PRIBOJEVIĆ, Vinko. [with] MELLINI, Guido.

An interesting sammelband. The first work is the first edition in Italian of the genealogical origins of the Slavic peoples by the Croatian humanist Vinko Pribojević (d. c. 1532), first published in Latin in 1532; it also contains a catalogue of books from the Aldine press available for purchase from their shop in Venice (ff. a6v-8v). The second is the first edition of a life of the medieval ‘grand countess’ or margrave Matilda of Tuscany, who ruled the feudal dominion of Tuscia in the eleventh century, by a little-known Dominican monk. 

The first work is a celebration of Slavic and Dalmatian culture, originally delivered in the form of an oration on the island of Hvar in Croatia, which includes the claim that Alexander the Great was a Slav. Pribojević blends mythical and biblical history, beginning with Noah’s Flood and the origins of the Illyrians and Thracians from one of Noah’s sons, and arguing that they were distinct from the Greeks, before suggesting that the Illyrians, as well as the Celts and Gauls, were descended from the union of Cyclops and Galatea. He also suggests that the Slavs were descended from the ancient Macedonians, who were also definitively not Greek (one of his boldest claims), hence the Slavic connection with Alexander the Great and his heroic conquests, which Pribojević describes. Other putative Slavic origin stories described by Pribojević include their descent from the Scythians or possibly from the union of the Amazons with the Goths, that is before the Amazons had brutally killed their Gothic husbands. Pribojević draws on a wide range of classical sources, including Virgil, Pliny the Elder, Polybius, Strabo, Livy, Appian, Plutarch, Thucydides, Vegetius, Curtius, Suetonius, Josephus, Pomponius Mela, etc. etc.

 Matilda of Tuscany was present at the pivotal Walk to Canossa during the Investiture Controversy, when the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV prostrated himself during a blizzard at the gates of her castle and begged the forgiveness of Pope Gregory VII. An advocate of papal authority over imperial hegemony, she mediated on behalf of the pope and in opposition to her estranged husband, Godfrey the Hunchback. The engraving, derived from an illustration in the contemporary manuscript account of Matilda’s life by the Italian monk Donizo, now in the Vatican Library, shows her enthroned and in a distinctive pointed hat, holding a branch and flanked by Donizo, who is presenting her with his book, and a male attendant holding a sword. She is sometimes depicted holding the papal tiara and keys of St. Peter.

The Pribojević was unknown to Renouard: ‘Je n’ai trouvé aucune trace de cette edition de 1595, alors annoncée comme étant sous presse. On voit le mème livre sur les précédens Catalogues, avec la date de 1592, mais sans l’indictation du prix; ce qui me feroit croire que ces éditions de 1592 et 1595 n’ont pas été effectuées’ (Ren. 253: 3).