Engelhard Funck and the golden age of Pope Innocent VIII

This article presents a text, translation, and analysis of a celebratory elegy addressed by the Franconian humanist Engelhard Funck to Pope Innocent VIII on the occa­sion of a peace treaty with the kingdom of Naples. The likely date and political cir­cumstances of the poem are identified, and attention is paid to the major literary sources and to Funck’s manipulation of his source material. The analysis locates Funck’s elegy within the tradition of Latin and Neo-Latin poetry celebrating the return of the Golden Age in the reign of contemporary dignitaries, and assesses the value of such occasional poetry for social and cultural historians of the early modern period.