Antonio Fabregues o Krbavskoj bici

In early modern Latin prose of the Croatian-Hungarian Kingdom, the key genres that engaged with Turkish themes are first and foremost letters (reports) and speeches. This type of correspondence always includes foreigners, either as authors or as recipients. These foreigners were usually in the service of the Holy See (Poggio Bracciolini; Mikołaj Lasocki, Enea Silvio Piccolomini). Two important Latin testimonies of a traumatic event in Croatian history, defeat of the Croatian noble army in the battle against Ottomans on the field of Krbava near Udbina on 9 September 1493, fulfil all of these criteria. These testimonies are contained in the letters from the papal envoy Antonio Fabregues (or Fabregnes; later at the courts of Emperor Maximilian and King Vladislaus II Jagiellon) to the Holy Father, written in Senj on 8 and 13 September 1493. The reason of Fabregues’ sojourn in Senj was the Frankopan siege of this town. Reports, as first-hand testimonies, were attached to the letter that, on behalf of Pope Alexander VI, was written by the papal secretary Lodovico Podocathor (Podocatharo). This ensemble then travelled through northern Italy (Milan, Modena, Mantua) in the form of transcripts and through the Holy Roman Empire in the form of broadsheet-incunabula (Vienna, Johann Winterburg, after 2 October 1493). Fabregues’ letter following the Battle of Krbava was transcribed by Hartmann Schedel for his manuscript collection Opus de antiquitatibus cum epitaphiis (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 716), while the Burgundy annalist Jean Molinet translated it into French and included it into his chronicle. The composition and means of expression in Fabregues’ letters are simple but dramatic: certain expressions and ideas (especially concerning ‘the end of this country’ and geopolitical threats) would resonate in other contemporary texts. Parallels may be found in contemporary yet stylistically much more elaborate texts authored by Juraj Divnić and Lodovico Podocathar, as well as in the structure and motifs of the Priest Martinac’s Notes and Latin histories by local authors, Ludovik Crijević Tuberon and Ivan Tomašić.