Matthew Fortunatus

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Matthaeus Fortunatus (Pannonicus), (* after 1480 in Hungary , † 1528 in Eger ) was a Hungarian humanist of the 16th century.

Life

Little is known about Fortunatus' origins and youth. He may have been of Dalmatian or Slavonian descent but was born in Hungary.

In 1506 he wrote a poem in which he celebrated the birth of the future King Ludwig II . In 1521 he met the humanist István Brodarics (1470–1539) in Buda and accompanied him the following year as ambassador to Italy. The two visited Venice in the spring and then Padua , where Fortunatus stayed to complete his humanistic education, while Brodarics continued to travel to Rome. Fortunatus made contact with influential and high-ranking Hungarian students in Padua, especially Orbán Batthyányi.

In Padua Fortunatus published an edition of the Questiones naturales by Seneca , which appeared in 1523 by Aldo Manuzio in Venice. It was based on the edition of Erasmus von Rotterdam (Basel 1515), but corrected many of the errors it contained. The publication also received praise from Erasmus, who listed Fortunatus as a co-author in a second edition in 1529. He dedicated the book to Prince Gianludovico Saluzzo, who was related to Ludwig II and was a patron of Hungarian students in Padua. The foreword to the book is one of the main sources for the life of Fortunatus. In it he reports that he was working on an edition of Pliny’s Natural History , but it did not appear.

When his friend Batthyányi returned to Hungary in 1523, he ran into financial hardship, which was only alleviated when he sent him money in 1524. Fortunatus probably returned to his homeland soon afterwards, which was, however, shaken by wars ( Battle of Mohács , 1526). In the margin of a copy of the Seneca edition of Erasmus from 1529 in the University Library of Budapest there is the entry that Fortunatus died in Eger in 1528 - which Erasmus himself was not aware of when he had the book printed in 1529.

literature

  • L. Domonkos, article Matthaeus Fortunatus in: Peter Bietenholz, Thomas Deutscher (Eds.), Contemporaries of Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and Reformation, Volume 1, University of Toronto Press 1985
  • Rezsö Weiss: Matthaeus Fortunatus, in: Egyetemes Philologiai Közlöny, 1888, pp. 346–362
  • Rabán Gerézdi: Aldus Manutius magyar barátai, Magyar Könyvszemle, 1945, pp. 84–98
  • Imre Trencsényi-Waldapfel: Erasmus es magyar baratai, Budapest 1941

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Printed in Andreas Veress, Matricula et acta hungarorum in universitatibus Italiae studentium 1221-1864, Budapest 1941, pp. 467–476
personal data
SURNAME Fortunatus, Matthew
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fortunatus, Matthaeus Panonicus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian humanist
DATE OF BIRTH 15th century
PLACE OF BIRTH Hungary
DATE OF DEATH 1528
Place of death Eger