THE LAST
BYZANTINE RENAISSANCE
THE WILES LECTURES
GIVEN AT THE QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY
BELFAST 1968
THE
LAST BYZANTINE
RENAISSANCE
STEVEN RUNCIMAN
W
CAMBRIDGE
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
197O
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Delhi
Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521077873
© Cambridge University Press 1970
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1970
This digitally printed version 2008
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-0-521-07787-3 hardback
ISBN 978-0-521-09710-9 paperback
CONTENTS
Preface
1
page vii
IMPERIAL DECLINE AND HELLENIC
REVIVAL
I
2
CONTROVERSY AND FACTION
24
3
THE SCHOLARS
49
4
THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE
RENAISSANCE
85
Further reading
105
Index
107
PREFACE
This book is made up of four lectures delivered at the
Queen's University, Belfast, under the aegis of the
Wiles Trust. They are printed much as they were delivered, with some slight re-arrangement and the verbal
alterations needed when the spoken word is transformed into the written word. One of the features of the
Wiles Lectureship is that scholars interested in the
subject of the lectures are invited not only to attend
them but promptly to criticize what the lecturer has
said. I have profited from that salutary experience and
have made a few further emendations in my text.
The nature of my subject precludes startling original
research. It has, rather, been my aim to try to correlate
and to put into perspective the intellectual achievements of the last two centuries of the Byzantine Empire,
when the State was collapsing but learning never shone
more brightly. I have made one serious omission. It
would have taken too much time and space to have included a worthy discussion of the art that was the most
splendid achievement of the period. The product of
Byzantine scholars is less attractive to us today than
the product of Byzantine artists. But scholarship should
be judged by the standards of its age, not by the tastes
of subsequent generations.
vii
Preface
I have to confess that I have not read every word of
the works of scholarship about which I am writing.
That would be the task of a lifetime, especially as many
of them are unpublished and not easily accessible nor
easily legible. I am dependent for my knowledge of
them to the labours of scholars who have studied them.
Though I have tried at least to glance at the accessible
printed works, I must admit that I have not had the
time nor the enthusiasm needed to wade through the
endless commentaries of ancient works of which the
Byzantines were so proud, and whose style is for the
most part distinguished for verbosity and elaboration.
There are, indeed, writers amongst them whose works
can be read with pleasure, such as Cabasilas and
Demetrius Cydones; but they are in the minority.
Not wishing the text to be dwarfed by the referencenotes, I have kept the latter as short as possible. In
particular, when dealing with individual scholars, I
have avoided long bibliographical details but have preferred to refer to secondary works where such information can be easily found. My notes bear witness to the
debt that I owe to such works. In transliterating Greek
names I have kept to the traditional old Latin system,
except where the name is more familiar in another form.
I should like to express my thanks to Mrs Janet P.
Boyd, to whose generosity the Wiles Lectures owe their
existence; to the Vice-Chancellor of the Queen's
University and Mrs Vick, to Professor Michael
viii
Preface
Roberts, and to other friends in Belfast who also gave
me hospitality and help. And it is a special pleasure to
me that the publication of the Wiles Lectures is assigned to the Cambridge University Press, to whose helpful friendship I have long been indebted.
STEVEN RUNCIMAN
Elshie'shields, Dumfriesshire', ig6g
IX
1
IMPERIAL DECLINE AND
HELLENIC REVIVAL
I F THERE is any meaning in the concept of decadence,
there are few polities in history that better deserve to
be called decadent than the East Christian Empire, the
once great Roman Empire, during the last two centuries of its existence. It was a period when a crumbling
administration, directed by an inept and short-sighted
government and centred in a city whose population was
rapidly diminishing, vainly attempted to ward off
increasing impoverishment and the steady loss of territory. The irresponsible ambitions of its leaders
encouraged disastrous civil wars. Militarily and economically the decline was rapid. The Emperor himself was poorer and feebler than most of the princes
whose domains surrounded him, and he was soon
to become the vassal of an infidel master. The political
history of Byzantium under the Emperors of the
Palaeologan dynasty is a tale of folly and misery, until
at last the coup de grace of 1453 comes almost as a
relief.
Yet was it a period of decadence? In strange contrast
with the political decline, the intellectual life of Byzan-
The last Byzantine Renaissance
tium never shone so brilliantly as in those two sad
centuries. In the sphere of art the earlier Palaeologan
period was of supreme importance; and if the artistic
output faltered and failed as time went on, that was due
to the lack of material resources, not of inspiration. It
was an age of eager and erudite philosophers, culminating in its later years in the most original of all Byzantine
thinkers, George Gemistus Plethon. The previous
generation had produced the finest mystical exegetist
of the Eastern Church in Gregory Palamas. There was
a sequence of ingenious scientists, whose discoveries,
however, could not find practical expression because of the poverty of the State. At no other epoch
was Byzantine society so highly educated and so
deeply interested in things of the intellect and the
spirit.
The contrast is not easy to explain. Maybe we should
look at it in reverse. Intellectuals are seldom good
administrators. Had there been fewer of them in high
places the government might have been more competent. The subjects of the cultured Emperor Andronicus might well have longed for a ruler less devotedly
concerned with culture, such as the great Basil II. A
civil service chosen for its high scholarship is not always
the most effective. To quarrel passionately over the
doctrine of the Energies of God when the enemy is
overrunning the countryside and plague devastating
the cities shows a sense of priorities admirable in the
Imperial decline and Hellenic revival
truly religious but unsuited for practical efficiency. Was
it that the intense piety which had always inspired the
Byzantine interest in philosophy and theology had now
grown too great? Or was it a vicious circle? The more
that the Byzantines concentrated on the intellect and
the spirit the less able they were to meet the challenge
of the outside world: while their failure to meet the
challenge induced them, in the deepening gloom, to
devote themselves more and more to the things that
mattered for the world to come.
It is impossible to understand the Byzantines without
remembering their piety. Every one of them firmly
believed that this world was only a prelude to a better
world in which he would share if he remained true to
the Faith. He was not unaware of this world. In his
personal actions he was full of practical and not always
very ethical good sense; and his political dealings were
often very astute. Byzantine diplomacy showed to the
end a cynical appreciation of the human weaknesses of
foreign statesmen and foreign peoples. But in his
worldly dealings he was apt to look for immediate
results. His longer view was dominated by his piety,
which could easily lead to defeatism and even apathy
when things went wrong. The disasters that befell the
Empire were seen as divine punishment for the sins of
its citizens. They were therefore inevitable and just.
This belief did not prevent the Byzantines from continuing to sin. In particular the princes and magnates
The last Byzantine Renaissance
never ceased from indulging their ambitions by intrigue
or even by open rebellion, and by behaviour that in any
other society would have ranked as treason.
The melancholy sequence of political events certainly suggested that sin was rampant. It is fashionable
amongst present-day Byzantine historians to play
down the effects of the Latin capture of Constantinople
in 1204.l The doom of the Empire was sealed earlier,
at Manzikert and by the Turkish invasions, and the loss
to the Empire of its economic and demographic heartlands in Anatolia. That may be true; and, if we wish,
we can go further back and trace the decline to the ineffectual social and economic policy of the administration of the mid-eleventh century. But the search for
earlier causes does not lessen the terrible effect that the
events of 1204 had on Byzantium, politically and morally. New Rome, the Imperial City, the home of the
Emperors and the centre of their government, had
fallen into the hands of hated and despised Westerners.
Not only was the whole physical organization of the
Empire ruined, but the humiliation was bitter and
unforgettable. The sacred Imperial power was driven
into exile; and even in exile it was divided, with claimants in Nicaea, in Epirus and in Trebizond; and even
though the Nicaean Emperors eliminated the rivalry
of the Epirotes, Trebizond remained as a separate en1
See the introduction to the Cambridge Medieval History, iv, part i
(new edition, 1966), x.
Imperial decline and Hellenic revival
tity and even survived Constantinople, with which its
relationship was always a little equivocal. When the
Nicaeans liberated Constantinople and re-established
the Empire in its proper capital, it was not the same
Empire. It no longer represented the Christian East. It
was merely one State amongst others in the Levant;
and most of the others were materially more powerful.
The Imperial title still maintained a curious mystical
prestige; Balkan monarchs were eager to have their
own titles recognized by the Emperor; and this prestige
was backed by the prestige of the great city and its great
church and its historic Patriarchate. But even the
Imperial prestige was fading. In about 1395 the Patriarch Anthony of Constantinople had to write to the
Great Prince Basil I of Russia to remind him that,
though the Empire was reduced to tragic straits, the
Emperor was still the Holy Emperor, the head of the
Orthodox commonwealth.1 The old conception of the
Christian Empire was becoming a myth.
Nevertheless, the shock of the disaster of 1204
seemed to give new force to the intellectual vitality of
the Byzantines. It is interesting, if idle, to speculate on
what might have happened had the Latin Empire of
Romania produced other Emperors of the calibre of
Henry of Flanders, men who sincerely sought to reconcile and absorb their Orthodox subjects, or even
1
F. Miklosich and L. Miiller, Acta et Diplomata Graeca Medii Aevi
(6 vols., Vienna, 1860-90), 11, 188-92.
2
5
RTL
The last Byzantine Renaissance
had Henry himself lived longer, or had the Roman
Church shown greater flexibility and sympathy in
dealing with the Greeks. Possibly then the majority of
the Greeks might have accepted the new order, and a
Greco-Latin synthesis might have evolved. But, as it
was, the livelier elements in the Greek intellectual
world went into exile, a few into the seclusion of monasteries and the rest to one or other of the Greek
succession-states, eventually gathering round the
Court at Nicaea, which seems to have the best claim
to legitimacy and to offer the best hopes for the
future.
Backed as it was by many of the best Greek brains of
the time, the Nicaean Empire suggested that the Byzantines were recovering both their practical talent for
government and their moral confidence. The Empire
was well administered, with realistic common-sense
and homely thrift. Where else could one find an Emperor making enough money out of his poultry-keeping
to buy his Empress a new crown? The Nicaean diplomats showed the traditional Byzantine skill in taking
advantage of their enemies' rivalries and quarrels; and
they were helped by the temporary weakness of the
Turks, whose eyes were necessarily turned eastward,
towards the menacing Mongols. The Court was highly
cultured, and the Emperors were all of them men who
commanded respect. Meanwhile the Latin Empire was
sinking further and further into ineptitude. No one can
6
Imperial decline and Hellenic revival
have been greatly surprised when in 1261 troops from
Nicaea recovered Constantinople.1
It was with happy hopes for the future that the Empire was reinstated in its sacred and historic capital.
But the reconquest created new problems. It roused
schemes of revenge among the Western powers. It
caused difficulties with the Italian sea-port cities whose
merchants had taken control of the international trade
of the city and were not to be dislodged. The city itself
had to be administered and fed and protected from the
ambitions of the Balkan princes. The government was
so anxiously concerned with potential dangers from the
Balkans and from the West that it began to neglect the
Eastern frontier. There the Turks had long been quiescent, but now a vigorous new emirate was emerging,
led by Osman and his successors. The Empire was to
pay heavily for this neglect.
The Emperor Michael Palaeologus, the recoverer of
Constantinople, saw the Empire safely through the
immediate crises. The Empire was still rich. The thrift
of the Nicaeans had left the treasury full. The Italian
capture of the carrying trade did not destroy but, rather,
enhanced the importance of the markets in Constantinople: while Thessalonica, the second city of the
Empire, prospered as the chief port of the Balkans.
1
For the Nicaean Empire, see Cambridge Medieval History, iv, part 1,
ch. VII (by D. M. Nicol), 295 ff.; also A. Gardner, The Lascarids of
Nicaea (London, 1912), passim.
The last Byzantine Renaissance
Michael's diplomacy was aided by his discreet use of
money. The plot culminating in the massacre of the
Sicilian Vespers, in which he was deeply involved,
lessened the danger from the West; and his intrigues
kept the Serbian and Bulgarian rulers from threatening
his dominions and enabled him to recover lands in the
Greek peninsula from the Franks. But he left the
Empire divided internally. He was an usurper, and he
had promised to maintain the rights and welfare of the
young legitimate Emperor, John IV. When he brutally
broke his promise, the Patriarch Arsenius excommunicated him, and he in his turn dethroned the
Patriarch. This caused a schism in the Church. While
most of the hierarchs were prepared to forgive him once
he had made an act of contrition, many of the lesser
clergy and the monks, who were always resentful of
Imperial control of the Church, continued to regard
him as excommunicated and Arsenius as Patriarch. The
Arsenites, as they were called from their somewhat unwilling leader, formed for a generation a party that
refused to co-operate with the State; but after Michael's
death in 1282 they faded out.
But meanwhile Michael's policy had led to a more
lasting division. In his desire to ward off attacks from
the West he decided that it would be politically desirable for the Church of Constantinople to re-unite itself
with the Church of Rome, even though Rome demanded the submission of Constantinople as the price of
8
Imperial decline and Hellenic revival
union. His policy stirred up a controversy that was to
last, with varying intensity, until the fall of the Empire
in 1453. Henceforward, while every thinking Byzantine
had to make up his mind whether or not his Church
ought to submit to Rome, the Byzantine man in the
street, to whom the idea was repugnant, turned against
any Emperor or minister who sought to further the
union.1
After Michael's death the Empire, politically and
economically, began to run steadily downhill. His son
and successor, Andronicus II, was a highly educated
man of great personal charm, but ineffectual as a ruler.
He restored peace amongst his subjects by reconciling
the Arsenites and by repudiating the union with Rome
that his father had accepted at the Council of Lyons.
But the Ottoman Turks now presented a threat that
could not be ignored; and his attempt to curb them by
hiring the services of the disreputable Catalan Company resulted in the Company devastating his own
territory and doing nothing to stem the Turkish advance. He could not prevent the ominous rise of the
Serbian kingdom. He could not control his own relations or his ministers. Eventually, after a reign
distinguished for its cultural and artistic activities but
otherwise disastrous, he began to lose his earlier
1
See Cambridge Medieval History, iv, part 1, ch. vm (by G. Ostrogorsky), 332-40; L. Petit, article 'Arsene Autorianus et Arsenites', in
Dictionnaire de Theologie catholique (ed. A. Vacant, E. Mangeot and
others), 1, part 11, cols 1. 1911-14.
9
The last Byzantine Renaissance
popularity. His eldest son predeceased him; but his
grandson, Andronicus III, led the opposition against
him, and, after seven years of fitful civil war, deposed
him in 1328.
Andronicus III, ably helped by his chief minister,
John Cantacuzenus, was a more vigorous ruler under
whom the Empire won some successes in Thessaly and
Greece. But the civil war had been debilitating. The
Turks continued to advance in Asia and the Serbs in
Europe. When he died in 1341 only a few isolated
towns were left to the Empire in Asia, and the Serbians
were at the gates of Thessalonica. The fifty-year reign
of Andronicus's son, John V (1341-91), was a period of
unceasing disaster. John, who was ten years old at the
time of his accession, was removed from power in the
course of it by his father-in-law, his son and his
grandson, though he was never actually deposed and
died as Emperor.
The reign began with a civil war of six years' duration, when John Cantacuzenus, deprived of his expectancy of the regency by the intrigues of the
Empress-Mother, Anna of Savoy, and of the Patriarch,
John Calecas, resorted to arms and was eventually
recognized as John V's senior colleague in the Empire,
the young Emperor marrying his daughter. But John
VI Cantacuzenus was unseated in a plot in 1354 and
spent the rest of his long life as a monk, but treated also
as an elder statesman. John V then governed feebly for
10
Imperial decline and Hellenic revival
nineteen years, to be unseated by his eldest son,
Andronicus IV, for a few months in 1373 and again
from 1376 to 1379. Andronicus continued to plot until
his death in 1385; and in 1390 John VII, the son of
Andronicus, drove his aged grandfather into retirement
for nearly a year.:
The plots and civil wars were disastrous for the
Empire. They used up its wealth; they dislocated
trade; and neither side had any scruple about inviting
foreign forces to intervene. As a result, the Turks were
able to establish themselves in Europe in the 1340s and
by 1360 controlled the whole province of Thrace. The
power of Serbia grew and might have overwhelmed the
Empire had not disorders followed the death of the
great Serbian monarch, Stephen Dushan, in 1355. In
the end it was the Turks who destroyed the Serbian
menace. They annexed the greater part of Bulgaria
during the years that followed their great victory over
the Serbian and Bulgarian armies on the River Maritsa
in 1371, and most of Serbia after their still greater
victory at Kossovo in 1389. By the time of John V's
death the Turkish dominions had reached the River
Danube, and the Christian Empire consisted of little
more than Constantinople itself, a few sea-ports strung
along the Balkan coastline, a few small islands in the
1
For a summary of the civil wars, see Cambridge Medieval History,
IV, part 1, ch. vin, 340-73. I think that the author, Ostrogorsky,
somewhat overstresses the social issues.
II
The last Byzantine Renaissance
Aegean Sea, and the Peloponnese, ruled by cadets of
the Imperial family, where alone Byzantine arms and
diplomacy had met with some success. Thessalonica
had been temporarily held by the Turks in 1387 and
was annexed by them in 1394. Since about 1375 the
Emperor had acknowledged the suzerainty of the
Turkish Sultan.1
Visitations of the plague had helped to ruin the
economy and the well-being of the Empire. The Black
Death struck Constantinople in 1347. Horrified contemporaries declared that nine-tenths of its population
perished. Allowing for medieval exaggerations it is
probable that the population of the city did decline by
nearly a half, and that of the whole Empire by about a
third. Though the neighbouring Turks and Balkan
peoples suffered too, their more rural economy made
their losses not quite so severe.2
Social problems added to the chaos. The civil war
between John Cantacuzenus and the government of the
Empress Anna has been explained as a struggle between
the landed magnates and the urban proletariat. This
view is, I think, an oversimplification. If we examine
the reactions of the Byzantines of whom we know some1
2
The best short summary of early Ottoman history is in P. Wittek,
The Rise of the Ottoman Empire (London, 1938). See also N. Jorga,
Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches (5 vols., Gotha, 1908-13), vol. 1;
M. F. Kopriilu, Les Origines de IEmpire Ottoman (Paris, 1935);
I. H. t)zimcar§ili, Osmanli Tarihi (3 vols., Ankara, 1947-51), vol. 1.
See S. Runciman, The Fall oj Constantinople (Cambridge, 1965), p. 5
and n. 1 (p. 205) giving references.
12
Imperial decline and Hellenic revival
thing, we find that each reacted individually to individual questions, without following any consistent
party-line. There was certainly hostility between the
poorer citizens of the cities and the landed aristocracy
that ran the government; but it was affected more by
religion than by politics, while personalities counted
for more than policies. There were indeed massacres of
the magnates in the course of the civil wars in several
cities; and the Zealot rising in Thessalonica, which
gave those municipal rebels control of their city from
1342 to 1349 and disrupted its hitherto prosperous life,
was accompanied by class bloodshed. But even there it
is impossible to distinguish the social from the religious
issues and unwise to ignore the clash of personalities.1
The fourteenth century was thus for Byzantium a
century of decline from which recovery was impossible.
The admirable efforts of the Emperor Manuel II, who
succeeded his father John V in 1391, were fruitless,
even though the Turks were checked for a time by the
invasion of Anatolia by Timur the Tartar and his victory over the Sultan at Ankara. Byzantium was given a
respite. A few cities, including Thessalonica, were
restored to Imperial rule: though Thessalonica was
sold by its despairing governor to the Venetians in 1423,
and the Turks re-annexed it in 1430. Manuel himself,
1
See Cambridge Medieval History, iv, part 1, ch. vm, 357-62; P.
