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. 

Plethon's Cleofe

Angel, Ag. Nicholas, Mistra.

I recently discussed Bessarion's monody, one of four given at the μνημόσυνον for Cleofe Malatesta Palaiologina.  The memorial would likely have been held at Ag. Sophia, where she had been buried. There was a thunderstorm that day, and crowds of people -- family members, officials, clergy, women of the court, townspeople -- had shoved their way into the little church and its burial chapels and porches. There was a newly-painted portrait of Cleofe and her husband over her tomb, and some of the speakers gestured toward it and said, "You," as they spoke.  But we don't know which chapel the tomb was in.  

I spent some time in Ag. Sophia at the end of October, standing in each chapel, trying to envision the circumstances, trying to consider how well a speaker could be heard from various positions. Most of the people present wouldn't have heard the speakers, and most would not have understood the Greek the speakers used: what was important to them was that they were there.

Hints in the monodies allow us to work out the order in which they were given. Bessarion's was the last. The first was by George Gemistos Plethon. What we have is probably not quite the speech that he gave, but his edited written text.

The magic name of Plethon has preserved this monody in twenty or so copies (one is bound with the only copies of the Bessarion and Cheilas): the other monodies survive in one copy each. Plethon's has been used, or parts of it, a number of times by a number of writers, for what it says about the soul. What has been completely overlooked is that Plethon's discussion of the soul comes from his portrayal of a very specific soul, Cleofe's soul, and then from his portrayal of her husband's.

Gemistos began quietly, speaking of Solon's idea of goodness, and how one could not be sure of human fortune until death. "For this reason," he said, "one would consider epitaphs and funeral addresses to be more reliable than any other encomia . . . for they are concerned with matters already securely established . . . The Athenians . . . thought it right to use these addresses."  Gemistos anchored the storm-blown mourners firmly in the Athenian tradition: "We, likewise, have come forward in this commemoration, not only to speak for our most holy ruler's now-departed wife who achieved a good ending to life . . . but expressing thanks for the reverence and understanding she always exhibited."

He then reminded them that Cleofe had come from Italy whose Romans had ruled the best part of the settled world, from the Danube to the Tigris to Libya to the Atlantic, and that she came from heroic ancestors.  "She came here, lovely and good, to dwell with our most holy ruler . . . bringing with her shining adornment of body and soul, for she was tall and lovely, and had matured into every sort of goodness. . . She, however, exhibited, in addition to the beauty of her body, which was radiant, an even more radiant and holy quality of soul, and showed that her body was a sort of image of the beauty of her soul."

This is an extraordinary emphasis on Cleofe's body, however beautiful, and it should be remembered that Plethon believed that physical desire was a divine gift, and that it was through the body that we become like the gods.

He went on to list the qualities of her soul and then followed them with a brief statement about each: "For she adorned it with every sort of complete goodness: judgement, discretion (illustrated by her “sober prudence in putting off her leisurely Italian ways and taking up the decorous restraint of our women”) , clemency, honesty, piety (illustrated by her worship with prayers and continuous fasting according to our custom"), married affection, and nobility, and having naturally acquired each from birth, she increased each through study and practice and proved herself a glory among women. (This discussion of qualities suggests that Plethon was working on Περι αρετων, "On virtues," earlier than generally thought.) 

"Living in this manner, and with such occupations, practicing and studying, always adding more good to good things . . . and I would add that she recently took part in the most sacred of our feasts and our mysteries." He would have known as well as any of Cleofe's anguished "conversion" to the Eastern rite.  "She departed this life from an affliction beyond the powers of all medicine, so that she seems so dear to God from all these to have been taken up by God, and she left despair in her subjects . . .." 

Leaving the subject of Cleofe specifically, Plethon went on to say that there is a part of us that is mortal, and a part that is immortal, the most important part. The body is a kind of garment, and when we take off this garment, it is wrong to mourn when the important part has moved into a better life. It is the life we live here that prepares us for that life, as did Cleofe's life, while a person who takes no care for the divine in this life will have no contact with it in the next.  Almost all people believe in this continuing life.  The creator, as a good master, would not have given us the longing for eternity unless there was an eternity to long for. Non-rational animals do not because they do not understand cause or infinity. The one who knows something about God must have something in common with him, and we could not know this everlasting life without a desire for it.   

