Jerome Comes Home: The Cult of Saint Jerome in Late Medieval Dalmatia

Ines Ivić

Central European University, Department of Medieval Studies

 

In present day Croatia, St Jerome is considered a national saint, the outcome of a long period of appropriation beginning in the Middle Ages. The spread of his cult in medieval Dalmatia can be traced to the fifteenth century, when Jerome became a synonym for Dalmatia and the Dalmatians. This article discusses the historical circumstances which led to the formation of the common Dalmatian identity: establishment of the Venetian government after 1409, changes in the social structure in the Dalmatian communes and the rise of humanism there. This research focuses on the first two towns to adopt official celebrations of Jerome’s feast, Dubrovnik and Trogir. They still hold the largest numbers of artistic representations of the saint. We take the perspective of the private and public veneration expressed in these artworks.
Keywords: St Jerome, regional cult, Late Middle Ages, Dalmatia

 

St Jerome (345?–420) occupies a special place in the pantheon of saints. He was a trilingual Biblical scholar, ferocious Catholic controversialist, zealous moralist and belligerent defender of the ascetic life. Today, this universal saint is also unofficially considered the national saint of Croatia. The national denomination is a result of a long process that started in Dalmatia with the development of a regional cult that formed out of different traditions. Local Glagolitic tradition, first documented in the thirteenth century, praised Jerome for his regional origins, his invention of the Glagolitic script and his translation of the Bible into Slavonic, while the imported humanist tradition praised his intellectual deeds and ascetic way of life.

This article will discuss the formation of the regional cult in Dalmatia through the intertwining of these traditions. Manifestations of the traditions are preserved in artworks and literary productions which also testify to the popularity of the saint. The cult in medieval Dalmatia has been discussed only sporadically in previous historiography and poses many questions for research. Among the most important is Jerome’s role in the formation of regional and ethnic identity in Dalmatia. Since this question has been treated before, especially through Slavic confraternities named after St Jerome that were active outside the homeland,1 I will focus on an aspect that has not yet been discussed: the historical and political context in which the cult emerged in Dubrovnik (Ragusa) and Trogir (Traù), among the first cities to celebrate the cult officially. An analysis of artworks and archival documents reveals how the cult was imbued with strong political and ethnic characteristics and was induced by the establishment of the Venetian government in Dalmatia after 1409. The discussion takes the perspective of public and private veneration of the saint.

There is a vast scholarship on Jerome’s life. Although the most relevant books were published some decades ago, they still represent the starting point for discussing Jerome’s cult in Europe.2 Among the recent works I would highlight is a collection of essays on Jerome’s written legacy, edited by Andrew Cain and Josef Lössl, giving an extensive bibliography on Jerome.3 Unfortunately, none of these works contain references to veneration of Jerome in Dalmatia, which would be an important contribution to scholarship, considering the strong cultural, religious and political connection between the two shores of the Adriatic Sea. A recently published book by Julia Verkholantsev deals with the Slavic identity of the saint in Dalmatia and among other Slavs, covering the manifestations of the cult in Bohemia, Poland and Silesia.4 This work represents an excellent starting point in the research of Jerome’s Dalmatian identity, since it discusses the local Slavic tradition of worship based on the belief that Jerome was the inventor of the Glagolitic script. A similar topic was also discussed by John Fine, one of the first scholars to sketch out how Jerome became a Slavic saint.5

In Croatian historiography, writing on St Jerome can be separated into three groups. In the first, Jerome appears in the light of the Glagolitic tradition and the attribution of the invention of the Glagolitic letters. Work in the second group focuses on the artistic features of a series of reliefs representing St Jerome in the cave by Andria Alessi and Niccolò Fiorentino.6 In the last group, Jerome is mentioned in the context of writing by humanists, mostly focusing on Marko Marulić.7 So far no study has united all known aspects of the cult of the saint or interpreted it through the perspective of historical, cultural and artistic contexts. Before getting to Quattrocento Dalmatia, however, I will briefly provide a survey of the evolution of Jerome’s cult from Bethlehem through Italy to Dalmatia.

From Bethlehem to Italy

The cult of St Jerome was present in Western Europe by the middle of the ninth century, when the first lives of the saint, Hieronymus noster and Plerosque nimirum, were written independently.8 The Legenda Aurea, by Jacobus de Voragine (1230–99) contributed to his popularity and became the main literary source for visual representations, as in the fresco cycle by Vittore Carpaccio in the Scuola de San Giorgio degli Schiavoni in Venice.9

