The doctor and his patient

Demetrios Pepagomenos was the second of the four speakers at Cleofe's memorial. I have written about these monodies at other times, in detail about those by Bessarion, the last speaker, and George Gemistos Plethon, the first. (The order of the speakers has to be deduced: Plethon was the oldest and certainly of the highest status of the four, Bessarion the youngest and, being a monk, of the lowest status. Cheilas probably has to follow Pepagomenos as he makes a comment about him.)

Pepagomenos was a doctor specializing in gout. We do not have an absolute statement that he was Cleofe's doctor, but there is enough evidence to allow us to deduce it. For example, in his monody he said, “There is need for all of us, and for myself especially, to let our voices loose in the intensity of our suffering.” I read that as a comment on his sense of involvement in, if not responsibility for her death. Later he spoke of “the body of our holy queen, so well-formed, so harmonious as to bring future happiness to the race.” As the daughter of an obstetrician, I read that as saying her body was suited for child-bearing, and so something he would be the only man, other than her husband, in a position to know.

But when Cleofe died at noon on Good Friday, she had been fasting for nearly forty days, and there is strong evidence to suggest that she would have followed the most severe fast. She spent nights standing in prayer. She had, unintentionally, prepared her body for a massive hemorrhage. Pepagomenos called it a cataclysm, a deluge over the whole race – ἄλλον τινὰ καταχλυσμὸν τοῦ γένους παντὸς, and said it had come on suddenly. Bessarion also refers to blood, saying that her husband (like Zeus) had wept tears of blood (and, like Zeus, at the loss of a son in addition to his wife).

I think the dead child was a son, because Pepagomenos said this birth was to have been such an even that “all good and decent things might come to settle not only among us present here but among all the entire race . . . that there might be skipping and dancing . . . the singing of festival chants, the display of general happiness.”

“All the best for us came,” he said to her – sometimes he spoke to the assembled mourners, and sometimes to Cleofe – “with your settling among us. . . . But now everything goes the other way.” He mentions first her husband, “our holy ruler,” and then “her dear daughter . . . all her blood relations, her servants and cities.” Pepagomenos speaks of her daughter three different times, and then again of the loss to her subjects.

He becomes more specific about her subjects: “But the bellies of the poor mourn especially the hands of our queen, which worked as it were to one purpose throughout her life, to nourish those in want, not merely through instruction, and through those of others', as might have been expected of such a queen, but themselves performing the service of cookery, collecting wood from wherever they had to, and lighting the fire, even roasting the food of the poor over it and serving it to them, nourishing them daily, taking no account of the heat of the fire, the intense burden of the smoke, and the inescapable duration of this service. This is an exceptional description. It was conventional for Renaissance and Byzantine ladies of good families to feed the poor, but nowhere, I think, do we learn that they carried firewood and cooked in the smoke.  Though I do wonder where she had learned to cook.  All the speakers spoke of Cleofe's character: Pepagomenos spoke more than the others of what she actually did in her life.

He specified other groups whom she nurtured: “The orphaned children of her household mourn her, who acted as a mother to all, sharing out to each of them what was right, and neglecting nothing of their care; she made it possible for the women to live together with husbands and men with wives, to act openly and to practice another way of life, something that had in many periods over the years been neglected. but was rightly and properly fostered during the reign of our most holy queen, with all attention and concern, as one might say. Widows, too mourn their protector, and strangers the source of consolation from which they often benefited--- all, in short, for whom she offered a respite from loss.”

It is possible that Pepagomenos himself knew the pain of losing a wife. The cleaving of the one flesh that is a marriage was an easy topos for the Byzantines, but he went further: “The cleaving apart of a bodily union brings the unbearable pain of an amputation when a mother dies in childbirth. This, more than anything else makes the pain of the cut intense and presents the suffering as ever new in the eyes of the husband, and becomes an inexhaustible fuel for the fire, always displaying the newness of the loss, and never ceasing. But the severing of spiritual attachment has an intense bite and makes the pain even more unbearable, inasmuch as it is carried on in the the present life, while the former pain, although it is, so to speak, undying, continues to be associated with that material, though now lost, companionship.

He went on to raise topics that might have been considered better unmentioned and, as with Plethon and Bessarion, the frankness of subjects towards their ruler is striking. There were aspects of the earlier relationship between Cleofe and Theodoros that nearly led to his rejection of her, and we might wonder if Theodoros had been repenting to Pepagomenos of his stubborness. “When the time was right, even before your marriage, you lighted the brand of self-mastery with a little spark and disregarding paternal pride, canceling maternal agreements, the petitioning of your sisters, and the native innovations in religion of your homeland, you were pliant in everything to your husband and lord, putting this before all else, to follow his beliefs throughout your life and to practice them as fully as you were able. (Had she confided to Pepagomenos the real facts of her "conversion"?) All of this scorches him the more intensely and causes greater agony as he thinks of what consolation, aid and assistance against this greater and more final loss he has lost.”

Theodoros had apparently insisted that she change her style of dress as well as convert, things directly opposed to the agreements he had made for the marriage. “The wearing of clothes outside our habits of dress, beyond our temperament and sense of what, so to speak, is naturally required, was a matter of her unmaterial and spiritual nature, one unassociated with worldly passion or any kind of bodily necessity, because she aimed, in her unconcern with such matters, at what seemed to her always to be a more perfect order and self-governance. Not that there might ever be perfection more perfect than perfection, or that clothing will change character, but nonetheless, there was some length of time before the end, when, unless she was constrained by official ceremonies, she wore the fashion of those who live monastically, so that what was earlier unappreciated by outsiders, was now obvious to all.”

Toward the end of his monody, Pepagomenos embarked on a series of thirteen “O”s: "O dwelling-place of virtues . . . O all those dreams . . . O charms of that holiest body . . . O lady, death loved you . . . O terrible and lightless day.”  These Os formed a transition from the main body of his monody to his conclusion, addressed directly to her, speaking to her as the representative of all of them there listening: 

“You, most divine, pious and holy queen, who have made this translation only under the instructions of God. . . you have flown from us through the approval of the almighty . . . Do not withdraw into this new world but, even before us, watch over our most holy despot of the Romans, your co-worker utterly cast down by so great strife, and by the onslaught of disasters, brought on him by your death. For you were the best co-worker -- συνεργόν --urging him toward the good, and consoling him for what was incurable, a good counselor, a guide for action, and a harbor for all that is good, and all of this is gone, flown away with you. (Here it is clear that Pepagomenos had read the poem Theodoros had written for her in which he had called her his ξυνεργὸς, his co-worker, though in the poem I have preferred “fellow poet.”)

