Oh best and wisest of friends, or George and the wolves

The best and wisest of friends, Nikeforos Prinkeps Cheilas, is one of the small group of intellectuals of mid-century Mistra, and probably the most enigmatic. Cheilas first appears in 1433, when he gave a monody at the memnosyne for Cleofe. It is an extraordinary work, highly emotional, and full of powerful metaphors, but it is his only surviving writing.  A number of letters to him have survived, which collectively give a strikingly detailed portrait of a complicated but valued personality. No letters of his survive. As Eugenikos wrote him in 1455:

Your letters are double treasures, O best of men, winged reminders of your dear countenance and our association, among us even when we have received nothing whatsoever.

It seems that Cheilas left Mistra with Theodoros in 1443 when he became Despot at Selymbria. This put Theodoros in Constantinople most of the time where he intended to pick up the throne from John. In the summer of 1448, John, seriously ill,  still had not named an heir. Theodoros had been quarrelling with him over money, and it appears that with the aid of family members and aristocrats in Constantinople, and his entourage, plus the prospects of foreign troops and the promise of a foreign bride, Theodoros was ready to attack Constantinople and seize the throne.  But there was a major epidemic of plague, he delayed his attack, contracted plague and died. His body was taken to Constantinople and buried at night in the Pantokrator. His friends and entourage – including Cheilas – sat by the tomb for seven days and nights in the traditional homage, in terror of what might happen to them.

Nothing happened. Too many important people had been involved, and details were covered over, except that everyone knew about it. Cheilas must have written a mound of mea culpas to everyone he had ever corresponded with. Bessarion received one, and responded with generosity in considering why Cheilas might have decided as he did.

You thought you were doing the right thing in deceiving us, having other considerations, and saying what was not the case, but you did not escape us in your attempt to conceal the truth in your concern for loyalty and good will toward our leader and despot, for his sake keeping his secrets truly secret. . . . It is no ordinary virtue for those who consort with dynasts to understand that they must hide the mysteries of those in power . . .Why would one not speak the truth to you and not praise acts worthy of admiration? Why would he not spare a friend from accusations or not supply the defense of one most dear to him. . . . We clearly do not blame you and we have acquitted you of any crimes already. Do not write your defense to us and give no thought to supplication. . . .

For you should view it as I do, that we were harmed by the loss of a brother and a wise friend, while we hoped that you would fare well, for by doing so you would clear away our dismay and comfort us that you were together with better companions. Or, if you willingly endured because you did not accept a division and separation from your benefactor, and were overwhelmed by love, that in itself was the better, and something for which--if you had not felt it--then you might need an apology, such as is not needed now, since you did feel it.

May you be in the midst of all good things, oh best and wisest of friends, and may you overcome all your griefs and, with the support of God, enjoy all the best of the great city. For the present, we wish you to cheer us with the occasion and beauty of your correspondence, and with better words about yourself. In the future, your brilliance will be seen brightly by us who love you. For they are well whenever and wherever your situation is better and pleasanter.

Scholarios was a man of many faces. Without revealing his support of Theodoros, and using language in keeping with his role as a judge, he wrote Cheilas:

Such is your case. We shall not believe you, and forget the evidence of your actions, and we shall not listen to you belittling your state when we have many fine witnesses who honor it, and justly so.

A good bit of the Scholarios letter to Cheilas comments on letters from him, overwritten and somewhat hysterical as was his style in distress (τοῖς γράμμασιν ἦν μετ´ὑπερβολῆς), but it also dryly indicates that their situations under Constantine had changed from what they previously had been under John:

You are abandoning us who have no wish to show contempt, and who respect the eagerness of a friend . . . Let this suffice us then. We share your happiness in the good will of our best leaders as we ourselves often enjoyed it in splendor, but now let us abandon and be free of it, thinking that we and you together with us are fortunate. We are enjoying this opinion equitably, and taking pleasure in a reputation for virtue in place of our former splendor. For we, along with them, shall celebrate the brother for his praiseworthy clemency -- don't you think? -- for through that all the best will come from both God and men.

Eugenikos wrote:

You are prevented from writing frequently by the crowd of problems that surround you . . . Write, then, whenever you find it easier for you. . . . Write something short: that will be dearer and more precious than the longer effusions of others, and show by this your longing and purest feeling toward us as from the beginning.

Cheilas eventually returned to Mistra where he then became mesazon for Demetrios. In a letter to the Gemistos brothers, when their father died, Bessarion concluded:

Be well, and speak to Nikephoros Prinkeps Cheilas for me, telling him to know that he is loved by me for his goodness more than ever before.

There is much evidence for the emotionality of Cheilas' personality, and when hostile gossip produced hurt feelings , Eugenikos had written:

I learned from one of your countrymen here, a warm supporter of yours, and the good son of one of my associates, that certain ill-wishers here have corrupted the good and wise information that you receive, announcing complete untruths and have claimed that I have condemned you frequently and to many people when, by the grace of God, what I do is just the opposite, fervently and continuously. You are, with the aid of God one of those we praise, and we are not given to slandering.