The thirteenth century saw a veritable rebirth of Jerome’s cult in the Western church, after Jerome’s relics were translated to the Roman basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. The translation is described in Translatio corpori beati Hieronymi written around 1290. It relates that Jerome appeared in the dream of a monk and expressed a wish that his body be moved to the Roman basilica, as Bethlehem was under the rule of Arabs. The process of re-evaluation of the saint’s deeds begun in the fourteenth century with Giovanni d’Andrea, a canon from Bologna and professor of law at the University of Bologna, who wrote a book Hieronymianus or De Laudibus de Sancti Hieronymi, which contains Jerome’s own work and writing on Jerome by other authors.10 Another contributor to the emergence of the cult in Italy was Pier Paolo Vergerio the Elder (1370–1444), a canon lawyer born in Capodistria in today’s Slovenia. Vergerio’s family worshipped St Jerome to express gratitude for the family’s rescue during several ambushes in 1380, which they believed was Jerome’s deed. Vergerio vowed that “as long as I live, I will review the praises and excellent merits of Jerome in the speech before an assembly of the best citizens”.11 The humanists who accepted Jerome as a patron praised him particularly for his intellectual work and his translations of Holy Scriptures. Furthermore, he was seen as a perfect example of living a moral life that followed the sacred teachings. For Vergerio, Jerome’s life “serves as an example of ethical conduct”.12 The eremitical aspect of Jerome’s life came into sharper focus in the fifteenth century along with the blooming of the Franciscan Observant movement and the foundation of different congregations of the eremitical brothers imitating Jerome’s lifestyle.13 After being disseminated through multiple channels, Jerome’s cult was accepted in most of the Western Church by the end of the fifteenth century.

Rivalizing for the Birthplace of the Saint

Before the humanist version took shape in the fifteenth century, the cult of St Jerome was well established in Dalmatia, mostly among the closed monastic communities. It developed out of the statement in the last chapter of Jerome’s work De viris illustribus that he was born in Stridon, situated somewhere on the border of the Roman provinces of Pannonia and Dalmatia, territory of the present day Croatia.14 Jerome probably never imagined that a single sentence in his book would cause a centuries-long dispute over the exact location of his place of birth. The town he mentions was a small oppidum, and lack of archaeological and historical evidence makes it hard for historians to reach definite conclusions regarding its location. Stridon has been identified with places near Aquileia, Italy, with Zrenj, Štrigova, with the surroundings of Skradin in Croatia, and even with Grahovo polje in Bosnia. These appropriations of the saint’s birthplace have never resulted in a strong local cult in the towns involved. For the present account, the most relevant explanations are the “Istrian” and “Dalmatian” theories, which emerged in the fifteenth century and directly fed the dispute between the Dalmatian and the Italian humanists.15

The Istrian theory locates the saint’s birthplace to the site of present-day Zrenj (Sdrigna), a village in northern Istria. In the Middle Ages, the habitants of Istria believed that Jerome was born somewhere within their peninsula, a belief that is evident in the presence of Jerome’s cult in liturgical books and churches consecrated to him. This explanation was popularized by Flavio Biondo (1392–1463) and Jacopo Filippo Foresti, also known as Jacopo di Bergamo (1434–1520), in the Late Middle Ages. In his Italia Illustrata, published in 1474, describing the region of Istria, Biondo names St Jerome and Pier Paolo Vergerio the Elder as the most prominent people from the region. He classifies Istria as an Italian province, concluding that Jerome could not be anything else but Italian, since, in his opinion, Istria had been a Roman province even before the time of Emperor Augustus.16 Jacopo di Bergamo, Biondo’s student, accepted his teacher’s opinion and so did many others in subsequent centuries.17

The Dalmatian hypothesis developed from the commonly accepted idea of the saint’s regional origin. This is evident, for example, in the official decision to adopt the feast of St Jerome in Trogir in 1454 on the grounds of his Dalmatian origin.18 Marko Marulić (Marcus Marulus, 1450–1524) was probably the first proponent of this hypothesis. He was the first to infer from written sources that Stridon was located somewhere near Skradin.19 Most of the representatives of this theory agreed only that Stridon was in Dalmatia, but could not reach a consensus concerning the precise place.20 This is the explanation that still features most commonly in Croatian and international historiography.

St Jerome as the Inventor of Glagolitic Letters

In medieval Croatia, St Jerome was considered as the inventor of Glagolitic letters and Slavic liturgy. There is no historical foundation for this idea, however. Jerome lived long before Slavs came to the territory of Dalmatia and was thus unlikely to have spoken Slavonic or to have invented Glagolitic letters. The earliest written record of the belief that Jerome was the inventor of the Glagolitic script is contained in Pope Innocent IV’s answer to a request by the Bishop of Senj in 1248 defending the use of Slavonic liturgy and Glagolitic letters in his diocese.21 The pope’s answer granted the clergy permission to continue their tradition, and confirmed the legitimacy of the Slavonic tradition, invoking the authority of the great church father. 22 Although the pope’s answer mentions “Slavic lands” in which these letters may be used, this approval should be seen as applying to the diocese of Senj alone, and not to the whole territory inhabited by Slavs.23

Croatian historiography traditionally accepts that the legend of Jerome inventing Glagolitic letters derived from the fear of accusations of heresy arising from disputes on the use of Slavonic language and liturgy. These disputes were discussed at the Church Councils of Split in 925 and 1060. This argument was also supported by the fact that St Cyril, the actual inventor of Glagolitic letters, was not venerated by the Glagolitic communities and his brother Methodius was considered a heretic.24 John Fine argues that Jerome was used by the Glagolites as “the ancient heritage” to justify their tradition each time they were attacked by Latinists.25 On the other hand, Julia Verkholantsev argues that even though Glagolites used the Slavonic language, they were following western monastic rules and had common practices with the Latin ecclesiastical communities. With this in mind, acceptance of St Jerome as their patron was a way to prove their loyalty to the Western Church.26 Furthermore, she discusses the possibility that the roots of this misbelief could be found among the Latin clergy, and the explanation was promoted as one of the ways of incorporating Glagolitic communities into the Western Church.27

Vesna Badurina Stipčević has made a detailed analysis of the Glagolitic liturgical books that contain references to the saint. She has published a list of breviaries, dating from between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, containing the officium of St Jerome on his feast day, September 30.28 The officium was composed of three parts: a hymn to Jerome, his life, and an excerpt from his letter to Eustochium. Jerome’s life is described from his birth in Stridon until his death in Bethlehem. Since most of the breviaries were used in monastic communities, it is not surprising that his officium included the passage of his letter to Eustochium where he described his penitent life in the desert, fasting, fighting bodily temptations, and surrounded by wild animals.