“This was not a good thing, and not how it should have been. Οὐ καλῶς μὲν οὐδ’ ὡς ἐχρῆν γέγονε δ’ οὖν.

“It would be in your power, either with your prayers to the divine, as you stand immediately beside God, to alleviate the distress of our ruler, and through this the misfortune of the entire Roman people---you can do this, I know, with a mere nod of assent-- δύνασαι γὰρ τοϋτ’, εὖ οἶδα, εἰ κατανεύσειας μόνον -- or to leave us to mourn and lament throughout life, as long as the sun sends its rays over the earth.”

This is astounding: he has put Cleofe in the position of the Panagia, and has given her the nod – and so the authority – of Zeus.

Pierre MacKay made the translation. Greek text available at http://nauplion.net/CL-Pepagomenos (3).pdf

The Pepagomenos Problem

Formally-dressed 15th C Byzantines.

When Manuel Palaiologos came to the Morea in 1415, he brought with him a doctor, Demetrios Pepagomenos who served as a secretary. This Pepagomenos, a correspondent of John Chortasmenos, is said to have also been a correspondent of John Eugenikos and Bessarion. This Pepagomenos is further identified as the Demetrios Pepagomenos who delivered a monody on the death of Cleofe Malatesta, the wife of Theodoros II, and an author of at least four medical treatises. I resist the idea that these are all the same individual. I cannot definitively prove otherwise, although I can try.

In Mazaris' Journey to Hades, composed in 1414-1415, Mazaris encounters a Dr. Pepagomenos in Hades and has a long conversation in which Pepagomenos mentions two of his his sons -- Demetrios ("Lizard-Eyes"), also a doctor, and the highly ambitious Theodosios ("Little Shit"). Mazaris makes a good deal of humor out of Pepagomenos once poisoning himself, and refers to his stopping bleeding with the herb ox-eye (βοόφθαλμον). The significance of its being mentioned at all lies in the fact that a Demetrios Pepagomenos made a collection of "folk" remedies.

Mazaris' Pepagomenos is sometimes identified with the first Demetrios Pepagomenos here, though that is a problem if Mazaris' Pepagomenos is actually dead. If the death is a literary device, there is no problem. But the Pepagomenos of interest to me is the Pepagomenos who was a friend of Bessarion and Eugenikos, and spoke at the death of Cleofe, who is more often identified as the son of Pepagomenos-in-Hades, Demetrios "Lizard-Eyes" Pepagomenos. (You can see the kind of eyes that were probably meant in Piero della Francesca's King Solomon.)

The Pepagomenos of my interest was a man of wide-ranging curiosity and great empathy, loving, and much-loved by his friends. He wrote a famous treatise on the treatment for gout, which was translated into Latin and printed in 1517 and reprinted as late as 1743. He is an easy writer, concerned for his patient's pain (he used opium, and colchicine, still the drug of choice for gout pain), frequently writing, "Δοκεῖ μοι" -- "it seems to me." He also made a collection of folk remedies, wrote treatises on the feeding and medication of hawks, and on dogs. He seems to have become the court doctor, and to have attended Cleofe's childbirths.

Chortasmenos' letters can be clearly dated to 1414-1415, when their addressee was in the Morea with Manuel II. One of the letters comments on problems that Pepagomenos had had with a patient. Dating the Eugenikos and Bessarion letters is a little more chancy. Their addressee, the doctor and writer Pepagomenos, was most likely to have met Bessarion at Mistra, where Bessarion was only between 1433 and 1437.  At the time of the letter from Bessarion, Pepagomenos' wife has given birth while they were away. It is  possible that this absence, or the first absence, can be identified with some specificity.

On March 25, 1436, the despot Theodoros II arrived in Constantinople on the ship with the bride for his brother Demetrios. Theodoros had come to Constantinople with the intent of remaining as successor to the throne. Four years earlier, his brother, the emperor John, had had a long period of extremely painful and paralyzing illness, possibly an aggravated chronic rheumatism, with extreme muscle weakness, if not actual paralysis.

Accounts from 1437 through 1440 give similar descriptions of a fugitive illness which was diagnosed as gout. I suggest that John had had another grave episode, and of course Theodoros had great familiarity with the family gout, having watched his uncle Theodoros I in his illness and death. A letter from Bessarion to Theodoros while he was in Constantinople remarks on the grand procession with which John had honored Theodoros, and acknowledges that Constantinople had made a great deal of him. Theodoros had found himself quite popular. Bessarion and Scholarios both comment on what a good talker he was -- they seem to suggest discourse rather than conversation -- and, of course, perceived proximity to the throne contributes greatly to popularity.

Theodoros had taken with him an elaborate epitaphios for the tomb of his parents (though his mother was still living) with double portraits of both and sixty-some lines of poetry, all embroidered in gold. I believe he took another present. He took Pepagomenos, the great specialist in gout and treatment of pain. Pepagomenos' treatise on gout is dedicated to "the emperor," and although the emperor is unnamed and the dedication gives no hint of identity or of illness, I suggest that Pepagomenos dedicated his treatise to John. There is no evidence of this, only coincidence, but a great deal of Byzantine history is written on coincidence. I also believe that Pepagomenos was unwilling to leave his pregnant wife in Mistra without good medical care and took her with him to Constantinople where his skill did save her life and that of their child. It was a boy: Bessarion's letter tells of the delight when they learned about it in Mistra.

Bessarion's moving letter compliments him on the survival of his wife and son: Pepagomenos had written Bessarion about his concerns, and then Bessarion praises the exceptional -- equal -- relationship between husband and wife. But there is another aspect to Pepagomenos writing Bessarion about those lives saved from a dangerous childbirth. They had both spoken at the memorial for Theodoros' wife, Cleofe, who died in childbirth, together with her child -- in Pepagomenos' care. Both friends had shared a specific and terrible loss, which could not have been away from their minds with this new pregnancy. 

