750788

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Two Byzantine Scholars and Their Reception in Italy Author(s): A. Keller Source: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 20, No. 3/4 (Jul. - Dec., 1957), pp.

363-370Published by: The Warburg InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/750788Accessed: 17-04-2015 16:48 UTC

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TWO BYZANTINE SCHOLARS AND THEIR RECEPTION IN ITALY 363 TWO BYZANTINE SCHOLARS AND

THEIR RECEPTION IN ITALY I

MARSIGLIO FICINO AND GEMISTOS PLETHON ON FATE AND FREE WILL

G emistos Plethon occupied the same position in fifteenth-century Byzantine Platonism as Marsiglio Ficino did in the Florentine school: he was its most brilliant and original exponent. Various attempts have been made to assess the extent of his influence on Ficino; Plethon is known to have visited Italy for the Council of Ferrara- Florence, where he acquired no small reputa- tion for the depth of his Platonic learning.' His admirers have sometimes claimed for him an important position in the history of Renaissance thought; but research has so far failed to produce sufficient evidence to sup- port this view.2

The little tract by Plethon, IIep t EfyapLVpi, On Fate, in MS. 76 of the Biblioteca Riccar- diana, with comments from Ficino's own hand, is therefore of special interest ; here is a work by the Greek scholar which Ficino has definitely read-and with a critical eye. His notes reveal the opposing views of two individual scholars; but they are also of wider import. They help to throw some light on that essential difference of outlook which perhaps prevented Plethon's having a greater influence on Quattrocento thought, despite the great respect in which he was held in Italy. To some extent, this also applies to the lesser figures among the Byzantines, even though their views on the power of fatality may have been less extreme than Plethon's. To Ficino and his circle, belief in the liberty of the human soul was the very centre of the spiritual world, for upon this doctrine de- pended man's unique dignity and splendour; they were therefore bound to oppose any attempt to lay out man's life according to strict and irrevocable rules, and to reduce him

to the status of a pawn on the divine chess- board.4

Plethon's approach is clear enough. For him, fate is &i E7rorpocos xaL &rCCpopPerToq--- "irrevocable and inflexible."5 All events, he maintains, must be determined; if anything should happen not

,pwtLyevij, either it has happened without a cause, or the cause has operated without necessity-neither of which would be possible. Whatsoever cause pro- duces any given effect must necessarily do so in precisely the same way; to deny this is to deny causation. The gods must decree everything for the best; if they could alter anything for the better, they would not be perfect.6 "Nature is the law (OeaotL6) of God; God's law cannot be unreasonable.''7 Thus the gods -or God-cannot be moved to change their minds; they cannot be dissuaded from their decision by prayers, services or sacrifices. Again, if the future is not determined, it cannot be foreseen, even by the gods; one ob- viously cannot predict of something which is indeterminate either that it will be, or will not be."

The principal objection he expected to encounter was that such a system enslaved men to necessity, and it would be unjust for men to be punished for their misdeeds-most of all by the gods, who had already determined the wicked action itself. He defended his theory by re-defining freedom and necessity. Knowledge of necessity is the truest liberty. We ought not, indeed, to set freedom and necessity so sharply in opposition, else we may make necessity identical with slavery. If we do so, however, slavery becomes practi- cally meaningless, since every man is a slave, being obliged to submit to God, through whom all things exist; slavery therefore ceases to be such a terrible evil.9 Moreover, if freedom means living as one wishes, a man has presumably achieved it if he succeeds in being happy and doing good, which all men want to do.o0 God can therefore punish sin in order to turn men to the right path. Man's nature being half divine and half human, the

x Most recent full bibliography in Zakythinos, Le Despotat Grec de Morde, II, Athens, I954; also in M. Anastos, Pletho's Calendar and Liturgy, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, No. 4, 1948, and A. Diller, "Plutarch and Pletho," Scriptorium, VII, I954.

2Cf. E. Garin, L'Umanesimo Italiano, Bari, 1942, pp. 107 f., also A. della Torre, Storia della Accademia Platonica di Firenze, Florence, 1902; B. Kieszkowski, Studi sul Platonismo del Rinascimento, Rome, 1936; and, on the other side, I. P. Mamalakis, e-'pytoS retLLar6q HIn6O v, Athens, 1939.

3 Hept EtpOLPvpr, printed by C. Alexandre in

his ed. of N6 ot, Traiti des Lois, Paris, 1858.

4 This is brought out in several places of the Theolo- gica Platonica and the Epitome of Plotinus; cf. P. O. Kristeller's introduction to The Renaissance Philosophy of Man, Chicago, 1948, pp. 18-I9. Cf. also Pico in De hominis dignitate.

SN6tpot, ed. cit., p. 266. 6 Ibid., pp. 64-66. 7 De Differentia Platonicae et Aristotelicae Philosophiae, Migne, Patrologia Graeca, CLX, Paris, 1866, col. 912.