Other Glagolitic liturgical books referring to St Jerome are missals. A mass in honor of St Jerome is preserved only in missals from the northern parts of the Adriatic basin, Kvarner and Istria. The full mass can be found in the oldest surviving Croatian Glagolitic missal written in 1371 in Omišalj. Today, it is kept in the Vatican library and known as Borgo Illirico IV.29 Another missal is the First Beram Missal 162, now held in the National Library of Slovenia in Ljubljana.30 The first printed book in Croatia, the Missale Romanum Glagolitice, published in 1483, was published in the Croatian recension of Church Slavonic, based on the manuscript Missal of Duke Novak written in 1368. In the calendar of the editio princeps, May 9 was marked as the feast of the Translation of St Jerome (Prenesenie svetago Eronima), but this is not contained in any other Glagolitic calendar. Marija Pantelić proved that the Missal of Duke Novak was edited for printing by Glagolitic monks in Istria.31 According to her, the celebration of the translation of Jerome’s relics to the Roman church of Santa Maria Maggiore was connected to the rising popularity of the idea of the saint’s Istrian origin promoted by Flavio Biondo. In 1464, Pope Pius II officially proclaimed this date as the feast of the Translatio. Interestingly, Pius II had previously been Bishop of Trieste and was certainly familiar with the widely-held belief in his bishopric that the village of Zrenj was Stridon. The bishop of Ravenna, Superantio, wrote in the fourteenth century that Zrenj contained a very simple church in honor of the Jerome, standing above the grave of the saint’s parents.32 The inclusion of the feast in the calendar is an expression of this Istrian tradition and the respect paid by the Istrian redactors of the text to their former bishop. The Istrian influence is reflected in other feasts specific to the region that cannot be found in other calendars: St Lazarus and St Servulus, martyrs from Trieste.33 Marija Pantelić also suggests that the celebration of the translation of the saint’s relics can be seen in another tradition. The Glagolitic First Beram Breviary 161, written in 1396 and today held in the National Library in Ljubljana, has a special officium on the date of the translation. However, the distinctive feature of this officium is an alternative hagiographical view of the translation of Jerome’s relics, attributing it to St Helen, who apparently had sent a piece of Jerome’s clothes to her son with a request to build a church consecrated to him in Constantinople.34 It is not yet known whether the cult existed in Byzantium or what could have been the source for this officium.

The surviving breviaries give a clue to the geographical origins of the cult. Most were used in the northern parts of Croatia, the Kvarner and Istria. The only Dalmatian Glagolitic breviary that contains the officium of St Jerome is the fourteenth-century Pašman Breviary, made in the Benedictine monastery of St Cosmas and Damian in Tkon, on the island of Pašman. The saint’s officium in the Pašman Breviary can be seen as the reflection of a strong Glagolitic tradition in the Zadar (Zara) region, but it does not indicate the celebration of the saint in the Dalmatian cities which would later become the centers of the humanist cult: Trogir, Split and Dubrovnik. The breviaries all attest to the continuation of Jerome’s cult in medieval Croatia and in Venetian and Habsburg Istria, medieval political entities which were not a part of medieval Croatian kingdom, but there is insufficient historical evidence to say the same for medieval Dalmatia. Regardless the political non-unity of the Croatian lands, it is evident that the saint was venerated in areas where the population was predominantly Slavic. It is reasonable to assume that other breviaries from Dalmatia, now lost, contained the same office. All the more so because the monastery in Tkon had a scriptorium in which Glagolitic books were produced for the whole region of Dalmatia. Future research into the origin of Jerome’s cult among the Glagolites, especially in Istria, should consider the comparative analysis of the Missal of Duke Novak and the editio princeps made by Marija Pantelić, which confirmed the exchange of the Glagolitic texts from Zadar, through Lika and Krbava, to Istria.35 This would reveal Dalmatia’s place in the wider cultural context, and permit the conclusion that the existence of the cult in Istria also implies its existence in Dalmatia. The enduring Glagolitic tradition in the region also lends support to this claim.

