N
Nicholas of Modruš
Born: ca. 1425, Kotor
Died: 1480, Rome
Luka Špoljarić
University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Nicholas of Modruš was a Croatian bishop and
intellectual, who after rising through the ranks
in Croatia and Hungary spent the major part of
his career in the Papal State. During his life he
authored at least eight works on various topics.
Although initially he wanted to establish his
name as a theologian and philosopher, he later
developed a stronger interest in humanist rhe-
toric and historiography.
Alternate Names
Nicholas Mahin of Kotor, Bishop of Modruš
Biography
Nicholas was born around 1425 in Kotor, Vene-
tian Dalmatia, into a well-off, though non-noble,
family that drew origin from the Mahin clan based
in the immediate hinterland. After presumably
finishing elementary and secondary education in
# Springer International Publishing AG 2018
M. Sgarbi (ed.), Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_1163-1
his hometown, he moved to Venice to pursue
philosophical studies in the Scuola di Rialto
under Paul of Pergola. He seems to have studied
with Pergola from about 1448 until to 1454/1455.
His rapid rise began after his move to Croatia in
1456, where in 1461 he became bishop of
Modruš, the most important bishopric of northern
Croatia, and from where he came to enjoy regular
contact with the Hungarian intellectual circle cen-
tered around John Vitez. After serving as papal
legate in Bosnia and Hungary in 1463–1464, he
relocated permanently to the papal curia. Over the
next 16 years, until his death in 1480, he
established himself as the chief representative of
the Illyrian national community, dividing his time
between Rome and the provincial cities of the
Papal State where he often served as governor.
In Rome he immediately formed close connec-
tions with Cardinal Marco Barbo and Pope Paul
II, as well as with Cardinal Bessarion and his
intellectual circle, while later he became one of
the intimates of Pope Sixtus IV (Mercati 1937;
Neralić 2003). During his career, he authored at
least eight works on various topics, from philo-
sophical treatises to speeches and works of
history.
His first two works are philosophical-
theological treatises written during the period he
divided his time between Croatia and Hungary.
His first known work, Dialogue on the Happiness
of Mortals (Dialogus de mortalium foelicitate,
1462), is a dialogue set in the Scuola di Rialto
with his teacher Paul of Pergola and two of his
2 Nicholas of Modruš
former fellow students, Domenico Bragadin and
Giovanni Cesarini, acting as interlocutors. The
dialogue, which was based in fact on the discus-
sions that took place in Vitez’s palace in
Nagyvárad (Oradea), treats the question whether
a man can achieve his happiness in the mortal
world through natural reason or only through
divine revelation (Lepori 1987; Lepori 1980;
Schiffler 1992; Banić-Pajnić 1998). The other of
his first two works, Peter’s Barge (Navicula
Petri), was more modest in ambition. Written in
1463 in the form of an epistle, it explores the
problem of physical evil, with Nicholas analyzing
what he sees are five reasons why God incurs evil
on humans. The prologue implicitly places the
work in the context of the Ottoman conquest of
Bosnia, which Nicholas, the last papal legate in
the kingdom, barely escaped with his life
(Špoljarić 2015a).
After his move to the papal curia in 1464,
Nicholas continued to pursue philosophical topics
in his works, at least initially. In 1465/1466 he
finished De consolatione (On Consolation),
which discusses the question of sorrow and
methods of consoling (Jovanović 2002). The
work blends Christian and Stoic ideas and is
praised today as an important chapter in the his-
tory of writing about grief (McClure 1987;
Jovanović 1999; Baltussen 2015). Nicholas’s
next work, On Humility (De humilitate, 1470), is
more enigmatic. It was dedicated to a woman who
had taken religious vows, most probably Francis-
can ones, but today is preserved only in manu-
script fragments, which discuss nourishments,
companion virtues, and fruits of humility.
Although the marginal notes in the books that
belonged to his library show that he still continued
to occupy himself with theological and philosoph-
ical questions in the privacy of his study (Špoljarić
2012), from the early 1470s Nicholas began writ-
ing about other topics. His later works include On
the Wars of the Goths (De bellis Gothorum, 1472/
1473), a history of the Gothic wars of late antiq-
uity; the funerary oration for Cardinal Pietro
Riario (1474) (Nicolaus Episcopus Modrusiensis
1474); a short treatise on the authors and themes
of psalms (1476/1477); and an anti-Medicean
propaganda piece, Defense of Ecclesiastical
Liberty (Defensio ecclesiasticae libertatis,
1480). One should also mention here his Latin
translations of Isocrates’s orations To Nicocles
and To Demonicus (after 1468), although these
were in fact redactions of already existing trans-
lations (Špoljarić 2015b); he studied Greek with
Bessarion’s scribe Andronico Callisto, but he
never seems to have developed anything more
than an elementary knowledge of the language.
Although many of Nicholas’s works often
offer unique perspectives on the questions they
address, they seem to have exerted little influence
on contemporaries. Apart from his funerary ora-
tion for Pietro Riario, which owing to papal sup-
port became the most printed funerary oration of
the fifteenth century, no work of Nicholas was
printed during his lifetime, and most are today
preserved in one or two manuscripts, usually
either presentation copies or his own.
References
Primary Literature
Jovanović, Neven. 2002. Nicolai Modrussiensis De
consolatione liber. In Hrvatska književna baština [Cro-
atian literary heritage], ed. Dunja Fališevac et al., vol. 1,
55–251. Zagreb: Ex libris.
Lepori, Fernando. 1987. Ragione naturale e rivelazione in
una disputa alla Scuola di Rialto: Il De mortalium
foelicitate di Nicolò Modrussiense. Medioevo: Rivista
di Storia Della Filosofia Medievale 13: 223–296.
Nicolaus Episcopus Modrusiensis. 1474. Oratio in funere
Petri Cardinalis S. Sixti habita. Rome: In domo
Antonii et Raphaelis de Vulterris.
Špoljarić, Luka. 2015a. Politika, patronat i intelektualna
kultura na ugarskom dvoru u prvim godinama
vladavine Matije Korvina: Nikola Modruški i Petrova
lađica (Studija, kritičko izdanje i prijevod) [Politics,
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Špoljarić, Luka. 2015b. Nicholas of Modruš and his Latin
translations of Isocrates’s To Nicocles and To
Demonicus: Questions of authorship, sources and ded-
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Secondary Literature
Baltussen, Han. 2015. Nicolas of Modruš’ De
Consolatione (1465–66): A new approach to grief man-
agement. In Hearts and minds: Ordering emotions in
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Banić-Pajnić, Erna. 1998. Modruški o ljudskoj sreći kao
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Jovanović, Neven. 1999. ‘Čitanje Modruškoga Marulićem:
De consolatione i Evangelistarium’ [Reading Nicholas
of Modruš through Marulić: De consolatione and
Evangelistarium]. Colloquia Maruliana 8: 137–168.
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fondazione alla metà del cinquecento. In Storia della
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3
Mercati, Giovanni. 1937. Notizie varie sopra Niccolò
Modrussiense. In Opere minori, vol. 4, 205–267. Vat-
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Neralić, Jadranka. 2003. Nicholas of Modruš
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circumstances. Bulletin of the Society for Renaissance
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Schiffler, Ljerka. 1992. Filozofski Dijalog o sreći smrtnika
Nikole Modruškog [Philosophical Dialogue on the
Happiness of Mortals by Nicholas of Modruš]. In
Humanizam bez granica: Hrvatska filozofija u
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Špoljarić, Luka. 2012. Ex libris Nicolai Episcopi
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