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

Bessarion's missing manuscript

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

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

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

Bessarion's Introduction.

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

* Encomium

* Monody for Manuel II.

* Discourse to the emperor Alexis of Trebizond.

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

* Monody for the empress Theodora of Trebizond.

* Another monody for her.

* Another monody for her.

* Epitaph to ??? (crossed out)

* Epitaph for George Amiroutzes. (crossed out)

* Canon to S. Pantaleon.

* Letter to ???

* Letter to the same.

* Another letter to Amiroutzes.

* Epitaph for the basilissa Cleofe.

* Epitaph for the basilissa Theodora.

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

* Letter to Theodoros II.

* Letter to the same

* Letter to Paul Sophianos.

* Letter to Demetrios Pepagomenos.

* Letter to Nikephoros Cheilas.

* Letter to the monk Dionisios.

* Letter to John Eugenikos.

* Letter to the monks Matthaios and Isidoros.

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

* Description of Trebizond.

* Homily

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

* Another monody for her.

* Another monody for her.

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

* Discourse on Union.

* Letter to Constantine, Despot of Mistra.

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

Which brings us to the missing manuscript. A monody.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The photographs of 533 are by John Burke.

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 Five

 

This image will represent Cleofe Malatesta.  It is painted on the wall of the throne room in her sister, Paola's palace in Mantua, and its features strongly resemble features in the portraits of her brother, Carlo, and Paola, below.   Compare the nose, chin, supraorbital arch. It is true that I once used another image of the same woman for Maria of Trebizond, but that was because I accepted the pronouncement of an Important Art Historian. We were wrong. 

I have written here on Sophia of Montferrat and how men talked about her face.  This entry is on how men talked about Cleofe's clothes.  Cleofe was an Italian woman of the early Renaissance, and brought with her to Greece manners and dress quite different from what was assumed appropriate for Greek women.  Certainly, her dress made more of her visible than Greek dress would have.  This is the sort of thing Cleofe may have worn on a formal occasion:

While this is what a woman of her class would have been expected to wear at Mistra, except for full-press court occasions.  You can see that the difference would have been noticed:

 

A year and a half before Cleofe arrived in Greece, Theodoros wrote the pope that she would be able to keep her Italian customs, and her religion.  She arrived in the fall of 1420 and the wedding was 19 January 1421.  Then she disappears from written records for six years, except for the information in Paola's account books that she was sending Cleofe an annual gift of Mantuan cheese.   

Six years later, in February 1427, Battista, their sister-in-law, wrote Paola that Cleofe was dressing as a nun.  This was a great shame. A fabric specialist  who worked on fabrics found in a Mistra grave wrote: "Most Byzantine fabrics are dense and relatively thick; it seems that the criteria of lightness and suppleness were not prevalent in Byzantium."

A mutual friend who had visited Cleofe reported that she said, "I have not become a nun because I was anointed with a little oil."  Far from it.  She had now achieved the status she should have had six years earlier, but only now did she tell her family that at the time of the marriage, Theodoros had announced that he would live with her for six years, only, without sex.  

At the end of the six years, before they knew this, there were worried letters from the family to the Pope fearing Theodoros would abandon her.  Then the next month there was the letter about dressing like a nun.  It does look as if, for his own complex reasons which he probably did not understand, Theodoros offered her a real, sexual marriage, in exchange for conversion to Orthodoxy and a change of dress.  A year later, in early 1428, there was a baby girl, and in April 1433 she died in giving birth to a son. 

That would be it, except that at the memorial service, the Mistra men talked about her clothes.  Plethon, who was for inexplicable reasons considered to be a great philosopher, spoke first.  He assured Theodoros that he could believe in the immortality of the soul because horses do not commit suicide. Then he complimented Cleofe's "sober prudence in putting off her leisurely ways and taking up the decorous restraint of our women."  He also commended her fasting. It is difficult for a modern, Western women not to think that he was pleased to think of the erasure of her body.

The next speaker was her doctor, Demetrios Pepagomenos.   He responded to Plethon, speaking obliquely, but disagreeing at length about clothes, and lamented

her youth, in which she had such grace, [and] the beauty, which has not been concealed, as might have been proper, but in a cruel way. . . . 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. [Look at the untidy hair and imperfect posture in the top picture.] . . .  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 (μονάζουσι) so that what was earlier unappreciated by outsiders, was now obvious to all.

In 1955,  a few fragments of the body of a young woman were found in a grave in the palace chapel of Mistra.  Among them were bits of fabrics from two gowns, with enough stitching in place to make the style of dress clear.  The outer gown was of a silk Italian brocade with a top styled like this: 

This V-necked gown was worn over a sheer silk gown very like the gown the Cleofe-stand-in  is wearing here.  The fabric expert noted how very soft and light these tomb fabrics were. 

The speaker after Pepagomenos was Nikeforas Cheilas.  He blasted Plethon's ego and then accused Pepagomenos of killing his patient.  He went on to describe Cleofe's death as being like "like the falling and shattering of a precious crystal." Going beyond clothing, he said:

Gone is the shrine of all virtues and graces, the most holy queen, the rainbow shining brilliantly in the beauty of her body, flashing out more intensely than any statue or image . . . [she] enjoyed a sort of splendor and radiance . . .