The non-liturgical Glagolitic codex Petris Miscellany from 1468 contains 162 different texts, mostly apocrypha and hagiographic legends, including the legend of Jerome, which refers to him as Jerome the Croat (Jeronim Hrvatin) and emphasizes his Slavic origin.36 For Petar Runje, one of the pioneers of Glagolitic research in Croatia, this is proof that “in the fifteenth century, among the Croats, there existed a notion of Jerome being Croatian”.37 In my opinion, this is a hasty conclusion based on an unwarranted generalization, since most of the other sources refer to Jerome as Dalmatian, Illyrian or Slav. Although Jerome may seem to have acquired Croatian national attributes in the fifteenth century and the modes of his appearance in the subsequent sources are clues to the formation of the Croatian nation, I believe that the explanation for the term Hrvatin should rather be sought in the original from which the text was translated. Stjepan Ivišić argues that Jerome’s legend in the Petris Miscellany, together with some other texts, was translated from the fourteenth century Czech passionale collection of saints’ legends.38 It is possible that Jerome was referred to as Croatian in the Czech original, not necessarily containing ethnic but rather geographical attribution, and that the translator was only following the original text and not exclusively emphasizing the national designation.39

The example of Juraj Slovinac (George of Slavonia; Georgius de Sclavonia, 1355/60–1416), theologian and professor at the Sorbonne, proves the general acceptance of the idea that Jerome was the inventor of Glagolitic script. In his copy of Jerome’s Latin commentaries on the Psalms, where Jerome explains that he translated psalms into vernacular language, Juraj made a marginal note claiming that Jerome was a translator of the psalms “in linguam sclavonicam”.40 There are similar testimonies in the travel itineraries of western pilgrims who visited Dalmatia on their way to the Holy Land. One of them was the Swiss Dominican Felix Fabri (1441/43–1502), who stopped in several cities on the Dalmatian coast, observing their religious and social practices.41 He reported that in most Dalmatian cities, the mass was held in the Slavonic language and some churches did not even possess the liturgical books in Latin.42 In conversation with the local people, he was informed that Jerome invented letters for his compatriots that were different from Greek and Latin script, and that he used them to transliterate and translate the Bible and the Book of Hours into the vernacular language that was later called Slavonic. Georges Lengherand, Mayor of Mons, stopped in Dalmatia and Istria during his journey to Jerusalem in 1485/86. He described a Slavonic mass he attended while he was in Istria, one which, he was told, had been composed in Slavonic by the saint himself.43

The Cult in Dubrovnik

Having extended beyond the strictly monastic communities by the fifteenth century, Jerome’s cult appeared with its distinctive features in all major cities in Dalmatia, from Zadar to Dubrovnik, by the end of the century. The intensive exchange of goods and knowledge between the two shores of the Adriatic contributed to the development and expansion of the humanist cult of St Jerome in Dalmatia. This humanist cult, however, was only an upgrade of existing forms of worship deriving from the Glagolitic tradition. The official introduction of the saint’s feast day in the towns of Dubrovnik and Trogir in the middle of the fifteenth century was due to a strong local tradition.

It is hard to find evidence of the cult in Dubrovnik before its official proclamation, but manifestations of the cult may have been lost in the Great Earthquake that struck the city in 1667, destroying much of it. Still, the archival material helps us to reconstruct the saint’s importance and the manifestations of his cult. In 1445, his celebration day was incorporated into the official state calendar of the Republic of Ragusa.44 This was the first official recognition of the cult in a Dalmatian city. The proclamation reflected an established practice in Dalmatia, as can be read from the text of the decision: Jerome was to be “worshipped by us and the other Dalmatians of whose nation he was”.45 This statement indisputably proves the wide recognition and acceptance of the idea of his origin among people living in Dalmatian territory.

After the half century of independence gained through skillful diplomatic negotiation and set into the Treaty of Zadar of 1358, the Republic of Ragusa felt a constant threat from the proximity of its biggest rival, Venice, especially after the establishment of the Venetian rule over Dalmatia after 1409. In order to weaken Venetian pressure and influence, the Republic’s authorities insisted on the introduction of the Observant reform in the Franciscan monasteries on the Ragusan territory. This was to prevent the Serenissima from reinforcing its position through the Dalmatian Franciscans, who were mostly Conventuals and suspected of attachment to Venice.46 The Republic of Ragusa was reluctant to separate its Dominican monasteries from the Hungarian province and opposed their union with the Dalmatian monasteries in an independent province. The Republic was similarly afraid that Venice could use monastic orders other than the Franciscans to reinforce its position in Dubrovnik. This ultimately led to the establishment of an independent Dominican congregation of Dubrovnik in 1486.47

Dubrovnik was not politically integrated with the other Dalmatian communes. It recognized the jurisdiction of the Hungarian king while the rest of Dalmatia was under the Venetian government. Ragusa’s Dalmatian identity was based on common language and territorial contiguity rather than political status. Another factor was ethnic affiliation. It is notable that during the fifteenth century the Republic of Ragusa emphasized its Dalmatian ethnicity in strenuous efforts to prove that it did not belong to Italian ethnicity.

In 1444, the Ragusan citizens in Barcelona were forced to pay the “Italian” tax. The Republic of Ragusa sent a letter to the authorities in Barcelona in 1446 explicitly stating that “…it is clear to the nations of the whole world…that Ragusans are not Italians…quite the contrary, that both judging by their language and by criteria of place, they are Dalmatians”.48 In this context, the veneration of St Jerome in Dubrovnik clearly bears political connotations: worship of the saint expressed a common—Dalmatian—ethnic affiliation. The political connotations and aspirations it reflected can be interpreted as expressions of otherness and togetherness: otherness through differentiation from Italy on the ethnic level, as part of efforts to prevent the constantly-feared re-establishment of Venetian government over Dubrovnik, and togetherness through the expression of the cultural, linguistic and historical sphere shared by Dubrovnik and other Dalmatian cities.

