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.

Scholarios talks about Theodoros II Palaiologos

  The churches of the Monastery of the Pantokrator,
now the Zeyrek Çamii, where the last Palaiologoi were buried.

The Byzantine Studies Association of North America begins its annual meeting Friday, this time in Chicago. I will be speaking on the construction of the throne room wing of the palace of Mistra which was built about 1430 under the aegis of Theodoros II Palaiologos.

I have apparently written about Theodoros in sixteen other entries, and I have written with increasing despair. Recently Pierre MacKay translated for me the speech Scholarios made after Theodoros died, which adds considerable nuances but does nothing to alleviate the despair.

Theodoros died in Selybria in June 1448 of plague, and was buried with his father and brother in the Pantokrator in Istanbul.  He had exchanged Mistra with Constantine for Selybria in 1444, anxious to be close to Istanbul where their brother the Emperor was increasingly weakened from gout, sure that he was entitled to inherit the throne.  George Gennadios Scholarios, the High Judge of the Court of Constantinople, spoke at the memorial before John VIII and the court. Possibly his brother Demetrios was present, and certainly his mother, Helena. Scholarios began:

I have put off my speech about the deceased brother of our mighty emperor until this day, in the third month after his death, not because I had no sense of what to say about him, nor because I thought it was proper to add my silence as one more misfortune for him but (the truth will out), understanding that that the enmity that many feel for him will have abated over time, and that thus, more reasonable judges of arguments in his favor will be found, and that those who are absolutely intolerant of listening to this memorial utterance will be less offensive toward me. 

His own feeling, and the enmity in the court, had been so intense that the eulogy had to wait for three months. This enmity is somewhat explained later in the speech, but some things have to be deduced.  It appears that certain people had urged Theodoros in his desire for the throne, probably because John had been very ill.  Scholarios spoke in September.  John died the end of October.  Fortunately, Theodoros died first:

He did not cause loss to any of the Greeks, but as he was on the verge of doing so or, as it seemed to some that this was so, he departed this life, which is his good fortune, that in such an evil circumstance he succeeded in doing nothing that was irreparable.

Scholarios spent considerable time at the beginning of his speech discussing how each of us has failings, and people have to be judged by the totality of their characters and not just by one incident.  He admitted that Theodoros was a fair and just ruler, and he was most respectful of his parents.  Then Scholarios cut loose and spoke of the Turkish incursion of 1423  and of the subsequent assault on the Isthmus of 1446.

There is one thing that one might blame him for, if one failed to give it proper thought, that fecklessness about the Isthmus of Corinth, which led to his being defeated, the people of Peloponnesos being taken captive, and a great many being killed. But if one were not to acquit the man of this, neither will his brother's actions be spared . . . It would not be right for the most stalwart Constantine to be deprived his praise for this . . .  nor should anyone burden his brother with responsibility for not setting up the wall strongly in the first place. That, the earlier and also the later collapse of the wall was a matter of the vileness itself of those living within the isthmus, as were the misfortunes that oppressed the entire Peloponnesos . . . the Peloponnesians knew not how to come to a call for aid, nor, if they did come, how to defend the land and keep it safe, being unwilling to confront the enemy, or, if they did face up to him, not having the courage to endure and to overpower him but rather to desert and run . . . while those who were destroyed by their own cowardice of spirit and intention seem to the observer who knows nothing about the defects and sicknesses of the ruled to have been ill-generaled and badly governed. The present population of Peloponnesos can be said to be heirs of the land and the name of the race only, but of the virtue of their forefathers they they have not even what might seem to be the expected inheritance of bastard offspring.

 Floor plan of the Pantokrator.

In 1423, the troops of Turahan Bey had come all the way to the walls of Mistra before returning home, and it was the Albanians alone -- "those laborers who had taken over Peloponnesos" -- who made any effort to stop them.  Those would be the same Albanians whom Manuel had praised for their work in building the wall.  Coincidentally, it was in that year of 1423 that Theodoros was considering becoming a monk.  Recently, in the winter of 1446, Constantine and Thomas had to defend the Isthmus against Murad II, the Greek troops cut and ran, and the brothers barely escaped alive.  Murad's troops went as far as Patras before turning back.  