And the warmth and affection of Bessarion and later of Eugenikos for Kyria Pepagomeni and the boys contrasts strikingly with the fact that Theodoros has left in Mistra his eight-year old daughter, Helena, and has no intention of returning. Perhaps he thought John would die soon, he would become Emperor, and he could then send for her, but her later life was not the life of a person who had received much affection as a child.  

It fits with what we learn of Pepagomenos from these letters that it was he who gave Helena, "your dear child who weeps for you bitterly," more than a bare mention at her mother's memorial -- "Your beloved daughter mourns you, bereaved of her dear mother at so young an age, at a time when she most needed you, and required your instruction and advice, who have left her with no maternal consolation."  He was the one who described the quality of companionship in marriage that Theodoros and Cleofe had achieved, who described Cleofe  visiting the poor, taking firewood, and fixing food for them -- "taking no account of the heat of the fire, the intense burden of the smoke, and the inescapable duration of this service," giving assistance to widows and strangers. He was the one who noted that Cleofe made marriages possible for women of the court.

While Papagomenos was away on another trip, he left his sons with the Eugenikos family.  John Eugenikos is said to have been at Mistra between 1439 and 1447, which somewhat suggests a date for the trip. (Cleofe and Bessarion were gone when Eugenikos arrived: his presence must have been a great joy to Pepagomenos and Theodoros.) A manuscript in Pepagomenos' handwriting, containing his own writings and others that he copied -- surely in Constantinople -- can be dated by the watermarks on the paper between 1437 and 1444, which focuses the date a little more.  His wife was with him on this trip, too.

John Eugenikos compliments the excellence of two boys, calling them "that pair of ours, and especially Nicholaos" (there was a remarkable and brilliant Nicholaos Pepagomenos in Constantinople in the 14th century), and then he compliments their mother's excellence and intelligence, and again, the relationship between husband and wife. In another letter, Eugenikos describes a group that he had invited to hear a new letter from Pepagomenos that had brought spring to their winter. (This is a topos in Byzantine letters, but that does not mean that it was not winter.)  He included "our good Nicholaos" and his friends in the audience -- it looks as if Nicholaos was the older son. (I think -- can't prove -- that the younger was Giorgos.) 

Everyone was tremendously enthusiastic about the letter (this is a topos in Byzantine letters, too),  then 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. It is an appealing glimpse of Mistra life, the circle of friends including the boys in their reading. All three of these letters reveal a warmth in relationships that -- if it existed -- is concealed in the pompous oratory and discourses on Athenian history and the Muses in the letters of Chortasmenos. These are letters from different generations, from different cultures. (Chortasmenos taught Bessarion in Constantinople: the generation difference is clear.)

[LATE NOTE: I have learned that Eugenikos was not in the Morea between 1430 and 1440, so if Theodoros took Pepagomenos to Constantinople in 1436, the boys were not with Eugenikos that year.]
 

Unusual for a name that shows up over and over, Pepagomenos seems not to have been a name involved in political matters, or representing one court or another in the West, and mercifully he left no letters of advice to emperors or disquisitions on the Procession of the Holy Spirit.  He hasn't left any letters at all, which is only to be regretted. He seems to have died about 1450.

Possibly the doctor and writer Pepagomenos who interests me is the same individual who accompanied Manuel and corresponded with Chortasmenos. If the sons of Mazaris' Pepagomenos-in-Hades were adult in 1415, the older son Demetrios is a much more reasonable candidate. However, other than the coincidence of name, there is no positive evidence. That a Demetrios Pepagomenos corresponded with Chortasmenos, and a Demetrios Pepagomenos corresponded with Bessarion and Eugenikos, does not require belief that they were the same Demetrios Pepagomenos. 

I have several publications on my desk on Demetrios Pepagomenos.  I have the PLP and the ODB which give the bones.  I have four articles that discuss the manuscripts associated with the medical writer Demetrios Pepagomenos, and I needed those articles, particularly the splendid one by Lazaris,* to overcome my unhappiness at finding an important source described as "oral tradition." I have the Greek, Latin, and French versions of his book on gout, and the Greek of his collection of medical cures.  Assorted texts mention him as one of the intellectuals at Mistra. Nothing considers him as a human being and an exceptionally humane one.  But if you look at the character of Demetrios Pepagomenos, Bessarion, and Cleofe, you could really believe that for a brief shining hour, Mistra lived an ideal.

*  S. Lazaris. "La Production nouvelle en médecine vétérinaire sous les Paléologues et l’oeuvre cynégétique de Dèmètrios Pépagôménos," in M. Cacouros & M.-H. Congourdeau, eds., Philogophie et Scences à Byzance de 1204 à 1453. Actes de la Table Ronde organisée au XXe Congrès International d’Études Byzantines. Leuven 2006: 225-267.

Pavane for a Dead Princess: Part Seven

 Agia Sophia, Mistra

Nikeforas Cheilas said: 

When the appointed day came, the day on which our Saviour consented for our sake to be nailed to the cross, on that same day and at that same hour of His sufferings and burial, she died and was entombed together with Christ.

Cleofe Palaiologina Malatesta died on Megali Pareskevi, April 10, 1433, about noon, in childbirth.  Her husband was beside her bed, mixing some medicine. There was a sudden hemorrhage, a great deal of blood, a dead baby.  Bessarion said she flew out of his hands. 

She flew away, Cheilas said, leaving amazement.

No one expected death, though she had spoken seriously to friends about her thought that she might not survive. She had given birth successfully before, though she had been afraid, then, too.  Doctor Pepagomenos said her body was built for childbearing.  But she had been keeping an exceptionally austere fast, standing much of each night in prayer, and she  had become extremely anemic.  You could expect a hemorrhage with anemia. 

Cleofe's body was carried on a bier up the hill to the palace chapel of Agia Sophia and interred that afternoon -- some people in the city only learned about it when they saw the procession, Theodoros following the bier, beating his head with his fists, howling (ὀλολύζοντος). The bier was mobbed, everyone trying to put a hand to support her.  Mistra was struck as if by a collective wound, Pepagomenos said: it was if everyone had a sudden fever in the bones.

Like a crystal shattering, Cheilas said. He had come up to Mistra, expecting celebration, as they had celebrated before when this woman first came from Italy -- a light from Hesperia, he said. 

