latin translation of the Commedia by Giovanni da Serravalle (c. 1350–1445), Bishop of Fermo, with his commentary on the Inferno, both of which were written during the Council of Constance. First, I will examine the simplistic and negative opinions that have been invoked to dismiss the translation, the commentary, and the codex itself as insignificant from various points of view. I will also investigate why the book failed to achieve its intended purpose, i.e., to provide a useful tool for those who did not know the Italian vernacular but had studied Latin grammar, such as 'Germans, Gauls, English, Czechs, Hungarians, Slavs, Poles, Hispanics, Portuguese, Castilians, etc.'—in making Dante's poetry accessible and promoting the moral and theological teachings of the 'theologian poet'.

Apocalypse Now: Bernhard von Kraiburg’s Letter on the Fall of Constantinople (1453)

2025-06-04T11:32:51+02:00

Bernhard von Kraiburg, chancellor of the archbishop of Salzburg and bishop of Chiemsee, was a man of letters esteemed by his contemporaries. His best-known and most influential work is an epistle on the fall of Constantinople and other miseries of his time, addressed on 23 July 1453 to Silvester Pflieger, bishop of Chiemsee. The aim of this study is to provide a brief biographical sketch of Bernhard, to outline the manuscript tradition and the structure of his epistle, and to identify its main sources, which are not negligible even for the exegesis of the text: the Divinae institutiones of Lactantius and Petrarch’s Liber sine nomine.

Piso, Lepta, and the pusio

2025-06-04T11:43:39+02:00

Jacobus Piso’s collection of poems preserved in the printed edition entitled Schedia contains two epigrams addressed to a certain Lepta. The aim of this treatise is to interpret the first of these poems, which describes an awkward situation in which the poet tries to visit his friend, Lepta, but is forced to wait at night just to be informed by a page about the absence of his would-be host. I discuss the parallel passages of the poem and the way Piso paraphrases them, as well as a possible hidden meaning of this epigram.

Love during emigration

2025-06-04T11:50:08+02:00

In my study, I present the secret love affair of Nicolaus Olahus (1493–1568), humanist, Archbishop of Esztergom and Chancellor, with Lucretia Caballis vom Ross and the life of their illegitimate and later legitimised daughter. Olahus concealed his love affair and tried to present it to the public in a way that is compatible with his ecclesiastical career, but the truth was never hidden from his close friends – and, it seems, his open-minded contemporaries. How can an illegitimate child be legitimised? Did Olahus succeed in his plan to create a chancery dynasty? These are some of the issues discussed in my study.

Principio quidem calamo certatum…, or Magnus, the evil

2025-06-04T13:22:48+02:00

Today, Copenhagen and Malmö belong to the same region: the Øresund Region (Öresundsregionen), also known as the Greater Copenhagen Region, which includes, among others, seventeen universities. Its most iconic landmark, the Øresund / Öresund Bridge, has been connecting the two cities by road and rail for 25 years. Building a common region—or even just a bridge—is a long process, and at the beginning of this road lies a historical trauma: in the Treaty of Roskilde (1658), onethird of Denmark, including Malmö, was ceded to Sweden. The eleven wars fought between the two countries from 1563 to 1814 were preceded by incitements to hatred. As a Swedish historian once wrote while imprisoned by Gustavus Adolphus: principio quidem calamo certatum, [...] [s]ed postmodum cruentissimo pugnatum gladio. Regarding Latin texts, the first piece of this "beginning" is Johannes Magnus’ Historia de omnibus Gothorum Sveonumque regibus, first published in Rome in 1554. In my paper, I would like to present Professor Szörényi with a bouquet of remarkable passages from this Historia—but altius repetendo.

Balassi scribbles

2025-06-04T13:35:10+02:00

The paper corrects the reading of the entry scribbled by Bálint Balassi in a book owned by Péter Bornemisza (Volaterranus Rafael, Commentariorum urbanorum octo et triginta libri, Basileae 1530) and explores the significance of the revised text in the context of the relationship between Péter Bornemisza and Bálint Balassi. Additionally, it examines some of the other entries in the volume and investigates the contemporary meaning of the adjective 'víg' in light of the new reading.