Charanis, 'Internal Strife in Byzantium in the fourteenth century',
in Byzantion, xv (Boston, 1940-1), 208-30; O. Tafrali, Thessalonique
au quatorzieme siecle (Paris, 1913), pp. 225-72.
13
The last Byzantine Renaissance
till the close of his reign, when his son, John VIII, had
taken over the government, kept on fairly good terms
with the Turks. But Constantinople and the Empire
itself were clearly doomed. The reign of John VIII
(1425-48), was dominated by the question of union
with Rome, the policy which the Emperor believed
might bring aid that could perhaps save the Empire,
but which was rejected even so by most of his subjects.
The end came under John's brother and successor,
Constantine XI, when a vigorous and brilliant young
Sultan, Mehmet II, to be surnamed the Conqueror,
organized and administered the final blow.1
This is the background against which we must see
the scholars of Palaeologan Constantinople. It is a
period that begins with a short-lived feeling of hope,
after the recovery of the capital from the Latins, but
which soon sinks into disorder and disillusion and at
last despair. How was it that the intellectual life could
burgeon so splendidly?
The disaster of 1204 provided the first stimulus. The
Byzantines had always been conscious of their Greek
past. They might call themselves Romans and remember proudly that theirs was the legitimate Roman
Empire. Still more, they were Christians, to whom
pagan learning was of secondary importance in comparison with the Christian revelation. But their
1
Cambridge Medieval History, iv, part 2, ch. VIII, 378-87; Runciman,
Fall of Constantinople, pp. 12-21, 48-72.
Imperial decline and Hellenic revival
language was Greek, their literature written in Greek;
and the works of the ancient Greek world were still
studied and admired. Homer was to them 'the Poet',
quotations from whose poems were expected to be
immediately recognized and appreciated.1 Plato and
Aristotle were to them teachers with whose philosophy
anyone with a claim to education must have some
acquaintance. Their sciences all rested on old Classical
foundations.2 But the word 'Hellene' was to be avoided, as it carried the meaning of'Pagan'. The Byzantine child had to 'hellenize' his tongue (as Anna
Comnena words it); that is to say, he had to learn to
write Greek in a Classical style with a Classical vocabulary. The study of rhetoric, as this discipline was
called, was a necessary part of a full education. But the
language taught in it was far removed from the spoken
tongue. It aimed at Attic purity, but it became far too
often an artificial katharevousa, flowery and verbose. In
1
2
In the Alexiad Anna Comnena makes sixty-six references to the
works of Homer and clearly expects her readers to catch the allusions
without further explanation. She rarely bothers to add: c as the Poet
says...'. See G. Buckler, Anna Comnena (Oxford, 1929), pp. 197200. Psellus (History, ed. C. Sathas, London, 1899, pp. 116-17) tells
the story of a compliment paid to the Lady Scleraena by a courtier
who had only to mention the first two words of the passage describing
Helen passing along the walls of Troy for his allusion to be taken.
If we take Anna Comnena again as a typical well-educated Byzantine, we find that she claims to have studied Aristotle and Plato, but
she does not actually display very much knowledge of the latter, and
much of her information about Greek learning seems to come from
Plutarch (see Buckler, Anna Comnena, pp. 202-8). For the sciences,
see below, pp. 88-93.
15
The last Byzantine Renaissance
defence of rhetoric we should remember that, in the
days before printing, a book if it was to circulate at all
widely would have to be read aloud, the number of
manuscripts being limited; and a concise style, however
agreeable to an individual reader, is often difficult for a
listener to follow. A wordier style suits him better.
But, unfortunately, too many Byzantine writers became intoxicated by words and wrote with such elaboration that neither reader nor listener could easily
comprehend the meaning.l
This education enabled a Byzantine to read the
Classics; and the Classics were read. It is true that the
Byzantines had a love for compilations and encyclopedias, short cuts to learning. But this love should not
be exaggerated. The originals were not neglected. Indeed, when making quotations, they were all too often
apt to rely upon faulty memories and not to consult
their dictionary of quotations.2
The cult of the Classics was thus nothing new. It had
been encouraged by the Iconoclastic Emperors. It had
been actively patronized by Constantine Prophyrogenitus and by the cultured Emperors of the eleventh
century. During the twelfth century the scholarship
1
2
Anna Comnena, Alexiad, ed. B. Leib (Paris, 1937), 1, preface, 4. See
Buckler, Anna Comnena, pp. 499-500.
Books such as Photius's Myriobiblion and Suidas's Lexicon were undoubtedly popular in Byzantium; and the scholars all enjoyed
making compendiums of learning (see below, lecture 3, passim.) But
the originals had to be carefully studied before compendiums could
be made.
16
Imperial decline and Hellenic revival
became a little more profound. The commentaries on
Classical authors made by John Tzetzes, who was born
early in the century, cover an enormous range and show
enormous erudition, though to modern eyes they may
seem naive and superficial, and are unsuitably written
in indifferent verse.1 In the next generation Eustathius,
Metropolitan of Thessalonica, a pious and active
hierarch, found time to write a commentary on Homer
which is first class and still of value; and he also studied
Hesiod.2 At the end of the century Michael Acominatus,
Metropolitan of Athens, was a Classical humanist
whose sensitive appreciation of past literature is reflected in the easy elegance of his letters. Though he
was a sincere Christian, to whom 'Hellene' still meant
'pagan', he felt himself to be of the same mould as the
Hellenes.3
This consciousness of the Hellenic inheritance was
enhanced by the Latin Conquest and the exile in
Nicaea. Byzantium still claimed to be the Roman
1
2
3
For Tzetzes, see K. Krumbacher, Geschichte der Byzantinischen
Litteratur (2nd ed., Munich, 1897), pp. 526-36; A. A. Vasiliev,
History of the Byzantine Empire (Madison, 1952), pp. 498-500.
Krumbacher, Byzantinischen Litteratur, pp. 536-41; P. Koukoules,
'AaoypacpiKcd dSfjcjEis irapa TCO GecraaAoviKTis EOcnaOicp', 'ETTETTIPIS
c
ETatpEias Bv^avnvcov ZTTOUSGOV, I (Athens, 1924), 5-40. Eustathius's
works are published in L. F. Tafel, Eustathii Metropolitae Thessalonicensis Opuscula (Frankfurt, 1832).
Krumbacher, Byzantinischen Litteratur, pp. 468-70; H.-G. Beck,
Kirche und theologische Literatur im Byzantinischen Reich (Munich,
1959), pp. 637-8; G. Stadmiiller, Michael Choniates, Metropolit
von Athen (Rome, 1934), passim.
The last Byzantine Renaissance
Empire; but the claim must have begun to sound a little
hollow to men who saw Westerners controlling New
Rome and Old Rome itself at the centre of an ebullient
civilization. The Westerners had defeated and humiliated Byzantium; but there was one thing that they could
not take away and that they could not as yet share; and
that was the Greek tradition. On their side the Westerners began to realize something of the wealth of Greek
learning. They discovered that in the Greek lands
which they had invaded, Aristotle, the philosopher
whom they were beginning to admire so greatly, could
be read and studied in his original words, and Plato too,
and other philosophers whose names they knew. They
despised the Greeks around them, but they could not
despise Greek learning. It was natural that the Greeks
should make use of this asset. They were proud to be
Greeks. The word cHellene' began to lose its pejorative connotation.
It is possible that demographic reasons aided the
change in sentiment. The loss to Byzantium of central
Anatolia and the Balkan hinterland reduced the Empire
to territories that had been Greek since the dawn of
history, lands in the Greek peninsula itself and along
the coasts of the Aegean and the Euxine and in the
islands, where the earliest Greek colonies had been
settled. Greek blood had been mixed even in Classical
times and had become far more mixed in the cosmopolitan centuries that followed the conquests of Alexander
18
Imperial decline and Hellenic revival
the Great and the oecumenical centuries of Rome and
the Later Roman Empire. But now the Byzantines,
concentrated in historic Greek territories, could know
themselves to be geographically Greek and could
imagine themselves to be racially Greek.
It was not, however, until the mid-fourteenth century that Byzantine writers dared to make use of the
word 'Hellene' to describe themselves.1 In the great
speech that the Emperor Michael VIII made at
Nymphaeum a few days before his triumphant entry
into Constantinople, a speech which contains the germ
of the later Megali Idea, the doctrine that the Greeks
are a race specially endowed down the ages by the grace
of God to take the lead, politically and intellectually in
Europe and in Asia, he was thinking of old Greek
traditions but he referred to his people as the Romans—
Rhomaioi—while the citizens of Rome itself were
merely called Italians, Italoi.2 Even in the later fourteenth century intellectuals such as the ex-Emperor
1
2
Professor R. Browning has had the kindness to inform me that he
has found one instance in the twelfth century of the use of'Hellene'
to mean 'contemporary Greek'. For the Byzantine use of'Hellene',
see S. Runciman, 'Byzantine and Hellene in the fourteenth century', T6|ios KcovaTavTivou 'ApiiEvoirouAou (Thessalonica, 1952),
pp. 27-31; H. Ditten, 'Bap(3apoi, °EAAT|VES und TcoiaaToi bei den
letzten byzantinischen Geschichtsschreibern',^/^ duXIIe. Congres
International tfEtudes Byzantines (Belgrade, 1964), 11, 273-99.
Metochites uses 'Hellene' to denote a man educated in Hellenic
learning. See below, p. 87, n. 1.
G. Pachymer, De Michaele et Andronico Palaeologis, ed. I. Bekker
(Bonn, 1835), pp. 153-5, 159-
19
The last Byzantine Renaissance
John Cantacuzenus, who was perhaps a little conservative in his views, and Nicephorus Gregoras, who regarded himself as completely up-to-date, still use
' Hellenic' to describe the old pagan learning as opposed
to the 'inner' learning of Christian theology.
The new use of 'Hellene' seems to have been inaugurated in Thessalonica. Thessalonica had always
been a Greek city, without the Imperial oecumenical
traditions of Constantinople. Its hierarchs had in the
distant past, it is true, been the exarchs of the Roman
pontiffs in the East. But they liked to forget that they
owed their prefix of'Holiness' to that position. The
schools of Thessalonica had long been centres for
Classical learning; and the work and influence of the
great Metropolitan Eustathius had enhanced their
reputation. By the end of the thirteenth century a large
proportion of the leading Byzantine scholars were
Thessalonians by birth or by upbringing. It is in the
writings of one of the most distinguished members of
this Thessalonian milieu that we first find the new use
of the word 'Hellene'. In an eloquent encomium of
Saint Demetrius, patron saint of the city, which Nicholas Cabasilas wrote as a young man, in about 1348, he
describes Thessalonica as the second Athens, the home
of the Hellenes of his day; and, in a covering letter that
he sent with a copy of the encomium from Constantinople where he was living to his father in Thessalonica,
he expresses his misgivings in letting him see the work
20
Imperial decline and Hellenic revival
for fear that its inelegant language might shock cyou
Hellenes'.1
Cabasilas there uses the word in a cultural sense, but
without any suggestion that Hellenes were to be equated with pagans. Soon, more significantly, we find the
word used in a racial sense. Nicephorus Gregoras kept
up a correspondence with a Cypriot scholar, Athanasius Lepenthrenus, from whom he wanted to find out
what remained of ancient Greek splendours in Cyprus
and in other places which Lepenthrenus, who was an
eager traveller, had visited. Gregoras is careful in his
terminology; but Lepenthrenus, in a letter written in
about 1355, speaks openly ofcall the Hellenes here in
Cyprus', and goes on later, when speaking of other
lands, to mention 'everywhere where Hellenes live'.2
Very soon afterwards we find Demetrius Cydones,
who, like Cabasilas, was born and brought up in
Thessalonica, though of Cretan origin, using 'Hellas'
to mean the Byzantine Empire. In a later letter Cabasilas follows his example.3 By the fifteenth century the
usage was fairly general. In about 1440 John Argyropoulos wrote of the struggle for the freedom of' Hellas'
1
2
3
MS. Gr. Paris 1213, fos. 47-8,294, quoted inTafrali, Thessaloniquean
quatorzieme siecle, pp. 156, n. 3, 169, n. 1.
Correspondance de Nicephore Gregoras, ed. R. Guilland (Paris, 1927),
P . 285.
Demetrius Cydones, Correspondance, ed. G. Cammelli (Paris,
1930), pp. 18, 30; MS. Gr. cit., fol. 301, in Tafrali, Thessalonique au
quatorzieme siecle, p. 157, n. 2 (letter of Cabasilas to the Empress
Anna).
3
21
RTL
The last Byzantine Renaissance
in a letter addressed to John VIII as 'Emperor of
Hellas '. l We have come a long way from the days when
the ambassador Liudprand of Cremona was thought
unfit to be received at the Court because his credentials
were addressed to the 'Emperor of the Greeks'. But
'Graeci' was never an acceptable term. George
Scholarius, the future Patriarch Gennadius, who was
to be the link between the old Byzantine world and the
world of the Turcocratia, often uses 'Hellene' to mean
anyone of Greek blood. But he had doubts about its
propriety; he still retained the older view. When he was
asked his specific opinion about his race, he wrote in
reply: c Though I am a Hellene by birth, yet I would
never say that I was a Hellene. For I do not believe as
the Hellenes believed. I should like to take my name
from my faith and, if anyone asked me what I am, to
reply u a Christian". Though my father dwelt in
Thessaly,' he adds, CI do not call myself a Thessalian,
but a Byzantine. For I am of Byzantium.'2 It is to be
remarked that though he repudiates the name of
Hellene he calls the Imperial City not New Rome or
Constantinople, but by its old Hellenic name.
This revolutionary revival of the word 'Hellene'
gives a clue to the nature of the last Byzantine Renaissance. It was a Greek, a Hellenic, renaissance. With
their political power crumbling around them the
1
2
S. P. Lambros, 'Apyvpo-rrouAEia (Athens, 1910), pp. 4-7.
G. Scholarius Gennadius, 'Contre les Juifs', in Oeuvres Completes
(Paris, 1928-36), in, 252.
22
Imperial decline and Hellenic revival
Byzantines clung to their great cultural asset. In a
world where ancient Greek learning was increasingly
admired they could claim that they were Greeks, the
heirs in unbroken succession to the poets and philosophers, the historians and scientists of ancient Hellas;
and the claim carried them proudly on. Ethnologists
may question the racial basis of the claim, theologians
point out the difference in culture that Christianity had
brought; and historians may reflect that an Athenian
gentleman of the fifth century B.C. would have felt far
from home in Constantinople of the fifteenth century
A.D. Yet the claim was not illegitimate. The Greek
world of the last two centuries of Byzantium had
shrunk now to become little more than a group of citystates, Constantinople, Thessalonica, Trebizond and
Mistra. It had become, far more truly than Byzantium
in its grand Imperial days, the descendant of the citystates of the ancient Hellenic world, and it showed the
same intellectual vivacity and bustle.
23
3-2
CONTROVERSY AND FACTION
Byzantine Renaissance was essentially a
Greek renaissance. But within its framework there
were various vital controversial issues about which
every thinking Byzantine had to make up his mind. It
is dangerous to try to interpret Byzantine history in
terms of party politics. In his political reactions the
Byzantine followed the Greek tradition. The Greek
has never been a good party politician. He is too individualistic. He will follow a leader whom he admires,
though he is apt to find it boring to keep up admiration
for any one person for long. He will co-operate with his
friends so long as his interests coincide with theirs.
Unless there have been family squabbles he will take
proper trouble to ensure the advancement of his
relatives. He does not regard consistency as one of the
major virtues, nor does he like to look very far ahead.
He is swayed by his individual opinions and prejudices, aspirations and interests, usually with an immediate end in view; and the end is by no means always
materialistic.
In Byzantine times this individualism was tempered
by a deep and genuine sense of religion. The Byzantine
T H E LAST
24
Controversy and faction
Greek, unless he was seriously provoked, was loyal to
the Empire and to the Emperor, because the Empire
was the Christian Oecumene, the Kingdom of God on
earth, and the Emperor was its holy symbol of authority, the viceroy of God. The loyalty was seldom given
to the Emperor as a man, and it would be removed were
the Emperor clearly unworthy of his sacred role. It was
only on religious issues that there was anything that
might be called party politics in Byzantium. There the
need that the Byzantine felt to keep the Faith pure
naturally bound him to such others as shared his
views on what was the pure Faith. There he looked
ahead; for his eternal life in the world to come was at
stake.
There were factions, certainly. But the Circus
factions of the sixth century, the Blues and the Greens,
only became parties when they were caught up in the
Monophysite controversy. The Iconoclastic controversy was over a religious issue. The struggle between
the civil service and the landed aristocracy in the
eleventh century was more purely political; but it was
not party warfare so much as an attempt by the central
government to control a baronage made up of a number
of great families all bitterly jealous of each other. There
was an administrative issue, in that the growth of the
power of the baronage meant the break-up of the system
on which taxation and military recruitment had been
based. But small groups whose motive force was the
25
The last Byzantine Renaissance
desire for personal or family aggrandizement can hardly
be called political parties. The civil wars of the fourteenth century were principally based on personal
ambition. Andronicus III and his friends fought
against Andronicus II not on any political grounds but
simply because the younger generation was impatient
of the old incompetent Emperor and his old incompetent ministers. John Cantacuzenus rebelled in 1341 not
because he disagreed with governmental policy but
because he had been outwitted by his former friend,
Alexius Apocaucus. Apocaucus was certainly able to
organize riots against Cantacuzenus's friends in Constantinople. But the city proletariat was always ready to
respond to any encouragement to pillage the houses
of the rich. It is absurd to call this a social movement
against the landed aristocracy when Apocaucus himself
and many of his friends belonged to the same class, and
their houses were unharmed. The same is true of the
riots similarly organized in Adrianople and other
Thracian towns, which had the effect of turning general
public opinion in Thrace in Cantacuzenus's favour. If
the Thessalian magnates supported Cantacuzenus, so
too, as far as we can tell, did the poorer Thessalians, as
he was very popular there, having been responsible in
the last reign for restoring Thessaly to the Empire. In
so far as there was a 'popular' party it was the party of
the religious Zealots, the successors of the Arsenites,
led by monks who moved about amongst the populace
26
Controversy and faction
and moulded opinion there. They were suspicious of
the wealthy intellectuals of the Court of which John
Cantacuzenus was a prominent example, and atfirstthey
seem to have been opposed to him, preferring the more
demagogic Apocaucus and John Calecas. But they seem
to have had little effect on the outcome of the civil
war.1
The Zealot movement in Thessalonica was in a rather
different position. It was more a local nationalist
movement. The citizens of the great city, which was
probably almost as populous as Constantinople and
who were on an average richer than the Constantinopolitans, resented being governed in the interests of the
capital and the hierarchs and rich magnates of the
countryside; and their resentment was expressed in
massacres. But the Zealots were not anti-religious,
much as they hated the hierarchy and the richer
monasteries. The poorer monks were their friends and
allies. It was not for nothing that the Religious Zealots
and the Political Zealots shared the same name. They
might disagree on Hesychasm; but neither had any use
for intellectuals.2
The intellectuals could therefore unite in disapproving of the Zealot movement. But there were three
main controversies on which they could disagree
amongst themselves.
The first and oldest of these questions, which had
1
2
See above, p. n , n. i.
27
See above, p. 13, n. 1.