Not much is known of what the official celebration looked like in Dubrovnik, or whether a chapel or an altar dedicated to the saint was set up under the official patronage of the government. There survive artworks commissioned by the local government, however, which manifest the official veneration of St Jerome. The firmest evidence is a representation of the saint in the hall of the Great Council, unfortunately destroyed in the great earthquake of 1667. Nikola Božidarević (Nicholas of Ragusa, c. 1460–1518) was commissioned to produce the image of St Jerome dressed in a cardinal’s robe in 1510.49 It matched the height and form of an existing figure of St John the Baptist in the same hall. The pairing of these two saints was due to their penitential character, and emphasized their eremitical and ascetic nature, as in the same iconographic representation by the Petrović brothers on the portal of the Franciscan church in Dubrovnik. The catalogue entry of the exhibition The Golden Age of Dubrovnik explains that the figure of St John the Baptist represents “the firmness of Christianity in the period of the onslaughts of the Turks,” while the figure of St Jerome represents “the cultural and spiritual unity with Dalmatians under the Venetian occupation”.50 Although I agree with the interpretation of the figure of St Jerome as the symbol of the unity with the other Dalmatian cities, I see it as a secondary layer of the statues’ symbolic meaning. The author misses the primary iconographical interpretation of this type: the pairing of the saints by virtue of their ascetic nature. Knowing the postulates for which Observant Franciscans were striving, the choice of these two figures for the portal of the Franciscan church is not at all surprising.

We can identify some members of high society as the main promoters of the cult and of the official policy. Archival documents and surviving artworks suggest that two aristocratic families, the Gradi (Gradić) and the Gozze (Gučetić), were to a great extent responsible for the implementation and the dispersion of the cult in late medieval Dubrovnik. Members of the Gozze family, one of the oldest noble lines in Dubrovnik, made many contributions to life in the Republic of Ragusa.51 An example of Gozze devotion is an altarpiece commissioned in 1488 by Bartol Gozze, a highly positioned member of the family who was appointed rector several times and served the Republic in several diplomatic functions, including visits to the kings of Hungary and Aragon, and to Pope Nicholas V. Among the six figures in the altarpiece he ordered for the family’s chapel of St Bartholomew on the island of Lokrum, is St Jerome, depicted as a hermit and holding in his hand a large piece of stone.52 The chapel which the family built for their summer house in Trsteno in the sixteenth century was consecrated to St Jerome.53 The family also possessed a stone carved relief depicting St Jerome, made in the second half of the fifteenth century by Niccolò Fiorentino and decorated with the family’s coat of arms.54 Not much is known about the provenance and purpose of this relief, but it certainly proves the family’s special devotion to the saint.

The Gradi (Gradić) family financed the construction of a Franciscan church in Slano near Dubrovnik in 1420 and dedicated it to St Jerome, as is written on the dedicatory inscription on the façade of the church.55 Also demonstrating the family’s influence and wealth was its patronage of the altars in the cathedral and the Dominican church, for which they commissioned some of the finest examples of Gothic painting in medieval Croatia. In 1494, Jerome (Jeronim) Gradi signed a contract with Božidar Vlatković and his son Nikola Božidarević (Nicholas of Ragusa) in the name of his brothers and himself for an altarpiece for the family’s chapel in the Dominican church. The triptych was to have three figures: St Matthew the Apostle, St Jerome as a hermit in the desert and St Stephen the Martyr together with the Virgin Mary.56 The choice of saints was not accidental. Jerome, Matthew, and Stephen were namesakes of the Gradi brothers, in whose name Jerome concluded an agreement with the painters.57 The Gradi family’s palace in the sexteria of St Peter, was one of the oldest in the city. Similar to the Gozze family, they built the family chapel in their garden and consecrated it to St Jerome.