Carmina de polysemis et vocabulorum differentiis.

2025-06-04T13:42:05+02:00

Guarino da Verona's grammatical and poetic work was published in one volume alongside a similar work by Christophorus Hecyrus (likely Christoph Schweier) in Kolozsvár (Claudiopolis, Klausenburg, Cluj-Napoca) in 1588. The two works had previously been published together in a separate volume in Nuremberg and as part of a larger compilation in Frankfurt. Guarino is best known in Hungary as a teacher of Janus Pannonius. A more thorough understanding of his reception can be gained through a description of the most important features of the work in question. Guarino's work was probably written between 1414 and 1419. Its original text was commented on and supplemented by numerous scholars. The Kolozsvár volume may have been modeled on the aforementioned German editions, which may have already included revisions.

Neo-Latin Literature, Saracens and Mountaineering in the Tatra Mountains

2025-06-04T13:48:46+02:00

This paper discusses and contextualizes a curious event recorded in a poem by Leonhartus Nicasius of Poprad (now in Slovakia). On the arrival of the humanist physician Jacob Monau of Breslau in the Tatra region, several local humanists greeted him with a poem, including Nicasius, which described how a captured black African herbalist (Aethiops, or 'Saracen' in the early modern Hungarian context) had recently climbed the Tatra Mountains. An analysis of the poem shows parallels with the almost contemporary description of mountaineering in the Tatra by David Frölich, which discusses the upper limits of the middle region of the atmosphere (media regio aëris).

Barbiano’s bears

2025-06-04T13:59:55+02:00

The paper examines an excerpt from Farkas Bethlen’s Historia de rebus Transsylvanicis, Book 13, which describes the antecedents and outbreak of the Bocskai Uprising in 1604. The author vividly portrays the miserable conditions of contemporary Transylvania before taking the reader to Kassa (Košice), where he reports on the atrocities committed by the chief captain, Barbiano, against the town’s citizens. These culminate in the case of Barbiano’s bears, which his servants set upon passers-by, causing grievous injuries for their own amusement. In examining the source of this detail, the study shows that the story is also found in slightly different forms in the fragments of Szamosközy. Since Bethlen had compiled the earlier sections of the work from the complete but unpublished writings of other authors, it is possible that he was not working from the fragments that are still known today, but that he still had Szamosközy’s now lost work on Bocskai. This hypothesis calls for further philological investigation and proof, following in the footsteps of the bears.

János Rimay’s Anjou-period Hungarian Prayer Book

2025-06-04T14:05:10+02:00

In the 1610s, János Rimay wrote an introduction to his planned edition of Bálint Balassi's poems, in which he mentioned the Hungarian prayer book by Mary of Anjou, the Hungarian queen who reigned at the end of the 14th century, since he compared its language with that of Balassi. During Rimay's official diplomatic mission in 1609, he spent over six months in Buda Castle, which was under Turkish rule at the time, where he met Ali Kadizade Pasha on several occasions. It was perhaps at this time that he had the opportunity, through certain means, to retrieve the Anjou prayer book from the former royal palace. This manuscript was older than the earliest known codices in the "Nyelvemléktár". Balassi did not invent his poetic language entirely anew, and Rimay was curious about its antecedents, making him interested in texts much older than the contemporary ones. By the beginning of the 16th century, the basic words and expressions of love and religious poems had largely been created by the creativity of the translators of the codices. The task of discovering the linguistic antecedents of the Balassi poems, which Rimay described as jewels of the Hungarian language, remains an ongoing challenge today.

