Sklapanje povijesne slike svijeta u Kronici Šimuna Klimantovića
Creating the Historical Image of the World in the Chronicle of Šimun Klimantović

Summary/Abstract: Šimun Klimantović, a Franciscan tertiary, has largely been known in the Croatian history as the author of three Glagolitic collections. He lived in the second half of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th century, in times of great historical discontinuities. His chronicle belongs to the genre of historical prose in the vernacular and is written in a style close to that of other Franciscan chroniclers. Notes written by Klimantović and the events he chose to include in the chronicle offer an insight into his inner world and may serve as a general guidebook for medieval and early modern imagery. His narrative also contains some traces of “collective memory” and “ars memoriae”. What were his reasons for choosing to depict some historical events and omit others? What is the meaning hidden behind the poetic imagery of some of the events outlined in his chronicle? These are the questions that the present study seeks to answer. The chronicle of Šimun Klimantović does not offer any new information on important historical events, nor can it be included among the stylish pinnacles of the Croatian literature written in the 15th and 16th centuries. However, it opens up a window into Klimantović’s intellectual and symbolical world, the world of a learned Franciscan in times of political instabilities and at the turn of two historical epochs. The historical events described in the chronicle have been analyzed and classified according to their themes. The most common subject in Klimantović’s chronicle is Bosnian history. This is understandable as he was intensely involved (as the Franciscans in general) in the religious politics that the Croatian-Hungarian Kingdom and the Pope pursued in Bosnia during the 15th and 16th centuries. Finally, at the end of our article, we have included a transcription of the chronicle, since we consider the previous transcriptions by Kukuljević and Strohal as unsatisfactory.

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