The last Byzantine Renaissance
been debated since the triumph of Christianity, was not
by now a source of much trouble. It was: how far could
a scholar go along the path of ancient philosophy
without endangering his Christian faith?1
Byzantium had always drawn a distinction between
the Outer Learning, which was the whole of Hellenic
secular learning, and the Inner Learning, which was
Christian theology. Byzantine education was based on
the old Hellenic system of the trivium and the quadrivium^ which included elementary philosophy. When
he had finished this regular course a student of ability
could go on to study law or medicine or mathematics
or higher philosophy at the University, or, if it were in
abeyance, at the feet of some distinguished private
teacher. But should the boy wish to enter the religious
life, he passed from the Outer Learning to the Inner
Learning, which was taught at some monastic or
ecclesiastic institution and above all at the Patriarchal
Academy. The Council in Trullo had ordained that only
clerics should teach theology and that laymen should
not be admitted into its mysteries.2 The first of these
ordinances was in general but not invariably obeyed.
1
2
Dr D. M. Nicol has kindly allowed me to see, before publication,
the text of his article on 'The Byzantine Church and Hellenic
Learning in the Fourteenth Century,' published in Studies in
Church History, v (Leiden, 1969), 23-57. He goes into the question
in some detail. I am glad to find that his conclusions roughly coincide
with mine.
Council in Trullo, canon 64, in J. P. Migne, Patrologia GraecoLatina (Paris, 1857-66), vol. cxxxvn, col. 736.
28
Controversy and faction
The second was impossible to enforce. Theological
students did not always stay the course, while there
were a number of lay intellectuals who did not intend
to be deprived of the Inner Learning. Throughout
Byzantine history there were laymen who were well
trained in theology, having studied either at the Academy or some other school or under some eminent
ecclesiastic. Indeed, some of the most learned of the
Patriarchs, such as Photius, were laymen until the eve
of their elevation but were already highly erudite
theologians.
But there were always clerics who were suspicious of
ancient learning. The Didascalia of the Apostles wished
entirely to proscribe its study; 1 and Origen, for all his
own excellent education, was doubtful of its value.2
The biographer of Theodore the Studite apologized
for his hero having received a full secular education. 3
The biographer of John the Psychaite, a few years later,
dismisses Homer as a gas-bag and the sciences of
astronomy, geometry and arithmetic as sciences of
the non-existent.4 Nicholas Stethatus in his panegyric
of Symeon the New Theologian boasts that Symeon
1
2
3
4
Didascalia Apostolorum, trans. M. D. Gibson (London, 1901), p. 101,
recommending that education should be technical only.
For Origen's rather equivocal views about Classical learning, see
J. Tixeront, Histoire des Dogmes (Paris, 1930), 1, 296-303.
Vita S. Theodori Studitae, in Migne, Patrologia Graeco-Latina,
vol. xcix, cols. 117-20.
See G. da Costa-Louillet, 'Saints de Constantinople aux Vllle,
IXe et Xe siecles', Byzantion, xxiv (Brussels, 1954), 259.
29
The last Byzantine Renaissance
had rejected learning, though the evidence of Symeon's
writings suggests otherwise.1 A few laymen shared
these views, such as the old soldier Cecaumenus, who
thought that it was enough for a boy to study the Bible,
the Old Testament for strategy and the New Testament for morals, and a little logic.2 But these antiintellectuals, though they drew support from many of
the monks, never commanded the main body of the
Church organization. The most admired of the early
Fathers of the Church, Clement of Alexandria, John
Chrysostom, Maximus the Confessor or John of
Damascus, had all been trained in the old Classical way
and were proud of it; and it had been above all to the
Cappadocian saints, Basil and his brother Gregory,
that the survival of the Classical system was due.3 This
tradition lasted on, with bishops such as the saintly
John Mauropus of Euchaita, who wrote an epigram
asking Christ to receive Plato in heaven,4 or Eustathius of Thessalonica, or Michael Acominatus of
Athens.
But the question still remained: where was the fron1
2
3
4
Nicetas Stethatos, Vie de Symeon le Nouveau Theologien, ed.
I. Hausherr, Orient alia Christiana, xn (Rome, 1928), 4.
Cecaumenus, Strategicon, ed. B. Wassiliewsky (St Petersburg, 1896),
PP- 46, 75For the early Fathers' approval of Classical learning, see W. Jaeger,
Early Christianity and Greek Paideia (Cambridge, Mass., 1962),
passim, esp. pp. 46 ff., 73 ff.
Mauropus's poem is given in G. Soyter, Byzantinische Dichtung
(Heidelberg, 1930), p. 26.
30
Controversy and faction
tier between the Outer and the Inner Learning? The
sciences could be legitimately studied, for they attempted only to explain things that lay within the dimensions
of the created universe. They did not exceed the bounds
of the Outer Learning. But philosophy attempted to
explain rather more. The general opinion seems to have
been that the works of the ancient philosophers were
valuable for training the mind. They could teach one
how to think. But they could not teach one what to
think. Theology, the Queen of the Sciences, was something apart. All that we could know of it was what had
been revealed by God, in the Scriptures, in the inspired
decisions of the Oecumenical Councils, in the works of
the Saints of the Church and in the unwritten traditions
handed down from the Apostles. Beyond that lay the
mysteries that the human mind could not comprehend,
about which all that we could know was that we knew
nothing. This dominant apophatic element in Orthodox religion precluded any man-made explanation of
eternal things. The philosophers could supply the
technique that might enable our intellects to penetrate
as far as the limits of the created and the revealed world.
If we sought more from them we ran into danger.
Aristotle did not pose much of a problem, for he was
mainly concerned in explaining the things of this world.
Plato was different. His attitude was far more attractive
to the Orthodox mind than was Aristotle's; and, indeed,
since the days of Saint John the Divine, Platonism and
The last Byzantine Renaissance
Neo-Platonism had played a large part in shaping
Christian thought. Some revered writings, such as the
works of the Pseudo-Areopagite, were almost purely
Neo-Platonic. In unsophisticated circles Plato and
Aristotle, with Plutarch not far behind, ranked with
the prophets. You can see them painted in chapels on
Mount Athos or on Orthodox churches in Moldavia.1
But, in spite of John Mauropus's prayer, they were not
Christians. Plato in particular was to be studied with
caution. In the fourteenth century the mystical writer
Gregory Palamas boasted of his training in Aristotelian
logic but thanked God that he had not succumbed to
the lure of Platonic philosophy.2
Nevertheless the Church, in spite of its antiintellectual wing, was always shy of persecution.
Intellectuals had been prosecuted in the ninth century,
but that was because of the suspicion of Iconoclastic
views. There had been a famous case in the mideleventh century when the celebrated Michael Psellus
was deprived of his University Chair as Chief of the
Philosophers for lecturing too enthusiastically on
Platonic doctrines. But it must be remembered that he
1
2
See Mandeville*s Travels, ed. M. C. Seymour (Oxford, 1967), p. 12;
F. W. Hasluck, Christianity and Islam under the Sultans (Oxford,
1929), 11, 363-9; P.Henry, Les Eglises de la Moldavie du Nord
(Paris, 1930), pp. 235-7, 274- The Tree of Jesse on the outside wall
of churches such as Sucevitsa often includes Thucydides, Plutarch
and even Porphyry.
For Palamas's views on the philosophers, see J. MeyendorfF, Introduction a VEtude de Gregoire Palamas (Paris, 1959), pp. 45-50.
32
Controversy and faction
had many personal enemies who instigated the prosecution, as well as many personal friends who saw to it
that his career was not seriously damaged: also that he
was suspected of too great an interest in occultism, of
which the Church could not approve. Still more notorious was the case brought against his pupil John
Italus, who was in his turn deposed from the Chair of
Philosophy, and who ended his days obscurely in a
monastery. But here again there were personal elements
which are difficult to unravel. Italus was an Italian
Greek and as such suspect at a time when the Empire
was fighting desperately against the Norman rulers of
Southern Italy. He seems to have been a tactless man.
Moreover, it was the Emperor Alexius Comnenus
rather than the Church authorities, whose enmity he
seems to have aroused; and Alexius was anyhow not
fond of intellectuals, whatever his intellectual daughter
Anna may have pretended.1
These two prosecutions may have discouraged the
study of philosophy for a while. But philosophers were
teaching again at the University long before the end of
the twelfth century. Philosophy was accepted as a
legitimate branch of the Outer Learning; but it must
be the hand-maid of religion, and no substitute for it.
The scholars of the last Byzantine period were
1
See Buckler, Anna Comnena, pp. 319-24; J. M. Hussey, Church and
Learning in the Byzantine Empire (Oxford, 1937), pp. 73-95; P. E.
Stephanou, Jean Italos (Orientalia Christiana Analecta, 134, Rome,
1949), passim.
33
The last Byzantine Renaissance
brought up in this tradition and they kept to its rules,
apparently without any conscious strain. When they
argued about scientific matters, as did Metochites and
Chumnus, they did so in secular terms based on Classical learning. When they argued about religious
matters, about Hesychasm or union with Rome, they
did so in religious terms. Even a scholar as well educated and as interested in the Classics as was Nicophorus
Gregoras never overstepped the frontier. Only one
Byzantine thinker of the period, George Gemistus
Plethon, disobeyed the rules; and the work in which he
aired un-Christian doctrines was never published. It is
only from a few surviving fragments that we can see
how shocking it would have appeared. Even so,
Plethon's lectures might have invited trouble; but, on
the advice of the Emperor Manuel II, he set up his
school not in Constantinople but in the provincial
capital of Mistra, where the Church authorities were
less likely to interfere with him.
Had Plethon remained in Constantinople it might
have been difficult for the authorities to have avoided
taking action against him. This would have been embarrassing; for throughout the Palaeologan period the
authorities in the Church hierarchy as well as in the
State were men with a high regard for culture. The only
Patriarch of the time who was not well educated was
Michael VIIPs appointee and subsequent opponent,
Arsenius; and Arsenius, though his followers were most
34
Controversy and faction
of them strongly anti-intellectual, opposed the government on a purely moral issue.l Even a protagonist of the
mystical way of life such as Gregory Palamas took a
Classical education for granted, though he disapproved
of carrying it too far. Many of his followers, such as
John Cantacuzenus and Nicholas Cabasilas, were in the
forefront of the intellectual life of the time. The philosophers might seek new interpretations within the
limits of philosophy, but they accepted its limits. They
were in no danger of persecution, but they did nothing
to invite it. They accepted the distinction between the
Outer and the Inner Learning.
It was as well for them that they were at ease on this
basic problem. For they had other bitter problems to
face. Of these the most crucial and the most permanent
was the question of the union of the Eastern Church
with the Church of Rome. The problem involved
politics as well as religion. The union was in many eyes
politically desirable because it seemed to provide the
only practical means for preserving the Empire itself,
at first because it could be expected to ward off potential enemies from the West, and later, and even more
urgently, because it might provide badly needed help
against actual enemies from the East. But, though the
government might stress the political advantages, the
average Byzantine was only prepared to argue the
question on religious grounds. His eyes were fixed on
1
For Plethon, see below, pp. 77-9.
35
The last Byzantine Renaissance
the next world. Political advantages were irrelevant if
eternal salvation was to be endangered. He was conscious of the scandal of divided Christendom; he
grieved that Christ's garment should be rent. But
before he could contemplate the mending of the rent he
needed assurances that his true Orthodox faith should
not be compromised.
The schism between East and West had arisen from a
number of causes; and, though neither side had wished
for the breach to be irreparable, it had become absolute
in the course of the twelfth century.: The religious
differences fell under three headings. There was the
theological issue of the Procession of the Holy Ghost,
centring round the wordfilioquewhich the Latins had
added to the Creed as it had been fixed at the Second
Oecumenical Council. This was a matter that the Latins
genuinely thought unimportant, the word merely
clarifying their interpretation of the doctrine of the
Trinity, but which to the Greeks could not be accepted,
as the word contradicted their interpretation of the
doctrine. In addition, its insertion seemed to them to be
an insult to a Council inspired by the Holy Spirit. Then
there were the liturgical differences, of which the chief
were whether leavened or unleavened bread should be
used at the Sacrament, the Greeks insisting on the
1
It ought to be unnecessary by now to point out that the schism did
not happen suddenly in 1054 but gradually developed. See S.
Runciman, The Eastern Schism (Oxford, 1955), passim.
36
Controversy and faction
former and the Latins on the latter: and the Greek
practice of the epiklesis, the prayer invoking the Holy
Ghost at the consecration of the Host, a prayer which
the Latins omitted. Finally, and most fundamentally,
there was the ecclesiastical problem concerning the
position of the Pope. The Patriarch of Constantinople
and his Eastern fellow Patriarchs were prepared to give
the Bishop of Rome the primacy of honour among the
Patriarchs (so long as he would account for his heresy on
the Procession of the Holy Ghost), but they would not
accept that the primacy allowed him to meddle in their
internal affairs and provide a court of appeal for their
bishops: still less that it enabled him to pronounce on
doctrine, which only an Oecumenical Council could do.
If union with the Western Church involved submission
to the dictates of the Roman pontiff, then the average
Byzantine, layman and cleric alike, would not willingly
agree to it. There were minor points of difference also,
as over the doctrine of Purgatory or whether secular
priests could marry, or with how many fingers and in
which direction the sign of the Cross should be made.
But the main quarrel was over thefilioqueclause, the
question of the bread and the epiklesis and the Papal
claim to ecclesiastical supremacy. In all of these items
the Western view seemed to the East to be disrespectful
to the Holy Spirit.1
1
See S. Runciman, The Great Church in Captivity (Cambridge, 1968),
pp. 86-96.
4
37
RTL
The last Byzantine Renaissance
The schism had been embittered by the Fourth
Crusade and the crude and clumsy attempts of the
victorious Latins to force their form of religion on the
Greeks. But could Byzantium afford to nurture a
bitterness that united the West against it, at a time
when Western power was growing and Byzantine
power declining? Moreover, the scholars in Byzantium
were beginning to realize that Western Europe, which
they had for so long viewed with disdain, was now
blossoming with cultural activity; and, as a result of the
contact following the Latin conquest, Western scholars
were just beginning to take an appreciative interest in
Greek culture. Was it right to stand aside from this
lively new world?
The Byzantine government had no wish to provoke
unnecessary hostility. During the Nicaean period the
Emperor John Vatatzes had carried on negotiations
with the Papacy which at one moment seemed near to
success. But Rome demanded conditions that seemed
to the Byzantine clergy, who were anyhow far from
enthusiastic about the union, too grossly humiliating;
and the mistrust on both sides was too great.1 Some
of the scholars of the Court were, however, not unfavourable towards union. The learned Nicephorus
Blemmydes hopefully suggested a formula dealing
with the filioque, which was intended to satisfy the
1
W. Norden, Das Papsttum und Byzans (Berlin, 1903), pp.
349 ff.
38
Controversy and faction
theologians on both sides. But neither side would
accept it.1
A far more serious move towards union was that
made by Michael VIII, in his attempt to counter the
vengeful plans of Charles of Anjou by submitting to
Charles's suzerain, the Pope. After long negotiations
Michael sent delegates to the Council of Lyons in 1274,
where they accepted in his name both Papal supremacy
and the lawfulness of Roman theology. The Union of
Lyons was ill-received at Constantinople. The delegates had been of no distinction theologically and did
not represent the feeling of the Church; and only one
was of intellectual distinction, the Emperor's secretary,
the layman George Acropolites. The populace, to whom
memories of persecution during the Latin Empire
were still vivid, refused to accept it, backed by the vast
majority of the clergy. There was opposition even in
the Emperor's own family, led by his sister Eulogia
and supported by his son Andronicus. Michael
attempted to use penal measures to enforce the
union; but that merely roused stronger hostility to
Rome. On Mount Athos legends of Michael's persecution were more numerous and more horrifying than
legends of persecutions under the Latin Empire. The
Papacy grew impatient at the Emperor's failure to
implement the union, and refused to give him help.
1
M. Jugie, Theologia Dogmatica Christianorum Orient alium ab
Ecclesia Catholka Dissidenttum (5 vols., Paris, 1926-35), 1, 417-18.
39
4-2
The last Byzantine Renaissance
The Empire was saved from Charles of Anjou not by
Papal intervention but by the massacre of the Sicilian
Vespers.I
Michael considered himself nevertheless bound by
the union; and he was supported not only by his secretary Acropolites but also by the eminent theologian
whom he had appointed Patriarch, John Beccus.
Beccus had been influenced by a Franciscan of Greek
origin, John Parastron, who lived as Papal legate at
Constantinople and whose personal charm impressed
even his opponents. Under his guidance Beccus and
his rather less distinguished pupils, Constantine of
Melitene and George Metochites, wrote well-thoughtout tracts in favour of Roman doctrines. But they made
few converts.2 When Michael VIII died Andronicus II
repudiated the Union of Lyons and replaced Beccus by
the scholar George of Cyprus, who became the Patriarch Gregory II. George and his friends were not as
bitter against the union as many of their compatriots.
They disliked the idea of Papal supremacy, but they
were eager to find a formula that would satisfy both
sides of the filioque controversy. The historian George
Pachymer suggested that though the word filioque was
unjustified it might be admitted that the Son did have
some part in the Procession of the Holy Ghost. George
1
2
See D. J. Geanakoplos, Emperor Michael Palaeologns and the West
(Cambridge, Mass., 1952), pp. 258 ff.
Ibid. pp. 267-8 (for Parastron), and 307-9; Jugie, Theologia Dogmatica, 1, 418-22.
40
Controversy and faction
of Cyprus himself put forward a formula that he
hoped would be acceptable. But, as Beccus unkindly
pointed out, it depended on there being a distinction between 'existing' and 'being in existence'. It,
and all other such formulae, pleased no one but their
inventors.l
When in the course of the fourteenth century the
Turkish menace became ominous, the Byzantine
government thought again of union. The help of the
Western powers was needed; but they would not come
to help a schismatic Empire. John VI Cantacuzenus
tried to open negotiations; but nothing came of them.
In 1355 the Emperor John V, the son of a Latin
mother, offered to submit to Rome if the Pope would
send him five galleys, a thousand foot-soldiers and
five hundred horsemen. On those terms he would, he
said, be able to convert all his subjects within six
months, and he would send his second son, Manuel,
to Italy for his education; and he undertook to abdicate
in Manuel's favour should he not himself achieve the
union. But the Pope had no troops to send. A Papal
legate armed only with the Papal blessing was an
inadequate substitute. Fourteen years later, when
on a visit to Italy, John made his personal submission
1
George of Cyprus's views, including the distinction between
C/TT&pxei and vhrccp^iv e'xet, are given in Migne, Patrologia GraecoLatina, vol. CXLII, cols. 233-46; and Beccus's rejoinder in ibid,
vol. CXLI, cols. 896-924. See Jugie, Theologia Dogmatica, 1, 429-31;
Beck, Kirche und theologische Literatur, pp. 685-6.
41
The last Byzantine Renaissance
to the Pope at Rome; but he would not involve his
subjects.1
The bulk of these subjects remained hostile to any
arrangement with Rome. But in intellectual circles
there was a growing interest in Western culture. A
number of Western scholars began to visit Constantinople where many of them made an excellent impression. Soon Greek scholars were being invited to Italy
and offered Chairs there. Translations from Latin into
Greek began to appear; and when in about 1360 the
young Demetrius Cydones published a Greek version
of the Summa contra Gentiles of Thomas Aquinas, the
distinguished, if restricted, group that read the work
was deeply impressed. In such circles it seemed
ridiculous not to make an effort to come together
religiously with their brilliant Italian friends.2
The problem could not now be ignored. It was hoped
that an Oecumenical Council whose decisions the
Eastern Churches would respect might be able to resolve the difficulties. But Rome declared that the
Council of Lyons had been oecumenical, and none
other was needed. The Conciliar movement in the
West resulted in a modification of the Roman position.