John Eugenikos left his estate in Cheilas' care during his trip to Trebizond in 1454-55. Then he had a letter from his son George (the deaths of his younger brothers were discussed in the previous entry). Eugenikos wrote Cheilas with such graciousness that it becomes difficult to discover that Cheilas had been negligent.  The wolves are a puzzlement: they are generally taken as raiding neighbors, but a mountain village on the slopes of the Taygetos range is likely to be a sheep-herding village and I suspect these are real wolves.

Not but that if you stood aside for a while from our common understanding and firm resolve for the better, something that happens to people who are distracted by many important things, as nature has it though it may be against their will, nonetheless keeping in mind the letter of warm mutual affection, and those bright hopes of ours for those around you, and what we set up for my son when I left, and you promised, what I begged from you in earlier letters for yourself and those under your care, a grant to us concerning everything where you are and whatever or ours there is. My son George needs help frequently, and the village along with him, which will provide for his and my survival when I, God willing, shall return. The village is frequently besieged, and excavations are dug under the fences by the wolves nearby, and who could be a better manager and a greater assistance for us than you, when you are led by God.  




Again, thanks to Pierre MacKay for his translations.

The Eugenikos sons

Two and a half years ago, I wrote about the time Pepagomenos left his sons with the Eugenikos family in Mistra when he and his wife made a trip to Constantinople. This was probably in 1443. In a letter to him, John Eugenikos compliments the excellence of the two boys, calling them "that pair of ours, and especially Nicholaos." In another letter, Eugenikos describes a group that he had invited to read a letter from Pepagomenos. He included "our good Nicholaos" and his friends in the audience -- it looks as if Nicholaos was the older son. (I think the younger was Giorgos.)  After the formal reading, Nicholaos and his friends took the letter, "treating it lovingly," and tried to work it out for themselves. Their Greek had not yet become Byzantine.

So I was startled and saddened to find an exchange of letters between Bessarion and Eugenikos, written four years earlier, about the deaths of two of Eugenikos' sons. Bessarion was in Florence at the Council of Union. Eugenikos, profoundly opposed to any discussion of Union, had obtained permission to leave the previous September and had finally reached Constantinople in May 1439, nearly drowning in a shipwreck on the way. Eugenikos seems to have gone directly on to Mistra -- did he arrive in Constantinople to find his sons dead? The letters don't say. 

They had learned in Florence that there was plague in Constantinople. Bessarion, concerned about no letters from Eugenikos began to worry, but he could not imagine that his friend's household could be affected by plague. Then he learned from two boys just arrived in Florence from Mistra that the Eugenikos boys had died. The boys must have been travelling with the group from Mistra Eugenikos mentions at the end of his letter.

Here is Bessarion's loving and clumsily-written letter to John Eugenikos. The two men were polar opposites on the topic of Church Union, but they were the closest of friends. The last paragraph of Bessarion's letter indicates that the Council is still voting: given what can be worked out about travel, Bessarion letter must have been written in June of 1439.

* * * * * *

[Bessarion to Eugenikos]

I was believing that your house was safe and not afflicted by the disease, and that in your relief you would be glad to take part in the pleasures of life and so would not overlook what is right for us who left the great city and came here, and who beg for letters from there more than any other gift. When we were unable to discover them—how could we, when they did not exist—for my part I was eaten up at heart, being uneasy about your silence When I asked around, no one had even a suggestion that might dispel my ignorance until I learned directly from fellow townsmen, those who knew you best, and was told that terrible news, that the cause was much worse than anything we might have suspected, that you had lost the companionship of your children, those children whom even someone hostile to you would be ashamed not to mourn, whom an enemy, needing no truce, would have pity for, and about whom anyone seeing it would fall into the same grief as their parent. I shed bitter tears as soon as I heard of it. Those who announced it to me were of the same age, with the same beauty and symmetry of limbs, in the same first flowering of their life that gave witness to me what their condition was to be in future. I write you now with the same tears, aware of the despair that must exist in your soul, and how sharply you grieved as you sent these dear ones to the tomb before you had clearly witnessed their full heritage. And yet you know how to grieve while at the same time praising nature, and you understand philosophy, for you have in all times praised the mean as best, taught that thee fully-matured virtues lead us to the mean, and you walk along the royal road, as it is said, distancing yourself from the evils on either side.