Then Plethon moves to suicide, a peculiar topic in the circumstances, unless he knew something that made this topic relevant.  Many of us who have been widowed have had the experience of being carried along at first, perhaps by shock, but with the sense that we are managing remarkably well.  Then about a month along, there is a great crash and an all-devouring depression.  It is clear, from Bessarion's monody, and particularly from Plethon's conclusion, that Theodoros had fallen deep into a depression, to the point that it had become a political as well as a personal problem.  He had earlier written a poem to Cleofe that looked forward to a radiant reunion in the presence of God.  Had he mentioned to Plethon the possibility of anticipating this?  

It is difficult to think why Plethon would have otherwise brought up the subject, particularly in such public circumstances.  He explained that non-rational animals do not commit suicide because they cannot envision their non-existence.   Nothing seeks its own destruction, so a human would not consider suicide if it would have that result.  A person who is suicidal must feel that suicide just allows it to move out of the body.  Plethon clearly allows more understanding of someone who is suffering, than did -- and does -- church teachings.

Plethon concluded with a firm statement of comfort, correction, and encouragement.   Who else at Mistra could have spoken to the ruler so critically in public?  "If the belief is established as certain within us that the soul is immortal, we shall be nobler and better, and shall bear such losses more gently. And so, most holy ruler, consoling yourself with these words, give up despair, considering again that you were born to preserve the common good in the face of troubles, but despair will stand always in the way of such action. You see how the menace has progressed and requires great concern for recovery and return to safety. This rests on you, and only if you will take care of it appropriately will all the rest follow you so that, if God wills, we shall be saved. 

"But, if you are indifferent, our danger will increase. Consider that if some mischief occurs—may that not happen—all will place the burden of it onto you, while if something happens to rescue us you will carry off the fame of it. So, understanding that you will in either of these cases have the greatest credit and, as your duty to God, who entrusted you with governance over us, stand before us, stronger and more attentive, and God will give you the diligence to be the rescuer of our community and provide you with whatever is necessary. And it has to be that, since your actions bringing us toward salvation will be great, and never trivial that, as well as by us, among all the rest of humanity you will be held in high esteem.  

My thanks to Pierre MacKay for his work on the translation.

Cyriaco's Mycenae

Cyriaco's Mycenae, at Ag. Adrianos near Nauplion, 2 November 2014.

Nearly three years ago I wrote about Cyriaco's visit to what he thought was Mycenae,  to a small, elegant fortification near Nauplion.  At the time I inquired of various discussion lists “What did Mycenae mean in the Renaissance?” That question was too general and no response was ever offered, but a couple of weeks ago in Athens, Stella Chrysochoou, a scholar of cartography, brought up the topic from another angle.

She has found, in Plethon's copy of Ptolemy, annotations of the "modern" -- fifteenth-century -- names of Greek cities. For examples, Mt. Taygetos is Pentadaktylon, Stymphalos is Zaraka, Sikyon is Vasilika, and Kleonai and Nauplia are "the same".   Mycenae, however, Plethon had identified as "Polyphengos". Had he been there or did someone offer him the identification?   Polyphengos is actually to the NW of Mycenae, near Nemea.  Cyriaco's Mycenae is in the opposite direction, SE at Ag. Adrianos.

This means that at least two different sets of Cylopean stones were identified as Mycenae, neither of them accurately, and makes one wonder what was visible at Mycenae when Cyriaco was shown Ag. Adrianos in 1448.  Why did Cyriaco care about Mycenae? He doesn't say.

Before Mycenae, Cyriaco had been in Mistra with Plethon between August 1447 and April 1448 for at least two extensive visits, as well as exploring Mani.  He had with him a newly commissioned copy of Strabo which he had had received in Constantinople on 26 January.