You gave us then a celebration, showing us all something new, a reason to sing sweetly, songs worthy of your goodness and of the good fortune that came to us from you . . .  But now you set us to deep grieving, to uttering long cries of pain,

to weaving a tragic song, antiphonal to our former hymns,

Pepagomenos implied that the baby was a boy:

But we were hoping that a successor for the race and a continuation of the monarchy . . . that there might be skipping and dancing in your realm, . . .that we might sing rightly about this and hymn it to the limit of our abilities. 

 When they spoke of her later, it was in terms of light, and music.  The Epitaphios service that evening must have been unbearable.



Translations: Pierre A. MacKay. For his translation of Cheilas' monody for Cleofe, go here.  For the sources for Cleofe's death, here.

Pavane for a Dead Princess, I
Pavane for a Dead Princess, II
Pavane for a Dead Princess, III
Pavane for a Dead Princess, IV
Pavane for a Dead Princess, V
Pavane for a Dead Princess, VI
Glory Days
Theodoros' Poem to Cleofe
Theodoros II Palaiologos  
Malatesta "dei Sonetti" Malatesti
Bessarion to Theodoros, II
Bessarion to Theodoros, I
Her Most Dear Daughter, Helena
Scholarios talks about Theodoros II

Her most dear daughter: Helena Palaiologina of Cyprus

 Women and their daughters:
donors from frescos in Galata and Pedhoulas, Cyprus.

Helena's mother died when she was five years old, an age to have established specific memories, as well as a sense of devastating loss.  In their memorials for Cleofe, Nikiforas Cheilas spoke of "her most dear daughter," and Demetrios Pepagomenos, the family doctor said, "Your beloved daughter mourns you, bereaved of her dear mother at so young an age, at a time when she most needed you, and required your instruction and advice, who have left her with no maternal consolation."  

Her father completely fell to pieces, so Helena had no help there, and we have no real sense of what kind of companionship might have been available to her. She was given a foster-mother (who apparently had no name), unmentioned in Greek sources. Plethon and Bessarion and Cheilas and Scholarios and the rest of the intellectuals would have been very nice to Helena, but I think of a mother -- Andromache -- speaking of what the death of a parent means to a child:

He bows his head before every man, his cheeks are bewept, he / goes, needy, a boy among his father's companions, / and tugs at this man by the mantle, that man by the tunic, / and they pity him, and one gives him a tiny drink from a goblet, / enough to moisten his lips, not enough to moisten his palate. (XXII, Lattimore trans.)

 On 3 February 1442, possibly on her fourteenth birthday, and a day or so after she arrived in the country, she was married to the King of Cyprus, John II, in the cathedral of Nicosia. Look at that photograph, and then look at the cathedral of Mistra.  She must have found it overwhelming, the city overwhelming, after the little churches and closed spaces of Mistra. She was from a puritan court when men and women were covered from neck to feet (and women's heads and necks covered, and she came to a court where the men wore tight-fitting hose, very short jackets which showed more than anyone needs to know about, great puffed sleeves, and wide turbans; the women, high-waisted, low-necked gowns with long trailing sleeves and upswept hair revealing great expanses neck, bosom, and back. I imagine a terrified adolescent, adamantly refusing to change her dress, almost flaunting her severely covered-up Greek style and hidden hair.
 
John was  ten years older than she, had become king at the age of fourteen, had been married before (to a distant relative, Medea Palaiologina of Montferrat), and had a very pretty mistress at court -- Marietta de Patras -- by whom he had a son.  A story is told concerning Helena's treatment of Marietta's nose, either by biting it off or by having it cut off (with the intent of causing an abortion, although the infant involved was three years old at the time), but the nose sounds unlikely and is very much the sort of story that abounds in Cypriot accounts of high-born women.  As does the story that she poisoned the husband of her 13-year old daughter.  Really, Cleofe's daughter simply could not have done that.  Further, accounts of the street brawl and illness that immediately preceded the husband's death suggest other possibilities.

Nothing survives as direct evidence of Helena, there is no correspondence and no documents -- only what people reported, and the reports are almost entirely from those who fall on the Latin side of the Latin-Orthodox divide. Her foster-mother, and her son Thomas, had accompanied her to Nicosia.  They are remembered as powerfully ambitious.  Helena is remembered in the Cypriot chronicles for imposing her Mistra Greeks on the Lusignan court, for pushing policies that favored the Orthodox, for hostility to the Latin church, and for seizing and using political power -- with the consent of her husband.  They also complained that she spent money aiding refugees from Constantinople.

The Cypriot chronicler, Henrico Giblet, described her as "fine & adroite" -- fine could mean "pretty," but he more likely meant "subtle, shrewd, sharp." The chronicler Estienne de Lusignan described her as "una donna astuta & sagace greca" -- "an astute and shrewd Greek lady."  Of course she was, with those parents, but I think it is particularly through comparisons with her mother, Cleofe, that we begin to understand what was said about her, and understand how she had been damaged even before she arrived in Cyprus.

Helena was particularly reviled for her support of Orthodoxy, her generosity to a particular monastery, and her advancement of Orthodox clergy.  Nothing is said about her own spiritual life, but who had there been to nurture it?  Cleofe was deeply devout, but she had grown up with, and when at Mistra, corresponded continually with women who were equally devout.  A small girl could translate deep devotion into militant action as an adult, particularly in what she must have felt as isolation.

In 1451, Constantine sent his trusted Sphrantzes to Cyprus. He said:

. . . do you know the monk I met a few days ago?  He brought me a message from my niece that she is in need of something; she would have told me in her own voice what she wanted; had it been possible, she would have sent her message through a  loyal, trusted courtier, but she has none.  As she does not have one and cannot make the trip, I must send a man whom I consider appropriate . . . it is you, since you have acted  and made decisions for me, know me personally, and have been informed. (XXXIII. 8-9)"

". . . not enough to moisten her palate."  Helena had no one whom she could trust.  That is a significant comment, considering the presence of a foster-mother and brother, and it is not a rare characteristic of individuals who have been bereaved at a young age.  Still, Sphrantzes does not say if he actually made the trip.