Death, for those in hardship is a release from evils, while for those who have lived virtuously, and for children, in whom there is no villainy to be considered, being not yet aware of the unfulfilled pledges of life, it brings mourning to those left behind, as is right when they are distressed by the separation of bonds. May it be a consolation to you, that medicine of consolation that has often been to many, and in many circumstances. Contrast the life in this world with that one, as being by so much more, blessed. To have been snatched away before time is to escape the griefs of this life, which are the preponderance in it, perhaps even all of it. With not exulting in them because they have gone away despite one's prayers and the hopes that they might too become fathers of children, contrast the absence of grief and affliction of offspring who are unworthy of their parents, for, that may sometimes happen, and if the separation, and your no longer being called their father grieves you, you must remember that you must not grieve more for what you have had taken away from yourself than you must rejoice in the acknowledgement of what God has offered, for He as our Lord has taken his own, not what is ours. How could it not be so, when we have our very life from Him. If God can give us many times over what he takes from us then this is a sufficient comfort to us who remember those who have gone from us neither in a small-spirited way nor as if those departed had ceased to exist.

About you, many good things are are noted by those Peloponnesians who come here and who have voted for what is best with every vote. The law of friendship makes me regard your good reputation no less than my own with pleasure. I greet those about you who have voted with you as still being friends. But if we have lost you, and your true self, to be well-pleased with those, who take pleasure in you but are others, is to pursue the shadow and an image of pleasure, neglecting the true pleasure. Nonetheless, being deprived of this now in the tyranny of the present circumstances, we shall enjoy the second pleasure, that of hearing you well-famed, until we ourselves may more clearly enjoy your goodness. 

* * * * * *

 Bessarion wrote Eugenikos other letters about the deaths that have not survived, and Eugenikos wrote back immediately.  He does not mention the Council or the Act of Union, which had been signed on July 6, but there was a lot going on, with many letters crossing in transit.  In this next letter we learn that Bessarion's letters were carried by Gabriel, and that Eugenikos had written Bessarion (these were the letters that Bessarion was worried about because he had not seen them) letters taken to Florence by the stratopedarchos 
Frangopoulos (this is the man who built the Pantanassa at Mistra) and by Alexios Laskaris (the name shows up in other Moreote documents).  This is new information about Greeks in Florence, and it makes very personal what we already know about the transmission of letters.

* * * * * *

[Eugenikos to Bessarion]

This is clear to me, what is said by the philosophers that pleasures are fixed right next to griefs, in that no part of the present life remains unchanged, for since the joy of good men in infinite future ages will properly be matched by the grief of the unjust. Certainly, it follows that this is true for those allotted life in this uncertain order that will shortly cease to be. Just as many other opposite things occur simultaneously, as, like a wheel, the affairs of men, change and are borne along this way and that, so happiness and grief are to one another. With your good and wise letters, you have filled me with this immeasurable happiness, oh best and thrice desired friend, after I have known many distresses from many sides, and what a fresh sweetness you have poured over my despairing soul, what a medicine of consolation. 

 This is not only because of the great charm, and the longing for me in your soul, your unmixed love, and your recognition of me and disposition toward me evident for a long time before and especially now, to which I add the flowering grace and skill of your writing, but also your advice to me to offer thanks to God even for the loss of my dearest. Your letters have had such power over me that they have been longed for especially, honored when seen, and deeply treasured. It is right, according to the teachings of the church and your counsels, that we should give thanks to God from our souls, both when he gives and when he takes away, as much as it is in us, and we ask for your prayers and for the prayers of those with you who love us or, rather, who love God more than us, that they be safe and be left to us in place of the children and may be increased in accordance with His generosity to us. 

Thus as I said, following the anguish to ourselves, there was also joy for other good things, not the least of them being your wise letters in which while they lacked absolutely nothing of your kindness and honor, I found in addition to these benefits that they came together with the high-minded escort, that best and sweetest, that good and noble Gabriel, who to such an extent filled my ears with frequent praise of you that he made my longing for you, which had already reached a peak, increase and rise to an even higher peak.

So this is my joy over you and yours. 

But there is also with it a grief, and a very immediate one, heavy and great for me, that strengthens my delight in your letters and at the same time troubles and confounds it. This is that you did not receive my letters, a long one sent earlier, and one after that, owing to the indifference of those who took them. The calamity was made so much the worse because of what the most distinguished of our friends, to whom the letters were entrusted, have become. These were the good Frangopoulos, the grand stratopedarch, who took the long one, and after him, Alexios Lascaris, who took along with the one I addressed to you others for the spiritual father Isidore. If there was one more important than the other it is the one that went with the grand stratopedarch which would have been given into your two hands if he had not been indifferent to God and to the happiness of friends. If this is not the case ask him to look into his trunk, or the trunks of his closest associates, and perhaps they will appear somewhere. If not, let that stand as a part of my misfortune and wretchedness.

[The Bessarion letter is found in Mohler 3: #10; the Eugenikos is IN Lampros, Παλαιολόγεια καὶ Πελοποννησιακά, 1: 164-5. Pierre MacKay did the tedious work of translation.]

Bessarion's missing manuscript

Bessarion's index to Marciana Gr Z 533 (coll 778).

