Raffaele Zovenzoni: Istrias (Book for Johannes Hinderbach)

The Istrias is the collected Latin verse of Raffaele Zovenzoni (1434–c. 1485) of Trieste, named after his native Istria and arranged in several books. This book opens with a hexameter poem to Johannes Hinderbach, bishop of Trent, asking what use are columns, marble walls, gardens and power over peoples if one’s name goes into the ashes with the body; the Decii, the Scipios and Regulus died for glory, and only the Muses’ songs preserve it. Later poems include an epigram on books from the library of the Venetian Daniele, and comic epigrams to a jealous husband named Polydorus.

The book shows Zovenzoni’s range, from the solemn argument for poetry as the guardian of fame, addressed to his chief patron, to the obscene humour of Martial. Hinderbach, a scholar-bishop who collected books, is a constant presence in Zovenzoni’s later verse, and this collection documents their relationship. The Istrias is the main source for its author and a notable product of humanism on the north-eastern Adriatic. It also shows his familiarity with Martial.