Giblet, said that "she liked being queen, she also acted like a King, and in effect, governed the kingdom." Estienne de Lusignan said, "vedendo il suo marito esser huomo feminile inhabile à regger'il regno; prese lei il governo" -- "seeing her husband was weak and unable to rule his kingdom, she took over the government," and he later reports that the High Court declared Helena regent. (But her grandmother Helena had served as regent when Manuel was abroad.) One account says that John was never entirely well, but Pius II -- and later chroniclers -- wrote that John had been educated among women as a boy, that he acted more as a woman than as a man, and concerned himself with banquets and pleasure.

Is John's life of sensual pleasure the only explanation for Helena's participation in government? Perhaps, but having been educated among women, perhaps he appreciated female ability.  Perhaps he recognized the girl's intelligence, perhaps he knew something of Plethon, and found her valuable.  Particularly if he recognized he had few talents for his position, something about which the chroniclers had no doubt whatsoever. Helena's mother, Cleofe, had been an equal (though discrete) participant in her husband's rule.  Pepagomenos had said:

For there was nothing that was not communicated to your judgement and thus some difficult problems were solved, while matters of greater moment, of holy governance and of the (soul’s) ascent were determined by the superiority of your virtue.  . . .

For you were the best co-worker urging him toward the good, and consoling him for what was incurable, a good counsellor,

And Cheilas had said:

. . . as she stood by her husband, the most holy despot, yielded to the men around him and enjoyed a sort of splendor and radiance while doing only what seemed right to her.  . . . In the midst of turmoil, when present among the imperial councillors she gave virtuous advice of every sort, and made herself available to help everyone, from which both sides learned the better, and the better triumphed over both . .

Well, Cleofe had grown up without a mother, but with Battista's love and guidance in poise and discretion.  Helena had no such guide as she moved into adolescence, but she apparently had the touchy disposition of her father Theodoros and grandfather Manuel.

Pius II wrote that her foster-brother Thomas ruled in his mother's place, his mother ruled in Helena's place, and Helena ruled in place of the king -- "regina regem regebat."  He was proud of his literary style. It is true that King John made Thomas Chamberlain of Cyprus. It is also true that John's son, James, eventually murdered Thomas.  It was not James' only murder.  James was tall, broad-shouldered, terribly good-looking, much indulged by his father.

The Genoese governor of Famagusta wrote, "The king was governed by a queen . . . a detestable Greek."  A chronicle published in 1788, by the Archimandrite Cipriano, says: ἀλλ´ οὖσα τῇ ἀληθεία γυνὴ μὲ φρόνημα ἀνδρικόν. καὶ πνεύματος ὀξέος, καθὸ Ρωμαία -- "though she was in truth a woman, she had a man's mind, and a quick spirit -- since she was Greek." That is what Nikeforas Cheilas had said about her mother Cleofe: "she possessed a truly masculine intelligence."  The Greeks seemed to appreciate what the Latins found threatening.

Beyond these remarks, all we know about her is that she was never very healthy.  We have no real impression of her personality, no idea of how she and her husband regarded each other outside issues of ruling. There were two daughters: Charlotte, born in 1444, who was married at thirteen and queen at fourteen; and Cleofe who died very young, in 1448.  Helena herself died 11 April 1458, at the age of thirty. One of the chronicles has her, on her deathbed, angry at the marriage John had planned for Charlotte, to a first cousin, and demanding Charlotte reject the marriage.

John died the next month. The deaths are not explained.  Charlotte became queen, and in the fall married the cousin.  Her half-brother, James, claimed the throne, and with the aid of Egyptian troops captured Famagusta and Nicosia, driving Charlotte from Cyprus.  Charlotte died in Rome in 1487 and was buried in St. Peter's.  James eventually married Caterina Cornaro, who later sold Cyprus to Venice, and was painted by Gentile Bellini.



 Broto is essential for Helena:

Eva Latorre Broto, "Elena Paleóloga de Chipre: revisión de un mito," Erytheia 23 (2002) 159-186, in Spanish.

______, "Η Ελένη Παλαιολογίνα, αναθεώρηση ενός θρύλου," L’épopée dans le monde grec: Η εποποιια μεσα στον ελληνικο χωρα. Colloque International, Nancy, mars 2001. 
 (If you are unable to find one of these articles and really need it, write me privately for a PDF.)

also, a brief account in
Ioanna Christoforaki, "Sainted Ladies and Wicked Harlots": perceptions of gender in medieval Cyprus." 
 

The Cretan Healer's Handbook

 

 Opium poppy, narcissus, polion. Ps. Apuleius Herbal
MS Ashmole 1431 ff. 15v-16r. Bodleian Library, Oxford.

The manuscript is more than a thousand years old, but the medical information in it
derives from a thousand years earlier, and has been found in use in this century.  

I recently came across a fascinating book, A Cretan Healer's Handbook in the Byzantine Tradition by Patricia Ann Clark, the publication of a document which she studied over many years in Crete.  The document, a handbook of medical cures, or iatrosophion, had been copied in 1930 by Nikolaos Konstantinos Theodorakis, a healer from Meronas, Amari, Crete.

Clark spent years in Crete, talking to other healers and listening to their explanations, and says that there are probably 240 of these iatrosophia in existence.  Most are from the 18th and 19th centuries, but some are earlier.  The contents have been copied over and over since Hippocrates, Galen, and Dioscorides, with cures added in as new substances came to hand, or as Christianity brought new prayers, or as people went off to medical school at Padua and came home with new information.  In 1934 a botanist reported an encounter with a healer-monk who carried with him four manuscript volumes of Dioscorides that he had copied out himself.

 Some of the cures are extremely complex, and one can only think that the patient would get well or die before the medicine was ready.  Like this one for the eyes:

Take a snake, cut off its head and its tail, throw them away and the rest chop it into pieces, put it in a pot and smear it and leave it considerable days until you know that it has formed worms.  Open it, gather the worms and put them in a heavy pot on the fire, roast them, make a powder very fine and put this powder on the eyes and when you have put on a coat of half of a quarter of the amount, have sugar, very fine and put it onto the eye and it cleanses.  Sure.

Other cures sound very like cures the "old folks" knew in the South when I was a child, like this one for warts:

First count how many there are and you take just as many plane tree nuts and you go and pour them out at the banks of a river and when they have rotted, the wars are destroyed.  But you should do it at the waning of the moon.