Five-thirty-three, as we call it here in this house (feeling that “Gr Z” and “coll. 778” are just plain pedantic in normal conversation), is a collection of Bessarion's writings that he put together himself and for which he wrote the index and an introduction.  His introduction to 533 says, in part, 

Of the writings included here, some were produced while I was still young and setting myself to the practice of writing for the first time, while I still had no ecclesiastical rank, since I was still tender in my years . . . Others in this collection, going on as time allowed, were published, some at the time of my ordination as I was brought into holy orders, others when I became patriarch . . . in addition a long letter to the Despot Constantine when I had already been raised to the rank of cardinal -- these letters which, even if they are not worthy of deep thought, I have an affection for as my own children, and I have put them in the book as a reminder for ourselves, rather than of value for others.

Bessarion's Introduction.

Despite the fact that Bessarion was well into his forties when he wrote the letter to Constantine in 1444, this collection in 533 is persistently called his “juvenalia,” which gives a completely incorrect expectation of its contents. Here are the contents of 533 (I am trying here to read the text above):

* Encomium

* Monody for Manuel II.

* Discourse to the emperor Alexis of Trebizond.

* Legal act in the name of the archbishop of Sophia.

* Monody for the empress Theodora of Trebizond.

* Another monody for her.

* Another monody for her.

* Epitaph to ??? (crossed out)

* Epitaph for George Amiroutzes. (crossed out)

* Canon to S. Pantaleon.

* Letter to ???

* Letter to the same.

* Another letter to Amiroutzes.

* Epitaph for the basilissa Cleofe.

* Epitaph for the basilissa Theodora.

* Verses for a tapestry for the tomb of Manuel and Helena.

* Letter to Theodoros II.

* Letter to the same

* Letter to Paul Sophianos.

* Letter to Demetrios Pepagomenos.

* Letter to Nikephoros Cheilas.

* Letter to the monk Dionisios.

* Letter to John Eugenikos.

* Letter to the monks Matthaios and Isidoros.

* Address to the synod of Constantinople in the name of the archbishop of Trebizond.

* Description of Trebizond.

* Homily

* Monody to John VIII on the death of his wife Maria of Trebizond.

* Another monody for her.

* Another monody for her.

* Speech made at the opening of the Council of Union in Ferrara.

* Discourse on Union.

* Letter to Constantine, Despot of Mistra.

Notice that the contents include 7 monodies -- 7 formal funeral laments which were sent as gifts to the family of the dead and read out at formal memorial services. One monody was for Manuel II, but the other 6 monodies are for women -- for two women, actually.

Which brings us to the missing manuscript. A monody.

His monody for Cleofe Malatesta Palaiologina is missing.  533 has a number of document from his Mistra period -- letters, and three poems for members of the imperial family, one of them Cleofe.  Why would he have omitted this monody?  Granted, it is fairly tedious and even incoherent in places, but so are the other monodies listed (except for Manuel's). It could not have been later removed from 533: all the pages are accounted for in his index.

I can speculate (with no evidence) as to why he would have decided to omit this document from 533, but the monody is missing from all the other manuscripts of his writings as well. The sole copy is to be found -- or was found ninety-some years ago -- in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, and printed in volume 4 of Spyridon Lampros' Παλαιολόγεια καὶ Πελοπονησιακά in 1924/30, along with other monodies for Cleofe.  The monody  by Cheilas follows Bessarion's in the Paris manuscript.  The Pepagomenos monody is in the Vatican.  There are several copies of the Plethon monody -- thanks to his magic name -- in Madrid, Bucharest, Belgrade, the Escorial, Leiden, with two in Milan. 

The other three monodies for Cleofe seem unique.  The Bessarion monody is a brief rewriting of the three monodies in the list above for the empress Theodora of Trebizond who died before she could become the mother-in-law of John VIII.  Pierre MacKay has made a collation of the monodies, which shows -- among other things -- that the tedious and incoherent parts were for Theodora, while the parts written newly for Cleofe are specific to her:

This disaster  -- her death -- has touched every race.  She cared for them from her own resources.  Her work was impossible to conceal, even if she avoided incense and lighted torches. She was a city founded on a mountain, impossible to hide (a reference to Mistra).  

She flew out of her husband's hands, leaving him crying tears of blood.  He was cut in two, and we see see that the high-born suffer as do the humble. The reasons must be left in the hands of God.

Who that knew her could not mourn her?  She accepted respect from the ladies of the court, but she did not compete with them.  She knew she was beautiful, but she had no concern about it  She wanted to go beyond it and be good.  She had the intelligence to chose the good, and the ability to follow through on what she had chosen.  She was quick to select the best solution to an argument.

Who can adequately express what we have lost?  We could have lost anyone else without hurt, but she was our guardian, our benefactress, our protector, and our enjoyment of her goodness was never satisfied.  No one has been left unwounded.

Bessarion concluded Cleofe's monody with an apparent criticism of Theodoros whose inability to deal with his grief has contributed to a sense of disorder.  This reflects the opening sentence, first written for Theodora, "O, the passage of disordered time," and then Bessarion mentioned the order Cleofe had brought to them.