Mycenae is to be found in Strabo 8.6.10 and Cyriaco was visiting in the general neighborhood.  Strabo gives Mycenae a page of attention, after Argos, and after mentioning the statues of Polykleitos at the Heraion.  Cyriaco was extremely enthusiastic about his discoveries of those very statues from the Heraion in the walls of a church. But what did his Venetian friends in Nauplion,  Pietro Rangano the scribe, and Joannes Bendramon, know about Mycenae?  Did Cyriaco pique their interest with his Strabo?  Of the three places Strabo mentioned in the immediate area -- Argos, Mycenae, the Heraion -- Cyriaco did not go to Argos.  Anyone from Nauplion would have told him that there was nothing there worthy of consideration.  But if he had known Plethon's identification of Mycenae, wouldn't he have gone there?  He doesn't mention Polyphengos. He never hesitated to travel several more days if he thought he might see something interesting.

Homer himself was not much interested in Mycenae, barely mentioning it in the Iliad as one of a cluster of cities under Agamemnon in the Catalog of Ships, and in the Odyssey as a place ruled by Aigisthos after he killed Atreides. It is Argos in the Agamemnon that gets the full benefit of the spectacular deaths.  It seems that Plethon and Cyriaco were more interested in Greek geography than in Greek literature and that is probably where Mycenae took on a little importance in the early Renaissance -- as one of a list of classical place names.

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. 

Burning Plethon

Burning Plethon photocopies.

Burning a book is not easy in the normal course of events. Several years ago I needed to dispose of a disintegrating Bible. Understanding that burning was the respectful way to deal with it, I pulled up a stool to the fireplace and started putting pages into the fire. Only a few pages would burn at a time: even a small stack of pages was too dense for the fire to get adequately into the fine paper. It took a very long time, and I became intensely anxious, because it was as if this book had its own will and it was not willing to be destroyed.

George Gemistos Plethon did not have such fine paper: his paper would have been easier to burn, particularly if a page or two were ripped out at a time and ceremoniously deposited in a brazier. We don't know how it went.

When Mehmed took his Mistra guests -- Demetrios Palaiologos and Theodora Asanina -- with him to Adrianople in 1460, they took in their luggage the formal copy of Plethon's Laws. There is no reason to think that Demetrios had a problem with Plethon -- his sons were members of the despotate administration, but Theodora certainly did and when they stopped in Serres, she sent it the book off to Scholarios who was living as a monk on nearby Mt. Menoikeon.

Scholarios read the Laws, he said, in four hours, a tremendously upsetting experience that left him in tears, though that four hours allowed him time to make a list of chapter headings, and a summary. He sent the book back to Theodora directing her to burn it. Theodora had lived long enough in Mistra, six years while Plethon was still alive, to have a sense of his authority, and she couldn't bring herself to do so. She sent the book back to Scholarios who looked at it again to see if he might preserve the sections on logic and science. Even those sections, he claimed, were too bound up with paganism, and he burned it himself, in a public ceremony. That's why I thought of a brazier, and used one to burn the photocopies.  Scholarios kept a few pages for evidence, should it ever be necessary to justify his behavior. He also wrote that any other copies or parts of the Laws should also be banned, and anyone who refuses to cooperate should also be banned from the Christian community. 

Where they burn books, they are likely to burn people. A few years before this Scholarios -- also safely in a monastery -- sent a letter to the Morea vividly describing how a heretic should be tortured and then burned. He was circling in on Plethon's followers.

And yet, and yet . . .

Plethon had, in the Laws, recommended burning for those guilty of bestiality, pederasty, rape, incest, and men guilty of adultery. (Notice that these are all perversions of the sexuality he considered divine.) And the sophists who attack our beliefs. But these judgments need to be discussed by a tribunal, and the circumstances of the accused investigated, because maybe he wasn't properly educated, and maybe he could be straightened out by a time in prison.

Some of the information here comes from John Monfasani, "Pletho's date of death and the burning of his Laws," Byzantinische Zeitschrift 98/2 (2005) 459-463.

