In Hungaria vero dementis est quaerere Ficinum? Valerian Mader’s poem about Marsilio Ficino

Dávid Molnár

doi:10.6093/1826-753X/8849

Dávid Molnár Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3825-2030

DOI: https://doi.org/10.6093/1826-753X/8849

Keywords: medical history, paratext, poetry writing, preliminary matter, schoolbook

Abstract

Despite the remarkable flow of Marsilio Ficino's works between Florence and Buda since 1470, an inexplicable silence around the Florentine master can be observed in Hungary in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: the epigram dedicated by Janus Pannonius to Ficino in 1469 («De Marsilio Ficino») was followed only in 1588 by a poem, «In libellum medicum, Marsilii Ficini», by Valerian Mader, a pastor from Trencsén (Trenčín). The article examines Mader’s text and its genre, with the aim of bringing out the reasons why Ficino in Mader’s view turned out to be an ‘ancient’ author, known in 1588 by very few people. It then traces the local network of the pastor-poet –– consisting of country teachers, priests, schoolmates, and friends –– in an attempt to interpret the 120-year hiatus in Ficino’s fortunes within Hungarian culture.

Author Biography

Dávid Molnár, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest

Dávid Molnár (<mollnardavid@gmail.com>) is a senior research fellow at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest since 2020 (the project number is PD 132376). He is also a senior researcher in the Speculum Research Group at the University of Tokaj-Hegyalja in Sárospatak, Hungary, since 2021. He graduated in Hungarian literature and Philosophy (Pécs, 2003) and obtained his PhD degree in Hungarian literature with a thesis entitled «“Furor est cum cantat”. Marsilio Ficino and the Hungarian platonists ‘in love’ in the age of Matthias Corvinus» (Eötvös Loránd University, 2015). Between 2015 and 2019 he was affiliated as a research fellow in Humanism in East-Central Europe Research Group at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 2010, he published his Hungarian translation of Agnolo Firenzuola’s Dialogo delle bellezze delle donne (A női szépségről). He is currently working on a monograph and critical edition of the works of János Filiczki, as well as on the edition of Ferenc Hunyadi’s opera omnia in Latin.