So I wonder why this manuscript is missing.  Was Bessarion, more than ten years later, still unable to face so tangible a reminder of the disorder, of the loss of Cleofe?

The photographs of 533 are by John Burke.

Pavane for a Dead Princess: Part Ten

Text of the 1433 poem to Cleofe, in Marciana Gr Z 533 (coll. 778) f. 48b,
a collection of personal documents put together by Bessarion.  Photo, John Burke.

I have written about this poem in the past, and for a few this entry may be repetitive, but it is an important poem to me and, I think, important historically. When Cleofe Malatesta Palaiologina died in childbirth "the shattering of a precious crystal," said Cheilas, on Good Friday of 1433, her husband Theodoros was devastated. Testimony from his friends -- Gemistos, Bessarion, Pepagomenos -- gives a portrait of a man completely incapacitated by grief. But at some time in that first month of her absence, he constructed a love poem to her, bringing together passion and loss in a structure informed by his own scholarship, and by the new world she had opened to him.

Although, my dearest, we were once united,
being one flesh, the word of God claims
that it is better now to be together in the spirit,
you, living in thought, looking down from Heaven
upon my life, my words, my ways, and thought,

seeing all clearly as it is your right,
I, alas, torn apart, living in pain,
calling out for you with scalding tears,
for me, one thing is left, one good thing, song.

And so, portraying you in this image,

I have put myself beside you in every sense
wishing to be united in a third form of union.
so as to quench the terrible fire of longing
and to empty out the agony from my soul.

But, you who have died but live with God, deservedly,
when in the same tomb necessity brings
my bones together with yours in the fourth way
then, showing me what lies beyond the five senses
unite with me in the fifth and greater way
to share in delight and in the sight of God
my courage lies with you, who possess and indeed
give me, as my fellow-poet, this song.

Cleofe, his fellow-poet, made it possible for him to write. Before he was able to work, he was driven back in his grief to a poem she had showed him, one her father had written when her own mother died in childbirth.  It is written in the tradition of the family friend Petrarch:

The holy lady is dead, who used to hold
my spirit with hers, quiet and content;
Now she lives in heaven, and I in torment
am left, another man from what I was:

     not man, but brute, so that I should have
followed her body, life extinguished,
never to leave the side of her tomb
but burned myself where her heart lies.

     Then perhaps my soul might follow her
in celestial triumph, where all live
eternally by divine power.

    Yet if I with all my force were to be kept
from following her, at least
my body would be buried with her sacred bones

The fifth line -- "non huom ma bruto" -- and its verse described his condition to himself. Pepagomenos may have given him opium to calm him, and the ideas of "brute" and "drug" may have driven his tangles of thought to the Theocritean idyll about the brute, Cyclops, grieving for the loss of a lady:

There is no other drug for love . . . nor salve, nor poultice,

except the Muses, and this is something sweet and gentle

for men, yet it is not easy to discover it.

And this was then the crystal about which his poem grew.   Several things are happening in his poem.  The first, perhaps the least important is that there are two bits of information about imperial lives in Mistra.  For one, he expected to be buried in the same tomb with her at the palace chapel of Ag. Sophia.  For another, he had arranged for a double portrait to be painted over the tomb.

Theodoros may originally have set out to structure the poem on the five senses, a reasonable Byzantine and Renaissance approach, paralleling the senses to five ways in which he and Cleofe might achieve union.  He managed Touch, Sight, and Hearing, before he wisely gave up on Taste and Smell, and realized that he had to go beyond the senses, yet, if this what what he had planned, there is no sense of incompleteness of intent.

He enumerates forms of union, beginning with the union of one flesh, a union of which he had been frighted for the first six years of legal marriage, and a union which had clearly brought him joy.  He tests the idea that God's will for a spiritual union might be better, a second form of union, but the great distance between Cleofe in Heaven and him on earth reduces him to scalding tears -- tears only too familiar to those of us who have survived the loss of a partner.  But the idea of song, of poetry, remains.

He now has a portrait of her, of the two of them together, a third form of union which has not brought the comfort he expected, and he does anticipate an eventual burial with her, a forth form which he knows is beyond their senses.

There is a fifth way to find union, the ultimate union in a shared delight in the presence of God, a Dantean expression of the beatific vision, to which Cleofe must have introduced him in their shared examination of poetry.  It is a rare poet who can bring the Cyclops into the Paradisio, but Theodoros concludes with Cleofe as sharer and Muse -- ξυνεργὸς -- in this work of song -- μέλος

The original languages of these poems will be found here.  The translations from the Greek are by Pierre A. MacKay.

Bessarion on the imperial hangers-on

Bessarion's villa (possibly) at Rome near the Via Appia.

In Bessarion's letter about arrangements for  Zoe, Andreas, and Manuel Palaiologos, he said that the Pope was providing 300 ducats a month. Two hundred of that was for their servants, food, horses, clothing, and other expenses. The remaining 100 was for the household.

