Muret's Oratio in funere Pii V: significance and fortune of a Neo-Latin funerary speech

Using a historical and philological method, we shall analyze the speech that the humanist Marc Antoine Muret composed and delivered at the funeral of Pope Pius V (1572) before the College of Cardinals. In our analysis we will pay attention not only to the internal aspects of the oratio (rhetorical structure, topica, sources, etc.) but also to the socio-political framework in which it was delivered. As we will try to demonstrate in this paper, the aforementioned speech constitutes an important milestone in his career as an orator and soon becomes a model of laudatio funebris in the Neo-Latin epidictic oratory practised at the papal court. Within this particular context we will attempt to assess the significance and relevance of this speech, as well as the impact and influence it had on the propagandistic literature from post-Tridentine Rome