8 N6Lot, ed. cit., p. 66. 9 Ibid., p. 74. 10 Ibid., p. 76.


364 MISCELLANEOUS NOTES human part sometimes turns him towards the bad. Punishment is then necessary, "like bitter and unpleasant medicines" (one of Plethon's favourite metaphors). It helps man to do good, and so be truly free."1

The Plethonian theory of fate provides its consolations in order to counterpoise man's sense of helplessness at his inability to alter his own destiny. The gods must necessarily order all things for the best. Man's higher desires, and his reason, are themselves a part of the divine causation, so that the gods act on men "by persuasion or love." They cannot cause fear or harm to anyone. Plethon concludes his treatise with the words "By an inflexible fate, they allot the best for each."12

Of course, Plethon expresses this view in its extreme form. He had many Byzantine critics. Camariotes composed a violent diatribe against his view of fate ;13 Scholarios wrote an attack on Plethon's Platonism'4 in which he took up the same question. Bes- sarion also discussed it in his two letters to Plethon; and in his great work defending Plato, In Calumniatorem Platonis, he adopts an intermediate attitude, asserting that Plato and Aristotle are essentially in agreement since "neither of them feel about fate as if they would have it that all things happen of necessity. In fact, they leave a wide margin for our power (potestas), and consider that much can happen without the intervention of any fatal necessity." There is indeed a necessary order, but it is not so powerful as to prevail over everything and even drag in its train "vitae nostrae libertatem." And this view "nos ex fide religionis nostrae omnia rite tuemur."15

Now, Ficino had a very great respect for Plethon. Their outlook on many philosophic problems was very similar; and they deal with many of the same topics. Both alike are concerned with the nature of the soul, the relations of universal and particular, the many and the one, the origin of the universe,

the hierarchy of being.1" Both Italian and Byzantine Platonists concentrated on the metaphysical aspects of Plato's thought, on the human soul and its relations with the universe, rather than on his treatment of social and political relationships-though these problems had concerned Plethon thirty years earlier, in his essays on political reform. 17

In particular, Ficino esteemed Plethon for his work in re-establishing the new-old tradition of the "pia philosophia," back through Proclus and the Neoplatonists of the Roman Empire on the one hand, and past Plato himself to Pythagoras and so on to Zoroaster on the other. Plethon was largely responsible for the inclusion of Zoroaster in the succession of sages, for he seems to have been the first to ascribe the so-called Oracula Chaldaica to Zoroaster, and it was because of him that Ficino and Pico della Mirandola were able to quote these "Oracles" so frequently and so confidently.18 Hence Ficino praised Plethon for his lectures before Cosimo de' Medici "de mysteriis Platonicis"-that is to say, concerning the esoteric tradition of philosophy through the great succession of thinkers. And thus Plethon becomes "alter Plato" in Ficino's eyes.19

When we turn to Ficino's concept of fate, therefore, the contrast in approach between the two men is very striking. Ficino quite definitely set out to prove that human beings are not entirely ruled by fate and necessity. In his view the very idea of "etlp[iv.q" is an error "circa quae non minus solebant Ethnici ineptire," through their failure to appreciate divine providence.so In chapter IX of his epitome of Plotinus he specifically objects to Plethon's thesis (though without actually naming him) that "Quicquid fit, ideo necessario et inevitabiliter evenire, quia cunctae simul causae connectuntur, positis autem omnibus undique causis, effectus necessario sequitur.'"21

However, Ficino's dislike of Plethonian fatalism stands most clearly revealed in his notes to his own copy of Plethon's treatise.

xx Ibid., p. 78, and cf. Oratio ad Theodorum, in P.G., CLX, cols. 844, 854. 12 Ibid.

1' Matthew Camariotes, pupil of Scholarios; his De Fato was published at Leyden in 1 722.

14 Georgios Gennadios Scholarios, later first Patriarch of Constantinople under the Turks, a notable champion of Orthodox beliefs; for his reply to Plethon see Oeuvres Complites de Gennade Scholarios, IV, Paris, 1935. 16 Ed. L. Mohler as vol. II of his Kardinal Bessarion als Theologe Humanist und Staatsmann, Paderborn, 1927, p. 1x8. But Bessarion was after all "Latinissimus Graecorum," in the words of Lorenzo Valla, who himself comes closer to the determinists in this question.

16 One need only compare the list of contents of the De Differentia or the great compendium, the N6potL, with the Theologica Platonica or the Epitoma Plotini. 17 Migne, P.G., CLX, cols. 821-66.

I8 For Plethon and Zoroaster, cf. M. Anastos, op. cit., p. 287 f. For Ficino on Plethon and the "pia philosophia," see Opera, Basle, 1576, fol. 1537.

