Library › Latin: Lyric & Elegy › Epigramma ad Petrum Tomicium
This short elegiac poem was written by Stjepan Brodarić, bishop of Srijem, to Piotr Tomicki, bishop of Kraków, shortly before Tomicki’s death, as the heading preserved by the eighteenth-century Polish bibliographer Janocki states. Brodarić asks how he can thank the prelate, who embraced him with fatherly love when he was an exile driven from his homeland and seeking medical help in poor health. He calls Tomicki father, lord and brother, prays that heaven grant him long health and fulfil his wishes, and wishes he could have reconciled the angry kings.
The poem documents Brodarić’s years of exile in Poland after Mohács, when he served as a diplomat for John Zápolya, and his close friendship with Tomicki, the leading Polish humanist prelate and vice-chancellor. The allusion to reconciling the kings refers to the rivalry between Ferdinand of Habsburg and Zápolya for the Hungarian crown. It is a small but personal record of the humanist links between Hungary, Croatia and Poland.
About this edition. The Latin text comes from Croatiae auctores Latini (CroALa), University of Zagreb (edition: Jan Daniel Andrzej Janocki, Siječnja 2012), through Corpus Corporum (University of Zurich), licensed CC BY 4.0. Every word has been analyzed with LatinCy, a neural language model for Latin — click or tap any word for its dictionary form, part of speech, and complete morphology, together with the full entry from Lewis & Short’s A Latin Dictionary.