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Janus Pannonius (Latin: Janus Pannonius, Croatian:
Ivan
Česmički, Hungarian: János Csezmicei, or
Kesencei; 29 August 1434, Čazma – 27 March 1472, Medvedgrad castle, nearby
Zagreb)[1]
was a Croatian and Hungarian
humanist, Latinist poet, diplomat and Bishop of Pécs.
He was the only truly significant poet of the Renaissance in the Kingdom of Hungary and one of the
better-known figures of Humanist poetry in Europe. He was born in a
small village near the Drava
river in a corner of Slavonia. Janus’s father was a Croatian nobleman, but little
is known about his family background. His mother, Borbála
Vitéz, was the sister of Archbishop
Vitéz.
Pannonius was brought up by his mother; then in 1447 his uncle
sent him to Italy for a humanist
schooling. He attended the School of Guarino da Verona at Ferrara where the pupils were
educated in Latin and Greek authors under the guidance of a noted
teacher of the Italian Renaissance. The young boy
was considered the brightest pupil of his generation by both his
teachers and fellow-students. He soon revealed his ability to write
poetry according to the rules of classical prosody; he was around
thirteen when he wrote his first epigrams. His higher education was
completed at the University of Padua in canon law,
and after making an educational tour of Rome, he returned to the Kingdom of
Hungary in 1458, the year of Matthias’s
accession to the throne. For a time, he worked at the Royal
Chancery, and soon became the Bishop of Pécs and
later Vice-Chancellor of the country. Janus Pannonius was thus an
influential intellectual in the kingdom, and one who never severed
his connections with some of the leading humanists of his time.
References
- ^ Di Peter G. Bietenholz,
Thomas Brian Deutscher, Desiderius Erasmus, Contemporaries of
Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and
Reformation, University of Toronto Press, 2003, pp.
233-234 ISBN 9780802085771
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