19 Ibid., and fol. 327. so Ibid., 1871. 21 Ibid., 1677.


TWO BYZANTINE SCHOLARS AND THEIR RECEPTION IN ITALY 365 Ficino had a copy of all Plethon's general philosophic works, including his treatises On the Differences between Plato and Aristotle, with the Answer to Scholarios' attack on the same; On Fate; and On the Virtues, with his Eulogies of two Byzantine princesses-the Empress Helen, widow of Manuel II, and Cleope, nee Mala- testa of Pesaro, wife of Theodore II, Despot of the Morea. This collection is contained in Riccardiana MS. 76, which codex also contains Julian's Oration to the Sun King, Synesius On Dreams, with a Latin translation, and other similar works. Kristeller, in his Supplementum Ficinianum I, after listing these last, adds that "Caetera quae hoc codice continentur graeca sunt, sed adnotationibus latinis illustrantur." Indeed, there seem to be two or even three Latin hands at work. One of these, which has annotated Plethon's IIept Eltpa6p[v~% most closely, betrays considerable similarity in language and argument with Ficino's treatment of the question in his chapters De

fato in the Epitome to Plotinus, and elsewhere. The same hand, I think, has written "hic liber marsilii Ficini est" in the colophon. Hence, although I have not had the opportunity to compare this hand with any notes of this character which are quite definitely his, it is at the least highly probable that these comments should be ascribed to the most famous owner of the codex.22

The following transcript has been made by Miss Hankey and myself.

fol. 96v: Boetius et Tomas contra hoc probant deum certo scire que per causas in- determinatas eveniant.

fol. 97r: Proprium deorum est prescire futura. homines autem prevident inter se et illi quibus et quatenus dii volunt significare, unde si devitant presci- endo que alioquin futura forent, hoc quoque ipsum est fatale. similiter si non devitant. verum, o Plethon, frustra significant quando sic decli- nare non possunt.

fol. 97V23: Intellectus est dominus non simper sed suorum; i.e. interni populi sibi subditi. Ipse vero est domino sub- ditus altiori. [?] Item in vita volup- tuosa vel pratica sequitur externa sc. pro modo nature exercitationisque

sue, que duo sunt a deo. ergo ductus agit.

fol. 98r24: Libertas non diffinitur non esse necessitas, quia divina necessitas foret sed intus; neque diffinitur nulli subici, quia sic solus primus foret liber. sed diffinitur vivare ut vis, sive subjectus alicui sive non. ergo qui bene, ut optat, vivit, vivit liber, etiam si pareat.25

fol. 98v: Responde Plethoni: quomodo dii non sint causae peccatorum, si ut dicis, dii presciunt omnes futuros eventus certe, quia per causas certas quas ipsi habent in se ipsis, dum ipsi videlicet illorum sunt causae easque disponunt in se ipsis atque rebus? [?] item si, ut dicis, animum aber- rare, quia sic et natura et consuetu- dine sit institutus, deos autem et naturas tales dedisse et opiniones, sic exercitandi infudisse, ergo Plethon tibi ipsi repugnas.

Despite the vigour of the concluding phrase, we might note that in practice he sometimes comes quite close to Plethon's views. Con- sider, for instance, the passage from the Theologia Platonica, de Animae Immortalitate, where he argues that: "All minds . . . are connected so as to proceed in a long and con- tinuous series beginning from God their head. ... This their mutual connection, scintillarum- que infusionem a superioribus ad inferiores continue demanantem, we call providence. The head of all is the 'idolum' of the soul of the universe; to this are connected the twelve 'idola,' of the twelve souls, operating twelve spheres ... And so all the idola of rational souls mutually depend on one another by a certain 'conspiratio'; we think fate is a 'conspiratio' or harmony of this kind."'26

Evidently the repugnance which Ficino feels for Plethon's fatalism is not really a matter of differing logical positions. To the Florentine, as to his friend Pico, the dignity of man arises from his free will, his ability to choose for himself. Perhaps the difference does not only arise from differing tempera- ments or differing education. In the security and prosperity of the Medicean court, in the dignified leisure of Lorenzo's patronage and his country retreats, one could more easily 22 P. O. Kristeller, Supplementum Ficinianum, Florence,

1937, I, p. xvii, listing the manuscripts in the possession of Ficino. Also mentioned in G. Vitelli, "Indice de' Codici Greci della Biblioteca Riccardiana, etc.," Studi Italiani de Filologia Classica, II, 1894, p. 523.

3a Cf. Ficino, fol. 1706.

24 Cf. opening chapter of section De Fato, in Epitoma Plotini, ibid., fol. 1673.

25 Cf. ibid., fol. 1677. 26 Ibid., fol. 289.


366 MISCELLANEOUS NOTES believe in the liberty of man's will and in his ability to make his own moral decisions and decide, within limits, his own destiny. God's benevolent prescience allowed scope for man's free operation.

The Greek, however, saw only the helplessness of the human situation. He had once tried to put forward proposals for the reform of all the social evils through which he felt the Byzantine state was rotting internally. But none of his suggestions had been carried out, and the flood-tide of Turkish conquest con- tinued to sweep away the remaining frag- ments of the Empire, and began to encroach on the Despotate of the Morea-where Plethon lived at the Despot's court at Mystra, and which he had once regarded as the last hope for a renascent Hellenism. He found that he was himself forced to take part in the undermining of the state in order to provide for his family. For example, he had com- plained of those who expected rich rewards for their services to the Despot. Like Phrantzes, the historian of the fall of Byzantium, he had observed how the Morea was weakened in the face of its enemies by the anxiety of the nobility to hold their local government com- missions as lordships (oaOOvtiLt) rather than simply as governorships (xe9pahXss).27 And yet the grants made by various Despots to Plethon and his sons in his own lifetime could well serve as an illustration of this process of feudal decentralization, in an exaggerated form: as if Plethon himself had now despaired of the state, and was reduced to grasping for his personal interests whatever could be salvaged from the debris. Moral optimism cannot have been easy for one who, in the words of a hostile contemporary, "non fugit eum quam extinctus sit ardor religionis nostrae, iniuriis, adulteriis, rapinis, caedibus omnia esse referta cognovit, haec mutationum semper magnarum causas fuisse non igno- rabat." 28

It would be foolish to imply that these two contrasting views of fate were determined by the contrasting experiences of political and social life. But perhaps Plethon found some consolation for personal failure and national disaster in his concept of a remorseless destiny that must in the outcome eventually prove beneficial; whereas Ficino had all his life enjoyed the patronage of one of the wealthiest

and securest families in Europe. He was economically protected by their favour, and always sheltered from the harsher aspects of political life. He could see in this "Platonic Academy" the fruition of his dreams, and he was able to gather round him friends of a similar outlook for the realization of his intellectual ideals. The world and human liberty might well look different from the tranquillity of Careggi than they appeared to a dis- illusioned courtier from the imperilled walls of Mystra.

II DEMETRIOS RAOUL KAVAKES ON THE

NATURE OF THE SUN

Under the sober exterior of intellectual life strange currents run, which only emerge to the surface when some of the more imagina- tive minds become dissatisfied with the estab- lished synthesis of knowledge, and seek about uncertainly for new concepts to replace it. The humanist circles of Quattrocento Italy and their friends, the Byzantine exiles, lived in an atmosphere favourable to inquiry along some curious paths. One of the most curious is the approach to the cosmos which produced those grandiloquent and ecstatic eulogies of the sun in which we may see the germ of the heliocentric theory. At least it has something in common with the approach to the problem of Nicolaus Cusanus and of later scholars such as Copernicus and Kepler. The manuscripts ofJulian the Apostate's Oration to the Sun King, not unnaturally neglected by orthodox scholarship, then received a fresh popularity, and the sun was again almost an object of worship to those whose temperament led them to a more mystical and pantheistic approach to the universe.29

One man alone, it appears, became a complete convert to Julian's teaching. Bidez has already shown how much Demetrios Raoul Kavakes himself accepted what he copied down as absolute and supreme truth. In addition to the annotations described by Bidez, he seems to have composed a little expose of his own opinions, or Theorema, preserved in MS. Estense T. 8. 12, fol. I67r as OEcopwac 8L7Vtrptou CXXvoq Aoxe~a&xovlou. Here is, I fancy, the most comprehensive manifesto of solar mysticism in the period, in

27 Cf. Phrantzes, Migne, P.G., CLVI, col. Io66, with Plethon, ibid., CLX, col. 833 etc.

28 George of Trebizond, Comparatio Phylosophorum Aristotelis et Platonis, Venice, 1523, P. 162.

29 J. Bidez, La Tradition manuscrite et les Editions des Discours de l'Empereur Julien, 1929, p. 76 f. For an important review of this from the point of view of Kavakes and his origins at Mystra, see H. Gregoire, in Byzantion, V, 1929, p. 733 f.


TWO BYZANTINE SCHOLARS AND THEIR RECEPTION IN ITALY 367 which all the various facets of his revelation are set out in a logically inevitable fashion: although a certain distrust of scientific knowledge shows itself, in the onrush of pantheist exultation. But perhaps before considering the treatise in detail, we should add a little by way of a biography of this rather eccentric figure. 30

It appears that he was born in Constanti- nople or its vicinity-he once signed himself "the Thracian"--of a very exalted family. Certainly he was proud enough of his descent in the fourth generation from the great Theodore Metochites, sometime Grand Logo- thete of the Palaeologan emperors in the early fourteenth century: for he wrote out his genealogy and some of the family correspon- dence, and was anxious to hand on to his son Manilius the knowledge of his nobility.3' On one occasion he signed a manuscript: o6 xaCXlypacpoS, ),'

. &.pXov-rxij r&F.eoS auxh),YrLX; "not a scribe but of the noble senatorial order"--which perhaps accounts also for his very erratic spelling of Greek.

