MARULIĆ (Marulus, MARULO), MARCO. — Croatian humanist, moralist, and poet, of noble family, born in Spalato in 1450 and died there in 1524. He attended the University of Padua. He lived almost continually in Spalato. After a carefree youth, around the age of thirty he withdrew from the world and fully embraced the Christian conception of life, whose principles he also applied in his literary work, both Latin and Croatian.
Among his Latin works of moral and didactic content, the De institutione bene vivendi per exempla Sanctorum (Venice 1506) is outstanding. Up to 1686 the work appeared in various European cities in 15 editions (in some cases with a changed title), and it had many translations. St. Francesco Saverio valued it so highly that on his missionary journeys, besides the Breviary, he carried only this work with him (cf. Epistolae s. Francisci Xaverii, II, 99ᵃᵈ, Rome 1945). He composed other works in Latin: Evangelistarium (1516); Quinquaginta parabolae (1510), and other minor writings, some of them historical in character. Many other works by M. still remain in manuscript. Of the Dawidiade, only one canto survives.
M. is the author of the first Croatian work of art in the classical style, Istoria svete udovice Judit u versih hrvacki složena, in six cantos, written in 1501 and first printed in Venice in 1521. In recounting the biblical story of Judith, the author has in mind the epic struggle of his people against the Turks, with the intention of rousing their patriotic ardor in those troubled times.
M.’s Croatian poetic works were published in Zagreb in 1869 under the title Pjesme Marka Marulića in the collection Stari pisci hrvatski, I, under the auspices of the Croatian Academy; some poems are of doubtful authenticity.