Zagonetno autorstvo ili zbrka među rukopisima: Prodromon et una generalis Illyrici descriptio
Mysterious authorship or a case of manuscript confusion: Prodromon et una generalis Illyrici descriptio

Summary/Abstract: This article discusses the hitherto poorly investigated relationship between Rafael Levaković and Ivan Tomko Mrnavić, two prominent seventeenth-century writers and public figures. Their relationship encompassed a range of realms: from social, political, religious to literary and creative. From the modern perspective, Levaković and Mrnavić are equally understudied and undervalued as writers and as public figures who participated in the contemporary political life. We know very little about their relationship, which transcended the personal level and may be viewed from the perspective of the onset of connections between the Croatian North and South in Croatian Baroque Slavism. Yet things are changing in that area too and quiet, hard-working persons, such as Mrnavić and Levaković, are transforming into loud and clear representatives of the contemporary worldview and creative effort. In this paper I discuss two manuscripts, both titled Prodromon et una generalis Illyrici descriptio. One is kept in the Franciscan Monastery Dubrovnik and is part of the collection of treatises about Illyria. The manuscript used to be attributed to Ivan Tomko Mrnavić, yet there are indications that the Dubrovnik manuscript was transcribed by Rafael Levaković and that it is a shorter and partly modified version of Mrnavić’s treatise that may be described as an extensive compendium. The suggestion of a link between Levaković and Mrnavić is reinforced by another manuscript with the same title, kept in the Zadar Research Library among manuscripts attributed to Levaković. On the basis of an analysis of the manuscript content, I propose that Levaković used Mrnavić manuscript to compose his (lost) piece Historia universalis de Illyrica natione et eiusdem vera origine.

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