The phase of the moon was quite important for Southern, and Appalachian, warts. The treatments for toothache are quite like the ones the old folks knew, too:

Take the bulb of an onion and cook it and put it on top of the root of the tooth. . . . (and for a cavity) A little tar and unslaked lime, you should soften it well, the pain disappears and the tooth disintegrates too.

 Suppose hemorrhoids were a problem:

First let him have a moderate, regular life for two days, later take one dram of oak gall, pound it well, put a piece in with wine and have him drink it in the evening and have several pounded onions and garlic and put them in a pot and put in also two bricks, but you should have them well heated in the fire, and from above quench them with strong vinegar and he sits on top and is steamed well, then he drinks again the oak gall and lies down like this.  Do this three times . . .

These iatrosophia have become a field of great scholarly interest but what has fascinated me particularly is that I have found two recipes in Theodorakis' book that I know from 15th-century sources.  One of these 15th-century treatments I have already used here, and that is a note on childbirth from Demetrios Pepagomenos, a noted doctor who himself collected cures from local healers:

Πρὸς δεύτερα γυναικός: παγούρους ποταμίους θὲς ἐπ´ ἀνθράκων καὶ ὑποκάπνισον αὐτήν, ἀγριοκαννάβου ῥίου δίδου πίνειν νῆστις.   For a woman’s seconds [afterbirth]: put river crabs on charcoal and smoke her, give [her] fasting a drink with grated cinnamon wood. 

This is the treatment that Theodorakis copied: 
 
τά κόκυλά της νὰ θυμιάσης τήν κακόγενην γυναῖκα εὐθύς γενά . . . οἰ τρίχες ὄπου εἷναι στό κουτελόν της νά καπνήσης τήν γυναῖκα τήν κακόγενυν εὐθύς γενᾶ.  (With) the bones of the seal you should fumigate the woman who is having a difficult birth, immediately she gives birth. . . . The hairs which are on the seal's face: you should fumigate the woman having a difficult birth, immediately she gives birth.*
These are close enough -- both use water animals and fumigations -- and the Theodorakis text shows that his source came from two different sources.

A second recipe from Theodorakis is for fever.  Part of the prayer reads:

ἠ δὲ τιμία σου κεφαλή ἔκραζε καὶ ἔλεγε πιρετός δυταίος τοῦ θεοῦ, . Σ . Μ . Κ . Λ . Σ . Μ . Τ . Ρ . Θ . ἀμήν. Ἠλί, ἠλί, λιμά σαβαχθάνι τούτέστι θεὲ μου, θεὲμου, ἴνα τὶ μὲ ἐγκατέληπεις τόν δουλον του θεοῦ. . . . χριστός εὐηγγγελήσθη φύγε ρίγος. χριστός ἐγενήθη φήγε ρίγος. Ξριστός ἐβαπτήσθς φύγε ρίγος ἀπό τόν δούλον τοῦ θεου. . . . Ιησοῦς Χριστός νικά καὶ βασιλεύει εἰς τούς ἀιώνας.  And your holy head (of John the Baptist) cried out and said, 'Fever of the second, third and fourth both days and nights, flee from the servant of the Lord,  . Σ . Μ . Κ . Λ . Σ . Μ . Τ . Ρ . Θ .  Amen. Ili, ili, lima savachthani, this is, my God my God to what purpose do your forsake me, the servant of the Lord . . . Christ is proclaimed, flee fever chill.  Christ is born, flee fever-chill.  Christ is baptized, flee fever-chill from the servant of the Lord. . . . Jesus Christ triumphs and rules forever".

Compare it with Michael of Rhodes' prayer for fever:

Sava Sava episava che Sava. Pasqua ton evreon. To Sava. Ectes tetartin oran Oiisus demonya epechefalisen diaton psicron to rigos, to proton to defteron to triton to tetarton che ton padote feuge rigos poreton demonochefale apo ton dulon tu Theu Michallin, stomen chalos agios o theos, steonen meta fovu. Agios ischiros agios athanatos eleison imas. Angelli Michail, Gavriil, Uriil, Rafail, apo rigos voithi.   Savas, Savas, Bishop Sava. Passover of the Jews. Saviour! Yesterday at the fourth hour, O Jesus, the demon leaped on my head – chills – the first, the second, the third, the fourth – continually. Chase away the chills, take the demon-head from the servant of God, Michael. We cry, Good God, Holy God! We cry out in fear. Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us. Angels Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, Raphael, save me from the chills! Return to health!*  

There is great similarity between the two fever prayers, which are certainly for malarial fever, and if you think they are somewhat overwrought, you have never known the desperate fever or the bed-rattling chills that come with malaria.  I knew malaria well as a child in West Africa, and I have a visceral response to these prayers.  

Theodorakis and Michael have other similar cures, such as when Theodorakis says that repeating the Credo (τό πηστεύω) three times is a cure for scrofula, and Michael says that three repetitions each of the Pater noster and the Ave Maria will allow a woman to give birth.  I suspect I could find many more similarities between Pepagomenos and Theodorakis.  The image at the top of the page is of the opium poppy: it was used by both healers.  Theodorakis' cures give such an awful view of the possibilities faced by pre-hospital populations, it is a great comfort to know that at least opium was known, and sometimes available, to them.

* Trans. DW.

Pavane for a Dead Princess: Part Six

At the forty-day μνημόσυνον after Cleofe's death on 18 April 1433, the intellectuals of Mistra came together to give their monodies. The four monodies that we have (there is a fifth, one page and negligible) are long, often moving, and indirectly full of information. I have been interested lately in their view of Cleofe as a political figure.

She was obviously a great help to Theodoros, and apparently participated in discussions with his advisors. Her doctor, Pepagomenos, spoke as if she were still present among them:

For there was nothing that was not communicated to your judgment and thus some difficult problems were solved, while matters of greater moment, of holy governance and of the (soul’s) ascent were determined by the superiority of your virtue.

Nikeforas Cheilas, about whom we know nothing, provides a little more information, though not enough:

She was not, in her mind, in competition with women, even as she worked to surpass the best of them, both ancient and modern, but although she was counted among women, she possessed a truly masculine intelligence, adorning her spirit with gentleness, adorning the constitution of her character with the guidance of philosophy and the practice of all the virtues and graces, and presenting herself as one belonging to a royal race . . . In the midst of turmoil, when present among the imperial councilors she gave virtuous advice of every sort and made herself available to help everyone . . .

