124 <strong>Camoenae</strong> <strong>Hungaricae</strong> 3(<strong>2006</strong>) The genealogy of the Bosnian kings, with autograph drawings of Marsili (BUB Ms 28)
all’istoria della ribellione d’Ungheria. 44 He must have liked the subject, because he prepared an expanded version of this, with Thököly in its focus, entitled Epitome della ribellione d’Ungheria. 45 His purpose with the presentation of the national characteristics and collective psycho-history of the rebellion-prone Hungarians must have been to legitimize the absolutist organisation of the territories already recaptured and yet to be recaptured from the Turks, the reduction of the traditional power of the aristocrats and the administrative efforts at modernising. 46 Plans for publication were scuttled not only by another war that engaged Marsili’s energies and attention (1702, the War of the Spanish Succession) but also by the effects of an important encounter. In September 1699, the Croatian estates sent a local associate to assist Marsili and this associate radically changed the direction of the confident vision of the imperial border surveyor. Pavao Ritter Vitezović was born in the town of Senj on the Adriatic coast to Croatised German immigrants from Elsace. His ancestors were soldiers and administrators for the Habsburgs in a militarized border zone. He was perhaps the most important unifier of the Croatian language, a poet, a scholar, a printer, a historian, a visionary of greater Croatia, an intellectual with encyclopaedic learning who was delegated as an expert to the Karlowitz border survey committee and worked for two years as the most diligent colleague of Marsili. 47 The Croatian Purgatory 48 <strong>Camoenae</strong> <strong>Hungaricae</strong> 3(<strong>2006</strong>) The first encounter between the two scholar-politicians came about through official channels. Marsili, commissioned to stake out the Habsburg–Turkish border, pitched camp at the first place of controversy—namely, by the river Una, where the situation of the “old” and “new” towns of Novi was discussed. 49 We know from his reports penned in 44 BUB Ms 28. 45 Epitome della ribellione d’Ungheria con annesso il prodromo del protocollo de’ moderni confini cesarei–ottomanni, BUB Ms 70 (fasc. 10). 46 For a description of the two historical compendia, see Zsuzsanna ROZSNYÓI, Luigi Ferdinando Marsili e gli ungheresi: Alcune considerazioni sul Marsili storico, in: «Hungarica varietas»: Mediatori culturali tra Italia e Ungheria, a cura di Adriano PAPO, Gizella NEMETH, Mariano del Friuli, 2002, 133–135. 47 The primary monograph, used to this day, is Vjekoslav KLAIĆ, Život i djela Pavla Rittera Vitezovića (1652–1713), Zagreb, 1914. See also Josip BRATULIĆ, Oživjela Hrvatska u obzoru života i djela Pavla Rittera Vitezovića, in: Pavao RITTER VITEZOVIĆ, Oživjela Hrvatska, preveo Zlatko PLEŠE, Zagreb, 1997, 7–40; as well as Zrinka BLAŽEVIĆ, Vitezovića Hrvatska između stvarnosti i utopije, Zagreb, 2002. On the cooperation between Marsili and Vitezović, see ID., Performing National Identity: The Case of Ritter Vitezović (1652– 1713), National Identities, 5(2003), 251–267. 48 The expression was used by Marsili himself, in his 29 October, 1699 report to Emperor Leopold, “To leave Croatia one day will be like liberation from Purgatory…” (“L’uscire una di Croazia sarà liberarsi da un purgatorio…”). Relazioni, I, 221. 49 The problem was that there were two towns called Novi on either banks of the river Una (the “old” and the “new” Novi) and both sides had claims for both—and the estates belonging to them, see STOYE 1994, op. cit., 186–187. 125
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