Janus Pannonius

Janus Pannonius (1434–1472), born in Slavonia, was the leading Hungarian humanist poet of his age and Bishop of Pécs. Sent to Italy in 1447 by his uncle John Vitéz, he studied under Guarino da Verona and canon law at Padua, writing his first epigrams before he was fifteen. He returned to Hungary in 1458.

He became royal vice-chancellor and, in 1469, Ban of Slavonia, and kept ties with leading philosophers while assembling a major humanist library. He died at Medvedgrad in 1472.