Opera Quae Extant Omnia: Prosaica.

This is the third volume of Bocatius's oeuvre under review (for the first two volumes, containing his biography and poetic work, see my review in Renaissance Quarterly 45.2 [1992]: 365-67).

It is a particular pleasure for all his fans to note that Ferenc Csonka, one of the most respected veterans of Hungarian Renaissance studies, has successfully concluded this gigantic undertaking and thus presented the students of the field with a complete edition of Ioannes Bocatius.

Bocatius's Prosaica, written in Latin, German, Hungarian, and Slovak, includes all popular literary and scientific prose genres of the period. Among his shorter pieces, a list of the "Hungarian kings" (from Attila to Maximilan II), and the Lord's Prayer (recorded here in twenty-five languages, among them "Vandal," "Icelandic," and "Flandrian"), provide us with valuable information regarding the humanist concerns of his time. The same pieces shed additional light upon the linguistic and orthographic norms adhered to in the second half of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century. Bocatius also devotes his attention to theological subjects such as parasceve (Good Friday), to the study of comets as omina, or to the topic of "Matthias the Just." In the latter (written as a dedication), Bocatius calls the Hungarian king "Salomon Hungaricus" (73).

His short autobiography, republished in this volume, is an admixture of private and public issues. It contains mention of payments and honoraria he had received, but it also records political events Bocatius believed to be significant. Most interesting is, however, the section in which Bocatius discusses his own imprisonment.

In late 1605, as part of his diplomatic service, Bocatius accompanied Stephan Bocskai, prince of Transylvania, on his trip to Turkey. In his Relatio Bocatius provides us with fascinating details about the Hungarians' visit to Grand Vizier Lalla Machomet, about life at the Porte, and the foreign policy goals of Bocskai and his Transylvanian party.

Bocatius' involvement with the Transylvanian national movement brought him into great peril. Charged with spying and conspiring against Austria, he spent the years 1606-1610 in Habsburg custody. Even though the narrative of his incarceration and subsequent escape - published here for the first time - are too circumstantially written to read like a detective story, Olympias carceraria, is a moving document about its author's anguish and sufferings. Bocatius' numerous petitions to Emperor Rudolf, in which he is begging for clemency, and his repeated pleas for help, dispatched to the town council of Kassa (Kosice, Slovakia), display vividly his deep distress and frustration about his continuing misfortune.

Bocatius' Latin and German letters, written in captivity, in which he is trying to enlist the help of his friends and patrons of earlier days, and his long German epistles to his parents, in which he writes about the deterioration of his physical and mental condition, are poignant testimonies to the sad reality: political prisoners were not an invention of modernity.

The volume also includes transcripts of the interrogations to which Bocatius was subjected, as well as his responses to the questions. Allegedly, Bocatius was arrested with a number of compromising documents on his person. His interrogation was based on that material, and on testimony against him given by his political adversary, George Basta. The modern reader is constantly reminded of the fact that interrogation as literary topos does not begin with the fiction of Dostoyevsky, Koestler, or Danilo Kis. In connection with the investigation, Bocatius was also tortured, and only the intervention of some of his supporters kept him alive (490). One of his protectors, Thomas Bosnyak, claimed that Bocatius "was suffering for the entire Hungarian nation" (492). The attempts at the intimidation of intellectuals look back on a long history.

The meticulously edited appendices, including all extant correspondence addressed to Bocatius or written about him, help the reader consider this German humanist's life and work in a broad political and cultural context. A chapter containing Bocatius' inscriptions to friends (each with place and dates), as well as a list of items of uncertain authorship, but attributed to him, complete Bocatius' Opera in three impeccable volumes, adding another title to the Hungarian Academy of Science publications of exemplary scholarship and care.

Marianna D. Birnbaum UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES