Competent compilers?

“The Last Byzantine Renaissance” is a short introduction to the so-called Palaeologan Renaissance, the unexpected revival of classical and theological scholarship during the last two centuries of the Byzantine Empire, when the “empire” was gradually declining in all other respects. Strictly speaking, the renaissance also covered the breakaway “empire” of Trebizond, ruled by the Comneni. Steven Runciman's book is really a collection of lectures, all of which presuppose a previous working knowledge of Byzantine history and culture. Only the last lecture attempts a synthesis of the material. I don't think this is suitable for beginners. It feels more like a summary for more advanced students, or even scholars, a kind of scholarly “lite lunch”.

Apparently, the Byzantines made a strict distinction between Inner and Outer Learning. Theology based on divine revelation was the Inner Learning, which was sacrosanct and not to be questioned. Philosophy and science belonged to the Outer Learning, “only” preoccupied with the created world. Paradoxically, this made it possible for Byzantine scholars to pursue philosophical and scientific studies with relative freedom, as long as these didn't infringe on the Inner Learning. Somewhat ironically, it also made Aristotle less controversial than Plato, since it was the latter thinker who made encroachments on Inner Learning. The more “secular” Aristotle was safer to study! In the end, of course, the Byzantines did study both.

Unsurprisingly, the Byzantines made their greatest contributions exactly in the field of theology. Runciman is full of admiration for Gregory Palamas and his defense of the Hesychasts. He also recommends “The Life in Christ” by Nicholas Cabasilas. Otherwise, I get the impression that the Byzantine scholars and “scientists” were competent compilers rather than innovators. Thus, while they did publish scientific works on astronomy, these were based on Ptolemy's classical writings complemented by recent Arab and Persian (i.e. Muslim) discoveries. The conservative attitude of the Byzantine intelligentsia explains why it took them several centuries to accept Arabic numerals when doing mathematical calculations. It seems that the sages of the Palaeologan “Renaissance” only made original contributions in two fields outside theology. One was in medicine, but here, they were eventually overtaken by the Jews. The other was the proposed calendar reform of Nicephorus Gregoras, but it was never accepted and, typically, served a Church function (the calculation of Easter).

The biggest contribution of the Late Byzantine learned men to human civilization was their dissemination of Greek, Arab and Persian science and philosophy to the West. Two important figures in this regard were Gemistos Plethon and Bessarion. The former was a covert pagan, while the latter converted to Catholicism and became a cardinal. While the Italian Renaissance had complex socio-economic causes that can be traced all the way back to the “Middle Ages”, the concrete forms taken by the 15th century Renaissance in the Italian city-states were surely influenced by Byzantine intellectuals who came to Italy either as guests or as refugees fleeing the advancing Ottomans. Plato, Aristotle and other classical Greek writers became widely available in the Latin West for the first time, together with Greeks who could exegete them for spell-bound humanistic audiences in Florence, Venice and elsewhere.

In passing, Runciman mentions that the “occult sciences” were popular in the Late Byzantine Empire, but since the Church and the official intellectuals condemned it, he says nothing further about it. This is a pity, since the Hermetic corpus also reached Italy from Byzantine sources…

Overall, I don't think “The Last Byzantine Renaissance” was as helpful as I imagined, but it's not wholly bad either. In the end, I give it three stars, which is the OK rating.

Byzantine Renaissance

A review of "Constantinople and the West" 

The late Deno John Geanakoplos was a Greek-American scholar of Byzantine and Renaissance studies. This book contains articles on the interaction between Byzantines and Latins during the 15th century in particular. About half of the book deals with Church-related issues, most notably the attempts at union between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. I concentrated on the other half in which the author discusses the influence of Byzantine intellectuals on the Italian Renaissance. Geanakoplos is “pro-Byzantine” and therefore reaches the conclusion that the influence was considerable and has been downplayed by other historians.

The Byzantine men of learning who visited or settled in Italy during the 15th century weren't just passive transmitters of valuable Greek manuscripts translated and interpreted by clever Italian humanists. They often translated and interpreted the manuscripts themselves, acting as teachers of the Italians. This was true of both the philosophical texts and the scientific ones. The author believes that the Byzantines directly shaped the Renaissance on a number of points. Thus, the turn from rhetoric to metaphysics in Florence can be attributed to the activities of John Argyropoulos. (The author doesn't deny that other factors also played a role, such as the despotism of the Medici, which made rhetoric – associated with a democratic form of government – redundant.) I found it interesting that Argyropoulos seemed to have both an “exoteric” and an “esoteric” teaching, the former based on Aristotle, the latter on Plato.

Another important turnaround initiated by the Byzantine scholars concerned Aristotelian studies. Theodore Gaza and Nicolaus Leonicus Tomaeus preferred the late Hellenistic interpretations of Aristotle to those of Averroës and the Scholastics, who had hitherto been dominant in the Latin West. They also translated the scientific works of John Philoponus, a sixth-century thinker who anticipated the impetus theory of projectile motion with almost a millennium. An often overlooked fact, dealt with only in passing in this book, is that better translations of the Greek Church Fathers and alternative ones of the Bible itself became available during the Renaissance. The author believes that this led to a resurgence of Pauline studies and new departures in the exegesis of Paul's epistles, but says nothing further of this. This looks like an intriguing subject, since Luther would base his reformation thought largely on a new reading of Paul.

