Marko Marulić Splićanin (pronounced [mâːrko mǎrulitɕ splîtɕanin];[a] Latin: Marcus Marulus Spalatensis;[b] 18 August 1450 – 5 January 1524), was a Croatian[2] poet, lawyer, judge, and Renaissance humanist.

Accordingly, like many other Renaissance humanists who shared his views, Marulić denounced simony and immorality among Roman Catholic priests and members of the hierarchy in often violent language throughout his writings.

Like fellow Renaissance humanists Johann Reuchlin, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Thomas More, John Fisher, Juan Luis Vives, and Paolo Riccio, however, Marko Marulić remained committed to an internal renewal of Roman Catholicism and loyal to the Holy See, while Martin Luther and his adherents did not.

[20][21][22] Furthermore, manuscripts of Marulić works previously thought lost, such as his Christian epic poem the Davidiad in 1952, his Latin-Croatian literary translation of Thomas à Kempis' The Imitation of Christ in 1989, and the Glasgow Codex in 1995, continue to resurface and to belatedly see publication for the first time.

The book was later republished by Italian Jewish publisher Gershom Soncino at Pisa and a copy of that edition was purchased by the German humanist scholar and Hebraist Johann Reuchlin in 1492.

[31] Between 1496 and 1499, Marulić worked on a compendium of Christian morality, entitled De institutione bene vivendi per exempla sanctorum ("Instruction on How to Lead a Virtuous Life Based on the Examples of Saints").

"[33] In addition to Old and New Testament examples,[34] Marulić also drew upon the writings of St Jerome, Gregory the Great, Eusebius of Caesarea, John Cassian, the lives of the saints, and other Ecclesiastical writers.

According to his friend and early biographer Franjo Božičević, "for nearly forty years he sweated, shut up with the Muses, in divine volumes, nocturnal study, vigils, fasting, a hair shirt, prayers and rough floggings, not without harsh penance day and night.

By 1509, Marulić had finished translating Thomas à Kempis' The Imitation of Christ, a highly important literary and devotional work of the movement, from Medieval Latin into Croatian.

[46] According to Edward Mulholland, "Most early modern poets chose as their heroes either ancient historical characters - Petrarch's Africa (written 1339-43, first published in Venice in 1501) on the Second Punic War showing the lead - or medieval figures such as Charlemagne in Ugolino Verino's Carlias (1480), or, most frequently, contemporary rulers.

"[51] Upon completing the poem on 22 April, which is still celebrated in Croatia as National Book Day (hr),[52] Marulić wrote to a friend, "See it and you will say that the Slavonic language also has its Dante.

The question underlying the dialogue seems to be which way is the most secure to arrive at the truth... For Marulić, as Elisabeth von Erdmann points out, pagan myth and poetry gained a certain legitimacy when employed in the service of theology.

"[56] During the 16th and 17th century, Marulić's three most popular and most widely read works were De institutione bene vivendi per exempla sanctorum ("Instruction on How to Lead a Virtuous Life Based on the Examples of Saints"), Evangelistarium ("Evangelistary"), and Quinquaginta parabole ("Fifty Parables").

By 1680, these three books had been republished more than eighty times not only in the original Latin, but also in many European vernacular languages, including Italian, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Flemish, and even Icelandic.

[59] De institutione bene vivendi per exempla sanctorum ("Instruction on How to Lead a Virtuous Life Based on the Examples of Saints"), a voluminous book of Christian morality based on examples from the Bible and concluding with the Latin poem Carmen de doctrina Domini nostri Iesu Christi pendentis in cruce ("Poem about the Teaching of Our Lord Jesus Christ Hanging on the Cross"), was first published in 1506 in Venice.

The final poem, which remains Marulić's most famous work of Latin Christian poetry, was published separately in a standalone volume at Erfurt by the German Renaissance humanist and Cistercian abbot Henricus Urbanus in 1514.

De Institutione is further known to have had an enormous influence upon St Francis Xavier; it was the only book, aside from the Roman Breviary, that he carried with him and constantly re-read during his missionary work in Portuguese India.

Writing in 1961, Marulić scholar Ante Kadić announced that recent inquiries about the volume had come up empty and that he believed the Saint's copy must have been destroyed during the May 1931 arson attack by Spanish Republicans against the Jesuit monastery in Madrid.

[61] Further research, however, will be needed to determine whether excerpts from De institutione were translated into Japanese by Paul Yôhô-ken (1510–1599) and his son and published at Nagasaki by the Jesuits as Sanctos no go-sagyô no uchi nukigakkan dai-ichi ("Extracts from the Acts of the Saints") in 1591.

[62] Due to Marulić having taken a stance in the fourth chapter of the Instituto in favour of the then controversial ethical doctrine of mental reservation, namely, "that lying may sometimes be licit, although always undesirable", the same volume was temporarily placed upon the Index of Forbidden Books and copies were burned at Siena in 1564.

[63] While imprisoned for recusancy in the Tower of London under Queen Elizabeth I, St. Philip Howard, who was later canonized in 1970 by Pope Paul VI as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, wrote a translation into Elizabethan English verse of Marulić's poem Carmen de doctrina Domini nostri Iesu Christi pendentis in cruce ("A Dialogue Betwixt a Christian and Christ Hanging on the Crosse").

Howard also produced an English translation of John Justus of Landsberg's Alloquia Jesu Christi ad animam fidelem ("An Epistle in the Person of Jesus Christ to the Faithful Soule") during his imprisonment in the Tower, which was posthumously published at Antwerp, in the Spanish Netherlands (1595).

St. Philip Howard's translation of Marulić's poem was published instead of a preface to the Antwerp edition[64] and again, with updated English orthography, as part of the March/April 2022 issue of the literary magazine, St. Austin Review.

[66] On October 4, 1998, Pope John Paul II quoted from Marulić's Carmen de doctrina Domini nostri Iesu Christi pendentis in cruce ("Poem about the Teaching of Our Lord Jesus Christ Hanging on the Cross") during an apostolic visit to Solin, Croatia, "One of your poets has written, Felix qui semper vitae bene computat usum ('Happy is he who always puts his life to good use.')

"[67] In 2024, Edward Mulholland, a Latinist and Classicist from the faculty of Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, published the first complete English translation of the Davidiad in un-rhymed iambic pentameter.

His central Croatian oeuvre, the epic poem Judita (Libar Marca Marula Splichianina V chomse sdarsi Istoria Sfete udouice Iudit u uersih haruacchi slosena chacho ona ubi uoiuodu Olopherna Posridu uoische gnegoue i oslodobi puch israelschi od ueliche pogibili) written in 1501 and published in Venice in 1521, is based on the Biblical tale from a Deuterocanonical Book of Judith, written in Čakavian dialect, his mother tongue, and described by him as u versi haruacchi slozhena ("arranged in Croatian stanzas").

Neven Budak of the University of Zagreb noted "ideological prejudices", "omission of historical facts" and "preconceived conclusions" due to Fine's alleged personal bias regarding the former Yugoslavia and its various ethnic groups.

[6][75][76] In 1517, Marulić completed the Davidiad an epic poem which retold the Old Testament story of King David in Virgilian Latin with multiple references to Greek and Roman mythology.

[80] The editio princeps was published by Josip Badalić of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1954, but this work "proved to be a failure," as whole verses were left out and many words were misread by the editor.

In his epigram In discordiam principium Christianorum ("Against Discord between the Princes of the Christians"), Marulić denounced the monarchs of Europe for warring among themselves at a time when the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and the janissaries were invading Christendom.