Scholarios gave personal information, some of it a little surprising.  I had not expected Theodoros to have such physical interests:

Was he not strong? Was he not athletic? Was he not a fine rider capable of guiding an untrustworthy horse down a hillside? Was he not ready to set his hand to anything that anyone might have conceived in reason? Was he not superior in dexterity of hand and nature to the masters of crafts? But all this is a matter of physical skills.whereas he was better in more important thing: he was a lover of learning, a quick learner and thus a polymath. I shall pass over the rest, but in calculation, and geometry and in the so-called organizations of the sciences who was there who handled such matters better in both theory and practice?

Just possibly, Theodoros talked a great deal too much.  Scholarios is complimentary, but still:

In quickness of tongue, grace flowering in words, and cleverness in conceptions whether with or without training, I do not think there was any one at all who could equal him. Rather I think it came to him from God. Who, on hearing him speak would not forget his own circumstances, who would not be delighted and would not beg to hear more, as it flowed continuously, to the extent that they were able to neglect their necessary concerns.

Apparently, his interest in becoming a monk had started even before he was married, in 1421.  Scholarios makes only the most limited mention of his marriage and family: 

Such a man he was, zealous in his private self, and happy in public goods. He was blessed with a distinguished marriage and proved to be the father of a fine child resulting from this marriage with a most distinguished family, and came to a similar end. He did not enslave cities, nor place a yoke on peoples.

 Scholarios' information combined with the letters Bessarion wrote to Theodoros (links below) -- quite apart from the information we have from his marriage, gives us an exceptional portrait of character and personality, for any Palaiologos, and certainly for the period. It is not a pleasant portrait.

Translation copyright © Pierre A. MacKay, October 5, 2011.  Text from M. Jugie, L. Petit, and X.A. Siderides, Oeuvres complètes de Georges (Gennadios) Scholarios, vol. 1. Paris: Maison de la bonne presse, 1928: 247-283.

 

More on Theodoros: 
http://surprisedbytime.blogspot.com/2010/02/theodoros-ii-palaiologos.html
http://surprisedbytime.blogspot.com/2009/04/glory-days.html 
http://surprisedbytime.blogspot.com/2011/05/bessarion-to-theodoros.html 
http://surprisedbytime.blogspot.com/2011/05/bessarion-to-theodoros-part-two.html
http://surprisedbytime.blogspot.com/2010/10/theodoros-poem-to-cleofe.html
http://surprisedbytime.blogspot.com/2010/06/emperor-in-pain-part-2.html 

http://surprisedbytime.blogspot.com/2008/07/pavane-for-dead-princess.html

http://surprisedbytime.blogspot.com/2009/02/pavane-for-dead-princess-part-two.html

http://surprisedbytime.blogspot.com/2009/07/pavane-for-dead-princess-part-three.html

Constantine Palaiologos

I was showing my grandson, Senan, the statue of Constantine Palaiologos in the plateia in front of the Athens cathedral.

This statue is reproduced in various places around the country and it shows him wearing an arm-confining cape, a crown that would fall off with the slightest exertion, and holding his sword in a position from which he cannot defend himself. This may be a metaphor.

A man at the next table leaned into the conversation and said loudly, "Konstantinos Palaiologos is the greatest emperor the Greeks ever had!" I thought to myself: Nikeforas Fokas? Basil II? Alexios I? Manuel II? Senan likes heroes and dragons, and I was trying to tell him that this was another kind of hero and another kind of dragon; that Constantine knew he was going into great anguish and sure death, but he chose to follow out his inherited fate with dignity and courage.

When his brother John VIII died, on 31 October 1448, the news reached him in early December. His brother Thomas, who had gone to Constantinople on his behalf, stayed to hold his place against their remaining brother, Demetrios. In January, two old friends arrived from Constantinople with the formal announcement and to escort him back to Constantinople, Alexios Philanthropenos Laskaris and Manuel Palaiologos Iagros. Constantine was crowned at Mistra -- the Empire had no single ceremonial crown and we know nothing about this Mistra ceremony -- in the little cathedral of Ag. Demetrios where this modern plaque marks the event. He was not able to leave the Morea until late February, presumably because of the problems of winter sailing, and he arrived in The City on 12 March.

The City was nearly deserted, the population a tenth of what the walls could contain. Sphrantzes was sent off to Trebizond and Georgia, and someone else went to Serbia, to find him a third bride, because an imperial marriage with its prospects of children would demonstrate hope for the future. None of these efforts came to anything. His mother died. Sultan Murad who was on reasonable terms of friendship with The City died. Presently the Patriarch, Gregorios Mamas, fled. Then Mehmed occupied the straits and began building a castle.