But if a new Council was to be held, where should it
meet? The Greeks were afraid of being outnumbered
1
2
Norden, Das Papsttum und Byzans, pp. 696-711; G. Ostrogorsky,
History of the Byzantine State, trans. J. M. Hussey (Oxford, 1956),
pp. 476-81.
See below, pp. 74-5.
42
Controversy and faction
and browbeaten were it to be held in the West. The
Latins were not prepared to come to the doomed city of
Constantinople, where, too, they in their turn would
probably be outnumbered.1 The Emperor Manuel II,
who was interested in Western culture, was eager to
create good-will and hoped that something might come
out of the Conciliar movement; he sent an observer to
the Council of Basle. But he did not want to go too far,
both because he was not going to yield on theological
points and because he knew that his people hated the
idea of actual union. His policy was to negotiate but
never to commit himself.2 But his son, John VIII, was
desperate in his need for aid. After long negotiations a
Council was arranged which met at Ferrara in 1438 and
was soon transferred to Florence. The Union was
signed in July 1439. Though the Byzantine delegation
had included most of the leading theologians and philosophers of the time, and though only one member
flatly refused to sign the Union decree, which gave the
Roman Church all that it had demanded, apart from a
doubtfully worded formula on Papal supremacy, once
again the people of Constantinople, led by many of the
bishops and all the lower clergy, refused to accept it.
The government was powerless to enforce it: though
eventually the Union decree was read out in Saint
1
2
See J. Gill, The Council of Florence (Cambridge, 1959), pp. 16 ff.
Ibid. pp. 46 ff. For Manuel's advice to his son on union, see G.
Phrantzes (Sphrantzes), Chronicon, ed. I Bekker (Bonn, 1838), p. 178.
43
The last Byzantine Renaissance
Sophia in the winter of 1452, at a ceremony almost entirely boycotted by the Greeks. Little was gained from
it. There was one great expedition that perished at the
hands of the Turks at Varna. There was a gallant
handful of Westerners who came to support the Empire
in its final agony. But the main result of the Union of
Florence was to bring dispute and bitterness to the
dying Empire. It was only when the actual siege of
the city by the Turks began that Unionists and nonUnionists would work whole-heartedly together again.
The polemical writings on the schism and the debates
at the Union Councils make sterile reading. The same
arguments recur, and the same misunderstandings,
made worse by the difficulty of translating theological
terms. There were endless references to the works of the
Fathers of the Church, but with differing interpretations; and the Fathers themselves were not always
consistent with each other or even with themselves.
The Greek and Latin versions of Conciliar acts often
differed. There was a profound difference between the
outlook of Greek traditional theology and the Latin
theology of the time, though the Latins tried to minimize it and many Greek scholars were attracted by the
Latin attitude. At the Council of Florence the Latins
who worked as a team outclassed the Greeks who
argued as individuals. The political side of the question,
which must have been in everyone's mind, was barely
mentioned until the final crisis. The cultural side was
44
Controversy and faction
only suggested rather than stated in the arguments.
True to their traditions the Byzantine scholars had to
justify their varying views on theological grounds.1
One other great controversy agitated the minds of
Greek scholars in the fourteenth century. It was over
the nature of mysticism. There had always been a
strong mystical element in the Byzantine Church. The
mystical writings of Gregory of Nazianzus, of John
Climacus, of the Pseudo-Areopagite and of others in
their tradition had always been read and admired. In
the early eleventh century, Symeon the New Theologian had given new force to the tradition; and by the
end of the thirteenth century mystical practices were
widespread in Byzantine monasteries, especially on
Mount Athos, and were even followed in sophisticated
circles in Constantinople. The mystics, the Hesychasts, or Quietists, as they were usually called,
believed that through intense contemplation, for which
certain exercises provide a helpful prelude, they could
rise to a state of mystical ecstasy in which they could
make contact with the divine.
As in so many aspects of Orthodox faith, which, in its
apophatic modesty, dislikes hard theological definitions, the theological theory of mysticism had never
been clearly stated because it had never been questioned. But by the fourteenth century there was a
1
The discussions at Florence are fully given in Gill, Council of
Florence', pp. 131 ff.
45
The last Byzantine Renaisance
growing feeling among many intellectuals that the mystical practices of the Hesychasts were barely Christian.
These views were given expression by a Calabrian
Greek, Barlaam, who had succeeded in quarrelling
with a number of Byzantine scholars on other philosophical and religious grounds. Amongst his opponents
was a learned monk, Gregory Palamas, who wrote
courteously to him to criticize his doctrine of the Incarnation. Barlaam was furious, and, knowing Palamas
to sympathize with the Hesychasts, made it his business
to refute their doctrines and ridicule their practices.
He delightedly discovered a group of Hesychast monks
in Thessalonica who claimed to attain to the divine
vision by gazing concentratedly at their navels. He
made great fun of them, and then went on to ask how
indeed could any mystic see God Who is invisible.l
Palamas's reply was fully given in a great work which
he called Triads in Defence ofthe Holy Hesychasts. In it,
while he defended the use of exercises and saw nothing
wrong with navel-gazing as a possible aid to contemplation, his main object was to prove that what the
mystics could perceive, if they attained so far, was not
God Himself, but His uncreated energies. What could
be experienced at the summit of mystical experience was
the Light of God, the Light that had shone on Mount
Thabor at the Transfiguration of Our Lord, the light
1
For the whole history and circumstances of the Palamite controversy see Meyendorff, Introduction a... Gregoire Palamas^ passim.
46
Controversy and faction
which the Byzantines suggested by the mandorla, the
rays that surround Christ in glory. The light was an
Energy of God, to be distinguished from His Essence,
which is invisible and indivisible. This was not a new
doctrine. It was inherent in the works of the Cappadocian Fathers, though they preferred the word c powers'
to 'energies', and of Maximus the Confessor and John
of Damascus. But it had never before been clearly
stated, because it had never been definitely challenged.
To many of the philosophers of the fourteenth century,
however, men less well grounded in the works of the
Christian Fathers and, some of them, affected by
Western scholasticism, it seemed new and unacceptable. If the Light is God, it must be of His Essence and
therefore inseparable from Him. They could not allow
a distinction between Essence and Energy.l
This is not the place for a deep discussion of the
theological arguments. In the outcome Palamism
triumphed, partly because it had the approval of the
majority of the Greek clergy, partly because it had the
political support of John Cantacuzenus, and partly because of the personality and intellect of Palamas himself.
The doctrine of the Energies was endorsed by a Council
of the Eastern Churches in 1351, and since then it has
been an article of Orthodox belief. But it had been bit1
The Triads have been edited and published with a French translation by J. Meyendorff; see Gregoire Palamas, Defense des Saints
Hesychastes (2 vols., Louvain, 1959). Palamas's other published
works can be found in Migne, Patrologia Graeco-Latina, vol. CL.
47
The last Byzantine Renaissance
terly opposed by scholars of the calibre of Nicephorus
Gregoras, George Akyndinus and Demetrius Cydones.
It was denounced as being heretical by Rome and so
became an added cause for contention between the
Eastern and Western Churches. At the Council of
Florence the Emperor, in his desire to avoid further
controversy, forbade an attempt to raise the question.
But, as we shall see, the anti-Palamites were not all of
them in favour of union with Rome, nor were they all
politically opposed to John Cantacuzenus. In his controversies the individual Greek scholar pursued in all
sincerity his own individual course. He might belong to
a faction, but never to a party.
THE SCHOLARS
I N THESE modern days when a sharp line is drawn
between the humanities and the sciences it is a relief to
look back to an age when a cultured man was expected
to take an interest in all branches of human knowledge.
The 'complete man' of the Italian Renaissance represented an ideal that only a Michelangelo or a
Leonardo could reach. But he was foreshadowed by
Western medieval scholars such as Roger Bacon, and
by the best scholars of Byzantium, especially during
the last two centuries of the Christian Empire.
There was a gap in the completeness. The Byzantine
scholars made no attempts to be painters or sculptors.
Practising artists did not enjoy a high status in Byzantium, great as was the Byzantine devotion to art. Except
for a few manuscript miniaturists and a few frescopainters working on the perimeter of the Byzantine
world, scarcely one Byzantine artist is known to us by
name, and only one architect, the Armenian Tirdat,
since the days of Justinian; and the great architects of
Justinian's time, Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of
Miletus, and Isidore's nephew and namesake, the
architects of Saint Sophia, were more renowned as
49
The last Byzantine Renaissance
geometricians than as the designers of buildings. In the
ninth century Photius could describe the New Basilica
of the Emperor Basil I without any mention of its
architect or its decorators. This was largely because the
Byzantine never thought in terms of individual works
of art. A picture or a carving was to be seen in its setting,
as part of a whole; and the whole was the product of a
team. A church would have its architects, or 'geometricians', who calculated the dimensions of the
building and its stresses, the builders, or 'architects',
who carried out the structural work, the masterpainters who drew the designs for the mosaics or the
frescoes and the artisans who inserted the mosaic cubes
or applied the paint, the specialists who chose and
placed the marble slabs and the bas-reliefs and the artisans who were under their orders. The design was dictated by the purpose of the building; and the unifying
force behind it was the patron who ordered and paid for
the work. This corresponded with the Byzantine theory
based on a curious interpretation of a passage in
Aristotle's Metaphysics. A picture had several'causes'.
The most important was the 'formal' cause, which
meant the prototype that the work represented—if an
icon, Christ or the particular saint: if a church building,
God's universe, of which it was a microcosm. Next was
the 'poetic' cause, which was the patron who was
responsible for commissioning the work and who was
thus its ultimate maker. The 'organic' cause seems to
The scholars
have been the artist or craftsman, and the 'material'
cause the actual material that he used. There was also
the 'final' cause, which may have been the intended
function of the work, or the need that it was required to
fill, or may perhaps simply have been thefinishedwork
itself.1
The artist was thus considered to be a craftsman, and
was kept in his place. A man of culture might perhaps,
like the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, enjoy
trying his hand at amateur painting;2 but his proper
function was to be the 'poetic' cause. Unfortunately it
is not cheap to commission works of art, and artists are
seldom wealthy men. Moreover wealth was growing
scarce during the political decline of the Empire. The
usual 'poetic' cause was the Imperial government or a
member of the Imperial family. Around the beginning
of the fourteenth century we find rich scholarstatesmen, such as Theodore Metochites and Nicephorus Chumnus, commissioning the decoration of
whole churches. Later in the century, though the
Despots of Mistra or the Emperors of Trebizond and
their wealthier magnates might arrange for the frescoing of some smallish church, at Constantinople itself
1
2
For theories of art and the role of the artist in Byzantium, see
G. Mathew, Byzantine Aesthetics (London, 1963), esp. pp. 119-21.
According to the Western ambassador Liudprand, Constantine
VII was kept so short of money by his father-in-law and senior
colleague, Romanus Lecapenus, that he painted pictures to make a
living. Liudprand, Opera, ed. J. Becker (Hanover-Leipzig, 1915),
pp. 91-2.
51
The last Byzantine Renaissance
a patron could do little more than order an occasional
illuminated manuscript. At the same time the substitution of the costly mosaic by the fresco, a substitution in which taste as well as economy probably played
a part, and by the icon painted on wood led to the upgrading of the artist's position. A single artist could
now design and execute the painted decoration of a
whole church; and he began to record his name while
doing so. Portable icons became more fashionable, and
certain icon-painters began to be preferred to others
less gifted. By the time that we reach the postByzantine period, artists' names are often and increasingly known.1
The practice of the arts was not the scholar's business. But he was expected to cover all other branches of
culture. There were certainly amongst them men who
specialized for choice in one branch only. For instance,
all that we know of the work of Nicholas Rhabdas is
contained in two remarkable letters, written in about
1350, which are purely concerned with mathematical
and logistical problems. It is probable that he had no
other interests.2 Gregory Choniades, who died in
Constantinople in about 1300 after having founded an
academy at Trebizond for the study of astronomy,
1
2
The first Byzantine fresco-artists to sign their names seem to have
been Greeks working in Serbia. The only miniature painters whose
signatures we have are the eight who worked on Basil IPs Menologion.
For Rhabdas, see G. Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science
(Baltimore, 1927-48), in, part 1 681-2.
52
The scholars
never, as far as we know, wrote on any other subject,
though he taught himself Persian and Arabic in the
pursuit of his studies. The same is true of Manuel of
Trebizond, who taught at this academy. On the other
hand, Manuel's pupil, George Chrysococces, wrote on
medicine and geography as well as on astronomy.1
Triclinius, the great commentator on Classical literature, whose work was much admired in his own time
and still is important today, seems never to have departed from his chosen sphere.2 The division between
the Inner and the Outer Learning meant that theologians, such as Gregory Palamas, would not have
thought of writing on the sciences; and lesser devotees of
the Inner Learning, such as George Moschampus or the
Patriarch John Beccus, never ventured outside theology.
There was, however, no merit in being a specialist.
The sciences overlapped, and all were part of philosophy in the fullest sense of the word. Even the Queen
of the Sciences, theology, could make use of philosophy in so far as it concerned itself with human reason
and the things of the created world. The traditional
education system of the trivium and the quadrivium
aimed at providing a general knowledge of the Outer
1
2
See ibid. pp. 688-90. For a fuller account of these astronomers, see
D. Pingree, 'Gregory Choniades and Palaeologan Astronomy',
Dumbarton Oaks Papers, no. 18 (Washington, 1964), pp. 133-60.
Krumbacher, Byzantinischen Litter atur, pp. 554-5. Krumbacher
considered Triclinius to be on a level with most modern editors of
the Classics.
5
53
RTL
The last Byzantine Renaissance
Learning; and the higher education provided by the
University, while for practical purposes it might concentrate on law and medicine, covered the whole range
of philosophy as well. The University had been in
abeyance during the exile at Nicaea. It was refounded
by Michael VIII soon after his recovery of Constantinople and was situated in the outbuildings of Saint
Sophia, conveniently under the Patriarch's eye. Its
first head, George Acropolites, lectured on mathematics as well as on pure philosophy. His main courses
were on Euclid and Nicomachus and on Aristotle.1
Andronicus II, apparently on the advice of his Grand
Logothete, enlarged the University and placed it under
the Grand Logothete's care. Professors' salaries were
paid by the State, but, as an innovation, parents had to
provide a small sum to supplement them.2 During the
troubles of the fourteenth century the University seems
to have declined, probably from lack of public funds;
and the best higher education was provided by private
schools such as that run by Nicephorus Gregoras at the
monastery of the Chora.3 Such schools probably had
some connection with the skeleton organization maintained at the University. At the end of the century
Manuel II re-organized higher education. He moved
the University to the monastery of Saint John in
1
2
3
F. Fuchs, Die Hoheren Schulen von Konstantinopel im Mittelalter
(Leipzig, 1926), pp. 54-8.
Ibid. pp. 62-5.
R. Guilland, Essai sur Nicephore Gregoras (Paris, 1926), pp. 13-14.
54
The scholars
Petrion, where there was a good library which students
could use. At the same time he placed the Patriarchal
Academy in the monastery of Saint John in Studion,
where, too, the library was good. The University, now
called the Catholicon Mouseion, was put under one of
the four Judges-General. It seems to have shared professors with the Patriarchal Academy. Both institutions
were active till the fall of the city.x
The germs of this new comprehensive learning were
developing in the twelfth century; but it was at the
Nicaean Court that it began to blossom, under the
influence of Nicephorus Blemmydes. He was the perfect polymath. He was born in about 1197, the son of a
physician. After studying medicine and philosophy at
Smyrna he went to sit at the feet of a hermit monk in
Bithynia, called Prodromus, from whom he learnt
mathematics and astronomy. He then settled in Nicaea
where he studied theology. The Emperor John Vatazes
thought highly of him and encouraged him to found a
school, where his pupils included the heir to the throne,
Theodore, and George Acropolites. In 1235 he retired
to a monastery at Scamandros, but used at times to
leave it to tour the Greek world in search of manuscripts scattered at the time of the Latin sack of
Constantinople. In 1248 he founded his own monastery
1
L. Brehier, Le Monde Byzantin (3 vols., Paris, 1947-50), vol. 111,
La Civilisation Byzantine, pp. 484-97; Fuchs, Die Hoheren Schulen
von Konstantinopely pp. 72-6.
55
="2
The last Byzantine Renaissance
at Ephesus, which remained his home until his death in
1272; but he paid several visits to the Imperial Court in
the vain hope of being appointed Patriarch. He claimed
that his former pupil, Theodore II, had offered him the
post but that he had been obliged to refuse, as the
Emperor would not promise him sufficient freedom of
action. The truth seems to have been that Theodore
turned down his insistent demand to be appointed,
knowing too well the defects in his character. The
range of his writing was enormous. He wrote a handbook on logic and on physics, a geographical synopsis,
a treatise on kingship, in order that Theodore II
should learn to appreciate the value of philosophers,
some poetry, several theological commentaries as well
as his treatise on the Holy Ghost, which was intended
to satisfy both Greeks and Latins by showing that the
Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father and the Son,
but principally from the Father—thereby pleasing nobody, as it clearly showed that he understood neither
the Greek nor the Latin doctrine—and an autobiography in two parts, a work full of fascinating detail but
almost unreadable, as his style is amongst the most
ornate and long-winded in all Byzantine literary history. He was a vain, self-righteous, ill-tempered and
vindictive man; but his love of learning was genuine
and his erudition immense.l
1
For Blemmydes and his works, see Krumbacher, Byzantinischen
Litteratur, pp. 445-9; Beck, Kirche und theologische Literatur, pp.
56
The scholars
Of his two most distinguished pupils, the Emperor
Theodore II wrote on philosophy, his main work being
Six Books on the Unity ofNature, and a book called The
Explanation of the Universe, written after his ascension
to the throne. It is a curious production, consisting
largely of apologies for his inadequate knowledge of the
sciences. Probably it was intended to be taken ironically, as an attempt to ridicule the vaunted polymathy
of his old tutor. Unfortunately he had learnt from his
old tutor a literary style almost as verbose as Blemmydes's own; and it is sometimes quite impossible to
follow his language or his thought. This is to be regretted, as he had an original mind and tried to re-assess
the teachings of the ancient philosophers and to reinforce them by his own ideas. His distinction between
natura naturans and natura naturata brings him nearer in
thought to Spinoza than to any philosopher of the past.l
George Acropolites was a little older than Theodore
and had succeeded Blemmydes as Theodore's tutor.
He was a gentle, lovable man, who managed, however,
to arouse Theodore's displeasure and whose subsequent
support of Michael VIII's usurpation was ethically
hard to defend. His political career as Michael's secretary was not very happy, though he seems to have
1
671-3; Gardner, Lascarids of Nicaea, pp. 278-82; B. Tatakis, La
Philosophie Byzantine (Paris, 1949: fasciscule supplementaire no. 11
of E. Brehier, Histoire de la Philosophie), pp. 223-5.
Gardner, Lascarids of Nicaea, pp. 197-211, 286-90; Tatakis,
Philosophie Byzantine, pp. 235-9.
57
The last Byzantine Renaissance
enjoyed his visit as a delegate to the Council of Lyons.