Naturally, the book also mentions Bessarion and Pletho, but the main point of the work seems to be to discuss a number of figures who are usually mentioned only in passing, or not at all, in general works on the period. Pletho or Plethon seems to have created considerable mischief by attacking Aristotle in favor of Plato, setting the stage for conflicts between "Platonists" and "Aristotelians". The actual Byzantine position was that the two philosophers could be harmonized! One subject touched upon only in passing is occult knowledge. Astrology was widely accepted in Byzantium, perhaps because of its connection to astronomy, but Geanakoplos says nothing about the Hermetic corpus. 

I find “Constantinople and the West” to be extremely interesting. While I'm not a great admirer of the Byzantine Empire, especially not the Late Empire, it's undisputable that their scholars did play a positive role in diffusing Greek learning to Italy at the right moment. This knowledge seems to have been of a higher quality than the Greek philosophy which reached Western Europe through Muslim channels, but it was also different from the Latin translations of Greek works made by William of Moerbeke during the 13th century (which had inspired the Scholastics). Some of the astronomical knowledge disseminated by the Byzantines must have been Muslim (Arab or Persian). While the Italian Renaissance had internal causes, some of its concrete forms seem to have been molded by the learned men of Constantinople.

Everything about Plethon

Gemistos Plethon was a 15th century philosopher in the Platonic tradition. He lived in the Byzantine-controlled town of Mistra in southern Greece, but his most important activities took place in Italy, where he inspired the budding Renaissance humanists to study Plato rather than Aristotle. Both Cosimo de Medici and (indirectly) Marsilio Ficino felt indebted to Plethon. Yet, this éminence grise of the Renaissance is surprisingly unknown. I presume C.H. Woodhouse wanted to fill the gap with his monograph "Gemistos Plethon: The Last of the Hellenes".

I'm not sure if he succeeds. Woodhouse does provide the reader with a full-length translation of "De Diferentiis", the most important of Plethon's works, and summarizes his other philosophical works. However, he says next to nothing about the social and intellectual background. I understand that this wasn't the author's intention, but it does make the book a hard read for the uninitiated. Page up and page down, Woodhouse discusses which obscure Italian scribe met Plethon in what God-forsaken Italian town, and when. His sources are impeccable manuscript collections from the 15th century. I was especially impressed by Woodhouse's references to "Laonici Chalcocandylae Historiarum Demonstrationes", published in two volumes in Budapest 1922-27.

Not!

OK, seriously. "Gemistos Plethon: The Last of the Hellenes" is a super-scholarly work, and much as I admire the author's learning (I really do!), it did get tedious to read after a while.

But yes, Gemistos Plethon must have been a fascinating (and bizarre) character. He was around 80 years old when visiting Italy in conjunction with the church council at Ferrara-Florence, and yet it was this visit which became the turning point in his life. Outwardly, Plethon was an Orthodox Christian, but several of his pupils converted to Catholicism, including Bessarion, who became a cardinal. Isidore of Kiev may have been another student of Plethon, but this is unclear. In reality, Plethon was a secret apostate. His esoteric message was unabashedly pagan, but known only to a narrow circle during his lifetime. To Plethon, the real religion was the Neo-Platonism of Julian the Apostate and Proclus. Christianity and Islam were both irrelevant and doomed to disappear. Plethon considered the polytheist pantheon of the Olympus as completely symbolic, but he nevertheless decided to construct a new version of Greek polytheism to serve as the public religion of a future ideal society. Since heresy and apostasy were capital crimes in the Byzantine Empire, Plethon choose to divulge his paganism only to a select few. Indeed, even his more practical proposals for turning Byzantium into a kind of modernized Sparta were turned down by the Emperors (who nevertheless considered him a trusted friend and advisor).

Not everyone was fooled by Plethon's pretenses. The future Patriarch of Constantinople, Gennadios, suspected Plethon of rank heresy already before the old man's death at the age of 90+, and got his worse fears confirmed when a copy of the secret "Book of Laws" fell into his hands shortly afterwards.

"The Book of Laws" was Plethon's magnum opus, loosely modelled on Plato's "Laws". The work was explicitly polytheist, using the old Greek names Zeus, Poseidon and Hera for its main deities. The shocked Patriarch burnt it, and only a few of the treatises have survived. The work is bizarre and misogynistic: adulterous women should be forced into prostitution (which should therefore be legal), homosexuals and their "victims" should be executed by burning, and so apparently should Christians. In fact, Plethon seems to have been obsessed with burning people to death. His mysterious and elusive Jewish teacher, Elissaeus, may have been burned at Constantinople for unknown offences (Elissaeus might also have been a covert pagan). Payback time? The rest of the surviving work contains everything from philosophical musings to pagan hymns.

To Woodhouse, Plethon was not just "the last of the Hellenes" but also "the first of the modern Greeks", since he was a kind of Greek nationalist, pointing forward to a more secular, national identity for the people of Byzantium. But here, the context once again eludes the reader, and we are quickly thrown back to all those Italians who may or may not have attented Plethon's lectures in Venice or what not...

Since "Gemistos Plethon" is a well-researched scholarly monograph, I'll give it four stars out of five, but don't tell me I didn't warn you...