George Gemistos Plethon at Mistra

Holograph manuscript of George Gemistos Plethon, Marciana, Venice.

A great deal of twaddle has been written about Mistra and Plethon (a name he never used) by people who ought to have known better:

. . . the imagination offers a splendid choice, whether it be of warriors or artists, of gracious ladies or learned philosophers, of the Villehardouin lords revelling in the loveliness of the countryside, of the dark-bearded Despots in their ceremonial robes discussing with their architects and artists how to add to the city's glories, or of the great philosopher Plethon himself talking to his pupils, while the Lady Cleope leaned from her litter to greet him as she passed . . .

Here strolled Plethon, the famous philosopher, surrounded by students who had journeyed from the four corners of the Byzantine world to listen to his teachings.

In fact, most of the scholars, theologians, philosophers, artists, and architects melt away with the snows of Taygetos if you attempt to find out who they were, or how many.  Consider Plethon's "students from the four corners of the world." We have, in fact, evidence for only two individuals as his students -- Bessarion and Mark Eugenikos, and possibly Scholarios. Some claim Laionikos Chalcokondyles was a student, but the source used to prove that comes from Cyriaco of Ancona who merely used both names in the same paragraph. Undoubtedly most of those who encountered Gemistos took away ideas and learning, but this is something that happens in serious conversation, and serious conversations in themselves are not normally considered school. 

We have no evidence that Gemistos was Theodoros' tutor and we have no evidence that he led any kind of pagan cell: given the intense religiosity of Theodoros II and his closest associates, it is difficult to imagine how such a deviant organization could have been maintained. That was invented by Scholarios who seems to have come to despise Gemistos, despite both being anti-Union.  Scholarios, ever the opportunist, likely resented Gemistos for being so honored in Mistra. He had wanted a position at Mistra himself, feeling inadequately valued in Constantinople, and had written a whining letter to Theodoros begging for an invitation.  Even Demetrios honored Gemistos, despite his political alignment with Scholarios, and Scholarios' correspondence with his wife.

When Gemistos arrived in the Morea is unknown. His introduction to Manuel’s funeral oration is an indication of a close relationship to Manuel, not of residence in the Morea. Gemistos may well have traveled with Manuel in 1407-8 and 1415, at which time he is identified as one of the four καθολικοὶ κριταί, the members of the highest court of Constantinople. His letters to Theodoros, between 1416 and 1418, and Manuel in 1418, about the reorganization of the Morea, do suggest that he had been in the Morea, at least for a while, but they are no proof of residence: he could well have studied the situation on trips and from documents. That Doukas identifies him as a member of the Senate in Constantinople in 1438 means little beyond the survival of the title: there was no Senate, and no action recorded for it since 1204, and in 1438 Gemistos was in Florence at the Council of Union.

A great many writers put him in Mistra by 1410, based on the theory that since he was judged dangerously influential in Constantinople, Manuel sent him to Mistra where he could contaminate the adolescent Theodoros.  This too is twaddle, if you stop to think about it.

While we have manuscripts from Gemistos, all we know that he actually did at Mistra was to speak at Cleofe's memorial service, and have a conversation with John.

The source that comes closest to indicating a date for Gemistos' arrival is Theodoros' statement in 1433, after Cleofe died, that George Gemistos had been sent by Manuel a few years earlier "to be in our service" and "our" would then have made his arrival after early 1421 when Theodoros and Cleofe were married. Manuel died in late July 1425, which would be the latest possibility for Gemistos’ arrival in the Morea. He was clearly at Mistra in 1427, as the 1433 statement confirmed and extended the gift of land Theodoros had made Gemistos in November 1427, in which he was"to serve our rule."