He was an excellent and popular head of the restored
University of Constantinople. His learning was wide;
but his only important literary work was his Chronicle,
a history of his own times, which is well written and full
of invaluable information, but not unprejudiced nor
always strictly accurate. His two theological works were
composed to justify the Latin doctrine of the Procession
of the Holy Ghost. His prose shows a welcome move
towards a simpler style. He also wrote an amount of
ceremonial poetry, and, it seems, like most Byzantine
scholars, a vast number of letters; but none has survived.l
Amongst Acropolites's pupils at the University was
George of Cyprus. He escaped as a boy from his native
island where, under Frankish rule, a Greek could not
obtain any higher education, and he planned to go to
Ephesus to study under Blemmydes. When he was told
of the old gentleman's cantankerous temperament he
changed his mind and went on to seek Acropolites,
whom he found just settled in Constantinople. George,
who later became the Patriarch Gregory II, was not, as
we have noticed, very successful in his theological
writing, but he wrote sensibly if unoriginally on geometry and geography, and produced an attractive short
autobiography.2
1
2
Gardner, Lascarids ofNicaea, pp. 282-6; Beck, Kirche und theologische Literatur, pp. 674-5.
See above, pp. 40-1. The text of the autobiography is given in
Migne, Patrologia Graeco-Latina, vol. 142, cols. 19-30.
58
The scholars
A more distinguished pupil of Acropolites was
George Pachymer, who was born in 1242 and died in
1310. His best-known work is his history of his own
times, which is amongst the finest productions of
Byzantine historiography. It is slightly marred by a
determination, characteristic of the time, to find the
correct Attic term for every name that he uses, whether
of nations or even of the months; but it is reliable and
fair-minded. Pachymer was a deacon of the Church and
for a time a professor at the Patriarchal Academy. He
wrote a little on theology, as when he sought to find a
compromise formula on thefilioquedispute, and long
works on philosophy which have never been printed, as
well as a useful handbook on the quadrivium; but his
main interest was in mathematics and the theory of
music. He understood though he did not employ
Arabic numerals.1
Still more remarkable for the range of his erudition
was the monk Maximus Planudes, who was born in
1260 and died in 1310. He was mainly self-taught,
though he may have sat under George of Cyprus. He
never held a University post but taught at a monastic
school with which George had been connected. He was
a good mathematician, who recommended the use of
Arabic numerals. He wrote a historical geography. But
his fame rested on his philological and grammatical
1
Tatakis, Philosophie Byzantine, pp. 239-40; Sarton, History of
Science, 11, part 2, 972-3.
59
The last Byzantine Renaissance
work. He wrote commentaries on Theocritus and
Hermogenes. He compiled an anthology of epigrams,
and dabbled himself in poetry. He re-wrote Aesop's
Fables. More remarkably, he learnt Latin. He was not
the first Byzantine scholar to do so. Byzantine lawyers
had always acquired a smattering of Latin; and Manuel
Holobolus, who was about twenty years older than
Planudes, had made a serious study of the language.
But Planudes actually translated Latin works into
Greek. His translations included extracts from Ovid
and from Cicero, Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy
and Saint Augustine's work on the Trinity. He was not
always a very accurate translator, but he captured something of the feeling of the original. He had at first
favoured the union of the Churches, as he showed in his
translation of Augustine's work. After Andronicus IPs
succession he changed his mind and wrote against the
Latin doctrine of xhtfilioque. The change was probably
sincere. Unlike most Byzantine scholars he seems to
have lacked political ambition. His only public post,
that of ambassador to Venice in 1297, brought him no
satisfaction.l
It should be noted that these philosopher-scientists
were nearly all of them involved in the Church organization. Blemmydes and Planudes were monks, Pachy1
Tatakis, Philosophie Byzantine, pp. 240-3; Sarton, History ofScience,
11, part 2, 973-4; Krumbacher, Byzantinischen Litteratur, pp. 543-6;
Fuchs, Die Hoheren Schulen von Konstantinopel, pp. 58-62.
60
The scholars
mer a deacon. Acropolites, though he remained a
layman, was an accepted theologian. George of Cyprus
rose to be Patriarch. Outside of Arsenite circles the
Outer Learning and Inner Learning worked in harmony. It was only the Roman question that roused
controversy, owing to Michael VIIFsfierceattempts to
implement the union that his delegates had signed at
Lyons. Scholars who supported the union, such as
Acropolites and George Metochites, found themselves
cold-shouldered by their former friends.1 As the fourteenth century advanced this controversy died down.
Negotiations continued, and men still argued on the
question. But there was no actual attempt to enforce
union on the Byzantines. That was to take place in the
next century, and then the bitterness would be revived.
In the meantime, though scholars might discuss the
merits and demerits of union, the debates did not
break up friendships or ruin careers. It was the Palamite controversy that was to play that role.
It is not possible in a short study to list all the
Byzantine scholars of the fourteenth century. We can
only glance at the careers of the more significant of
them. In the restricted world that Byzantium had now
become, these scholars were all acquainted with each
other, even if they did not all like each other. They
corresponded with each other, sometimes cordially and
sometimes with animosity. The Imperial Court con1
See Geanakoplos, Emperor Michael Palaeologos, pp. 273 ff.
61
The last Byzantine Renaissance
sistently patronized scholarship; so most of them
gravitated there and intrigued to secure posts or influence there. There was at first a second centre of scholarship at Thessalonica. But it was dispersed after the
Zealot rising in the 1340s; and even before the rising
the Thessalonians liked to be in touch with Constantinople, and many of them settled there.l Trebizond
had its schools and its renowned astronomical academy;
but bright young Trapezuntines preferred to come to
Constantinople. Scholars might retire now and then to
Mount Athos or to monasteries elsewhere in search of
quiet; but controversy often followed them there. The
scholars formed a society that was at the same time
closely knit, highly individualistic, jealous and quarrelsome, but ready as never before in Byzantine history to
look at traditional thought with a fresh critical eye.
The chief patrons of the new generation of scholars
were the two leading ministers of the pious and cultured Andronicus II. Nicephorus Chumnus and
Theodore Metochites had remarkably similar careers.
Each came to the Court as a young man. Each was chief
magistrate at Thessalonica before attaining to high
office in Constantinople. Each married a daughter into
the Imperial family and so entered the inner ring of the
Byzantine aristocracy. Each was a 'poietes' of art,
endowing, rebuilding and decorating a great monastery.
Each encouraged young scholars and found time to
1
See above, p. 20.
62
The scholars
write a vast number of books and letters; and each,
perhaps because of these distractions, proved to be an
ineffectual administrator. Each remained devotedly
loyal to Andronicus II, though Chumnus predeceased
him. Each retired into a monastery. For much of their
careers they were good friends, but eventually embarked on a fierce intellectual controversy, though,
courteously, neither mentioned the other's name in his
polemical tracts.
Chumnus was slightly the elder. He was born at
Thessalonica in about 1260 and always retained a deep
affection for his native city. He studied at Constantinople under George of Cyprus. He wrote on philosophy, his tastes being Aristotelian but tempered by an
overriding sense of apophatic theology. He was interested in natural science, particularly in meteorology;
and he particularly concerned himself with rhetoric and
style. He advocated clarity, simplicity and brevity in
writing, but did not always practise those virtues. He
was a haughty, touchy man, not much liked outside of
his immediate circle. Of the monastery that he
beautified, Our Lady of Prompt Succour, nothing
remains.1
Theodore Metochites was some ten years younger
than Chumnus. His father was George Metochites,
1
For Chumnus, see J. Verpeaux, Nicephore Choumnos, Homme d'etat
et Humaniste Byzantin (Paris, 1959), passim; and I. Sevcenko,
Etudes sur la Polemique entre Theodore Metochite
Choumnos (Brussels, 1962), passim.
63
et Nicephore
The last Byzantine Renaissance
who had been one of the few scholarly supporters of the
Union of Lyons and had therefore fallen into disgrace
with Andronicus II. But though Theodore started his
career under this cloud, he soon won the Emperor's
confidence and affection. He became Grand Logothete
in 1320 and remained the Emperor's loyal helper to the
last. On the old man's dethronement he retired to his
monastery of the Chora. His erudition was immense;
and he wrote on every branch of the Outer Learning.
Perhaps because of his family background he avoided
theology, though he composed one or two hagiographical studies. He wrote funeral orations and eulogies, both
in prose and inverse, besides numerous works on philosophy, education and the sciences. He was especially
proud of his knowledge of astronomy, to which he came
late in life, having at last found a worthy teacher in the
mathematician Michael Bryennius. He thought highly
of the importance of history; and his commentaries
show an honest objectivity, not only as regards the
Classical period but also as regards later periods. His
most celebrated work was his Miscellanea^ a collection
of 120 essays on philosophy and politics, which is impregnated by his knowledge of the Classics and his preference for Plato to Aristotle and by his readiness to
think things out for himself. His controversy with
Chumnus opened on the question of style, over which
it is difficult not to sympathize with Chumnus; for
Metochites was one of those Byzantine writers who
64
The scholars
never used one word if ten would suffice. The argument
then moved into the sphere of philosophy and the rival
merits of Aristotle and Plato. Here Metochites with his
larger scholarship and his finer understanding of the
ancients emerged the victor. He was not, in fact, a very
profound thinker, and his verbosity often obscures his
meaning. He was also a trifle chauvinistic, refusing, for
instance, to take any interest in Arabic numerals, as the
Greeks had no need for new-fangled foreign inventions,
though he admitted that they had learnt from older
nations in the past. But the extent and accuracy of his
erudition, backed by a stupendous memory, and the
freshness of his approach thrilled the students that sat
at his feet and made him a powerful influence for enlightenment. The mosaics and frescoes of the church of
Saint Saviour in Chora remain as a testimony to his
piety and his taste.l
At Thessalonica, where the influence of Eustathius
lasted on and where Triclinius had been brought up,
the master whom young students revered was a friend
of both these scholar-statesmen, but a man whose
career was very different from theirs. Joseph the
Philosopher, who lived from 1280 to 1330, was a monk
who was happiest when he could lead the contemplative
1
For Metochites, see H.-G. Beck, Theodoros Metochites (Munich,
1952), passim; Sevcenko, Etudes sur la Polemique, passim; H. Hunger,
'Theodoros Metochites als Vorlaufer des Humanismus in Byzanz',
in Byzantinische Zeitschrift, XLV (Munich, 1952), 4-19; Tatakis,
Philosophie Byzantine, pp. 249-56 (see below, p. 94, n. 1).
65
The last Byzantine Renaissance
life. He had no worldly ambition and firmly refused the
offer of the Patriarchate. But he believed in the value of
a Classical education, and he prepared a vast encyclopedia, intended to correlate the various branches of
Classical learning and to show how their interconnection and their understanding could help in the higher
study of theology. His attitude to the Outer and the
Inner Learning was followed by several later Thessalonians, in particular by Nicholas Cabasilas.1
At the capital Metochites's role as patron of scholarship was taken on by John Cantacuzenus, Grand
Logothete under Andronicus III, later a rebel, then
Emperor, and finally the monk Josaphat, who, like
Metochites, was a man of wide learning himself. He
was perhaps too much of an opportunist to be a great
Emperor, and his rebellion had done infinite harm to
the Empire. But he had an attractive personality and
was loved by his friends and respected by his enemies.
After his fall from power he was frequently invited to
emerge from his retirement to play the role of elder
statesman. His chief literary work was his History of his
times, written during his retirement. Despite its length
it is perhaps the most readable of all Byzantine histories. Its language is clear and straightforward, though
he was overfond of echoing Thucydides. Though it is
1
See M. Treu, 'Der Philosoph Joseph', in Byzantinische Zeitschrift,
Vin (Munich, 1899), 1-64; Tatakis, Philosophie Byzantine, pp. 2446; Correspondence de Nicephore Gregoras, ed. Guilland, pp. 338-42.
66
The scholars
not quite as impartial as he claimed, it is not unfair to
his opponents, and its factual information is fairly
reliable. Cantacuzenus's model for the history seems to
have been Caesar's Gallic Wars, which he certainly had
studied. He may therefore have known Latin; but there
was already in existence a Greek translation of the
Gallic Wars, which used to be thought, incorrectly, to
be the work of Planudes. Cantacuzenus seems not to
have written on the sciences, but he produced a number
of theological works, Christian apologias directed
against the Jews and against the Muslims, and tracts in
favour of Palamite doctrines, in which he devoutly
believed. It was only against the opponents of Palamism
that he felt any hostility, even imprisoning, though
without severity, his old friend Gregoras. His attitude
towards Rome was friendly, though he was careful not
to commit himself to any scheme for union. Demetrius
Cydones, the strongest advocate of union amongst the
scholars of the time and a convinced opponent of Palamism, remained one of his closest friends. But Cydones, unlike Gregoras, was not a vain and quarrelsome
man.1
Of all the Byzantine polymaths, Nicephorus Gregoras was the most remarkable. He was born in about
1295 at Heraclea in Pontus. His parents died when he
1
For the career of the Emperor John VI Cantacuzenus, see the
summary in D. M. Nicol, The Byzantine Family of Kantakouzenos
{Cantacuzenus) (Washington, 1968), pp. 35-103.
67
The last Byzantine Renaissance
was a child, and he was brought up by his maternal
uncle, the Metropolitan of Heraclea, who instilled in
him a taste for learning and, when he was twenty, sent
him to Constantinople with an introduction to the
learned Patriarch, John Glykys. The Patriarch introduced him to Metochites, who took to him at once and
soon showered on him the affection that his own delinquent sons had forfeited. Metochites in his turn introduced the young scholar to the Emperor Andronicus II.
Soon he was the star in the company of savants that
Andronicus gathered around him. He refused to take
any position at Court, but agreed to go on a delicate
embassy to Serbia in 1326. He never held any University
Chair, preferring to run his own school: which probably gave him more freedom and more money. The
fall of Andronicus II and of Metochites was a blow to
him; but he won the respect of Andronicus III and the
affection of the Grand Logothete John Cantacuzenus,
while loyally continuing to visit his fallen friends. He
supported Cantacuzenus when civil war broke out on
the death of Andronicus III. In 1330 he won renown
through a debate in which he demolished the Calabrian
Greek Barlaam, in which his deductive reasoning was
shown to be far superior to Barlaam's syllogistic
method. It is possible that his victory was not quite as
complete as he claimed; for Barlaam, who was a fine
mathematician and one of the founders of modern
algebra, continued to have his admirers. In 1334 he won
68
The scholars
still greater renown by his triumphant arguments
against two Papal emissaries, the Dominicans Francesco of Camerino and Richard the Englishman. His
troubles started in 1340, with the beginnings of the
Palamite controversy. Though the attack against
Palamite doctrines was initiated, ironically, by his
detested opponent Barlaam, Gregoras too was strongly
and sincerely opposed to them; and his opposition
coloured the rest of his life. He quarrelled with Cantacuzenus because of it, and refused to keep silence, even
though he thereby lost his school and suffered a period
of imprisonment. Not knowing the Christian Fathers
as well as he knew the Classics, he was convinced that
Palamas was a dangerous innovating heretic. His many
scientific works belong to his earlier years. As a
mathematician he achieved very little, chiefly because,
like Metochites, he disapproved of the new use of
Arabic numerals. His chief interests were in acoustics,
where he tried to supplement Ptolemy's standard work
and conducted another controversy with Barlaam, and
in astronomy, where his most remarkable achievement
was his scheme to correct the Julian calendar andfixthe
date of Easter. In later life he devoted himself to
polemical works on theology, attacking Palamism, and
to his great History. This, like that of Cantacuzenus, is
written in a clear and effective style, and is likewise
really an apologia for his career. But he was far vainer
than Cantacuzenus, and far less generous to his op6
69
RTL
The last Byzantine Renaissance
ponents. He maintained that he won every debate in
which he took part; and anyone who disagreed with him
was unscrupulous, ambitious and dishonest. As a result
he is a vivid and entertaining but quite unreliable
guide, far better as a historian on the period before
his own lifetime, as he could view those years with a
scholarly detachment. His vanity was redeemed by
intellectual integrity and courage. He had many devoted friends whom he never deserted when they fell
into disgrace, and he valued friendship highly. Yet
when Cantacuzenus tried to be reconciled to him his
intransigence wrecked the reconciliation.l
Gregoras's bete noire^ Gregory Palamas, would not
have wished to be rated as an intellectual, and ought not
to be counted amongst the scholars. But he had in fact
had a good education and possessed a powerful intellect; and he wrote his great theological works in a clear
Classical style, reminiscent of that of the Cappadocian
Fathers, whom he greatly admired. But, though he was
himself suspicious of scholarship, he had friends among
the scholars with whom he corresponded; and the controversy arising from his doctrines showed how little
there was of a party line amongst the scholars. Palamas's
opponents were led by Barlaam, who was at first more
Orthodox than the Orthodox but later was converted to
1
The best general modern work on Nicephorus Gregoras is Guilland's
Essai sur Nicephore Gregoras (see above, p. 21, n. 2). There is a good
summary of his thought in Tatakis, Philosophie Byzantine, pp. 25661.
70
The scholars
the Roman Church: Gregoras, who was Barlaam's
bitter enemy and who was strongly anti-Roman: the
Patriarch John Calecas, who was despised by all the
intellectuals: Akyndinus, a Bulgarian by birth, who had
been Palamas's favourite pupil: Demetrius Cydones,
who was a devoted friend to John Cantacuzenus and
eventually a convert to Rome: and the Papal legate,
Paul of Smyrna. The Palamite supporters included
John Cantacuzenus himself, as well as his political
enemies Apocaucus and the Empress-Mother Anna,
though her liking for Palamas was personal rather than
ideological, a number of highly educated scholars such
as Nicholas Cabasilas and Theodore of Melitene, and
nearly the whole monkish element in the Church.
Palamas himself was censured by Gregoras for maintaining a friendly correspondence with the Grand
Master of the Latin Knights of Rhodes.1
Palamas's austere attitude towards Classical studies
was by no means shared by his followers. Isidore
Boukheras, the Athonite monk who succeeded John
Calecas as Patriarch, was a scholar highly respected by
his humanist pupil Demetrius Cydones.2 His namesake, Metropolitan of Thessalonica at the close of the
century and an adherent of Palamism, declared that a
1
2
For Palamas, see J. Meyendorff, A Study of Gregory Palamas,
trans, from the French by G.Lawrence (London, 1964); also
Meyendorff's French translation and valuable introduction and notes
to Palamas's own great work, In Defence of the Holy Hesychasts.
See MeyendorrT, A Study of Gregory Palamas, pp. 34-5.
71
6-2
The last Byzantine Renaissance
study of the ancients would inculcate moral virtue, as
their characters were far nobler than those of the men
of his time.: Theodore of Melitene, professor at the
Patriarchal Academy and an ardent Palamite, wrote a
comprehensive and up-to-date encyclopedia of astronomy, which showed full acquaintance with Persian
and Arab research, as well as a didactic poem entitled
On Chastity', in which the lady Prudence (Sophrosyne)
leads the poet through her realm, and which is almost
as encyclopedic.2
The greatest of these Palamites was Nicholas
Cabasilas, who was born in Thessalonica in about 1320.
His father's surname was Chamaetus, but he took the
surname of his maternal uncle, Nilus Cabasilas, later
Metropolitan of the city, who was his teacher. He grew
up in the tradition of Joseph the Philosopher, combining a taste for mystical contemplation with a love
for secular learning. Nicholas Cabasilas's letters show
his affection for Classical literature and science, though
he wrote little himself on such subjects, apart from a
1
2
Isidore's views are given in an unpublished sermon quoted in
Tafrali, Thessalonique au quatorzieme siecle, p. 157, n. 4, from MS.
Gr. Paris 1192.
See Krumbacher, Byzantinischen Litteratur, pp. 782-4. Krumbacher
considers it impossible to say which member of the Meliteniotes
family wrote the poem, as no first name is given. But the whole
nature of the work, which includes a rather pedantic account of the
properties of precious stones and minerals, accords with Theodore's
known interest in astronomy and mathematics, as well as poetry.