The Hymnological Language of Polemics:

2025-06-04T14:11:34+02:00

Albert Szenci Molnár's work Jubileus Esztendei Prédikáció was written for the centenary of the Reformation and is a strongly polemical work (Oppenheim, 1618). It ends with the Latin hymn Judex, Jesu Christe and was accompanied by sheet music. Four Hungarian versions of it are known in Hungarian codex literature. The hymn Iuste Iudex was known in the Protestant musical poetry of the 16th century, and its melody is referenced in printed hymnals. Its first adaptation, made by Balázs Radán, was published in 1560 in Debrecen, together with sheet music. The hymn has a strong anti-Catholic and anti-papal tone and is included in the most important Protestant hymnals (Gál Huszár, Péter Bornemisza, Imre Újfalvi). Szenci Molnár became acquainted with this hymn, its melody, and Hungarian text during his studies in Hungary. The hymn, adapted by Szenci Molnár, was originally written in Latin by the French monk Berengar of Tours. Berengar, with his heretical belief that communion is merely symbolic of Christ’s body and blood, rejected transubstantiation. He was persecuted, imprisoned, excommunicated, and ultimately forced to recant his doctrines. In Hussitism and Protestantism, he has been regarded as a forerunner of the reformers, and he was also referred to as such in Hungary. Szenci Molnár's Latin adaptation of the hymn, written for the centenary of the Reformation, reflects on the background of the Reformation and presents the Hungarian perspective.

A Small Contribution to the History of the Reception of St Patrick's Purgatory in Hungary

2025-06-04T15:33:22+02:00

In the early 1660s, a booklet on the Purgatory of St Patrick, translated from Latin into Hungarian, was published. While it has occasionally appeared in literary discussions and a few pages have been included in modern editions, it has not yet undergone a thorough philological study. Although a detailed comparison between the Hungarian text and the Latin original on which the translation is based remains to be conducted, this study aims to demonstrate, through analysis of select passages, that such an examination is highly worthwhile. The insertions and additions in the text reveal a deliberate translational approach, suggesting that the Hungarian version was crafted with a specific theological intent. This intent appears to be closely tied to contemporary inter-confessional theological debates regarding the afterlife.

School and Extracurricular Life in the 16th–18th Centuries

2025-06-04T15:40:40+02:00

The printed texts that describe students' behaviour both in school and outside of it often regulate such behaviour, resting on purely theoretical foundations. However, they raise questions—without explicitly stating what reality is—that prompt us to imagine what these pieces of advice aim to protect the youth from, if they adhere to them. In this study, we have based our analysis on two printed works: Thesaurus sanitatis inaestimabilis: Quomodo facili methodo plurimos vitae dies integer et incolumnis conservari possit (1691); and Dies vitae adolescentis studiosi (1718). Personal documents, starting from the instructions of parents or patrons sending their children on study trips, are much more concrete. They detail what the youth should avoid, what the accompanying tutor should pay attention to, and what is expressly prohibited (ranging from not visiting educational institutions of other denominations, avoiding infested bedding and prostitutes who spread disease, to refraining from excessive alcohol consumption). Unfortunately, very few diaries have survived in which students candidly wrote about how they behaved without supervision. At present, we have only analysed one such document: Album recreationis (1578). However, a rare source from the 17th century has also survived—a so-called sin catalogue. Although it is recorded as notes by a nobleman, there is no doubt that our students committed similar sins too.

From Prose to Poetry – Lessons from Translating a Prose Source

2025-06-05T08:38:40+02:00

György Pray has provided footnotes for his didactic poem on falconry, Poema de institutione ac venatu falconum libris quattuor comprehensum. The footnote in the fourth book, marked (k), differs from the others in that the author not only refers to his source, but also quotes verbatim from Aldrovandus's Ornithology, his source. A comparison of the main text and the footnote gives us an idea of the way in which Pray, trained in ancient poetry in the context of the Jesuit repetens teaching, transforms the prose text into hexameters. An in-depth study of the text has been carried out using ancient and late antique texts from the Bibliotheca Teubneriana database.