This was not in itself exceptional: political participation was a normal activity of Palaiologan and Malatesta women. Much more striking is the fact that -- allowing for exaggerations implicit in imperial eulogy -- she was regarded as so valuable that George Gemistos used the word "salvation" (τήν τῆς ἀρετῆς ἄχρι τελευτῆς σωτηρίαν) in speaking of what her virtue had done for them. 

The men don't tell us much. Apart from that brief mention of her political skills, Cheilas spoke of her great generosity, Bessarion referred to her philanthropy and patronage -- but of what he fails to tell us. Pepagomenos was a little more specific, speaking of her great concern for the poor, visiting them in their hovels, bringing them firewood and cooking for the sick. (One wonders how a Malatesta-Palaiologina learned anything about cooking.) He also suggests that her arrival -- after twenty-five years of no imperial woman in the palace -- much improved the lives of women there and made it possible for a number to be married.

This, though is the kind of behavior to be expected of the women of her family, all of them tremendously educated and given extensive political authority -- her sister Paola Gonzaga of Mantua, her sister-in-law Battista Montefeltro Malatesta of Pesaro, their cousin Elizabeth Malatesta of Rimini. In the well-ordered court of the early Renaissance, the ruler's wife was the social security and public assistance administrations.

This, though, is not what Pepagomenos was talking about when he said:

The queen of the Romans is dead, the very eye of the people, the shared ornament of the inhabited world, the steadfast pillar, while all our present fortune totters. How the death of our queen has turned the expectations of the Romans upside down and has left none of the hopes of our race intact. The bond of union of the monarchy is gone, all is dead and nothing remains, not just of the present for the Romans but of what is to come as well, and it persuades us to prophesy the worst and to expect no end of distress. This horror has run through us like a thunderbolt, burning everything out and turning it to ash, threatening never to give up possession until it consumes all of what is left of the Romans. All the best for us came with your settling among us, and our congenital misfortune has taken away all this, and more besides, in your being gone from us in such an unnatural way.

This conveys -- again allowing for rhetoric -- an extraordinary sense of the doom that must have saturated the educated of that culture, if not the general population. Theodoros had, ten years earlier, unsuccessfully tried to give away to Venice the Morea that he could not defend, and his brother had given the Venetians Thessalonike which they could not defend either. A generation earlier, Adam of Usk reported that Greeks whom he had met in Rome told him that "their empire is almost worn out by the attacks of Turks and Tartars," and Kydones had written Manuel Kantakuzenos as early as 1353 that the Byzantines could not ultimately withstand the Turks.

Pepagomenos kept returning to the idea of doom:

What greater disaster might come than what has destroyed the whole world of the Romans . . . leaving behind sorrow not only to us, her subjects, but to all who are accounted as Roman.

How was it that Cleofe was seen, even rhetorically, as the Byzantine’s sole bulwark against the Turks? The sources give us no way to answer this question. How was it that Pepagomenos could conclude his monody with this statement?

It would be in your power, either with your prayers to the divine, as you stand immediately beside God, to alleviate the distress of our ruler, and through this the misfortune of the entire Roman people---you can do this, I know, with a mere nod of assent---or to leave us to mourn and lament throughout life, as long as the sun sends its rays over the earth.

Cleofe in the position of both Zeus and the Virgin is a stunning image!

ZeusNational Museum, Athens

The Cretan icon is signed Κὺρ Πακσύου ΑΨΙ μαεον η ετελιοθη το παρον - This was completed 8 May 1710 by Kyr Paskuos.

My great appreciation to Pierre A. MacKay for the translations of the monodies. The monodies can be found here.

Others in this series are:
Pavane for a Dead Princess, I
Pavane for a Dead Princess, II
Pavane for a Dead Princess, III
Pavane for a Dead Princess, IV
Pavane for a Dead Princess, V
Glory Days
Theodoros' Poem to Cleofe
Theodoros II Palaiologos  
Malatesta "dei Sonetti" Malatesti

The Doctor: Part Two

1431, Pseudo-Apuleius, Bodleian Library

I wrote here earlier about Dr. Pepagomenos' treatment for gout, and I also wrote up what is known about him, including the fact that he attended Cleofe Malatesta Palaiologina in childbirth and was one of the speakers at her memorial service.  I recently came across a small Italian publication of his notes on medicine, a collection of mostly short paragraphs on drug treatments for specific conditions.

Some of these are copied from Dioscorides, or Galen, or Paul of Aigina, and some appear to be notes he collected from informants.  The first two notes of the book, printed here in Greek and my translation, are what Pepagomenos included on childbirth.

Ἰατρικόν. Παρασημειώσεων τοῦ μακαρί του Πεπαγομένου ἐκείνου.

1. Πρὸς τὸ γεννῆσαι ταχέως γυναῖκα: κολίανδρον κουκκία ια’ δήσας εἰς πηνίον δίδου παρθένῳ κόρῃ, καὶ δησάτω ταύτην εἰς τὸν μυρὸν τῆς τικτούσης, καὶ μετὰ τὸ γεννῆσαι εὐθέως λυσάτω. ‒ ἐκ σμιλακίων ποιήσας στέφανον ἐπίθες ἐπὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν τῆς τικτούσης καὶ εὐθέως τέξεται.

2. Πρὸς δεύτερα γυναικός: παγούρους ποταμίους θὲς ἐπ´ ἀνθράκων καὶ ὑποκάπνισον αὐτήν, ἀγριοκαννάβου ῥίου δίδου πίνειν νῆστις.

Medicine. Notes of the blessed [late] Pepagomenos.
1. For a woman to give birth quickly: bind 11 coriander seeds on a spool; give it to a young virgin girl [who] should bind it on the thigh of the woman in labor. After she gives birth, unbind it quickly -- put a crown of smilax cuttings on the head of the woman in labor and she will give birth immediately.

2. For a woman’s seconds [afterbirth]: put river crabs on charcoal and smoke her, give [her] fasting a drink with grated cinnamon wood.