Trogir as the Cradle of Devotion

In 1455, Trogir included the feast day of St Jerome in its official calendar of celebrations. In the text of the decision, Jerome is named as gloriosissimus doctor as was common from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries.58 The text states that Jerome was to be worshipped for his devoted and hard life (a reference to the ascetic aspect of his nature), for his explanation of the Holy Scripture, and for his innumerable miracles during his life and after his death. Most of all, the text repeats a same statement from its Dubrovnik counterpart, pointing out that he was venerated by Dalmatians because of his regional origin.59 Besides the influence of the local tradition, the origins of the cult in Trogir may be analyzed from the perspective of the rising humanist culture in the city and the popularization of the Renaissance style in the middle of the fifteenth century. With the appointment of Bishop Giacomo Torlon (1452–83), a theologian from Ancona, the city began its renovatio urbis, during which it was completely transformed with renaissance artworks.60 Bishop Torlon surrounded himself with a circle of excellent artists that included Andrija Aleši (Andrea Alessi, 1425–1505), Nikola Firentinac (Niccolò di Giovanni Fiorentino, 1418–1506) and Ivan Duknović (Ioannes Dalmata, 1440–1514), and intellectuals including Koriolan Cipiko (1425–93). The latter, together with the bishop, was one of the key Renaissance figures in the city. He served as the operarius of the cathedral and was one of the most outstanding individuals responsible for the construction of the Renaissance chapel of St John in the cathedral church. Considering the impact the bishop had in the city, he was perhaps the most instrumental, together with the intellectual elite, in spreading the veneration of St Jerome in Trogir. The seventeenth-century history of Trogir, Storia della città di Traù by Paolo Andreis (1610–86), states that the cult officially started under Bishop Torlon at the beginning of the rule of Rector Giovanni Alberto. He calls the saint the greatest adornment of the Church, and thus the greatest adornment of the Illyrian people.61 In Trogir, the cult of St Jerome was strongly connected to the cathedral church of St Lawrence. Among the most famous representations of the saint in Dalmatia is the relief (1460–67) by Andrija Aleši (1425–1505) above the altar in the baptistery depicting St Jerome in the cave, surrounded with books, dressed as a hermit and with a lion lying under his legs. In 1489, the doors of the cathedral organ were decorated by Gentile Bellini with the figures of St Jerome and St John the Baptist.62 At first sight, this representation of St Jerome does not seem to depart from the standard iconography that emerged from Giovanni Bellini’s paintings of the saint, a combination of two iconographical types: the northern depiction of the saint as a scholar in the study and the Tuscan representation of a penitent hermit in the desert in front of the cave.63 What deserves our attention is an open book in front of the saint, filled with what look like Glagolitic letters. Some of the letters are legible and interpretable, and clearly Glagolitic, while others seem to be the master’s interpretation, only resembling Glagolitic forms. What is even more interesting is that the letters of the initial paragraph are written in Latin script. Regardless of the details displayed, we can clearly discern an intention to represent the saint as the inventor of Glagolitic letters. This proves the strength of the Glagolitic tradition in the town and identifies the origins of the official veneration.64 Another depiction of St Jerome can be found on a stone triptych in the Dominican church together with St Lawrence and St John of Trogir, made by Niccolò Fiorentino.65 The appearance of the city’s patron saints on the triptych are the grounds for Bužančić’s proposition that it was commissioned by the local authorities.66

Humanism made a deep mark on Trogir in the second half of the fifteenth century. Its pioneer in the city was Petar Cipiko (1390–1440), father of Koriolan, who had a great passion for collecting and transcribing the works of ancient authors. He maintained a friendship with Italian and other Dalmatian humanists, especially Juraj Benja (Georgius Begna) of Zadar, from whom he received the gift of a codex in which he continued to transcribe other texts, including sections of Jerome’s work.67 The name Jerome (Jeronim or Jerolim) was common among the descendants of the Cipiko family, no doubt indicating special devotion to the saint.68 Pavao Andreis mentions the altar of St Jerome in the church of St Peter, commissioned by the descendants of Hektor Cipiko (1482–1553), probably in the second half of the sixteenth century.69 The choice of Jerome as the patron of the altar is not surprising, because Hektor’s father and son were both called Jerome, and it was most probably the latter who commissioned the altar. A piece of irrefutable evidence for the family’s particular devotion is a statue of St Jerome dressed in a cardinal’s robe, made in the second half of the fifteenth century and now kept in the Museum of Fine Arts in Split. It bears a devotional inscription stating that it was commissioned “out of the devotion to St Jerome of Stridon and in the memory of the brave father, Alvise Cipiko, son of Jerome”.70

Joško Belamarić has noted that the statue of St John the Evangelist made by Ivan Duknović for the chapel of St John in Trogir in 1482 is strongly reminiscent of the facial characteristics of Alvise Cipiko (1456–1504).71 The Renaissance enthusiasm for identifying portraits, so-called portraits travestis, had the purpose of praising the moral virtues of the person portrayed. Koriolan Cipiko commissioned the statue of St Jerome in order to present his son as the successor of the saint in terms of moral and spiritual values. This statue fits a similar hypothesis as that proposed by Belamarić for the statue of St John the Evangelist, in that it portrays characteristics of members of the Cipiko family. It was made by Tripun Bokanić for the chapel of the castle built by Koriolan in Kaštel Stari, near Trogir. Bokanić’s workshop participated in the construction of the cathedral’s bell tower, under contract to Alvise Cipiko (1515–1606), procurator of the cathedral.72 Belamarić also explains that Jerome’s statue had a memorial as well as an ex voto purpose, since Alvise lost three of his four sons, the surviving son also being called Jerome. Thus, in addition to erecting a kind of private shrine in the memory of his father, we can understand, given his unfortunate destiny and the unstable times at the beginning of the seventeenth century, that he also intended the statue as a votive offering.

We should also mention that a chapel dedicated to St Jerome, built between 1438 and 1446, is one of the oldest annexes to the cathedral church. In 1438, Nikolota Sobota, widow of Nikola Sobota, got permission from the cathedral chapter to build a chapel and endow it with the necessary liturgical appurtenances.73 An altar consecrated to St Jerome was placed inside the chapel. The chapel is one of the earliest examples of the cult of St Jerome and is also important in being one of the earliest private chapels of this type.

The Benedictine church of St John the Baptist also had an altar consecrated to St Jerome. A polyptych made for this altar by Blaž Jurjev Trogiranin (Biagio di Giorgio da Traù, c. 1390–1450) in 1435 was later moved to the chapel of St Jerome in the cathedral.74 In the center of the composition was the figure of the Virgin Mary with figures of saints including St Jerome in his cardinal robe and a model of the church in his hand. In addition to the altar in the church of St Peter, Pavao Andreis mentioned an altar to St Jerome in the church of the Virgin Mary on the main square. It was made of marble and featured a sculpture. Andreis also transcribed the dedicational inscription where the donators are mentioned. According to Danko Zelić, they cannot be identified but they certainly did not belong to any of the noble families in Trogir.75 Not much is known about this altar, since the church was demolished in the nineteenth century.

