hrvatski

Laudes civitatum: Filip de Diversi’s “Description of the Position of Buildings, the Governance, and the Praiseworthy Customs of the Glorious City of Dubrovnik

Medieval city is often understood schematically, in terms of economic and demographic growth or communal development. It is observed through its external political strife and change, as well as its social stratification and inner conflicts. However, the diversity of urban experience was far more complex – which is revealed, among others, by Philippus de Diversi, who offers both the image of Dubrovnik as an ideal city, worth of all praise, and the real Dubrovnik, as it actually was in the 1440s. Thus, he presents his reader with a convincing and vivid picture of the city, with its material structures, colours, forms, and people living in it. A city is not manifested merely in its political, legal, geographic, and demographic aspects, but also in images, perceptions, public activities and discourses, in the shaping of urban community and its culture. It is a stage, a site of intense everyday encounters, which enact and ritualize the living rhythms of its citizens and visitors. Urban space is produced through human interactions and social networks that emerge in everyday life, not exclusively within the city walls, but also through networks and contacts with other, closer or distant places. It is through this social dialectics that various forms of collective life are constituted – from political institutions to various types of economic and private associations. Both in everyday life and on ceremonial occasions, urban spaces are the stage for a dynamic and rich urban life, typical of the late medieval society based on the ideas of corporate cohabitation, life in the community, collective responsibility, and common good.55 This multi-layered urban reality is also present in Diversi’s description of Dubrovnik, blended with the city’s attitude towards its own past, its tradition and myths, the political ideology of the ruling elites, republican ideas, humanist values, civic and theological virtues, discourses, and urban/republican identity. E. Occhipinti has described such eulogies as a form between memories and desires, in which the image of a city becomes a mixture of the actual reality and the experiences or wishes of the author. Diversi’s Dubrovnik is exactly that – a prominent harbour, a metropolis, a rich, aristocratic republic of merchants that he, albeit a foreigner, has described in overenthusiastic words, giving expression to the pride and love of Dubrovnik’s citizens for their own city.

srednji vijek, srednjovjekovni gradovi, Dubrovnik, književnost, laudes civitatum

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