The problem here with this as evidence is the use of the first-person plural. Is this the royal "we" or does it have a more personal meaning? These grants to Gemistos are the only two extant Greek documents from Theodoros I have found (please let me know if there is another), and both speak of "our" service, one use of the plural in each where the singular -- τὴν βασιλείαν μου/my rule ‒ is otherwise the norm. Both John and Demetrios adjusted the land grant: neither used the plural. In the four personal grants Constantine made in the Morea, there are twenty singulars and five plurals. In the grant to Demetrios Mamonas Gregoras, which survives in a seventeenth-century copy, there are four singulars and three plurals, one of them "in our service," and all four include Theodoros in "our." The fourth grant, for Gemistos -- there are five different Palaiologos documents for the same land -- uses two plurals where it refers to Constantine and Theodoros. The evidence indicates a strong tendency towards a use of the plural to indicate more than one person and, on that basis, provides a reason for thinking Gemistos took up permanent residence at Mistra after Theodoros and Cleofe were married.

Gemistos' writings allow the idea that some of the service he provided Theodoros and Cleofe had to do with gently educating Theodoros regarding the matter of sex  (he denied Cleofe a sexual relationship for the first six years of their marriage) and it may be important that the first land grant to Gemistos was made shortly before the birth of their first child. Even if the written text comes from the Laws, considered a late work, there is no reason the ideas could not have been discussed years earlier.  Ironically, when Scholarios praised Theodoros as a ruler, speaking at his memorial in 1448, he described him as guided by ideas of justice which can also be found in the Laws.

To judge from the survivals of documents from Mistra concerning Gemistos and his family, we  assume a particular closeness to the Palaiologos family. Had other documents survived for other families, perhaps they would be seen as equally close, or closer, but there are fewer than ten survivals for other individuals in comparison with five for the Gemistos family. These five documents record gifts of land, first to Gemistos, and then to his sons. The first, from Theodoros in late 1427, two months before Cleofe gave birth, gave Gemistos a kastro and village at Phanari, making him the governor of a small territory for life, which could be passed on to his legitimate sons (γνήσιοι παῖδες) Demetrios and Andronikos.

A year later, John VIII confirmed this gift and added to it a property at Bryse, possibly considering that Gemistos had two sons who should each have his own inheritance, and probably as a gift of appreciation for the practical advice John had received from Gemistos on the annoying question of Church Union while he was at Mistra.  (In Florence Gemistos recalled that when he discussed the council with John during his trip to the Morea in 1428, he warned that "your visit will accomplish nothing and get nothing for us.")

The Gemistos family, like the Sphrantzes family, was intertwined with the Palaiologos family over at least two generations: Theodoros, John, and Constantine use οἰκεῖος (member of the household) for George Gemistos, and Demetrios uses οἰκεῖοι for his sons.  There may be a slight hint that Demetrios and Andronikos Gemistos were young at the time of the first gift of land in 1427, and that they were both of age by 1433, as that year, after Cleofe’s death, Theodoros issued another document in which he made Demetrios governor of Phanari, and Andronikos governor of Bryse and a place called Kastri.  In early 1449, just before leaving Mistra for Constantinople, Constantine issued an argyrobull confirming Theodoros’ gift of lands, quoting heavily from the 1433 text. Finally, in July 1450, Demetrios Palaiologos -- conventionally assumed to have been antagonistic to Gemistos -- issued an argyrobull to Demetrios and Andronikos again confirming that of Theodoros.  Gemistos was over 90 at this point: does this document indirectly suggest that he was failing severely?

The imitation of the immortality of the gods

Out of the overflowing abundance of images from the Byzantine world, this is the only image I have been able to find that shows affection between a man and a woman. I would be greatful if anyone could offer me another. Some will think of the Digenes plate, but that suggests silliness, and the intimacies in the epic are neither affectionate nor erotic. I have mentioned before my dismay at finding no Byzantine love poetry beyond a single late poem that follows an Italian model.   

In contrast, what I have found on George Gemistos Plethon, has been too much.  An unnecessary number of males -- rarely a woman -- seem called on to discourse on his philosophy of the soul. Very few can write about Gemistos without feeling obliged to discuss his paganism.  And very few can avoid yet another unnecessary revew of his suggestions for reorganizing the Morea on the Spartan method.  (No one notices that his suggestion for 6000 soldiers reflects precisely the number of men shown to be available over and over during the century.)  So over and over in working on my book, needing Gemistos if I was to write about Mistra, I have come up between a rock and a hard place in finding Gemistos inaccesible to my contemporary concerns.