For his scientific work, see Sarton, History of Science•, in, part 2,
1512-14.
72
The scholars
commentary on some of Ptolemy's works. As we have
seen, he was a pioneer in the new use of the term
'Hellene5. After some hesitation he became convinced
of the rightness of Palamite theology; but his views on
mysticism were not those of Palamas. He might be
called a mystical humanist. He believed that mystical
experience could best be reached by concentration on
the Sacrament, and that there was no reason why a
mystic should not be a man of the world, and that secular learning would help rather than hinder him. Of all
the Byzantine writers his style is the most attractive,
combining Classical simplicity with a very individual
grace, and even a sense of humour, as his unkind but
witty attack on Gregoras and his pretensions reveals.1
The Thessalonian tradition that combined humanism and mysticism continued after Cabasilas's death.
The sermons of the Metropolitan Isidore, written towards the end of the fourteenth century, are as yet
unpublished, and, though he seems to have written in
support of Palamite doctrines, that work has not survived. But he combined his mystical sympathies with
Classical erudition and practical good sense. Symeon,
who succeeded to the Metropolitan throne early in the
fifteenth century, was perhaps less interested in Classical learning, but a much more distinguished theolo1
For Cabasilas's life and teaching, see M. Lot-Borodin, Un Maitre de
la spiritualite byzantine au XIVe siecle; Nicolas Cabasilas (Paris,
1958). See also Tatakis, Philosophie Byzantine, pp. 277-81.
73
The last Byzantine Renaissance
gian. His polemical works, against the Latins and
against the anti-Palamites, show a moderation rare in
that age. He was deservedly loved in Thessalonica, not
only by the Greeks but also by the Italians and the
Jews. His main work was an explanation of the symbolism contained in the Holy Liturgy and in the buildings in which the Liturgy took place. His theology of
the Liturgy is not always in agreement with that of
Cabasilas; his approach is less mystical, and it is the
symbol which he regards as important. But his erudition about the Liturgy is vast, and his information is of
great historical interest.I
Amongst the boys who sat with Nicholas Cabasilas
at the feet of his uncle Nilus was Demetrius Cydones,
who belonged to a rich family of Cretan origin, a family
ruined by the Zealot rising. Isidore Boukheras had been
for a time the family tutor. But Cydones turned
against the Thessalonian contemplative tradition. He
went to Constantinople, where he made a deep impression on John Cantacuzenus, henceforward one of his
dearest friends. At Constantinople he learnt Latin from
a Spanish Dominican living at Pera. Henceforward,
apart from a few funeral orations and eulogies, and
theological tracts mainly directed against the Palamites,
his literary output consisted of translations from the
Latin: of which the most important was his version of
1
For Symeon, see M. Jugie, 'Symeon de Thessalonique', in Dictionnaire de theologie catholique^ xiv, part 2, cols. 2976-84.
74
The scholars
the Summa Contra Gentiles of Thomas Aquinas. This
work, though it never circulated widely, aroused great
interest in Constantinopolitan intellectual circles.
Many Byzantine scholars, not all of them in favour of
union with Rome, were fascinated by Western scholasticism. In his later years Cydones made several journeys
to Italy, where he had many friends and admirers. He
became a convert to the Roman Church while remaining
a loyal Byzantine. In extreme old age he retired to a
monastery in the Venetian-held island of Crete, from
which his family had come. He was a lucid and able
writer and a man of great personal charm. He never
allowed his anti-Palamite views to mar his friendship
with John Cantacuzenus and his family, unlike his
brother Prochorus Cydones, who quarrelled furiously
with the ex-Emperor. But Prochorus had the embittering position of being the leader of the antiPalamites in the Palamite stronghold of Mount Athos.
Demetrius was loyally devoted to the Emperor Manuel
II, though their religious views were far from identical.
He could speak with admiration of his old tutor, Isidore
Boukheras, in spite of his dislike of Isidore's policy as
Patriarch. If he wrote a tract against his old master,
Nilus Cabasilas, it was because he thought that Nilus
had been unfair to him.:
1
See Beck, Kirche und theologische Liter atur, pp. 733-7; K. M. Setton,
'The Byzantine background to the Italian Renaissance', in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society•, c, part 1 (Philadelphia.
1956), 52-7; Krumbacher, Byzantinischen Litter atur, pp. 489-92.
75
The last Byzantine Renaissance
At the close of the fourteenth century intellectual life
at Constantinople was dominated by two figures,
Manuel II and the head of the Patriarchal Academy,
Joseph Bryennius. Manuel's interest in culture was
shown by his reform of the University and the Academy. He knew Latin and insisted on its study at the
University. He had travelled widely in the West, in
search of allies, and had many Western friends, though
he failed to win the material help that he sought. But he
disagreed with Latin theology, and he doubted whether
the union of the churches would be practicable or wise.
He was afineenough theologian to be able to argue with
the professors at the Sorbonne on thefilioque clause and
win their respect if not their agreement. His written
works were mainly on theology, and included an elegant
tract on the Christian faith designed for a Turkish
audience. He also produced an essay on kingship, which
shows the influence of Marcus Aurelius, and several
jeux tfesprit, including a fanciful, if somewhat platitudinous, dialogue between Timur the Tartar and the
captive Sultan Bayezit. He was admired by the Turks
as well as by the Western potentates whom he visited.
In all he was perhaps the most attractive and likeable
of all the Byzantine Emperors.1
1
See Beck, Kirche und theologische Literatur, pp. 747-9. The only
biography of Manuel, Berger de Xivrey, Memoire sur la Vie et les
Ouvrages de VEmpereur Manuel Paleologue (Academie des Inscriptions, vol. xix, Paris, 1853), is still useful. See also E. Legrand, Les
Lettres de VEmpereur Manuel Paleologue (Paris, 1893).
76
The scholars
His friend Joseph Bryennius, who died in 1431, six
years after Manuel, shared his general views. He was a
fine teacher, under whose aegis the Patriarchal Academy seems to have outshone the University, though
he probably lectured at both institutions. He, like
Manuel, knew Latin well and was interested in scholasticism. But he remained staunchly loyal to Orthodoxy;
and his theological works were mainly tracts attacking
Roman doctrines and supporting Palamite hesychasm.
He wrote little else; but his will, in which he bequeathed
his library to Saint Sophia and listed the books in it,
reveals his interest in all the sciences, particularly in
mathematics, optics and music. We know, too, that he
was puzzled and distressed by the decline of medical
studies in Constantinople.:
Bryennius came from Sparta, which was then little
more than a suburb of Mistra, the small provincial
capital of the Despots of the Morea. But while he
journeyed from the Peloponnese to Constantinople,
his slightly younger contemporary, George Gemistus,
self-surnamed Plethon, who had been born in Constantinople, travelled in the opposite direction, to
Mistra, on the advice of the Emperor Manuel, to carry
on his teaching far away from the watchful eyes of the
Great Church of the Imperial city. Plethon was born in
about 1355. It was in about 1393 that he moved to
1
Beck, Kirche und theologische Literatur, pp. 749-50. See also N . B.
Tomadakes, l O 1000-119 Bpuevvios (Athens, 1947).
77
The last Byzantine Renaissance
Mistra, where he enjoyed the protection of the enlightened despot, Manuel's second son, Theodore, and his
charming Italian wife, Cleope Malatesta. Plethon was
the one scholar of the time who saw no difference between the Inner and the Outer Learning, and was
quite ready to jettison established Christian doctrine in
favour of his own philosophical system. He particularly
disliked apophatic theology. God gave us reason, he
said, in order that we should understand everything.
He had little use for Constantinople and none for the
Roman tradition of Empire. ' We are Hellenes by race
and culture', he wrote. His reason was dominated by
his devotion to Plato. He loathed Aristotle and held him
responsible for the wrong-headedness of Christian
doctrine. His aim was to save the Greek world by reforming it along Platonic lines. He sent his proposals,
worked out in considerable detail, in memoranda to the
Emperor. They dealt with the structure of society, with
finance and taxation, with the armed forces, with
agricultural policy and with education, all planned with
a superb disregard to actual political conditions and to
probable human reactions. Had his schemes been
practicable they would have created an unpleasantly
Fascist State; but at least they showed the workings of a
courageously independent and original intellect. His
religious views were even more startling, considering
the times. George of Trebizond, who disliked him, declared that he openly advocated a religion which he
The scholars
declared to be neither Christian nor Muslim but akin to
the old paganism, and which, he hopefully foresaw, the
whole world would soon adopt. His book On the Laws,
in which he expressed what he really thought on religion, was never published. Only a few extracts have
survived. The full text was discovered after his death
by the Despot of the Morea, Demetrius, shortly after
the Turkish capture of Constantinople. Demetrius
sent it to George Scholarius, who was now the Patriarch Gennadius. The Patriarch, as he read pages in
which God was usually called Zeus and the Trinity
consisted of a supra-essential Creator, the Mind of the
world and the Soul of the world, and maybe in which
doctrines more shocking still were aired, decided, rather
reluctantly but not surprisingly, that the manuscript
must be burnt.
Plethon, though he had many friends even among the
scholars whom his views appalled, had little influence
on his fellow-countrymen. Had the Empire survived,
he might have had disciples to carry on his message.
But Constantinople fell only two years after his death. It
was on the West that he left his mark. The Emperor
John VIII nominated him as one of the delegates to the
Council of Ferrara-Florence. It was an inappropriate
choice. Plethon had no use for religious debates. Much
as he disliked the Greek Church, he disliked the Latin
Church even more, and somehow avoided signing the
Act of Union. But he greatly enjoyed himself in Flor79
The last Byzantine Renaissance
ence, where he gave lectures on Plato to enraptured
audiences. It was in Italy, not in Greece, that his
memory was to be honoured.1
The same was true of his most distinguished pupil.
Bessarion was born at Trebizond in 1403. He was
educated in Constantinople, under the rhetorician
George Chrysococcus, who was probably a grandson of
the famous astronomer of the same name, and became a
monk at the age of twenty. He spent some years at a
monastery near Mistra, where he attended Plethon's
classes. On his return to Constantinople he soon became renowned as a brilliant teacher of philosophy. He
was chosen to be one of the delegates to the Council of
Ferrara-Florence, and was appointed Metropolitan of
Nicaea in order that he might have a proper status there.
Though he could not approve of Plethon's religious
eccentricity, he had learned from Plethon to love
Plato; and, like Plethon, he had no use either for
scholasticism or for apophatic theology. The latter dislike prevailed. At Florence he let himself be genuinely
convinced by the doctrinal arguments of the Latins;
but his conversion was largely cultural. He believed
that not only the Empire but Byzantine civilization
1
For Plethon, see F. Masai, Plethon et le Platonisme de Mistra (Paris,
1956), passim, and for a good summary of his philosophy, Tatakis,
Philosophie Byzantine, pp. 281-305. His insistence that 'we are
Hellenes' is recorded in his epistle to Manuel II, in Migne, Patrologia Graeco-Latina, vol. CLX, cols. 821-4. What survives of his work
On the Laws is published as Traite des Lois, ed. C. Alexandre, with a
translation by A. Pellisier (Paris, 1858).
80
The scholars
itself could only survive in alliance with the West. The
Greeks should not stand aloof from the burgeoning life
of Renaissance Italy. They should play their part in it.
He was bitterly disappointed to find that very few of
his compatriots shared his views. The lack of sympathy
that he found in Constantinople after his return from
the Council induced him to go back to Italy; and he
spent the rest of his distinguished career in the West.
But, even as a Cardinal of the Roman Church, he always felt himself to be a Greek, sighing for Byzantium.
No one was more generous and solicitous towards
refugees from Constantinople after the Turkish conquest; and no one took more trouble to rescue Greek
manuscripts from destruction and oblivion. But his
own writings were destined for a Latin rather than a
Greek reading public.l
At the Council Bessarion's chief opponent among
the Greeks had been Mark Eugenicus, a monk who
similarly had been raised to a Metropolitan see, that of
Ephesus, on his appointment as a delegate. Mark was
born in about 1292 and was educated under Bryennius
at the Patriarchal Academy. He belonged to the apophatic tradition, which put him at a disadvantage when
1
For the whole range of Bessarion's career, see L. Mohler, Kardinal
Bessarion als Theologe, Humanist und Staatsmann (3 vols., Paderborn,
1923-42). For his philosophy, see the summary in Tatakis, Philosophie Byzantine, pp. 294-301. For an estimate of his effect on the
Renaissance, Setton, 'Byzantine background to the Italian Renaissance' pp. 72-4.
81
The last Byzantine Renaissance
arguing with the subtle Latin spokesmen. Within his
limits he was himself learned; and even his opponents
recognized his sincerity and his integrity. Alone of the
Greek delegates at Florence he could not be persuaded
to sign the Act of Union. His own writings were mostly
in praise of Hesychasm, though late in life he interested
himself in the problem of predestination and grace,
attempting to introduce an element of relativity: as a
result of which he found himself in friendly disagreement with his disciple, George Scholarius.1
When Mark Eugenicus died in 1444 his place as
leader of the anti-unionists was taken by George
Scholarius. Scholarius had been born in 1405. He
studied for a while under Eugenicus, but was trained
as a lawyer and became a Judge-General, in charge of
the University. He learnt Latin very thoroughly and
became an ardent admirer of Thomas Aquinas. This
admiration and his general interest in Latin scholarship
affected all his thinking and his methodology. It also
led him into theological difficulties. He was a Palamite,
but in order to reconcile Palamism with his scholastic
tastes he blurred the Palamite distinction between
essence and operation, considering the latter to be
only formally finite but really infinite because it had the
same being as essence which was infinite. Palamas
would not have approved of that interpretation. Other1
Beck, Kirche und theologische Liter atur, pp. 755-60; Tatakis,
Philosophie Byzantine, pp. 295-7.
82
The scholars
wise his theology was traditional. In his dispute with
Eugenicus over predestination he restated the doctrine
proposed long ago by John of Damascus and generally
accepted by the Orthodox Church, though it still has
nofixeddogma on the problem. He wrote a number of
philosophical works, but as a philosopher he was unlucky in his time. His commentaries on Aristotle are
remarkable, for he not only knew the original text
thoroughly and the Greek commentaries but also the
Latin commentaries by Gilbert de la Porree, Albertus
Magnus and Aquinas, and he had studied the works of
Averrhoes and Avicenna. Had he and Bessarion exchanged their views on Church union and had he
settled in Italy, he would certainly have influenced
Italian scholarship and might have inaugurated a NeoAristotelian school at once more traditional and more
profound than that which was later to arise at Padua.
He went as a lay delegate to the Council of Florence
and there supported the union. On his return to Constantinople he began to have doubts. Eugenicus persuaded him that he had been theologically in error; but
he was probably influenced still more by political considerations, doubting, with good reason, whether the
West would or could send the help necessary to preserve Constantinople. He also seems to have believed,
half ashamedly, that the end of the world was at hand.
By Byzantine calculations the world would reach its
7,000th birthday in 1492—a year which was indeed a
83
The last Byzantine Renaissance
turning-point—and certainly Anti-Christ was at the
gates. In such circumstances was the preservation of
the earthly Empire of any importance? It mattered
more that the Faith should be kept pure. The Byzantine world did indeed end soon afterwards, in 1453;
and it was Scholarius's finest achievement that as the
Patriarch Gennadius he worked out with the conquering Sultan a constitution which, for all its oppressive clauses, did preserve the entity of the Greek people
and of their Church.I
There were other distinguished members of that
last remarkable generation of Byzantine scholars. Many
of them retired to Italy and there made their mark. But
even now, when there was a definite unionist party
amongst them and a party that opposed union, their
incorrigible individualism still flourished. Plethon the
Platonist opposed union. His Platonist pupil Bessarion
warmly supported it. Scholarius, the Aristotelian with
scholastic sympathies, succeeded the apophatically
minded Eugenicus as leader of the anti-unionists. The
Aristotelian George of Trebizond favoured union but
disliked Bessarion. The Platonist George Amiroutzes
of Trebizond at first supported union, then changed
his mind and sought to find a synthesis between
Christianity and Islam. Even in the last agony of Byzantium each of its scholars went his own individual way.
1
Beck, Kirche und theologische Literatur, pp. 760-3; Tatakis, Philosophie Byzantine, pp. 295-9. For his later career see Runciman/ Great
Church in Captivity, pp. 168-70, 182-6, 193-4.
84
4
THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF
THE RENAISSANCE
I F SCHOLARS ARE men who study seriously and reflect upon their studies and seek to make deductions
from them, then these Byzantine intellectuals were
scholars. But what did their scholarship achieve? Did
they add anything of value to the sum of human knowledge and understanding?
For the results of learning to be effective, they have
to be transmitted, not only to the scholars' immediate
circle but in such a way that they can have meaning for
posterity. Herein the late Byzantine scholars were
unlucky. They were living in the declining years of a
civilization. In a short time Byzantium would perish
and the Greeks become second-class citizens. The
language in which they wrote was understood by few of
their contemporaries outside the shrinking Greek
world. By the time that Greek philology was studied in
the Western countries with which the future lay,
Byzantium had disappeared and its scholars were dispersed or dead. And, with the wealth of ancient Greek
literature and thought made available to them, Western
scholars were uninterested in what the later Greeks
7
85
RTL
The last Byzantine Renaissance
might have had to say, unless it was closely relevant to
the Classical past. Moreover, what the later Greeks had
to say in general was restricted by their distinction between the Inner and the Outer Learning. The Inner
Learning dealt with eternity, with truths that had
existed before the beginning of time; and man could
only know what God in His goodness had chosen to
reveal. The rest was unknown and unknowable. The
student of the Inner Learning might be able to expound and explain these revealed truths, but he could
not add to them unless the Holy Spirit vouchsafed
further revelations. The mystic might be permitted to
penetrate a little further into the unknown but his
experience was not an intellectual exercise. Even so
devoted an advocate of philosophy as Nicephorus
Gregoras could write that: c All human opinion is but a
symbol of ignorance.'1 The sophists who arrogantly
explained the universe in terms intelligible to the intellect had no place in Byzantium. Philosophy could
not open the door into the Inner Learning.
Nevertheless, philosophy had its role. It could teach,
not what to think but how to think. It could not explain
heaven, but it could help to explain the earth. It was
proper for the philosopher to turn his trained mind on
to what now are called the sciences, as well as mathematics. Whether or not it was due to their philoso1
Nicephorus Gregoras, Florentios, ed. A. Jahn, in jfahns Jahrbuch,
Supplementband, 10 (Halle, 1844), pp. 531-2
86
The achievements of the Renaissance
phically trained minds the scientists of the last Byzantine period were amongst the foremost of their age. To
us who live amidst vast scientific advance their
achievements must seem absurdly petty. But in the
context of the middle ages they were not to be despised.
The Byzantine scholars had the advantage of being
Greeks, brought up to be familiar with those Greeks of
the past who had laid the foundations of scientific
studies. Moreover, for all its intellectual pride and
voiced contempt of the barbarians, Greek civilization
had always been eclectic. Like their Classical ancestors
the Byzantines were ready to learn and adapt knowledge from neighbouring peoples. Their religion came
from Palestine, their law from Rome, their ceremonies
mostly from Persia, and some of their ceremonial trappings even from China. They had constantly exchanged
ideas and art-forms with the Muslim East. In this last
period they even discovered, thanks above all to Planudes
and to Demetrius Cydones, that there was something to be learnt from the long-despised West. There
were, it is true, chauvinists like Theodore Metochites
who maintained that Hellenic culture had no longer any
need to borrow from elsewhere;l but in fact the borrowing was frequent and useful, and Metochites's own work
would have been better had he been less xenophobe.