No one was surprised. It had been assumed for more than fifty years that the Ottomans would be unstoppable. His parents' close friend, Demetrios Kydones, had written them before 1400 about

this dark cloud which is closing in over the land of the Romans. . . this plague which does not let us catch a breath but is drawing us to death . . . little by little, like a consumption, weakening the body of our community . .

Constantine asked Sphrantzes to take a census of the resources available to them, and to keep the results private. Sphrantzes found 4,773 Greeks and about 200 foreigners, mostly Genoese and Venetian, for the 14 miles of walls around the triangle of The City. Constantine also had such men as the judge and priest, Giorgios Scholarios, who had trimmed his sails to every prevailing wind for the past 25 years. And he had the Grand Duke, Loukas Notaras who had been treating with the Turks for years.***

Mehmed had 200,000 men and 400 ships for those 14 miles of walls, and everyone knows how The City fell. Constantine disappeared into myth on the morning of 29 May 1453.

His father had written:

But a ruler’s and an emperor's duty is to accept any risk in order to save his people, and to regard dying a light burden, whenever freedom is at stake and whenever the risk concerns. . .Faith.

The time for great emperors had come to an end twenty-five years before Constantine got to Constantinople, but he gave evidence on the limited stage of the Morea that he could have been one. He was a successful military commander, taking Patras and then the territories of Carlo Tocco, and later a series of territories north of the Gulf of Corinth. Alone of the brothers, he left a record of long-term planning, such as when he exchanged territories with Thomas so he would be poised for his subsequent conquests across the gulf, or when he talked to Sphrantzes about his concern for justice, and his organization of the Moreote administration. He rebuilt the walls of the Hexamilion, and with Thomas took an army there to oppose yet another Ottoman invasion, but the army panicked and fled, and the brothers barely escaped alive.

For fifty years there had been regular protests from the small Venetian territories on the periphery of the Morea at the violent raids of the despotate's robber archons who raided and burned Greek farms. During Constantine's five years as Despot, there were no complaints, but within two months of his leaving for Constantinople the raids had begun again.

He is more difficult to grasp as a person than his brothers or father. He was probably, like them, a slight man, but unlike John, Andronikos, and Theodoros, physically tough, having ridden and hunted from childhood. Theodoros had described him in a poem as:

one who breathed war and slaughter in battle
eminent in appearance and the depths of thought,
the dread warrior, Constantine the despot.

This was a praise poem: not courtroom evidence, but as it was circulated among people who knew him, it has to have had some basis in fact. His self-control is always in evidence, and one myth of what happened to him after on 29 May calls him "The Marble Emperor." But there are glimpses of his enjoyment of hunting, of his courtesy to guests, and he took Cyriaco to watch an athletic contest in Sparta.

We have evidence for three Palaiologos brothers --John, Theodoros, and Constantine -- of deep, passionate attachments to their wives, and the single clue to Constantine's emotional life comes by way of the death of his wife, Theodora Tocco, who died in childbirth, When Constantine became Despot of the Morea, he had Theodora's body moved from its grave at Clarentza and reinterred in Ag. Sophia at Mistra. When he went to Constantinople as emperor, he had her body brought to Constantinople. He had another marriage, to Caterina Gattilusi, who died a year later from what Sphrantzes says were the results of a miscarriage, but he did not move Caterina's body.

A gravesite in Constantinople has been suggested as possibly that of Theodora, the grave in the Kariye Djami with the richly-colored fresco above. Two elements together contribute to this suggestion. The first is that her supposed burial site at Mistra is marked with a ruinous fresco of the Virgin and Child -- appropriate for a woman who had died in childbirth -- and this site also has a Virgin and Child. The second is that the woman in this fresco is wearing a gown of Western fabric, and the style of painting is Western, with the pattern following the folds of the fabric instead of being painted flat as with other frescos in the Kariye Djami. But her grave, like his, is unknown.

Constantine was a just and rational despot, a dedicated emperor, a good man.



***Some small justice came, though. Notaras did not understand that in Mehmed's world, Mehmed ruled.: Mehmed despised traitors and Notaras was executed early on. Despite the portrait of her in the Kalomoiris-Kazantzakis opera, Constantine Palaiologos, Notaras' daughter Anna had left The City for Venice with a fortune in money and jewels, letting it be believed that she had been secretly married to Constantine, a belief that allowed her to dominate and squeeze the Greek community of Venice for years. Scholarios had trimmed successfully enough to be made Orthodox Patriarch.