The Kotor Poet Ludovik Pontano

Sa？etak The Kotor poet Ludovik Paskali？ (Lodovico Pascale, Ludovicus Pascalis) (about 1500-1551) wrote five sonnets and a Latin eclogue marking the death of his friend Ludovik Pontano, who, in Paskali？’s words, had no equals among contemporaries for his intelligence, skills and virtues. Juraj Bizanti (Georgio Bizanti, about 1490-1560) tells us that Pontano wrote prose and verse; but the poem Carmen Virgini Matri sacrum, 107 elegiac couplets long, which Bizanti published in his collection Rime amorose, 1532, is the only Pontano work that has come down to us. There have been, in the efforts to identify this writer since the beginning of the 19th century, numerous confusions and erroneous interpretations, to such an extent that even today discussion of him is only tentative. A newly discovered collection of Italian poems written by Hanibal Luci？ has directed our attention to Pontano once again; a sonnet addressed to Paskali？ reveals that Pontano was born in Kotor, which refutes the claim that he was a humanist born in Italy. After critically reviewing the relevant research, this paper isolates the reliable historical facts relating to Pontano and proceeds to show that his identity is beyond dispute. It also supplies new biographical information, which is combined with a new reading of Pontano’s Latin poem devoted to the Virgin Mary as firmly rooted in the religious traditons of Kotor