The household was what would have been their court somewhere else -- a few useful people, a few whom they knew and actually liked, and hangers-on to whom there was some familial obligation.  Bessarion was quite stern about this. Their father Thomas had had 300 ducats a month for his household from the Pope, and another 200 from Bessarion and the cardinals, but Bessarion and the Pope had still been quite shocked to learn how large a group Thomas had been supporting out of that. (They had also been amazed at the size of John's household when he came to Italy twenty-plus years earlier on the trip that the Pope was also paying for. ) When Thomas first visited Rome it had been noted that he was accompanied by a suite of 70 people, all on borrowed horses, except for the three that he owned. John, too, had been noted for his lavish household. 

It was not going to be this way for the children.  There was no way Bessarion and his colleagues could come up with the contributions they needed for the authentopoula -- that is the term in the letters for the children -- if people saw the household as a Greek immigrant fraternal welfare association.  Bessarion wanted the administrator to select a few reliable people who could provide the authentopoula with good support, good service, and honor.

He wrote the household administrator in Ancona about financial arrangements on 6 August. That's 305 kilometers on modern roads, 3 hours driving now at best.  Then it was two days in one direction for a fast messenger. The household administrator was to settle the financial arrangements for the people who were to be the authentopoula's court.  It is obvious that a great many people who had planned on sinecures were sorely disappointed. Various people in Ancona sent a stack of letters in reply. On 16 August Bessarion wrote letters in response to these.  Two of these letters survive, very irritated letters.  He says, "The grace of God be with you," four times in two letters but you can hear that he says it between clenched teeth.

The first is to a group of three men, apparently the core of the court, and probably people Bessarion knew.  They had sent along a list of the other members of the court, and how much money each was to have. They reported that there were many complaints. Bessarion approved this list and said that the others  had  to understand that there is no more money.  Period.  They had written him saying they were sure he would fix things. He would write them a general letter and tell them that there was nothing he could fix.  He wanted this clearly understood and he wanted them to quit burdening him.

Bessarion had been physically unwell for several years.  He was burdened with trying to find support for the Pope's crusade in the Morea that was going very badly:  most of the Italian troops and the Venetian commanders had died of plague, they were inadequately supplied, they had lost the control of the country they had a year before, and the Turks had pushed the crusade troops down into a small pocket in the south.  He had been personally supporting a large number of refugees from Constantinople and the Morea and finding jobs for them.  He had no energy left over for whiners who claimed entitlements.

He wrote them that they had accepted the amounts offered, that they had agreed to serve the authentopoula, and that they needed to stop making words about the matter.  The Holy Father was not sending any more money.  God knows he personally would like to be able to help, but -- we have said this many times -- it cannot happen.  He repeats all of this several times. Frustration runs off the page like sweat.

We have no real indication of who some of the members of that household might have been, with the exception of a Demetrios Rallis Kavakes who went with Zoe to her Moscow marriage seven years later. There were certainly other Rallades, first and second cousins, who had accompanied the family when they left the Morea in 1460. For generations the lives of these household hangers-on had been financed by their relationship to the imperial family.  Bessarion knew clearly what they were afraid to admit: the Empire is over.

Bessarion on educating the imperial children

Early in 1465, Thomas Palaiologos directed that his children be sent from Corfù to Italy. He had gone to Italy in the winter of 1460. Their mother had died in August 1462. We know nothing of their circumstances in Corfù without either parent. The only individual in Corfù of whose presence we can be sure was Giorgios Sphrantzes, loyal Palaiologan courtier, but he had declined to be part of Thomas’ court in exile.

Thomas died in March of 1465. A sense of impending death may have made him send for his children. The children -- Zoe, age 17; Andreas, 12; Manuel, 7 -- arrived in Ancona in the summer. There appears to have been considerable and frantic correspondence between individuals in Ancona with some responsibility for the children, and Cardinal Bessarion in Rome whom Thomas had left as their guardian.

Bessarion wrote, or dictated, a letter to an unnamed individual in Ancona who was to be head of these young remnants of an imperial household. This person, and Dr. Kritopoulos, were to work out the details of the household and education, and send them to Bessarion. Meanwhile, the Pope, Paul II, would give 300 ducats a month for various expenses. Of this, 200 ducats were to go directly to the children’s household, for 6 or 7 servants each, for food, for 3 or 4 horses and their food, and for a little extra each month, depending on what was needed.

Bessarion, after reading the correspondence, had decided that a Greek teacher was essential. He was concerned about their understanding of Greek, concerned enough that he was not writing them directly but wanted his letter, in demotic Greek, read to them several times until they could understand it. They were to have a Latin teacher, who would certainly have taught Italian. They were to have Dr. Kritopoulos, and a translator or interpreter. This raises the question of what language they had been raised to speak in Greece, which they had left five years earlier, and what language they had been speaking in Corfù, but it is clear from Bessarion that their conversational demotic Greek was considered deficient.