1
' Be a Hellene. Leave aside the theories of the Indians or the Scythians or the Persians.' Quoted from Metochites's commentary on
Aristotle's Physica, in K. Sathas, MsaaicoviKf] BipAioOrjKri, i (Venice,
1872), preface, pp. TITI'-ITO'.
87
7-2
The last Byzantine Renaissance
Eclecticism by itself is ineffectual, but when allied to a
strong native tradition it helps to keep that tradition alive.
In any case the old tradition remained dominant.
The mathematicians of the time continued to paraphrase the works of Euclid and Nicomachus and Diophantus, works which had been somewhat neglected
since the eleventh century; and their work was only
carried forward by the use of Arabic numerals. As we
have seen, Pachymer knew of them and Metochites
chose to ignore them; and it was Planudes who by
writing his Calculation by the Indian Method explained
the system for Greek users. It was not readily adopted.
Nicholas Rhabdas, the best mathematician of the next
generation, seems to have used Arabic numerals in his
calculations but when writing employed the old figures.
It was only after the beginning of the fifteenth century
that the new numerals, with a symbol for zero and
decimal points, came into general use in Byzantine textbooks. Incidentally, though an anonymous Greek
manuscript, dated 1252, ofwhich Planudes certainly had
a copy, makes use of the Gobar numerals, adopted by
Western mathematicians, Planudes and his disciples
took over the Eastern numerals, in use amongst the
Persians and the Arabs of the Orient. Algebra, though it
was known in Constantinople in the fourteenth century,
chiefly through the teaching of the Calabrian Barlaam,
never became a fashionable study there. The Byzantines
much preferred logistics, geometry and geodesy, sub-
The achievements of the Renaissance
jects which they put to good practical use, above all in
architecture. They delighted in mathematical puzzles
and riddles, which constituted a favourite after-dinner
pastime; but though as a result they worked out many
ingenious numerical problems, their contributions to
mathematical theory were insignificant.1
In astronomy, too, the old tradition was revitalized by
borrowings from the East. Serious astronomical study
seems to have been revived in Constantinople by
Michael Bryennius; and it was his pupil, Theodore
Metochites, who made it popular. But Metochites's
own work is little more than an introductory commentary on Ptolemy's Syntaxis. The advances in astronomy
came from the scholars of Trebizond, where Persian and
Arabic works, themselves based on Ptolemy but with
the addition of later observations, were compared and
synthesized with the writings of the ancients. These
oriental treatises were collected by Choniades and were
translated under his supervision by the monk Manuel
of Trebizond and by his pupil George Chrysococces.
The fullest synthesis was then made in Constantinople
by Theodore of Melitene, professor at the Patriarchal
Academy. His Three Books on Astronomy contains
nothing remarkably original; but it is a compendium,
which is still of value, of all the astronomical knowledge
1
See K. Vogel, 'Byzantine Science', chapter xxvm in Cambridge
Medieval History, iv, part 2 (new edition, Cambridge, 1967), 274-9;
Sarton, History of Science, 11, part 2, 972-4, m, part 1, 679-82.
89
The last Byzantine Renaissance
available at the time.1 But meanwhile Nicephorus
Gregoras had made his one really original contribution
to learning in his suggestions for the reform of the Julian
calendar, worked out so as to give a universally acceptable date for Easter. He was not the first to make the
attempt. There was already in Byzantium a work,
attributed for no good reason to Saint John of Damascus, which dealt with the subject; and it had been more
recently discussed in the West by John of Santobosco
and a little later by Grosseteste and Roger Bacon. But
Gregoras's work was impressively lucid and wellthought-out. The old Emperor Andronicus II was
convinced of its merits. But it would have needed
courage to take action on it; and before Andronicus
could think of doing so he was dethroned, and the matter was dropped. Gregoras's rival, Barlaam, also wrote
a small book on the subject, but with an equal lack of
success. It is ironical to reflect, in view of the bitter
hostility shown by the Orthodox to the reform of the
calendar by Pope Gregory XIII, that, had Andronicus
II been younger, more enterprising and more secure on
the throne, the Orthodox authorities might have introduced an almost identical reform two centuries earlier.2
In the physical sciences the Byzantines, in common
1
2
See Pingree, 'Gregory Choniades and Palaeologan Astronomy',
Dumbarton Oaks Papers, no. 18, for a good discussion of Palaeologan
astronomy, and Vogel, 'Byzantine Science' in Cambridge Medieval
History, vol. iv.
See Guilland, Essai sur Nicephore Gregoras, pp. 279-85.
90
The achievements of the Renaissance
with everyone else in the middle ages, suffered from
making their deductions from casual observation rather
than from experiments. Where the subject was susceptible to mathematical treatment, as with mechanics
or optics or acoustics, they were not hindered by this
limitation; but in fact their work on these subjects was
seldom more than a re-statement of what had been already stated. Michael Bryennius's great book on musical
theory is a valuable compendium of the knowledge of
the time; and both Pachymer and Metochites wrote
observantly on optics. But their methods prevented any
advance in chemistry, except on a purely technological
and practical level, as in making dyes or glass; nor did
they achieve anything in physics or in meteorology.1
In medicine, where careful observation is of value,
the Byzantines, while they remained firmly entrenched
in the tradition of Galen, added considerably to knowledge. As in astronomy, the scholars of Trebizond
translated works from the Persian and the Arabic,
which were of practical use. But there was original
work also. The Nicaean Court physician, Nicholas
Myrepsus, wrote a work on materia medica, which was
for some centuries consulted in the West as well as in
the East. Michael VIIFs physician, Demetrius Pepagomenus, wrote a book on gout, based mainly on his
own observations. He was also the author of a book on
falconry, based equally on his own experience and
1
Vogel, 'Byzantine Science', pp. 282-8.
91
The last Byzantine Renaissance
notes. The most remarkable doctor of the period was
the Court physician to Andronicus III, John Actuarius.
He was an authority on diseases of the urine, about
which he had much that was new to say. He seems to
have been the first doctor to discover the whipcord,
trichocephalus dispar^ in the human intestine; and he
was a pioneer in the study of psychosomatic complaints.
After his time Byzantine medicine declined. At the
end of the century Joseph Bryennius sadly recorded
that medical practice was entirely in the hands of Jews.l
In geography the Byzantines added little to what
Ptolemy had taught. Few of them were travellers; and
their interest in foreign countries had usually been
political and diplomatic rather than geographical.
There were cartographers amongst them, particularly
in these last centuries, when Muslim maps were studied, again, it seems, owing to the enterprise of the
scholars of Trebizond. They were interested in the
practical side, studying navigation and continually recharting their home-waters. The compass seems to have
been introduced into Byzantine ships in the fourteenth
century. But it probably came to Byzantium from Italy.2
The occult sciences flourished in every period of
1
2
Ibid. pp. 291-4; Sarton, History of Science, 11, part 2, 1094-6, m,
part 1, 859-92. Myrepsus's Dynameron, translated into Latin by
Nicholas of Reggio, was the standard pharmocopia in use at Paris
till the seventeenth century.
See Guilland, Essai sur Nicephore Gregoras, p. 276: Vogel,' Byzantine
Science', pp. 294-5.
92
The achievements of the Renaissance
Byzantine history. There were always fortune-tellers
in Constantinople, adept at making their own fortunes
even if they made no one else's: such as the imposter whom the Empress Anna liked to consult and
whom Gregoras exposed. But, unlike Psellus and his
friends, the scholars of this last period had no truck
with occultism. They were superstitious. Even so
learned a scholar as George Scholarius was affected by
prophecies of the coming end of the world.1 Nearly all
of them were fascinated by the Pythagorean attitude to
numbers. The fourteenth-century scholar Pediasimus
even believed that certain numbers had a physiological
effect.2 But Metochites was anxious that no one should
confuse astronomy with astrology, though his pupil
Gregoras believed that the moon and stars did exercise
an influence on human life.3 The physicians of the time,
such as Papagomenus and John Actuarius, were anxious to show that amulets and magical rites had no
place in medicine. This refusal of the scholars to have
any truck with occultism was one of the reasons for
their good relations with the Church.4
1
2
3
4
George Scholarius Gennadius, Oeuvres Completes, ed. L. Petit and
others (Paris, 1928-36), 111, 161, 287, iv, 280-1.
See Tatakis, Philosophie Byzantine, pp. 242-3.
Guilland, Essai Sur Nicephore Gregoras, pp. 277-8. In his pamphlet
against Gregoras written in 1355 (ed. A. Garzya, 'Un opuscule
inedit de Nicolas Cabasilas', in Byzantion, xxiv, Brussels, 1954,
521-32), Cabasilas laughs at Gregoras for giving himself the airs of
a prophet, quoting Chaldean oracles and magical incantations.
The flourishing superstitions in Byzantium at the beginning of the
fifteenth century are denounced in a tract of Joseph Bryennius, cited
93
The last Byzantine Renaissance
The scholars themselves would have doubtless regarded their philosophical works as their chief contributions to learning. Later generations cannot share
that view. Byzantine philosophy was hampered not
only by the need to keep clear of theology but also by
their devotion to the Classical philosophy. 'The great
men of the past', Metochites writes in the preface to
his Miscellanea^' have said everything so perfectly that
they have left nothing for us to say.' All that one can do,
he opines, is to make comments on them out of one's
own experience. In some ways he does himself an injustice. In the course of his critical and appreciative
remarks on more than seventy authors, of which the
Christian Platonist, Synesius of Cyrene, seems really
to have been his favourite, he managed to make his own
individual thinking clear, though it turns out to be
a rather unadventurous Platonism, muted by his piety.
His comments show shrewdness and understanding
and are to the point, in so far as they are not made unintelligible by the bewildering elaboration of his style.1
Though every Byzantine philosopher with the exception of Plethon would have subscribed to Metochites's view, a few were a little more enterprising. In
1
in L. Oeconomos, 'L'Etat intellectuel et moral des Byzantins vers le
milieu du XlVe. siecle', in Melanges Charles Diehl (Paris, 1930), 1,
225-34. Oeconomos's title is misleading, as the tract must have been
written after 1400.
Theodore Metochites, Miscellanea Philosophica et Historica, ed.
C. G. Muller and T. Kiessling (Leipzig, 1821), pp. 14-16 (see above,
p. 65, n. 1).
94
The achievements of the Renaissance
the thirteenth century Blemmydes tried to reconcile
medieval nominalism and realism by explaining that
species exist eternally in the mind of God, and it is
from them, having pre-determined them, that He has
created all entities. His theory was studied and developed later by Bessarion and through him transmitted to
the West.l Blemmydes's pupil, the Emperor Theodore
II, deserves to be called an original thinker at least in
his attitude towards nature, but the complication of his
language obscures his thought.2 Of the later philosophers, Joseph the Philosopher is interesting for his
attempt to show the interconnection of all branches of
science and learning and their relevance to Inner
Learning:3 and Chumnus for his refutation of Plato
and of Plotinus, whose works he is one of the few
Byzantines to have read, although he was defeated by
Metochites's defence of Plato.4 For all his learning,
Gregoras was more of a rhetorician than a philosopher,
as Cabasilas unkindly pointed out. He is of interest for
his lofty views on the importance of history, which, like
Metochites before him, he considered to be an essential
study for the guidance of mankind. It not only explained the past but gave clear indications for the
future. It showed the workings of nemesis and the
1
2
3
Nicephorus Blemmydes, Opera, in Migne, Patrologia GraecoLatina, vol. CXLII, col. 761.
Theodore Lascaris, Synopsis Sexti Sermonis, in Migne, Patrologia
Graeco-Lalina, vol. CXL, cols. 1266 ff. (see above, p. 57, n. 1).
4
See above, p. 66 and n. 1.
See above, p. 63 and n. 1.
95
The last Byzantine Renaissance
punishments meted out to nations for their crimes and
apostasies. He thus combined something of both the
Classical Greek and the Old Testament point of view;
but he admitted also that the workings of providence
were inscrutable: which weakened his argument.l
It was in the sphere of the Inner Learning that
fourteenth-century Byzantium produced its finest
philosophical work. Gregory Palamas did not regard
his writings as being concerned with philosophy or as
being original. He believed that he was merely expounding divine truths that were part of holy tradition.
But his books on Hesychasm were the product of a
formidable intellect expressed with a lucidity rare
amongst Byzantines and are of prime importance in the
history of religious thought. Less formidable but more
charming are the works of his follower, Nicholas
Cabasilas, the humanist mystic, who wished that the
human intellect as well as the human soul should find
expression, carrying on the tradition of Joseph the
Philosopher into the Inner Learning. His Life injesus,
which George Scholarius called a' jewel of the Church,'
is one of the finest works in Christian devotional
literature. It is sad that it is so little known outside the
world of Orthodox scholarship.2
The translation of Aquinas's works into Greek came
too late in Byzantine history to affect the scholars of
1
See Guilland, Essai sur Nicephore Gregoras, pp. 230-6, for a summary
2
See above, pp. 70-1.
of Gregoras's views on history.
96
The achievements of the Renaissance
Byzantium, with the one great exception of George
Scholarius. The translator, Demetrius Cydones, was
himself more of an elegant essayist than a philosopher.
But with Scholarius we see the direction that Byzantine
scholarship might have taken had Byzantium endured.
But though he had his heirs in the West in the NeoAristotelian school of Padua, it was, rather, his philosophical opponent Plethon and his philosophical and
ecclesiastical opponent Bessarion who were to bring the
influence of Byzantium to bear on the West.1
As literary figures these scholars of latter-day Byzantium left no legacy. They wrote for the most part in
a sophisticated language for a sophisticated public
which was soon to be wiped out. The future in Greek
letters lay with the popular writers using a popular
tongue. But if we regard scholarship as providing a
great compendium of human knowledge which is
available for those who choose to consult it, even if
many of the chapters remain unread, then these scholars
made a real contribution to scholarship. But if it is the
duty of scholarship to play a part in the general stream
of learning, then their contribution was limited; and,
ironically, it lay in the area which to most of us today
was its least interesting side. It was for those endless
commentaries of the ancient philosophers that the
scholars of Byzantium made their mark on the scholars
of Renaissance Italy.
1
See above, pp. 80-1
97
The last Byzantine Renaissance
The Fourth Crusade and the Francocratia in Greece,
for all the political harm that they did to Byzantium and
to Europe, had one compensating result. They brought
Westerners into Greek lands and enabled them to see a
living Greek culture from close at hand. The conquering Franks were for the most part simple warriors
with no understanding of the civilization of the people
whom they had conquered. But the century of the conquest was the century in which the scholars of the West
first became properly aware of the wealth of ancient
Greek learning. They received it in translations from
the Arabic. But it gradually dawned on them, as an
outcome of their closer connection with the Greek
world, that in that world these valued writings were to
be found in their original tongue and were still read and
studied. Even the schism between the Churches helped
to create this awareness; for Rome now sent missionaries who were to heal the breach and chose for that
purpose men of good education. In particular Rome
liked to make use of priests of Greek birth who had been
converted to the Latin Church and who were therefore
well fitted to bring the two cultures together. Men like
Nicholas of Cotrone or John Parastron in the thirteenth
century and Paul of Smyrna and Simon Atumano in the
fourteenth, and even the volatile Barlaam of Calabria,
though they may not have secured the conversion of
many of their countrymen, could at least inform the
West of Greek scholarship. Cultured Italians in the
The achievements of the Renaissance
fourteenth century began to want to learn Greek.
Petrarch himself had a few lessons from Barlaam,
though he proved to be a poor pupil.1 In 1204 the
Franks had happily made bonfires of Greek manuscripts snatched from the libraries of Constantinople.
Two centuries later their descendants were sending
agents to buy such manuscripts at whatever price might
be asked for them.
It was some time before Greek scholars, apart from
the converts, visited the West. George Acropolites attended the Council of Lyons. Planudes went on an
embassy to Venice.2 But neither of them made lasting
intellectual contacts. Barlaam on his return to Italy was
more effective; but, for all his talents, he was suspect on
both sides.3 The Emperor John V's visits to Italy in
search of political and financial aid were unproductive
of intellectual results, except that he brought Demetrius Cydones with him. The arrival of Demetrius
Cydones in Italy opened a new era. He was a scholar
respected for his translations from the Latin, who liked
to move amongst scholars; and he was a man of great
personal charm. He made an excellent ambassador for
Byzantine learning.4 Soon, largely through his in1
2
3
4
See Setton, 'Byzantine background to the Italian Renaissance', Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, c, part 1, esp. pp. 4 0 52-
See above, pp. 58-60.
Setton,'Byzantine background to the Italian Renaissance', pp. 44-5.
See above, p. 75 and n. 1.
99
The last Byzantine Renaissance
fluence, his friend and pupil Manuel Chrysoloras was
invited to lecture on the Greek philosophers at Florence. Chrysoloras was not a very profound scholar, but
he seems to have been a lecturer who could inspire his
audiences. He instilled in the Florentines a taste for the
divine Plato; and they longed to learn more.1 The
Emperor Manuel, himself a fine scholar, helped further
to raise Byzantine intellectual prestige even beyond the
frontiers of Italy. His debating powers greatly impressed the doctors at the Sorbonne; and the unintellectual
English recognized him as a man of high culture.2 Meanwhile Italian scholars began to visit Constantinople,
not just to conduct religious discussions but to listen
to Greek scholars. Men like the able if unadmirable
Francesco Filelfo spent many months at its schools.3
The future Pope Pius II tells us that in his youth every
aspiring student wanted to make the journey.4 The
Council of Florence further whetted the Italian appetite, when Plethon, whom all the Greek visitors declared to be the greatest of living Platonists, came to the
city and, being bored by the interminable religious debates at the Council, spent his time giving lectures on
Plato: to such effect that Cosimo de' Medici founded a
1
2
3
4
Setton,'Byzantine background to the Italian Renaissance' pp. 57-8.
See above, p. 76.
For Filelfo, see Setton, 'Byzantine background to the Italian
Renaissance', pp. 72-3, and D. Geanakoplos, Greek Scholars in
Venice (Cambridge, Mass., 1962), pp. 32-3.
Pius II, Pope, Opera Omnia (Basle, 1551), p. 681.
IOO
The achievements of the Renaissance
Platonic Academy in his honour.I Less sensational but
more effective than Plethon was his most distinguished
disciple Bessarion, who retired to Italy towards the end
of 1440, and there published his most important book,
Against the Calumniators of Plato, which had a great
influence on the whole thought of the Renaissance. The
imminence of the fall of Constantinople and then the
fall itself brought other Greek scholars to Italy, where
they continued the debate, so well enjoyed in Byzantium, on the respective merits of Plato and Aristotle.
The leading Aristotelians were Theodore of Gaza,
Andronicus Callistus and George of Trebizond, and
the leading Platonists John Argyropoulus, Michael
Apostolis and Bessarion himself. Thanks chiefly to
Bessarion Platonism triumphed.2 But Aristotelianism
had its victory later, when in 1497 the Epirot Nicholas
Laonicus Thomaeus, who seems to have studied the
works of Scholarius, began to lecture at Padua on
Aristotle, using nothing but the Greek text and Greek
commentaries. These lectures, which the future
Cardinal Bembo regarded as opening a new era in
Western philosophy, led in due course to the NeoAristotelianism of Pomponazzi and Cremonini: which
in its turn opened the door to the uninhibited study of
the sciences in the century to come. Perhaps more im1
2
For Plethon's visit to Florence and his influence on the Italian
humanists, see Masai, Plethon et le Platonisme de Mistra, pp. 315 ff.
