Saša Vuković
Undergraduate student of history
Faculty of Philosophy, University in Zagreb
sasa.vukovic1996@gmail.com
Original scientific paper
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4926105
received: 26.09.2020.
accepted: 20.10.2020.
Abstract: In this article, the author deals with the origins and development of the theory of the Slavic origin of Saint Jerome during the High and Late Middle Ages. After a short introduction about the life of Saint Jerome, based on The Golden Legend and its historiographical commentary, and the basic problems with determination of the place of his birth, ancient Stridon, discussions about his origin are put into the context of the problematic position of Glagolitic letters and Slavic liturgy within the medieval Catholic Church. In the first part of the article, the ambivalent position of Latin hierarchy towards Saints Cyril and Methodius, most probable authors of Glagolitic letters, and their legacy within the Church is shown as the main reason for the development of the so-called Jerome-myth among the local clergy in Croatian lands. Based on the idea of the Slavic origin of Saint Jerome, this myth claims him to be both the inventor of Glagolitic script and translator of the Bible and liturgical books to Slavonic language. By inventing this, the Glagolitic clergy hoped to remove the suspicion caused by the so-called Methodii doctrina, frowned upon in Rome since the end of the 9th century. The central part in this was played by the lack of understanding the concept of migrations of the population of the mentioned area during its early medieval history, which was used as a foundation for the development of the myth that reached its peak with the papal approval of Glagolitic tradition in Innocent IV’s letter to the bishop Filip of Senj in 1248. From this moment on, the practice of Slavic liturgy spread across Croatian territory, marking the peak of Croatian Glagolitic production. The second part of this article talks about the conflict between Croatian and Italian humanists focused around the person of Saint Jerome, interpreted as an ideal archetype of a humanist thinker, which could have been used as a tool in the fight against clerical conservatives and their stance about the use of Classical literature and scholastic philosophy but also for the critique of the immodest ways of living of Church’s hierarchy during Renaissance. Participants of this heated discussion, mostly made during the late 15th and early 16th centuries, are divided into two main groups – Istrian and Dalmatian – roughly matched with their Italian or Croatian ethnicity, whose basic ideas and main representatives (especially Flavio Biondo for Italian and Marko Marulić for Croatian side) are shortly presented. By using different fragments from Classical authors writing about modern Croatian territory and developing their own interpretations of the connection between their contemporary Slavic and Italian populations and the peoples described in the mentioned sources, they had sought to appropriate Saint Jerome for their own ethnicity, hoping that it would boost their prestige within the Church and humanistic Europe. After a short review about the beginning of proto-nationalistic uses of Saint Jerome as an identity symbol in Dalmatian towns endangered with Venetian pretensions (such as Dubrovnik or Trogir; but also in the Venice itself) and his promulgation as Croatian national patron saint, crowned with the transformation of the Roman church of Saint Jerome into the national church of Croats/South Slavs, the author concludes the article by joining its two parts in the personality of Saint Jerome and its centuries-old attraction.
Keywords: Saint Jerome, glagolitic script, humanism, Stridon, Dalmatia, Istria, Jerome’s cult, Marko Marulić, Pier Paolo Vergerio, Flavio Biondo
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