He first appears in the 1440's, at Mystra, near the ancient Sparta, the capital of the Despotate of the Morea. Evidently he was then studying under that equally unusual figure, Gemistos Plethon, who had gathered round him quite a large circle of admiring pupils. We possess two letters from this period, written to Kavakes by two notable champions of orthodoxy, Georgios Scholarios, later first Patriarch of Constantinople under the Turks, and his friend Matthew Cama- riotes. They mention Plethon's attack on the Latin dogma concerning the procession of the Holy Spirit, and his Treatise on the Virtues, copies of which, it seems, had been sent to them by Kavakes, for they write partly to thank him.32 A manuscript of Ps.-Aristotle's De Mundo by Nicholas Lemenites, notary of the cathedral of Mystra, was copied for Demetrios in 1441,33 when we must take it that he was already fairly mature, and quite wealthy. A letter addressed to him by one

Gabriel the Monk must be of approximately the same period. Unfortunately it is not at all easy to make out, but it appears to suggest that Kavakes returned for a while to the capital, and was given advice on how to conduct himself at court, in order to win the esteem of the Emperor, as he had won that of the Despot of Morea.34 The post he came to hold was perhaps connected with a monastic house; in any case his personal associations, and a little invocation to the Virgin at the foot of the page beneath this letter, seem to cast doubt on his later declaration that he had been a pagan and a sun-worshipper since the age of seventeen.35

Thereafter hardly anything is known of his activities for the next forty years. It has been stated, without evidence shown, that he served as a mercenary soldier after the fall of the Despotate.36 The only thing certain about his later career is that he arrived in Rome in 1466, and occupied all his old age as a copyist, in order to earn a living, and perhaps also to assist in the preservation of Hellenic culture."3 All his dated manuscripts are of the period 1480-87. He had some connection with Bessarion after his arrival, since he refers to a conversation with him, and possessed copies of some of Bessarion's cor- respondence, notably his letter to Theodore of Gaza, the wide dissemination of which among the Greek exiles we might explain as due to its concise expression of the ideal of all those engaged in keeping Greek literature alive.38 He definitely had some dealings with Ciriaco of Ancona whose notes are found in two of Demetrios's most important manuscripts.39

Kavakes died at the age of ninety in Rome, and is buried in Bessarion's Church of SS. Apostoli.40 In one of his manuscripts he tells of a dream he had towards the end of his life, in which Plethon appeared to him, and said, "mTyv &aOe~axv irex"-"You have spoken the

80 For such information as we have on his life, see prin- cipally S. P. Lambros, Aaxe8~cLovtot Bt),Ltoyp&iPO o, in his year-book Neoq

'EX-qvovicov, IV, I907,

pp. 331 ff.; K. Sathas, Neoah-qvLtxw 0DLoQoylc, Athens, x868; D. A. Zakythinos, Le Despotat grec de Morle, II, Athens, 1954. 31 MS. Estense T. 8. I2; Lambros, op. cit., p. 339. 32 MS. Estense T. 8. I2; pub. E. Legrand, Cent dix Lettres grecques de Franfois Filelfe, Paris, 1892, p. 311 f. For their lives and works, see (Euvres compldtes de Gennade Scholarios, ed. L. Petit, Paris, 1935; and Patrologia Graeca, CLX.

33 Lambros, op. cit., p. 185.

3* MS. Estense T. 8. 12, fol. I77r. Unpub., though Lambros intended to do so; see op. cit., p. 338.

5 Bidez, op. cit., pp. 6I, 77-78. 36 Sathas, op. cit., p. 76. A. Khatzes, 'OL 'PxouA, 'PTaX, 'PaxL, Kirchhain I909, suggests that Sathas was misled by the phrase "Spartanus eques" on Kavakes' tombstone.

37 Lambros, op. cit., pp. 331-4. 38 Part pub. in Pat. Graec. CLXI, 685. Kavakes'

copy is now MS. Ottob. gr. 181. His conversation with Bessarion (about Plethon's great qualities as a philosopher) in a marginal note to MS. Vat. gr. 2236, is pub. by G. Mercati, "Minuzie. 45" in Bessarione, XXXVIII, 1922 [Opere minori, IV, p. 173 f.]. 39 MSS. Est. T. 8. I2 and Vat. gr. 173.

40 For his epitaph there, see E. Legrand, Bibliographie Hellinique . . . -XVe et XVIe sikcles, Paris, 1885-~9o6.


368 MISCELLANEOUS NOTES truth."41 If this means by expounding his master's doctrines he was justified, for there is no doubt of his loyalty to what he had been taught. He also learnt from Plethon the practice of writing down in a note-book any sentence or notion that particularly struck him, and of composing lists for use in reference. Thus we can learn something of his interests and his ideas from the jottings, and the notes and ejaculations, which fill the margins and end-pages of many of his manuscripts.42 For instance, he warns the West not to be weakened as the Greeks had been, by internal feuds, and not to lose control of the sea, which can be a bridge as well as a barrier.43

In addition to annotating the manuscripts of others, he composed a Theorema of his own. Lambros, it is true, calls the passage headed OeCwpLpcx 8.yrptou XX7voc AoxeX8oLovtou a compilation of "different sayings of ancient philosophers collected by Kavakes,44 and it is certainly followed by such a collection. But the title, and the fact that he does not make his customary marginal ascription to an ancient authority, incline me to think that the Theorema is his own work. Although he comes closer to Julian than any other writer, and his dependence on the Oration to the Sun King is very clear, there is very little actual quotation.

