ROME SYMPOSIUM ON MARKO MARULIC ENDS

ROME, Nov 29 (Hina) - A three-day symposium on the Croatian poet and humanist Marko Marulic (1450-1524), held at the Papal University Gregoriana, ended on Saturday. Closing the event, the head of the Catholic Church in Croatia, Zagreb Archbishop Josip Bozanic, emphasised the importance of Marulic's work for the third millennium. In the Europe of today, which is burdened with tensions, Marulic with his Christian humanism would be "one of the creators of co- existence worthy of man, peoples and nations in a single united Europe and world, remaining at the same time true to his cultural and Christian otherness", said Bozanic. A famous citizen of Split (a town on the central Adriatic coast) and an Italian student, Marulic is known in the Croatian cultural history as the "father of Croatian literature". He wrote morality and literary works in Latin and Croatian and was well known as a translator. In his time, the Turks conquered their way through to the very city walls of Split and Marulic was known for his calls for defence and help from Europe. Marulic is "a witness to the joint European heritage as well as to multi-dimensional values, a rich and versatile philological, ethnic, regional and national tradition", Bozanic said. "This is of special importance in the era of so-called globalisation, when there is a danger of reducing man and his culture to a unilateral dimension", he added. The symposium was organised by the Papal Council for Culture, the Split Centre Mariulanum and the Croatian Papal Institute in Rome. The director of the Mariulanum Centre, Professor Bratislav Lucin, called on the participants to meet again in Split in April next year. (hina) jn rml