Remarks on Mátyás Maróthy, the Philosophical Chief Engineer of Szeged

2025-06-05T08:49:56+02:00

The essay deals with a hitherto little-noticed aspect of the life of Mátyás Maróthy (1791–1850), the highly respected 19th-century chief engineer of Szeged. It states that in the twilight of his life and in the difficult year of 1850, he not only performed his duties in an exemplary manner (the documents of which are recorded in local historical literature), but also published a treatise in Hungarian on natural law and natural religion. The essay describes the main ideas of the work and then presents the author and his work, which is only identified by name in the Hungarian edition, outlining the history of Constantin François Volney's treatise, its origins, and its afterlife in France and Europe. Drawing on the Hungarian reception of the work, the presumed purpose of Maróthy's enterprise is formulated. He highlights a work by István Vedres, written a decade earlier, and concludes from the similarities that the inspirational example of his former boss likely played a role in the publication.

Szeredai:

2025-06-05T09:22:33+02:00

The essay presents one of the characters of János Arany’s epic poem, The Love of Toldi, completed in 1879. The middle part of the Toldi trilogy is set in 1350, during the reign of King Louis I, after the murder of his brother, Prince Andrew. At this time, Hungarian soldiers were fighting in Italy. The protagonist, Miklós Toldi, met an outlander in disguise, under the pseudonym Szeredai, meaning ‘born on Wednesday’. This character is connected to Arany’s earlier works on many layers. He is a bard who plays the koboz (an early Hungarian type of the lute) and is a survivor of a family tragedy. Eventually, he finds his new homeland in Arany’s birthplace, Nagyszalonta.

Meek Bozgors

2025-06-05T09:43:41+02:00

Based on the consistent omission of the Hungarian swear words from the different Hungarian translations of Jaroslav Hašek’s The Good Soldier Švejk, this paper aims to prove Sándor Szilágyi N.’s suggestion regarding the etymology of the deprecatory ethnonym “bozgor” used in Romanian. According to the sources presented here, the stereotype of verbally aggressive Hungarians has been known since the 18th century, especially in German literature, but it was reinforced around the First World War. It was spread through vulgar jokes in the popular literature, but at the same time less and less tolerated by Hungarian public opinion, which, after the Treaty of Trianon, most probably started simply to ignore it with an automatic, defensive reflex.

Nothing New Under the Sun:

2025-06-05T09:58:50+02:00

The paper discusses a 20th-century Hungarian adaptation in verses of E. S. Piccolomini’s Historia de duobus amantibus. The author of the adaptation was an otherwise unknown poet, by the name of Aladár Kiss. Taking as a starting point one of Kiss’ notes to the text, the paper focuses on fictitious songs written about Lukrécia, the female protagonist of the story, comparing her attitude towards such songs with the mentality of another fictional female character, Julcsa Manga, created by a late 19th-century Hungarian novelist, Zsigmond Justh.

The Dragon, the Tail of the Rabbit and something Wretched:

2025-06-05T10:30:09+02:00

The article follows the journey of a humanist manuscript from its discovery to its publication, with the help of two letters and a thank-you note from a library. In 1936, Oszkár Sárkány (1912–1943) came across Elias Corvinus' panegyric bearing the title Ioannis Hunniadae res bellicae contra Turcas. The talented young researcher discovered the manuscript in the ÖNB, while being on a scholarship awarded by the Collegium Hungaricum in Vienna. In the first quoted letter, Sárkány informed his friend, László Tarnói about the discovery of the manuscript. The second letter was written to Sárkány by his colleague, Emma Bartoniek, who proved that Sárkány’s discovery was indeed a work previously unknown to the scholarly community. The third document is sent to Sárkány by the archives of the University of Vienna, thanking him for the copy of the critical edition, fresh off the press.

A Bear World and Its Implications in Dino Buzzati’s Tale

2025-06-05T10:44:10+02:00

La famosa invasione degli orsi in Sicilia (The Bears’ Famous Invasion of Sicily) by Dino Buzzati, one of the most important figures of 20th-century Italian literature, presents a vision of general moral and political mechanisms. The realistic political plane, combined with a fabulous and fantastic narrative arc, provides a completely human perspective on zoomorphic reality through the optics of a particular bear. This paper focuses on the implications that explore the moral attitudes of the zoomorphic man.