See Tatakis, Philosophie Byzantine, pp. 290, 293-5, 2 99~3 01 8
IOI
RTL
The last Byzantine Renaissance
portant still, these refugee Greek scholars, with Bessarion at their head, took trouble to collect and to copy
the Greek manuscripts that Byzantium had preserved.1
It was from these scholars, these Platonicians and
Aristotelians alike, that the men of the Renaissance
learnt most of their philosophy. The immediate results
were not very lively to our way of thinking. The philosophical works of the Italian Renaissance for the most
part can challenge those of the Byzantines for uninspired verbosity. But they carried on the tradition, to
inspire more original minds in the future. The Byzantines have been called ' the librarians of the middle
ages'.2 They conserved ancient books worthy of conservation, and some that were unworthy; and they
read them and commented on them, and transmitted
what they had conserved for the benefit of European
civilization.
But there were other sides of Byzantine life which
could not survive the fall of the city in which that life
was centred. The practical techniques, the mechanics
and the like in which the Byzantines excelled, could no
longer be developed. The art, the noblest expression of
Byzantine civilization, was halted and stunted because
it no longer quite knew what it wished to express. Even
1
2
See Geanakoplos, Greek Scholars in Venice, pp. 136-8 and P.
Sherrard, The Greek East and the Latin West (London, 1959), pp.
125-7N. H. Baynes, Byzantine Studies and other Essays (London, 1955),
pp. 71-2.
102
The achievements of the Renaissance
the deep religious feelings of the Greeks became somewhat atrophied without the concept of the holy Empire
of God on earth to inspire them. The fall of Constantinople truly marked the end of a long story, the end of a
great civilization; and little was able to endure there
except for crumbling buildings, falling mosaics and
fading frescoes, and memories of an idea of the world
that could not be maintained. It was the treasures that
Byzantium had eagerly and carefully preserved that
were handed on, not the conception of Byzantium itself. Yet during those last centuries of political decadence and of thickening gloom, the intellectual torch
had burned brightly. The scholarship of the last
Byzantine Renaissance may not mean much to us
today. But the scholarship was there, genuine and intense ; and it deserves our respect.
103
8-2
FURTHER READING
GENERAL WORKS
Further information about the scholars mentioned in this book
can be found in the sources cited below.
BECK, H.-G. Kirche und theologische Literatur im Byzantinischen
Reich. Munich, 1959.
BREHIER, L. Le Monde byzantin. 3 vols., Paris, 1947-50.
Cambridge Medieval History. Vol. iv, 2 parts, new ed., Cambridge, 1966-7.
FUCHS, F. Die Hoheren Schulen von Konstantinopel im Mittelalter.
Leipzig, 1926.
KRUMBACHER, K. Geschichte der Byzantinischen Litteratur. 2nd
ed., Munich, 1897.
SARTON, G. Introduction to the History of Science. Vols. I—ill,
Baltimore, 1927-48.
SETTON, K. ' T h e Byzantine background to the Italian Renaissance'. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society,
vol. c. Philadelphia, 1956.
TAFRALI, O. Thessalonique au quatorieme siecle. Paris, 1913.
TANNERY, P. Sciences exactes chez les Byzantins; Memoires
scientifiques. Vol. iv, Paris, 1920.
TATAKIS, B. La Philosophie Byzantine, fascicule s u p p l e m e n t a l ,
no. 11, in E. Brehier, Histoire de la Philosophie. Paris, 1949.
WORKS ON INDIVIDUAL SCHOLARS
BECK, H.-G. Theodoros Metochites. Die Krise des byzantinischen
Weltbildnes im 14 jfahrundert. Munich, 1952.
GUILLAND, R. Essai sur Nicephore Gregoras. Paris, 1926.
I0
5
Further reading
LOT-BORODIN, M. Un Maitre de la spiritualite byzantine au
XlVe siecle; Nicolas Cabasilas. Paris, 1958.
MASAI, F. Plethon et la Platonisme de Mistra. Paris, 1956.
MEYENDORFF, J. A study of Gregory Palamas, trans. G. Lawrence.
London, 1964.
SEVCENKO, I. Etudes sur la Polemique entre Theodore Metochite
et Nkephore Choumnos. Brussels, 1962.
VERPEAUX, J. Nicephore Choumnos, Homme d'etat et Humaniste
Byzantin. Paris, 1959.
106
INDEX
Academy, Patriarchal, at Constantinople, 28-9, 55, 59, 76-7, 90
Acomitatus, Michael, Metropolitan
of Athens, 17, 30
Acropolites, George, 39, 54,55, 57-9,
61, 99
Actuarius, John, 92, 93
Aegean Sea, 18
Aesop, 60
Akyndinus, George, 48, 71
Albertus Magnus, 83
Alexander the Great, King of
Macedonia, 18-19
Alexius I Comnenus, Emperor, 33
Amiroutzes, George, 84
Anatolia, 13
Andronicus II Palaeologus,
Emperor, 2, 9-11, 26, 39, 40, 54,
60, 62-4, 68, 90
Andronicus III Palaeologus,
Emperor, 10, 26, 66, 68, 92
Andronicus IV Palaeologus,
Emperor, 11
Ankara, battle of, 13
Anna Comnena, princess, 15, 33
Anna of Savoy, Empress, 10, 12,
7i,93
Anthemius of Tralles, architect, 49
Anthony IV, Patriarch of Constantinople, 5
Apocaucus, Alexius, 26-7, 71
Apostolis, Michael, 101
Aquinas, Thomas, 42, 75, 82, 83,
96
Arabs, 88, 89: Arabic language, 53,
91, 98; Arabic numerals, 59, 65,
69,88
Argyropoulus, John, 21-2, 101
Aristotle, Aristotelianism, 15, 18,
3i, 54, 63-5, 78, 83-4, 101
Arsenite party, 8-9, 34-5, 61
Arsenius I Autoreanus, Patriarch
of Constantinople, 8, 34-5
Athanasius, see Lepenthrenus
Athens, 20; Metropolitan of, see
Acominatus
Athos, Mount, 32, 39, 45, 63, 75
Atumano, Simon, 98
Augustine, Saint, of Hippo, 60
Averrhoes, 83
Avicenna, 83
Bacon, Roger, 49, 90
Balkan peninsula, 5, 7, 11, 18
Barlaam of Calabria, 46, 68-71, 88,
90, 98-9
Basil I, the Macedonian, Emperor,
50
Basil II, Bulgaroctonus, Emperor,
2
Basil I, Grand Prince of Russia, 5
Basil, Saint, of Caesarea, 30
Basle, Council of, 43
Bayezit I, Ottoman Sultan, 76
Beccus, see John XI, Patriarch
Bembo, Cardinal, 101
Bessarion, Metropolitan of Nicaea,
later Cardinal, 80-4, 97, 101-2
Bithynia, 55
Black Death, 12
Blemmydes, Nicephorus, 38, 54-8,
60,94
Blues, Circus faction, 25
Boethius, 60
Boukheras, see Isidore I, Patriarch
Bryennius, Joseph, 76-7, 81, 92
IO7
Index
Bryennius, Michael, 64, 89, 91
Bulgaria, Bulgarians, 8, 11, 71
Cabasilas, Nicholas, 20-1, 35, 66,
7i, 72-3, 74> 95, 96
Cabasilas, Nilus, Metropolitan of
Thessalonica, 72, 74, 75
Caesar, Julius, 67
Calabria, 46; see Barlaam
Calecas, see John XIV, Patriarch
Callistus, Andronicus, 102
Camerino, see Francesco
Cantacuzenus, see John VI
Cappadocian Fathers, 30, 47, 70;
see Basil, Gregory
Catalan Company, 9
Cecaumenus, 30
Charles of Anjou, King of Sicily,
39-40
China, 87
Choniades, Gregory, 52, 89
Chora, church of the Holy Apostles
in, in Constantinople, 34, 64-5
Chrysococces, George, 53, 89
Chrysococces, George, the younger,
80
Chrysoloras, Manuel, 100
Chrysostom, see John I, Patriarch
Chumnus, Nicephorus, 34, 51, 624, 95
Clement, Saint, of Alexandria, 30
Cleope Malatesta, Despina of the
Morea, 78
Climacus, see John
Comnenus dynasty, see Alexius,
Anna
Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus,
Emperor, 16, 51
Constantine XI Palaeologus,
Emperor, 14
Constantine of Melitene, 40
Constantinople, city of, 4-5, 7, 11,
12, 20, 22, 23, 26, 27, 39, 40, 42,
43-4, 45, 5i-2, 62-3, 68, 74-5,
77, 79, 80-1, 83, 89, 93, 100, 103;
Church and Patriarchate of, 5,
8, 37; Patriarchs of, see Anthony,
Arsenius, Gregory, Isidore,
John, Gnotius; University of, see
University
Cosimo, see Medici
Cotrone, see Nicholas
Councils, Oecumenical, 31, 37, 42-3
Cremona, see Liudprand
Cremonini, Cesare, 101
Crete, 21, 74, 75
Crusade, Fourth, 38, 98
Cydones, Demetrius, 21, 42, 48,
67, 7i, 74-5, 87, 97, 99-100
Cydones, Prochorus, 75
Cyprus, 21, 58; see Gregory
Cyrene, see Synesius
Danube, river, 11
Demetrius, Saint, 20
Demetrius Palaeologus, Despot of
the Morea, 79
Demetrius, see Cydones, Pepagomenus
Didaskalia Apostolorum, 29
Dionysius, see Pseudo-Areopagite
Diophantus, 88
Dominican Order, 69, 75
Dushan, see Stephen
Energies of God, controversy, see
Palamism
English, see Richard
Ephesus, 56, 58, 81; Metropolitan
of, see Eugenicus
Epiklesis, 37
Epirus, Epirote, 4, 101
Euchaita, Bishop of, see Mauropus
Euclid, 54, 88
Eugenicus, Mark, Metropolitan of
Ephesus, 81-3
108
Index
'Hellas', 'Hellene', 15-23, 73, 78
Henry of Flanders, Emperor of
Romania, 5-6
Heraclea, in Pontus, 67-8; Metropolitan of, 68
Hesiod, 17
Hesychasm, 27, 45-7, 81, 96
Holobolus, Manuel, 60
Homer, 15, 17, 29
Eulogia Palaeologina, princess. 39
Eustathius, Metropolitan of
Thessalonica, 17, 20, 30
Euxine Sea, 18
Ferrara, city and Council of, 43,
79-80
Filelfo, Francesco, 100
Filioque controversy (Procession of
the Holy Spirit), 36-7, 40-1, 58,
59, 60, 76
Florence, city, 43, 79-80, 82, 100:
Council of, 43-4, 48, 79-80,
100
Francesco of Camerino, 69
Franks, Francocratia, 8, 98, 99; see
Latins
Galen, 91
Gemistus, see Plethon
Gennadius, George Scholarius,
Patriarch of Constantinople, 22,
79, 82-4, 93, 96, 97
George, see Acropolites, Akyndinus,
Amiroutzes, Chrysococces,
Gennadius, Gregory, Metochites,
Moschampus, Pachymer,
Plethon
Gilbert, see Porree
Gobar numerals, 88
Greece, Greek peninsula, 8, 18-19
Greens, Circus faction, 25
Gregoras, Nicephorus, 20, 21, 34,
48, 54, 67-71, 73, 86, 90, 93,
95-6
Gregory, Saint, of Nazianzus, 45
Gregory, Saint, of Nyssa, 30
Gregory XIII, Pope, 90
Gregory II, Patriarch of Constantinople (George of Cyprus),
40-1, 58, 60, 61, 63
Gregory, see Choniades, Palamas
Grosseteste, 90
Iconoclasts, 16, 25
Indians, 87 n.
Isidore I Boukheras, Patriarch of
Constantinople, 71, 74-5
Isidore, Metropolitan of Thessalonica, 71-2, 73
Italus, John, 33
Italy, Italians, 7, 19, 41, 42, 74, 80,
83-4, 92, 98-102
Jews, 67, 74, 92
John III Vatatzes, Emperor, 38
John IV Lascaris, Emperor, 8
John V Palaeologus, Emperor, 1011, 13, 41-2, 48, 99
John VI Cantacuzenus, Emperor,
10, 12, 19-20, 26-7, 35, 41, 43,
47-8, 66-71, 74-5
John VII Palaeologus, Emperor, 11
John VIII Palaeologus, Emperor,
14, 43, 48, 79
John I Chrysostom, Patriarch of
Constantinople, 30
John XI Beccus, Patriarch of Constantinople, 40-1, 53
John XIII Glykys, Patriarch of
Constantinople, 68
John XIV Calecas, Patriarch of
Constantinople, 10, 27, 71
John the Evangelist, Saint, 31
John Climacus, 45
John of Damascus, Saint, 30, 47,
83,90
IO9
Index
John the Psychaite, 29
John of Santobosco, 90
John, see Actuarius, Italus,
Mauropus, Parastron, Tzetzes
Joseph the Philosopher, 65-6, 72,
95
Joseph, see Bryennius
Julian Calendar, 90
Michael VIII Palaeologus, Emperor,
7-9, 19, 34, 39, 54, 57, 61, 91
Michael, see Acominatus, Apostolis,
Bryennius, Psellus
Michelangelo Buonarrotti, 49
Miletus, see Isidore
Mistra, 23, 34, 77-8, 80; Despots
of, see Morea
Moldavia, 32
Mongols, 6
Morea, see Peloponnese; Despots
of, see Demetrius, Theodore II
Moschampus, George, 53
Muslims, Muslim civilization, 67,
79, 87, 92
Myrepsus, Nicholas, 91
Mysticism, see Hesychasm
Kossovo, battle of, 11
Laonicus, see Thomaeus
Lascarid dynasty, 8; see John IV
Latin language, 60, 67, 76, 77, 82,
99
Latins, Latin Empire, 4-6, 17, 38,
39, 55; see Franks
Leonardo da Vinci, 49
Lepenthrenus, Athanasius, 21
Liudprand of Cremona, 22, 51 n.
Lyons, Council of (1274), 9, 39,
40, 42, 58, 61, 64
Malastesta, see Clcope
Manuel II Palaeologus, Emperor,
13-H, 34, 4 ^ 3 , 54-5, 75-8, 100
Manuel of Trebizond, 53
Manuel, see Chrysoloras, Holobolus
Manzikert, battle of, 4
Marcus Aurelius, Emperor, 76
Maritsa, battle of the, 11
Mark, see Eugenicus
Mauropus, John, Bishop of
Euchaita, 30
Maximus the Confessor, Saint, 47
Maximus, see Planudes
Medici, Cosimo de', 100-1
Mehmet II the Conqueror,
Ottoman Sultan, 14, 84
Melitene, see Constantine, Theodore
Metochites, George, 40, 61, 63-4
Metochites, Theodore, 19 n., 34, 51,
54, 62-5, 66, 87, 88, 91, 93, 94
Nazianzus, see Gregory
Neo-Aristotelianism, 83, 97, 101
Neo-Platonism, 32
New Basilica, church in Constantinople, 50
Nicaea, Nicaean Empire, 4-7, 17,
38, 54, 55, 91; Metropolitan of,
see Bessarion
Nicephorus, see Blemmydes,
Chumnus, Gregoras
Nicholas of Cotrone, 98
Nicholas, see Cabasilas, Myrepsus,
Rhabdas, Stethatus, Thomaeus
Nicomachus, 54, 88
Normans, 33
Nymphaeum, 19
Origen, 29
Osman, Turkish emir, 7
Ottomans, see Turks
Ovid, 60
Pachymer, George, 59, 60-1, 88,
9i
Padua, University of, 83, 97, 101
IIO
Index
Purgatory, 37
Pythagoreanism, 93
Palaeologus dynasty, 1-2, 14; see
Andronicus, Demetrius, Eulogia,
Manuel, Michael, Theodore
Palamas, Gregory, Metropolitan of
Thessalonica, 2, 32, 34, 46-8,
53,70,73,96
Pcilamism, doctrine of the Energies
of God, 2, 46-8, 67, 69-73, 75,
77,82
Palestine, 87
Parastron, John, 40, 98
Patriarchal Academy, see Academy
Paul, Archbishop of Smyrna, Papal
Legate, 71, 98
Pediasimus, 93
Peloponnese, 12, 77; see Morea
Pepagomenus, Demetrius, 91-2, 93
Pera, 75
Persia, Persians, 87, 88; Persian
language, 53, 91
Petrarch, 99
Photius I, Patriarch of Constantinople, 29, 50
Pius II, Pope, 100
Planudes, Maximus, 59-60, 67,
87, 88, 89
Plato, Platonism, 15, 18, 30, 31-2,
64-5, 78, 80, 84, 93, 94, 95,
Renaissance, Italian, 49, 81, 97
Rhabdas, Nicholas, 52, 88
Rhodes, Knights of, 71
Richard the Englishman, 69
Romania, see Latins
Romans', 14-19
Romanus I Lecapenus, Emperor,
51 n.
Rome, Roman Church, 8-9, 14,
35-45, 56, 61, 67, 75-6, 79, 81,
98
Santobosco, see John
Savoy, see Anna
Scamandros, 55
Scholarius, see Gennadius
Scholasticism, 47, 82
Scleraena, 15 n.
Scythians, 87 n.
Serbia, Serbs, 8, 9-11
Sicilian Vespers, massacre, 8, 10-11,
40
Simon, see Atumano
Smyrna, 55; Archbishop of, see
Paul
Sophia, Saint, church in Constantinople, 43-4, 49, 54, 77
Sorbonne, in Paris, 76, 100
Spain, Spanish, 75
Sparta, 77
Spinoza, 57
Stephen Dushan, Serbian King,
100-1
Plethon, George Gemistus, 2, 35,
77-80, 84, 93, 97, 100-1
Plotinus, 95
Plutarch, 15 n., 32
Pomponazzi, Cesare, 101
Pontus, 67
Porree, Gilbert de la, 83
Procession of the Holy Spirit, see
Filioque
Prochorus, see Cydones
Prodromus, monk, 55
Psellus, Michael, 32, 93
Pseudo-Areopagite, the, 45
Ptolemy, 69, 89, 92
11
Stethatus, Nicholas, 29-30
Studium, monastery of St John in,
in Constantinople, 55; see
Theodore
Sucevitsa, 32 n.
Symeon, Metropolitan of
Thessalonica, 73-4
III
Index
Symeon the New Theologian,
29-30, 45
Synesius of Cyrene, 94
Tartars, see Timur
Thabor, Mount, 46
Theocritus, 60
Theodore II Lascaris, Emperor,
55-7, 95
Theodore II Palaeologus, Despot
of the Morea, 78
Theodore of Melitene, 71, 72,
89-90
Theodore the Studite, 29, 31
Theodore, see Metochites
Thessalonica, 7, 10, 12, 13, 20, 23,
27, 62-3, 65-6, 72-4; Metropolitans of, see Cabasilas,
Eustathius, Palamas, Symeon
Thessaly, 10
Thomaeus, Nicholas Laonicus, 101
Thomas, see Aquinas
Thrace, 11
Thucydides, 66
Timur, Tartar Emperor, 13, 76
Tirdat, architect, 49
Tralles, see Anthemius
Trebizond, 4-5, 23, 51, 52-3, 62,
80, 81, 89, 91, 92
Tricilinius, 53, 65
Trullo, Council In, 28
Turks, 4, 6-7, 9-14, 41, 44, 76, 79;
Turcocratia, 22
Tzetzes, John, 17
University of Constantinople, 28,
33, 54-5, 58, 60, 76, 82
Varna, battle of, 44
Vatatzes, see John III
Venice, Venetians, 13, 60, 75, 99
Zealots, political party in Thessalonica, 13, 27, 62, 74
Zealots, religious party, 26-7
Zeus, 79