Until I analyzed his monodia for Cleofe. George Gemistos spoke of the beauty of her luminous body, and of her even more luminous soul. He, in fact, mentioned her beautiful body three different times.  And it occurred to me that this was a man with a physical body, and a man who liked the fact of a woman having a physical body, and that he was a man who has been carefully muffled by the heirs of the Byzantines who really did not like bodies at all. When you treat him like Plato -- even Plato wasn't Plato -- you get a marmoreal automaton.  My Greek is not adequate to sustain me through very much of Gemistos, so I was glad to find the Alexandre, Pléthon: traite des lois, which has a facing French version, and between them I found evidence of a warm and interesting human being.  This is  Gemistos on affection between and man and a woman.

Very early in the Laws he says, "For the others [in contrast to the celibate] it is a thing most beautiful and most divine to marry and have children." Later he says  -- paraphrasing -- that the sexual relationship was instituted by the gods to perpetuate the race of mortals, to give them a sort of immortality, and that desire is a gift of the gods.  This way, we approach the gods. We cannot deny the importance of this act which in our mortal nature is the imitation of the immortality of the gods. We ought to see that we do it well. We do this [in private] not because of shame, but because most humans do not wish to display publicly those religious acts which they regard as the most holy. It is the most personal thing people can do, and since it is one of the most important things given to people to do, it deserves to be done as perfectly as possible. Nothing is more shameful than an important act poorly done.

Demetrios fled to Galata

Constantinople and Galata, 15th C Florentine chest. MMA.

Sphrantzes writes:
In the summer of the same year (1423), the αὐθεντόπουλος Demetrios, accompanied by Ilario Doria and his son-in-law, George Izaoul, fled (ἔφυγεν) to Galata with the intention of going over to the Turks; if they did not get to them, to Hungary instead.

Syropoulos writes:
Matters were in a critical situation because of the war, and the despot Demetrius was forced, at the beginning of the second year of hostilities, to flee (ἀπέδρᾳ) to Galata with Doria, γαμβρός of the Emperor. His father and mother urged him to return, but he was unwilling. His intent was to go to the emperor of the Germans. They unwillingly allowed this and arranged his voyage in company with Matthaios Asan, Doria, and several other archons.

I have written on Demetrios before.  Nearly everything I wrote was wrong, and this is a reconsideration.

In 1423 Demetrios was sixteen and at loose ends.  His father had offered him Lemnos the previous year but he refused to go. Then his father had a devastating stroke, which made his brother John sole emperor. His older brothers Theodoros and Andronikos were despots (although Andronikos would give up Thessalonike in September).  Constantine had recently come of age and, although we know nothing about him until he became regent for John in November, he was undoubtedly demonstrating a sense of responsibility. 

Demetrios went across the Golden Horn to Galata.  Galata was a self-governing commune under the rule of Genoa, and so going to Galata meant Demetrios had left the Eastern Empire.  Other discontent young men went with him -- George Izaoul had been turfed out of Ioannina which replaced him with Carlo Tocco, and Demetrios Kantakuzenos of Trebizond who was in Constantinople because of family problems there.  Matthaios Asan went: he remained a close friend for the rest of their lives, later governing Corinth, then arranging a face-saving surrender to Mehmed.  Demetrios married Asan's sister. Izaoul's father-in-law, Ilario Doria, is more difficult to explain: he had married Manuel's half-sister, and perhaps he, too, felt he had been passed over once too often.

The two different accounts reflect, to a great extent, the prejudices of their writers.  Sphrantzes, writing fifty years after the event, showed consistent disapproval of Demetrios whenever he came into the narrative.  Syropoulos, writing an account of the Council of Union, was anxious to portray Demetrios in as good a light as possible because he had been a supporter of the anti-unionists during the miseries of Ferrara and Florence.

