A new Chalkokondyles

Ms. Plut.70.06 in the Laurentian Library of Florence, 

the concluding page of the 1318 Herodotos belonging to George Gemistos Plethon, 
used by Bessarion in 1436, belonging to Laonikos Chalkokondyles. 

The bottom, faded, inscription is the only surviving writing by Chalkokondyles.

The intellectual world of Mistra mostly dissolved in the disorders of the Morea after 1453. George Gemistos Plethon died in 1454 (or 1452: there is disagreement, but 1454 suits my purposes better).  Chalkokondyles and his teacher Gemistos had had many conversations over the past few years comparing the progression and personalities of the Ottomans, with what Herodotos had to say about the Persians. After the Fall of the City, which surprised none of them, Gemistos told him it was his responsibility to write a new Herodotos to explain current events, and presented him with his own copy in which he had made corrections. After Gemistos died, Nikolaos Chalkokondyles, in his mid-20s, left Mistra, with the Herodotos . John Eugenikos left that year for Trebizond: perhaps Chalkokondyles took the opportunity to go with him and collect material on Trebizond. He ended up in Constantinople -- Eugenikos seems to have gone to Constantinople, and family members were in business there. 

This is what I imagine happened: we have no information one way or another, but there are a number of reasons to think he was writing in Constantinople.

Exhilarated by Gemistos' confidence, Chalkokondyles wrote at the end of the Herodotos – you can barely see it above on folio 340v – “[Belonging to] Laonikos the Athenian. It seems to me that the Greeks displayed a virtue greater than what is merely human, and that they made a demonstration of deeds such as to amaze us when we learn about them in our inquiries.  They were also fortunate to have a herald who himself did not fall far short in worth of the deeds themselves, I mean Herodotos of Halikarnassos, who recounted these events in the way in which each happened, in a manner akin to a divine procession." 

He was going to be the new herald, and he began: “Laonikos the Athenian has written here the events that came to his attention during his lifetime, both those that he witnessed and those he heard about. . . . In my opinion, those events are in no way less worthy of being remembered than any that have ever taken place anywhere in the world. I am referring to the fall of the Greeks and the events surrounding the end of their realm, and to the rise of the Turks to great power, greater than that of any other powerful people to date.”

I have recently been delighted to acquire copies of Anthony Kaldellis' new two-volume translation of Chalkokondyles, and a third companion volume, A New Herodotos which is a gracefully-written analysis of what we can know about Chalkokondyles, his ideas, and his sources.  Kaldellis has wrestled with Chalkokondyles' murky prose -- if he was writing a new Herodotos, he was trying to use Thucycides' language -- and made it lucid. Working back and forth with these books has provoked my speculations.

It is the ending, though, that gives a memorable view of Chalkokondyles.  He had intended to write nine books, like Herodotos, and Book 9:78 has a sort of ending, one he would have improved had he had time to revise and clean up his text.  But August 1461 was not the end of the history of the Ottomans and the Greeks, and he kept writing. (He had also acquired good material on Vlad the Impaler he had to use.)  But the Histories sputter to an unplanned ending early in 1464 with the Ottoman-Venetian war, and the last several pages are a feverish jumble of remarkable fragments of information and errors.  Kaldellis comments in his notes, on the incoherence of the last sentences.  In these last pages we are watching Chalkokondyles forcing himself to write until he knows he has come to his end. His last sentence is a formal act of reverence to Thucydides.  He wrote: “ταῦτα μὲν τοῦ χειμῶνος ἐς τὴν Πελοπόννησου ἐγένετο / That, then, was what was happening that winter in the Peloponessos." Thucydides had ended his third book:  “ταῦτα μὲν κατα τὸν χειμῶνα τοῦτον ἐγένετο . . .," and other books similarly.

It has been thought he died of plague but we don't know: plague arrived in the Morea in August 1464 and travelled north, although it is not reported in Constantinople until 1467. It could have been plague.  There is certainly an impression of the effects of  high fever on the mind. 

The manuscript of his book got into the hands of George Amiroutzes, who stuffed in a great deal more information about Trebizond than Chalkokondyles had found it necessary to include. (The first copy was made after Amiroutzes had finished.) This makes me wonder whether Chalkokondyles had heard about the incident in Florence (he himself would have been only about 7 then), an intense discussion between John VIII, Amiroutzes, Bessarion, and Isidore of Moscow who were supporters of Union, against Mark Eugenikos and Gemistos who opposed it. Amiroutzes berated Eugenikos so humiliatingly that Gemistos intervened, only to be shouted down. John said nothing to stop or reproach Amiroutzes, "nothing of solace" (πρὸς θεραπείαν) to Gemistos. Cyriaco of Ancona was at the Council of Union: he met young Chalkokondyles nine years later at Mistra when the boy was about 17. Already interested in history, Chalkokondyles showed him the ruins of ancient Sparta.