Bessarion says nothing about Greek or Italian literature, mathematics, philosophy, history, swordplay, riding, hunting, or anything normally included under education. He does mention writing, but writing would be part of the language education. The rest of his instructions concern manners, behavior, how these young imperials were to present themselves to the world. The instructions give a chilling view of the world these children had entered, but Bessarion had observed Thomas for four and a half years, and he was keenly aware of what was necessary for these children without parents, without a country, and without income of their own.

They would be, he wrote, living on strangers’ money and strangers’ expectations. They could not vaunt their imperial descent. They were orphans, foreigners, beggars. Any advantages they had would come because they were pleasing. So they were to dress and live completely in the Italian style. Their diet was to be restrained, and their table manners excellent, as well as their manners toward the members of their household. They were not to be rude, but well-behaved, humble, and serene.

They were to learn to bow appropriately to each rank, to touch their hats, lift them slightly, or remove them according to the social standing of the person they encountered. They were to walk with dignity in public, speak in low voices, keep their eyes down, and not gape or giggle. When people came to pay calls, they were to learn how to make appropriate conversation and high-minded without laughing or chattering too much. They were to learn how to evaluate the Greeks who would come to their household, and the appropriate courtesies for each, particularly towards those in a difficult situation.

If they met a cardinal or the Pope, they were to kneel and not rise until told to. It would not shame them -- this was something kings and great rulers did. They should not sit in the presence of individuals of high rank -- Thomas told Bessarion he had often told them that. They were to be completely obedient and deferential to their administrator and doctor and teachers.

The household was to have one or two priests of the Latin rite who would be constantly saying the liturgy so they could become letter-perfect in it. They were to observe the Latin rite meticulously, and learn the kneelings and crossings and gestures, copying the Italians. They were not to smile at anything in the service, and not to whisper to each other. It had been reported to him that on the trip over, the children had walked out of the church some of the members of their suite had walked out of the church at the liturgical commemoration of the Pope:  this could not happen again, because if they did it it were to happen again, they the children would have to leave Italy, and then they would be beyond Bessarion's protection.

They were to come to Rome -- for this they should learn by heart little addresses they could make to the Pope -- but not until October at least, because there was plague in the city. The household should remove itself from Ancona, an old city liable to be unhealthy, and go up to the mountains to Cingoli where the Bishop of Osimo -- one of Bessarion's people -- had a house he wanted to offer them. Actually, the archons in Rome thought it might be a good idea for the children to stay there all the time.

They did go to Rome. Sphrantzes, one of those in a difficult situation, came to see them the next year and stayed for five weeks, but beyond this, we know nothing about their lives as children.

When she was 24, Zoe was finally married, to Ivan III of Moscow. Her sister and cousin had been married when they were 14. Her formal education must have been of some use. Bessarion died shortly after Zoe's marriage and so her brothers lost his protection. The boys were over-educated for what life in Italy had to offer them.   Andreas tried to auction off his title to the throne of Constantinople. Manuel left to visit the important courts, looking for a job or an allowance, but no one offered him enough to maintain the household he thought he should have. Andreas’ complicated life has been excellently described by Jonathan Harris. In 1476 Manuel went to Turkey where he was welcomed by Mehmed II and given a generous income. His own son converted to Islam.  


[More next week.]

The Maltese whelp

In February of last year, I wrote an entry on Bessarion's Little White Dog and used the two dog painting I have here. I think I'may have identified the two dogs here, as to species, even though there are some differences between them. Apparently from ancient times on up to modern, this white toy Maltese -- with some breeding changes over time -- has been traditionally identified as a lady's lap dog.  If Bessarion did have one, he wouldn't have worried about that issue.  Odysseus (xvii: 315) compared his hunting dog Argos to lap dogs.  He called them τραπεζῆες κύνες -- table dogs, the kind of dogs we here who are partial to mastiffs and karabaş might in an off-moment call a "kick-me" dog, though I have been known to become sentimental over a King Charles Spaniel.

What is particularly interesting about this over-enlarged blurry dog is Aristotles' comparison of the Maltese to a mustelid, and it does have a slight resemblance to a weasel. These little white dogs are also found in the writings of Pliny, Strabo, Martial, and possibly first of all in Callimachus.  They have an tradition in scholarly writing, which may be why they appear with images of Bessarion.  Or maybe he really did own a little white dog.  I keep hoping.

But there seems to have been a Byzantine development where the term "Maltese whelp" became a term of literary contempt. We don't know if they had the little white dogs but they had the insult.  Psellos called John Italos a "Maltese whelp." When George Gemistos Plethon wrote Theodoros II about reforming the Morea, he spoke harshly about the present system of military defense:

It is better to be ready for war and inexpensively dressed than to wear golden robes and live in dread of your enemies.  Or one may compare the way of a shepherd, who will feed a guard-dog from his produce rather than waste it on keeping Maltese whelps, or other useless or voracious animals . . . like one or two of those you are now keeping, who flatter and deceive you , with their mouths wide open . . . unable to restrain their greed.