St Jerome between the Venetian Republic and the Hungarian Kingdom

Why was it that these two cities, more than any others, gave such prominence to the worship of St Jerome, and why should they be considered the focal point of the humanist cult of St Jerome? The strong influence of Italian humanism offers an easy explanation, but the promotion of the saint through the visual arts provides evidence of a wider historical context. Furthermore, the Glagolitic cult persisted alongside the humanist cult and certainly contributed more to the proclamation of the official veneration of Jerome in Dubrovnik and Trogir. The saint’s regional identity emerged as the Glagolitic tradition became interwoven with the humanist cult, and is best expressed in the Trogir decision to make his celebration official, the text of which gives emphasis to both of these factors.

In my opinion, the development of the cult in Dubrovnik and Trogir is also connected to the establishment of Venetian authority on the Eastern Adriatic coast after 1409. While the Hungarian kingdom was preoccupied with internal struggles for possession of the throne between Sigismund of Luxemburg (1387–1437) and Ladislas of Naples, the Venetian Republic took the advantage and bought the rights on Dalmatia from Ladislas of Naples in 1409. Most of the communes did not accept the fact that they had been sold, and the Venetian government had difficulty in implementing its rule in Nin, Šibenik, Split and Trogir. In other cities such as Zadar, which accepted the new ruler in 1409, all the noble families close to the Hungarian king were forced to leave the city.76 The establishment of Venetian rule in Trogir did not go as easily as expected, and Trogir did not surrender until 1420. Venice quickly unified the legal system in the newly conquered lands, depriving many medieval communes of their privileges and autonomy.77

Tomislav Raukar argues that the question of which state held authority over the medieval communes was of less importance to them than the nature of their relations with that state.78 During the reign of Louis I of Hungary (1342–82), some Dalmatian communes despite having restricted political autonomy – became economically stronger and developed trading relations with the hinterland and with Italian cities, especially those on the opposite side of the Adriatic. After 1409, the economic development of the Dalmatian communes began to stagnate and, in some cases, even to decline. The reason for this was that the Republic of Venice, having incorporated the communes in its centralized economic and trading system, tried to limit trade on the Eastern Adriatic shore, mostly through high taxes and the obligation to export all surplus goods to Venice.79

Not all social strata accepted the new rulers equally. The peasants were not much concerned who their ruler was, and commoners in general accepted the new ruler in the hope that he might extend their rights. It is not possible to give a definite answer, however, to the question of whether the highest layer of the society, the nobility, supported or opposed Venetian rule. This question deserves a separate study, which would shed light on aristocratic participation in the formation of regional identity. Dissatisfaction with Venetian rule could have arisen from the local aristocracy’s exclusion from local government in general, as in Trogir, where the council rarely met and was not responsible for actual decisions, which were mostly made by the rector, a Venetian appointee.80 On the other hand, the example of the Cipiko family demonstrates how some aristocratic families took advantage of the situation and retained their role in local government by supporting the new ruler. Petar Cipiko was one of the noblemen who accepted Venetian rule and served for them in many communal, as well as military, positions. Petar was proud of his classical education and erudition, so much so that he even gave his descendants classical names. His son Koriolan was named after the Roman hero who came to the side of the Volscians, the enemies of Rome. Ivo Babić assumes that by this analogy, Petar found a justification supporting Venetian rule.81 Members of families who resisted Venetian rule were forced to leave the city or were forcibly taken to Venice as hostages, as a pledge to keep the peace in the communes. In Trogir, most of the Venetian opponents were expelled from the city, including the captain and the bishop, who was close to the Hungarian King Sigismund.82 The same occurred in Zadar, from where some people spent as much as 20 years as prisoners in Venice.83

Of relevance here is to mention possible reasons of the dissatisfaction that arose in the communes between Rab and Trogir. They objected to their revenues going directly to the state treasury, while the income of some communes such as Split and Hvar remained in the charge of the local authorities.84 Loss of autonomy also showed up in the Venetian review of all municipal statutes, and the requirement for the senate in the Venice to approve the election of the city’s rector and bishop. Furthermore, many decisions could not be brought without the permission of the rector or, in some cases, of the doge.85

The period of consolidation of Venetian government in Dalmatia was fruitful for the cult of St Jerome. Before the Venetians established control, expressions of identity were limited to the communes, since they represented politically and economically closed communities. Micro-identity based on local characteristics began to lose its importance after the Dalmatian cities were taken into the unified Venetian legal and administration system, since this identity had mostly been carried by members of the local aristocracy. As a consequence, at the beginning of the fifteenth century and afterwards, Dalmatia was administratively isolated from medieval Croatia. Given the negative economic transformation in Dalmatian towns, the standardization of their legal and administrative systems and the Venetian neglect of the towns and their privileges, the emergence of dissatisfaction is not surprising.

