Library › Latin: Letters › Epistola ad Clementem VII (13 September 1525)
In this letter of 13 September 1525, Stjepan Brodarić, royal secretary of Hungary, reports to Pope Clement VII on his return from Rome. He reached Buda twenty-one days after leaving the pope, and, not finding King Louis II there, went to the island of Csepel, where the king had retired for recreation, and met him and Queen Mary. He was received kindly and set out the pope’s instructions, which they heard with great gratitude, especially the pope’s fatherly love for them and his concern for the kingdom. On the sending of envoys to the emperor and some other matters he has not yet received an answer, but promises to write when he does.
This letter, the earliest of Brodarić’s surviving letters to Clement VII, shows him serving as an intermediary between the papal court and the Hungarian king in the year before Mohács. It gives a glimpse of the court of Louis II and Mary and of the diplomatic efforts to organise help against the Ottomans. It is preserved in the Vatican archives and has been edited by Theiner and later scholars.
About this edition. The Latin text comes from Croatiae auctores Latini (CroALa), University of Zagreb (edition: Bessenyei József, 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.