He is mixing a lot of metaphors here and making a lot of points, but contempt for Maltese whelps comes through.  

So think then about how George Gemistos Plethon, the philosopher of Mistra, friend of emperors, despots, and scholars, honored guest of Florence, judge and teacher, wrote George Scholarios in what was presented as a scholarly reply to Scholarios' Defense of Aristotle.  Nestled among arguments about Aristotle's errors, logic, circular motion, comets, and heat, the great Plethon included statements such as these: 

Along with your other faults, lying comes naturally to you. . . .

. . . a man who has no shame in boasting about the influence of a wretched woman -- and a little tart at that . .

You are not only vindictive, but dull-witted, as your present work shows . . 

[You] enjoy discussion, which is a practice of moderation, as well as simultaneously enjoying your own vanity, which is deplorable and tasteless and has nothing in common with moderation; and you seem to be so consumed with your vanity that you will even sacrifice your religious beliefs for it, changing them at every opportunity in whatever direction you think will bring you greater esteem. . . 

They are certainly not stupider than you, for it would be hard to find among serious students of Aristotle anyone stupider than you. . .

You can have nothing to say that affects me . . . I have paid, and shall continue to pay, no more attention to it than to the howling of a Maltese whelp.¹

 I have found these remarks devastating.  Scholarios' response is a matter for another entry.

1Woodhouse 1986: 283, 285, 166, 298, 299, 307. 

Bessarion's Little White Dog

St. Augustine, Carpaccio, ca. 1504

In Carpaccio's painting of St. Augustine, at the instant when he becomes aware of the death of St. Jerome, there is a small fluffy white dog. This dog, too, has become suddenly alert at the sudden stream of light from the upper right. It is a wonderful room, books piled on books, a wooden platform to keep feet from the cold floor, books along the wall, another room of treasures, his clerical effects untidily lying around the altar, a shelf of Greek antiquities to emphasize the Greek connection, and a bear-paw sconce for a light like the sconces in Cocteau's La Belle et la Bête.

Although Cardinal Bessarion had been dead for thirty years (1472), Augustine and his room are based on Bessarion's life (I like to think my own study reflects Bessarion and Augustine), and Carpaccio shows, among Bessarion's collection of astronomical instruments, the astrolabe made for him in 1462 by Regiomontanus.    This astrolabe still exists. He had met Regiomontanus in Vienna the year before, when he was travelling on behalf of the Papacy looking for support for a crusade in Greece against the Turks. Regiomontanus left Vienna with Bessarion and spent several years in his household, collecting and copying scientific manuscripts.

 

As far as I know, there is no mention of a little white dog in any Bessarion material, but I have always been charmed by the dog, and so imagine my delight when I discovered another little white dog in this Ptolemy manuscript made for Bessarion's collection.

 

The dog seems to be perched in Bessarion's cathedra, adjacent to his studiolo with Venetian ornamentation, and with that studiolo we come back to St. Jerome who was the Renaissance prototype for the scholar in his studiolo.  

Portrait of Ptolemy, Geography, c. 1453.
Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Cod. Gr. Z. 388 (=333)f. 6v

This picture should be quite large when downloaded, which you will need to do if you are to see all the wonderful details in it, including that astrolabe again. This one, too, has a stream of light from the upper right, illuminating the mind of Bessarion who is shown as a magos, a wise man who studies the stars, as did his teacher, George Gemistos Plethon. He also has all those untidy piles of books -- look at that wonderful large illustrated codex, and platforms to keep his feet from the chill.  Bessarion -- or Ptolemy -- is wearing a crown, which associates him with the "wise men from the East," the Magi who became kings in Western art.

Now about the dog.  I read some years back that wise men, magoi, were represented with white dogs, as wise women (who of course must have been witches) were supposed to have black cats. (I should admit here that a preliminary sketch by Carpaccio shows a beardless man with a rather nasty-looking cat, instead of a dog.) This dog-cat assignment sounded quite reasonable, but it occurred to me recently that these are the only two images I have seen of wise men with white dogs.  Most of the Jerome images give him a cat, possibly because of his lion.  So I don't really know if magoi have dogs, and would be delighted if any readers could produce more images.  Nor do I know if Bessarion actually owned a white dog, or any dog.  He probably did.  Bessarion was always adding people to his household who needed help in some way or another, and surely local dogs would have noticed that. So if any reader should come across a line in a 15th-century source that mentions a white dog in Bessarion's household, or any dog,  I would be particularly delighted to know about it.

One more comment about the manuscript painting: ranged along the top are several fantastical towers.  I think the painter was aware of Pisanello's Verona fresco (ca. 1436-38) with the towers of Trebizond in the upper register.  He was probably also aware that Bessarion came from Trebizond, and that Regiomontanus had just been working on a Ptolomy manuscript from Trebizond. 

And for information about one of my favorite novels, The Towers of Trebizond, go here.