Ganchou (below) adds an important element to the story in printing a letter from Francesco Filelfo  to Cardinal Piccolomini.  Filelfo not only substantiates the Sphrantzes account, but says that John had sent him to Hungary to  tell Emperor Sigismund that Demetrios might be planning to go over to the Turks, and to ask his help in heading it off.  But Filelfo also says that there was trouble between the brothers. This is important to remember, even if we don't know what it was.

John was nearly double Demetrios' age, and his teenage years had been burdened with training for being emperor.  At present he was burdened with a dying father and his differences with his father, and overwhelmed with the threats to the City, the Morea, and Thessaloniki from the Turks.  

There is no information about Demetrios for 13 years.  He took up the rule of Lemnos in 1425 (once he was of age -- he had rejected the position earlier, when he would have had to have a regent), and later  married (probably) the sister of Kantakouzenos Stravoummetes, a governor of Lamia. She died.  He married Zoe Paraspondylos in the spring of 1436. Then in November 1437 he was required to accompany John to the Council of Union at Ferrara.  Syropoulos quotes John as saying, "Everyone knows why he has to come with us."  Disloyalty is assumed, but there is no evidence.

What we know about Demetrios at the Council depends for the most part on Syropoulos, and recall that Syropoulos appreciates Demetrios' position (although Demetrios had been extremely rude to Syropoulos in Ferrara), while trying to show John at a disadvantage.  John was very much at a disadvantage: quite apart from the humiliation of having to attend the council at all, if he had a chance of aid for Constantinople, he was was in severe pain from gout, bedridden much of the time he was there, and surrounded by several hundred orgulous Greeks.

Syropoulos shows us John's public humilations of Demetrios, and Demetrios flailing to assert himself.  Demetrios was 30 years old by the time of the council, married, a despot.  At least twice, Syropoulos tells of John asking Demetrios for his opinion in doctrinal discussions, calling him ἀδελφούτζικε.   John took Demetrios with him and the patriarch to confer with the pope, then ostentatiously left him to wait in a courtyard for three hours. Demetrios left Ferrara and went  to Venice.  

When the council was forced to move to Florence in early 1439 because of plague, John asked Demetrios to join him. It took the patriarch -- Joseph II -- to persuade him to come, but John waited in Florence for three weeks for Demetrios to arrive.  There was another episode of ἀδελφούτζικε.  Demetrios asked the patriarch to help him get permission from John to return to Venice.  The patriarch did, but then a delegation of cardinals came to see John and he complained about Demetrios.  The cardinals asked him to stay until the end.  The patriarch -- very ill at this point -- conveyed the information to Demetrios who responded, "I will stay but not because of the cardinals: I stay because of the imperial command. Personally I have no information or experience with matters of dogma. I know nothing about the subject."

Then the patriarch died on 10 June.  He was buried in the Domenican church of S. Maria Novella where many of the Greek delegation had been staying. Demetrios participated in the funeral service, then four days later left for Venice with Gemistos and Scholarios who could not bear to be present for the signing of the Act of Union. On the way back to Venice, a group of Latins tried to attack an elderly bishop in their group.  Demetrios protected him.  Syropoulos gives other incidents where Demetrios stood up for anti-unionists.  It was with this trip to the West that Demetrios built up his great store of credit with the anti-unionists, and why he had so much support in his later attempts to gain the throne.

This is enough for now.  Demetrios  is regarded as the black sheep of the Palaiologos family.  Sphrantzes is taken as the last word. Barker calls him "reckless and selfish," and "worthless": that seems to be the preferred view which disregards his apparently competent rule on Lemnos and at Mistra, his recorded acts of kindness, and his friendship with Gemistos. 

History prefers the sacrificial lamb to the black sheep.

T. Ganchou, "Giourgès Izoul de Ioannina, fils du despote Esau Buondelmonti, ou les tribulations balkaniques d’un prince d’Épire d’possédé," Medioevo Greco 8 (2008) 159-199. If you need a copy of this article, I will be glad to send it.  

See also, Ganchou, “IlarioDoria, le gambros Génois de Manuel II Palaiologos: beau-frère ougendre?" Revue des Études Byzantines 66 (2008) 71-94.

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.