Now Plethon had been influenced by Julian, and had addressed the Sun King in his neo-polytheistic prayers, but in his scheme the Sun was always a subordinate part of the Pantheon.45 To KavakesJulian was the great hero, and his speech on the Sun the highest revelation of ultimate truth, in which the Sun dominates everything. Before long, sun-worship had led him on to a new track. Pursuing certain passages of Julian and Pliny, taken from their contexts, he seems to have come almost to the conclusion that the Sun could not revolve as a satellite round the earth, but instead the whole universe must revolve round, and be moved by, the Sun. Even Plethon and

Strabo (or the anonymous writer attached to them in Vat. gr. 173) can be criticized for failing to appreciate the divinity of the Sun and its central position in the universe.

This is how the Theorema describes the wonderful nature of the Sun, beginning with its position in the universe: "It is to be posited that this sphere is thickly populated, as a camp with an army; and has the Sun for a King. This Sun-King then, is borne from west to east. And the whole camp longs to be close to the King, to be seen near him, and so it necessarily follows that the camp of the army moves in the opposite direction to the King, face to face with him so as to be seen, and to contemplate the incomparable spec- tacle of his mantle. And since all long for this, and because of the ordinance of their governor, they follow their cause and King and God, and are carried along continually and eternally from east to west. Then, according to a second reason too, all these same opposed motions are natural perfections of the whole cosmos, and categories of life .. .",4 His distrust of-I suppose we should translate "scientific reasoning"--derives from his astonishment that mankind has been so slow to acknowledge the supreme divinity of the sun. Julian himself would have been satisfied with a heliolatry so rapt and enthusiastic, so deeply cognizant of the world's need for the sun's essential presence. Kavakes even went beyond Julian in his insistence on the visible and perceptible sun.47

4' Lambros, op. cit., p. 336. 4* Apart from those mentioned above, also MSS.

British Museum Add. 5424, and Vat. gr. 2236. ,S MS. Vat. gr. 173, fol. 40. ,4 Lambros, op. cit., p. 338. Puntoni, "Indice dei Codici greci della Biblioteca Estense," in Studi italiani

di Filologia classica, IV, 1896, p. 477, refers us to Demetrius the Laconian, an obscure disciple of Epicurus! Several of the MS. notes of Kavakes to Vat. gr. 1883 and 2236, reproduced by Bidez, op. cit., pp. 77- 78, recall the phraseology of the Theorema.

,1 Plethon, N6MoL, ed. C. Alexandre, Paris, I858, pp. 136, 154, 164.

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To 8e arporo,ecov

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TCo MalheL XOTOm 7r poa rov, Wa'm x.L 690-VOCL XOXL OaCsMMaOcL OxML &7roXuaML rT 7% x I-% 0eoCO doauvxp'rou XL0ovoc 0ovT .q xOCL 'ouov =7~vreS

iptel.evoL xo r ' ' rou xpouvroUVS i-n r. poa'rFg copCPEPOV7o bg ovarox-nq i aE~ac ovexw S xkat &aL&cS kinot.eVOL 'r) od'rLo xo( fpoQ xe- XOCL 0ey. Mrevrzoc xo XOC'roC eU'vrepov Thyov, oCu'roL OXOL MV7v'rLOL

X?'Vae'S, 'rexteoa.,... A long description follows, of the Sun's omnipotence and wisdom, the source of all good, all intelligence, all life. Cf. this translation of Pliny, Hist. nat., II, iv, 12-13, isolated on fol. 150r of Est. T. 8. 12:

'roury cov ae eaoq 00o EpPepEr'CL, .LeyEiEL Ire xL aUVOcpt , spr0og, xlwov xoCV 7~ptLyyoV

XOCL a 8txoou- P-Mvo 0 PLovov xaLCpouS e OL x oCv' o 7TrC 78S, &?xa xOCL &arpoc ocu'roc 're XOCL o'pocvov. 'rou'roV OVy LVLo 'rou au4LxcrvroS xoa~Lou

uX.v xo~t &ahoS youv xca

auPL7r0aCY In'- cpuaErS 71PCrOV iXa'oc'v E XOaC Osov o,')reov. 47 Cf. Julian, Oration IV, esp. I35b, 146b, I5ib,

which were Kavakes' chief sources.