The manuscript of Herodotos you see above was in Rome in 1480, in the hands of the copyist Demetrios Rallis Kavakes who was from Mistra. 

The Philosopher and the Duchess

15th-C Greek philosopher

You know the Greek delegation at the Council of Union was in trouble from the git-go when George Amiroutzes was one of its leading minds. He, Scholarios, and Plethon -- all lay scholars -- had a better command of the issues and theology at hand than any of the 600-plus religious members of the delegation with the exception of Bessarion and Mark Eugenikos. Plus Amiroutzes and Scholarios read Latin, and Amiroutzes was one of the very few of the 600-plus who could speak Italian.

That Amiroutzes was a moral slug is amply demonstrated in Syropoulos' description of his taunting of Eugenikos during a major speech. On another occasion, in a discussion with Eugenikos, Bessarion, Isidore of Russia, Plethon, and the emperor, Amiroutzes was so aggressive towards Eugenikos that when Plethon came to his defense, Amiroutzes shouted Plethon down. Then there is the evidence from papal sources that he took a bribe for his vote. Scholarios voted for Union, too. And Bessarion. As did a great many of the delegation. Plethon had been warning them for 11-plus years that such a conference would be a disaster.

But few in the delegation had the social, political, or intellectual standing to be able to go back to Constantinople and claim so successfully that they had changed their minds. And there were not so many claims in mid-century to the position of "Greek philosopher" that Amiroutzes can be disregarded. In fact, if the intellectual accomplishment is hived off from his personal moral qualities, there is a great deal to be admired.

However, this entry is -- minimally -- about Amiroutzes and his private life, about which he showed no more taste than in his treatment of Eugenikos.

The lady in question was the daughter of Demetrios Laskaris Asan, kefali of Mouchli, who has been written about here before. There is no sure name recorded for her, although sometimes she is called "Maria" -- a reasonably safe name to assign a Byzantine woman, and sometimes she is called "Mouchliotissa." The fragile skeleton of a Byzantine church up on the Mouchli hillside is also called "Mouchliotissa" so I don't think this is very useful.

The lady was Duchess of Athens, wife of Franco Acciaiuoli, put in position by Mehmed after his cousin, Francesco, a minor, had come under the control of his mother and her lover who seem to have poisoned his father, Nerio II. When Mehmed took Athens in 1456, he also took the Duchess, Franco, and their three sons. The three sons eventually became janissaries, Franco became strangled, and the Duchess went into Mehmed's collection of high-status guests who were useful for negotiations.

Either in Constantinople or Adrianople, the married Amiroutzes met her and decided to marry her. Nothing is known of her feelings in the matter, and in fact nothing is known of her beyond her existence. Mehmed gave permission for the marriage -- a matter of Orthodox bigamy was not likely to concern him -- and the patriarch, Joasaph I, was ordered to perform the ceremony. Or to give permission for the ceremony.

There are various accounts of this, each worse than the others which variously claim that he was dragged, protesting, by his beard, and that he dropped down dead in chagrin. Or that Mehmed ordered the patriarch's beard and someone else's nose cut off, and that the patriarch tried to commit suicide in a cistern under the Pammakaristos. He was hauled out and exiled to Anchialos.  Much about this event and the patriarch is uncertain.

Amiroutzes and the Duchess seem to have been married, but this was not the last demonstration of his low moral character. He is said to have dropped dead with a dice-box in his hand, but this is probably not true.

What survives of this tawdry business are a couple of quatrains Amiroutzes is said to have written to the Duchess, very much in the tradition of medieval love poems from across Europe and the Middle East, and found not at all in Byzantine poetry, though many similar phrases show up in folksongs.

Shafts from your eyes strike the hearts

Alas, of those who see you. But, even so they adore

And rejoice as they burn; wounded, they love you.

Ah, what a love you beget, Ah what a passion you give birth to.

One time I saw you in the house, from below in the garden,

And by night, with your eyes leading me, I came;

A thrill took hold of me, astonishment and desire.

Ah what love you bear, who nurture as you conquer.

Βέλη ἐκ τῶν ὀμμάτων σου βάλλουσι τὰς καρδίας,

βαβαὶ, τῶν θεωμένων σοι. Οἱ δ'ὄμως ἀγαπῶσι
καὶ χαίρουσι φλεγόμενοι, φιλοῦσι τετρωμένοι.
Φεῦ οἷον ἔρωτα γεννᾷς, φευ οἷον πόθον τίκτεις.


Εἰς οἶκον εἶδον σε ποτὲ κάτωθεν ἐκ τοῦ κήπου,
καὶ τῇ σκιᾷ, τοῖς ὄμμασι σου προϊόντος, ἦλθον·
καὶ θάμβος ἔσχε με εὐθὺς καὶ πόθος σύν εκπλήξει.
Φεῦ οἷον φέρεις ἔρωτα, ἤ νίκας τρέφεις. 

Thanks to Pierre A. MacKay for the translation.