These notes say nothing about what he actually did in his own medical practice and if any readers know of crabs in the river Eurotas, I would appreciate being informed.  The two prescriptions here are harmless and non-invasive. There are vague, associative, reasons for the use of each of the herbs, but possibly not in the forms prescribed.

Coriander, of which there is a contemporary image above, was considered stimulating, and was used for inducing menstrual cycles and reducing pain.  Smilax, taken internally, was an analgesic for painful menstruation, and for urinary tract infections. Cinnamon was used for nausea, menstrual cramps and heavy menstruation, among other things.  I can imagine that the crown of smilax had some association to crowning.

The book is Demetrio Pepagomeno, Prontuario Medico, ed. Maria Capone Ciollaro. Hellenica et Byzantina Neapolitana Collana di Studi e Testi. Naples, 2003.

The Emperor in Pain: Part Two

I wrote earlier about the physical pain suffered by John VIII. This entry is going to be about John's salad and why his brother Theodoros wouldn't go to bed with his wife. 

Look at this picture of John's right ear, made in Florence 1439, when we know he was in severe pain:

I didn't see it at first, but Dr. Tom Morgan, with whom I was consulting about the reported incidences of gout among the Palaiologoi,wrote me about the earlobe:  "Several people to whom I have shown the images believe that there is a round swelling in the posterior, lower earlobe. What this may be is a gouty tophus, that is, a collection of uric acid crystals with surrounding inflamed, swollen tissue."    

Dr. Morgan summarizes gout this way: "Gout is due to abnormal production of uric acid from the diet and thus to increased amounts of uric acid in the bloodstream. The uric acid forms needle-like crystals especially in the joints and kidneys.  When the needles occur in the joints - especially in the great toe [podagra] - pain, often severe, and swelling occurs. The slightest movement induces severe pain; not only in the feet but also in the hands, wrists and elbows. The pain is episodic and debilitating and may be accompanied by fever and malaise. Ingestion of meat (especially kidney, brain, pancreas) and alcohol leads to high levels of uric acid and precipitates attacks."  

The same feature can be seen on the earlobe of the bust Pisanello made of John the same year, 1439. John was diagnosed by contemporaries as having gout, as was his uncle Theodoros I of Mistra, and his younger brother Andronikos who died of it in his twenties. 

On July 27 of that year, John -- with quite a large entourage -- was returning to Florence from a religious pilgrimage, which is shown on the reverse of the medal Pisanello also designed.  They stopped in Pistoia and asked Giovanni di Pigli for a place where John could rest and get something to eat.  Giovanni wrote down what happened that day, commenting that John had difficulty walking:

"And note, the first food the Emperor ate was a salad of purslain and parsley, with some onions, which he himself wished to clean. After that there were chickens and pigeons . . . As the dishes came, they were all placed before him, and he took what he wanted, and sent them along to the others. His last dish was eggs thrown on hot bricks where the other things were cooked."  

You may be asking just what the salad and the gout report of 1439 have to do with Theodoros' private life which centers on 1421.  John's earliest reported episode of gout was in 1432 so he can be discounted for a while. Recall that Theodoros was sent to Mistra in 1407 at the age of 10.  His uncle Theodoros I, Despot of Mistra, was dying in extreme pain from gout so the child was able to watch the sores, the smells, the excruciating pain, and know that this is what happened to people in his family. His brother, Andronikos, despot of Thessalonike, suffered extremely from gout.   Andronikos had a son, although we don't know how old he was when that happened, but in 1421 he was 21 years old.  [Late correction:  Andronikos actually didn't have gout.  Read this.]

In 1415, their father Manuel had visited Andronikos in Thessalonike, and then Theodoros in Mistra.  Traveling with him was the doctor Demetrios Papagomenos, a specialist in gout, and respected enough that his treatise on gout -- written at Manuel's request -- was continually printed, first in Greek and Latin in Venice in 1517, and then steadily afterwards in various translations for the next 250 years.  Manuel left Pepagomenos in Mistra to be court physician for Theodoros.

We can be absolutely positive that two of the books Theodoros owned and read thoroughly were Pepagomenos on gout, and his father on marriage. The combination would have been anything but encouraging to a young man. This is where the salad and Theodoros' marriage come together.

Pepagomenos' treatise on gout is about prevention and probable cure.   Cure consisted of planned vomiting, purging, and bleeding -- getting the bad humors out of the body.  Prevention consisted of a light diet, with a lot of green leafy vegetables and avoidance of meat and wine.  Eggs were fine.  (See what John was eating above.) And avoidance of excess sexual activity because -- I love this -- the motion required in sexual activity shook up the little particles in the body and precipitated them into the legs and joints.  Pepagomenos didn't specify what excess might mean, but he himself was married and had two adult sons, so the average intuitive person might have drawn reasonable conclusions from that.

But Theodoros, on the other hand, who was raised by clerics and intellectuals in an all-male environment -- except for  the cleaning women and laundresses -- learned nothing of marriage but a great deal about how to be a hyper-intellectual.  The poor man was set up to make the decision in 1421 -- perfectly rational from what he knew from books -- that sex, even in marriage, was something he could not do, if he was to avoid his uncle's fate. There is no doubt that he was encouraged in this by his religious advisors, particularly John Eugenikos who for reasons unclear to me is highly regarded even today as an intellectual but who totally opposed any Union of the churches, and who -- after Theodoros had married Cleofe and had a child -- was still encouraging him to take monastic vows.   (All wrong.  I have learned too much about Eugenikos.)

Sometimes these Mistra people are enough to make you want to forego the intellectual thing altogether.

We also have a letter from Battista (#3) reporting that Theodoros had said he would not have sex with Cleofe and he would not eat meat.  She seemed to have learned this at least second-hand, and by word-of-mouth, so the reasons might not have filtered through, or been understood.  But Theodoros who as a lonely child had watched the extremes of gout was desperately afraid.  This is, to be sure, another reading of the not-eating-meat statement which is conventionally interpreted to suggest that meat inflames sensual passions, but I have come to think that too simple an explanation.


The writing of history depends on survivals, coincidences, intuition, likelihood -- and faith that all of those can, together, make sense.

My gratitude to Vittorio Volpi, incomparable librarian in Iseo-Brescia, for tracking down those Pepagomenos PDFs for me.