TWO BYZANTINE SCHOLARS AND THEIR RECEPTION IN ITALY 369 I have already suggested the relevance of

Demetrios' sun-worship for later and more scientific developments. The Theorema leaves the exact relations of the earth to the sun rather vague. But he apparently denies that the earth can be in the centre of the universe, in a note to the anonymous treatise On the Nature and Position of the Earth, sandwiched between Strabo, and Plethon's Corrections to Strabo, in Vat. gr. 173, at the foot of fol. 95v:

"This man says, like many others, that the earth holds the central position vis-a-vis the sphere of the sun. What Julian says about the sun's disc in his Oration to the Sun King is correct: 'The disc is borne to the starless sphere, much higher than the sphere of the fixed stars, so it is not in the midst of the planets'.. ." etc.48

Confused though it be, I think we can deduce from all this that Kavakes so inter- preted Julian and Pliny as to be led to question at least the earth's central position in the universe. Evidently he must have remained undecided, conscious of the opposition of classical science-represented by the De Mundo in the same codex as his Theorema-to the cosmology in which he wanted to believe, on account of his reverence for the sun. It is hardly surprising to come across the question:

"If there is no better way of knowing the truth than by science, why do so many dis- agree on what truth is?"

One need not suppose that Demetrios had much influence. His codex passed, presumably by way of his son Manilius, to Aldus Manutius, for whom Manilius edited at least one classical text.49 The codex bears the words Opera Aid. Manuce stamped on the side. But in any case his ideas are significant of a certain train of mind among the more adven- turous in the century before Copernicus. Bidez has commented on the popularity of Julian's Oration to the Sun King during this period, and on Kavakes' not inconsiderable share in disseminating it. The texts suddenly multiply, with copious annotations.50 One might compare the expressions of Kavakes with Cusanus, for instance in his De Docta

Ignorantia, and still more in VII and VIII of his Exercitationes (e.g. "Sine influentia solis, nihil vivit. Participant igitur omnia motum vitae, a motu Solis in zodiaco seu arculo vitae. Aliae stellae per suum motum non influunt motum motum vitae; Sed circa esse vitae, disponunt iuxta suam virtutem.").51

But there is a much more striking resem- blance in Copernicus himself:

In medio vero omnium residet sol. Quis in hoc pulcherrimo templo lampadem hanc in alio vel meliori loco poneret, quam unde totum simul possit illuminare: si quidem non inepte quidam lucernam mundi, alii mentem, alii rectorem vocant. Trismegistus Visibilem Deum, Sophoclis Electra intuentem omnia: ita profecto tanquam in solio regali Sol residens circumagentem gubernat astrorum familiam.52

(In the midst of all dwells the sun. What man is there who could choose another and better place in this most glorious temple for this brilliant luminary, than that from which it can at the same time light the whole universe? It is not without reason that some have called the sun the world's lantern, the soul, the ruler of the universe. Trismegistus calls it visible god, Sophocles' Electra "he who sees all". And so, as if seated on a royal throne, the Sun governs the family of planets as they circle round him.)

The same expressions, the same authorities, are used here, as by Kavakes. Even if Kavakes' own conception of the solar system may have been closer to that held by Tycho Brahe, for example, it seems safe to conclude that he was moving in the same direction as Copernicus, if for peculiar reasons. He was not a very brilliant man. Moreover his phonetic orthography increases the bizarre aspect of his work. Yet when one sees the fruits of an uncertain germination such as this, it seems a pity that he should be neglected entirely. For the study of his boldly original, if eccentric, mind can cast a valu- able illumination on an interesting and still obscure substratum in contemporary thought, and show where Neoplatonist pantheism could lead; and the effects of reverence for

m48 yYn xevVpou Toyov XEL rpoq T-wv .htocx'v ocpCLpCV, xcOo xac

oo ro xoat &),XoL 7oXOLt ?EouaCv.

xOCXov Tct O7Cp 9CpL 'IouXhlvoq Ept Tou 8taxou &vk T 7rpoS PGaLChe hov oyC: 'O 6 8axoq I=L 17% avaorpou CPEPECOtL, 7O),U T%

' &)avouq plotcpov* o7CO

8S TV EVV ,v OWVOV, oX

&e-L 70 pte=ov' x0a 'rc g-nq. 49 E. Legrand, Bibliographie Hellinique, III, p. 258 f.

1o Bidez, op. cit., pp. 76 ff.

5" Opera, Basle, 1565, p. 589; and cf. p. 623. 2 De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, I. x. The translation is slightly modified from that by J. F. Dobson, in Royal Astron. Soc., Occasional Notes, X, 1947, p. g9. For Copernicus' reverence for the sun, v. H. S. Jones, Copernicus, 1943; and A. Armitage, Copernicus and the Reformation of Astronomy, 1950. Cf. E. A. Burtt, Metaphysical Foundations of modern Science, p. 47 f.


370 MISCELLANEOUS NOTES classical authors, when statements were taken literally that had never been meant to be treated as scientifically true. So the troubled and confused intellect of an impoverished "Spartan gentleman" in exile, and his eccen-

tric and ecstatic worship, can be seen as a symptom of a much greater change in cosmology than even he could envisage.

