Marko Marulić, Croatian poet (b. 1450)
Marko Marulić Splićanin (Croatian pronunciation: [mâːrko mǎrulitɕ]), in Latin Marcus Marulus Spalatensis (18 August 1450 – 5 January 1524), was a Croatian poet, lawyer, judge, and Renaissance humanist who coined the term "psychology". He is the national poet of Croatia. According to George J. Gutsche, Marulic's epic poem Judita, "is the first long poem in Croatian", and, "gives Marulić a position in his own literature comparable to Dante in Italian literature." Furthermore, Marulić's Latin poetry is also of such high quality that his contemporaries dubbed him, "The Christian Virgil."Marulić has been called the "crown of the Croatian medieval age", the "father of the Croatian Renaissance", and "The Father of Croatian literature."According to Marulić scholar Bratislav Lučin, the notary of Split was well-versed in both the Christian Bible and in the Fathers of the Church. At the same time, Marulić also attentively read the Pre-Christian Greek and Latin classics. He read and interpreted Latin epigrams, wrote glosses on the poetry of Catullus, read Petronius' Satyricon, and admired Erasmus of Rotterdam. Marulić also composed epic works of Christian poetry, humanist elegies, and even satirical and erotic epigrams.Although Marulić's writings in Renaissance Latin, once adored and envied across Europe, shared the destiny that befell most of Renaissance Humanist literature: they vanished into oblivion.According to Lučin, however, the passage of time has slowly revealed the important web of influence that a single Croatian poet and writer successfully wove all over Europe and far beyond its borders. Marulić's writings were admired by churchmen such as Sts. Francis Xavier, Francis de Sales, Peter Canisius, and Charles Borromeo, by monarchs and statesmen such as King Henry VIII, Thomas More, and Emperor Carl V, and lastly by poets and humanists such as Jan Dantyszek, Conrad Peutinger, and Francisco de Quevedo.More recently, Pope John Paul II quoted from a Marulić poem during his 1998 Apostolic Visit to Solin, Croatia.