The presence of Jerome’s figure can also be interpreted as emphasizing the tradition and the privileges that Dalmatian cities had held for a long time under the Hungarian kings. Veneration of the saint through official celebrations highlights his regional and ethnic Dalmatian identity, engendering a sense of common identity among the inhabitants of the Dalmatian communes and their affiliation to the same cultural sphere and customs. The official decisions of Dubrovnik and Trogir to venerate the saint makes this identity explicit by describing Jerome as Dalmatian. Zdenka Janeković Römer explains how Dubrovnik maintained the expression of its geographical, ethnic and cultural bonds with Dalmatia even after being politically cut off from the other Dalmatian cities. Dalmatians had special status among non-Ragusan citizens, permitting them to work in Dubrovnik and have dual citizenship. 86

In Trogir, nostalgia for the better times enjoyed by the commune under the Hungarian kings is manifested on a stone triptych, originally part of the altar of the Virgin Mary in the cathedral church of St Lawrence in Trogir and today kept in the Museum of Sacred Art. The altar was under the patronage of the local noble families Borgoforte and Dragač, who were also known for their humanist activities.87 The triptych features the Virgin Mary with the Child in the middle and the figures of St Ladislas and St Jerome on the two sides. Radoslav Bužančić argues that the presence of the Hungarian saint is connected with the Ottoman wars after 1470; accordingly, he dates the polyptych to the early 1470s.88

I am more inclined to agree with Maja Cepetić, however, who proposed that the presence of St Ladislas, King of Hungary, indicates a propaganda in favor of the Hungarian king and kingdom in the period of consolidation of Venetian rule.89 The special bond between Trogir and the Hungarian kingdom lies in the fact that Trogir enjoyed almost uninterrupted autonomy in the Hungarian kingdom from 1107 onwards and resisted accepting Venetian rule and losing its privileges after 1420. The figure of St Ladislas is also known to have appeared on golden florins minted during the reigns of Louis the Great and Sigismund of Luxemburg. He continued to be the most popular patron saint in Hungary during the Angevin and Luxemburg dynasties.90 Here I would mention another example of the special bond between Trogir and the Hungarian rulers, which indeed precedes the period discussed here but provides more evidence of the town’s preference for Hungarian rule. On the main façade of the cathedral church, above the rose window, is a relief of the Angevin dynasty.91 It was probably installed in the second half of the fourteenth century, after the re-establishment of Hungarian rule after the Venetians had controlled it for a short period (1332–58). It was a response to Louis the Great confirming the city’s rights and privileges, but is also related to the royal family’s financial contribution to the construction of the cathedral. Representations of the Hungarian saint in Trogir should be interpreted less as nostalgic longing for Hungarian rule than as fondness for the civic and legal privileges which the commune received during the reign of King Coloman (1095–1116). For several centuries thereafter, these privileges underpinned the commune’s judicial system and formed the basis for its local autonomy.92

Another critical factor that strengthened regional and ethnic identity was the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans, which caused mass migration to the southern parts of Dalmatia, and subsequently to Italian cities. A good example of regional identity and the expression of otherness within the Venetian Republic is the formation of the confraternities outside the territory of Dalmatia, the Confraternita degli Schiavoni. The term Schiavone was a Venetian expression used for all the people coming from the Eastern Adriatic shore under their rule. The confraternities were founded mostly in cities which traded with Dalmatian cities, and they were mostly dedicated to St Jerome.93

Conclusion

The cult of St Jerome in Dalmatia represents a broad, largely non-researched and important topic in the discussion on the formation of regional, ethnic and national identities. From the middle of the fifteenth century, the cult of the saint became an expression of a common identity based on historical, linguistic and ethnic characteristics, mostly referred to as Dalmatian, Slavic or Illyrian. The interweaving of these identities, and differences between the meanings of “Slavic”, “Dalmatian”, and “Illyrian” are highly complex questions which I will leave for a separate and detailed discussion.

The devotion to the saint that emerged among the Glagolitic monastic communities, as earliest evidenced in the thirteenth century, started to be propagated by ecclesiastical and intellectual elites in the fifteenth century. Generally praised for his religious and intellectual deeds, Jerome was worshipped in Dalmatia primarily because of his regional origin and his alleged invention of Glagolitic letters. As expressed in the official statements of veneration in Dubrovnik and Trogir, the connotations of his cult were more political than religious. Although Jerome’s cult was present in Dalmatia before the fifteenth century, there is no evidence that it was present throughout the region or that worshipping him was considered an expression of the regional identity of his devotees.

St Jerome became particularly important in the fifteenth century. Humanist ideas from Italy and the development of intellectual circles on the Dalmatian coast enriched and transformed the Glagolitic tradition into a regional cult in the middle of the fifteenth century. Although the regional cult of St Jerome grew out of a local tradition unconnected to the ideas of Italian humanism, it was only the writings of Dalmatian humanists that raised it to an expression of common identity, and this will be presented in a separated study. The rise of Jerome’s cult in Dalmatia in the fifteenth century was closely related to the complex political situation and changes in social structure ensuing from the establishment of Venetian rule, the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans and the resulting mass migrations. Further clarification of the story of the Dalmatian Jerome requires detailed iconographic analysis of artworks in Dalmatia, examination of the migration processes and the activities of the Schiavoni confraternities, and detailed comparative study of how the proto-nationalist ideas which developed from Italian humanism influenced the emergence of ethnic identity.

 

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