A. KELLER

THE INTERPOLATED TEXT OF THE VITRUVIAN EPITOME

In his edition of the late classical Epitome of Vitruvius, Liber Artis Architectonicae, attri- buted to Faventinus,1 published in Exercita- tiones Vitruvianae, Padua, 1739, J. Poleni printed as footnotes, without comment, a number of short interpolated passages (of a later date than the Epitome and having noth- ing to do with architecture) which he had found in one of the manuscripts he had col- lated, Vat. MS. reg. 1286. This manuscript contains nine interpolations or addenda to the Epitome, of which Poleni printed the first five, though mentioning the existence of the others. Later editors of the Epitome2 have not reprinted any of these interpolations, as being, in Poleni's words, "nihil ad rem," though they have indicated that the text of the Vatican manuscript (referred to here as V) is not unique, calling attention to three other manuscripts with the same, or milaris peculiarities: Brit. Mus. Sloane 296 (S), Paris B. N. lat. 6842c (P) and Laon 403 (L). To these four the present writer wishes to add two others: Trin. Coll. Camb. 0. 3. 42 (C) (M. R. James, Cat. of the MSS. of Trinity Coll., 1902, III, p. 224), and Brit. Mus. Add. 44922 (A), uncatalogued.3 All six manuscripts are apparently not later than the end of the twelfth century. Further, in all six, the interpolated version of the Vitruvian Epitome is preceded by a text of Palladius, De Agricultura.

The purpose of the present article is to describe the interpolations to Faventinus found in this group of manuscripts. It will not attempt the far more difficult task of say-

ing how this interpolated version of the Epitome originated. The interpolated pieces are mostly technical recipes probably origi- nating in about the tenth century, some of them to be found in the compendia Mappae Clavicula, Schedula Diversarum Artium and De Coloribus: further particulars about each inter- polation will be given below, after the cata- logue of the whole interpolated epitome. The rubric (omitted in S) is "Incipit de architec- tura valde utilis scientia. De libris anti- quorum qui de hoc scripserunt non parvo labore excerpta." The incipit is "Multa ora- tione de artis architectorie peritia multa ...", as compared with "De artis architectonicae [architecturae, Thorndike and Kibre, Incipits, p. 17o] peritia multa" in the ordinary un- interpolated version. Then follows the Vitruvian Epitome with interpolations, viz. (S omits titles):

I. Faventinus i-vii. 2. "De fistulis organicis," three chapters

on organ-pipes. An introduction, "Post fistulas tuborum fusiles pauca subtexere licuit de fistulis organicis quae fiunt hoc modo," links Faventinus vii (on water-pipes) to this treatise, which begins "Cuprum purissimum tundendo." Chapter i ends "iocundior istis." Chapter ii begins "capsam cui supponantur," chapter iii begins "post haec ordinantur," ends "per fistulas refundat."

3. Faventinus viii-xxvi. 4. "De generibus colorum," two chapters

on colours. Contains some of Faventinus xxvii, which it replaces, but is closer to Heraclius, De Coloribus, III, 50-55 (ed. A. Ilg, Vienna, 1873, pp. 85-91). Begins "Colores alii sunt albi, alii nigri." Chapter ii begins "Colores autem," ends "inficiunt indici colorem."

5. "De croco hispanico," a brief tract on how to make tin shine like gold. A similar recipe is Mappae Clavicula 60o (ed. A. Way, Archaeologia, XXXII, I847, p. 202). Begins "crocus quoque hispanicus."

6. "Quomodo scribatur de auro vel cupro." Theophilus, Schedula, I, xxxv, ed. A. Ilg,

x The attribution of the epitome of Vitruvius to M. Cetus Faventinus occurs in a MS. fragment at Vienna (suppl. 2867, 8th or 9th century).

2 The most useful editions, as far as this article is concerned, are V. Rose and H. Miiller-Strfibing, Leipzig, 1867, and V. Rose, Teubner, 1899, referred to in the text as Rose I and Rose 2.

8 This MS. belonged to Sir John Prise and has now been mentioned by N. R. Ker, Sir John Prise, Biblio- graphical Society, London, 1955.


Article Contentsp. 363p. 364p. 365p. 366p. 367p. 368p. 369p. 370

Issue Table of ContentsJournal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 20, No. 3/4 (Jul. - Dec., 1957), pp. 187-392Front MatterFlorentine Political Assumptions in the Period of Savonarola and Soderini [pp. 187-214]Jean Louis Guez de Balzac's le Prince: A Revaluation [pp. 215-247]The Rose-Window [pp. 248-297]Tiepolo's Treatment of Classical Story at Villa Valmarana: A Study in Eighteenth-Century Iconography and Aesthetics [pp. 298-317]The Sea of Time and Space [pp. 318-337]John Constable, 1810-1816: A Chronological Study [pp. 338-357]Miscellaneous NotesObservations on the Iconography of the Wound in Christ's Side, with Special Reference to Its Position [pp. 358-362]Two Byzantine Scholars and Their Reception in Italy [pp. 363-370]The Interpolated Text of the Vitruvian Epitome [pp. 370-372]A Song from Campion's Lord's Masque [pp. 373-375]

Back Matter [pp. 376-391]

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