Greece Reinvented Brill’S Studies in Intellectual History
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Greece Reinvented Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History General Editor Han van Ruler (Erasmus University Rotterdam) Founded by Arjo Vanderjagt Editorial Board C. S. Celenza ( Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore) M. Colish (Yale University) J. I. Israel (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton) A. Koba (University of Tokyo) M. Mugnai (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa) W. Otten (University of Chicago) VOLUME 247 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/bsih Greece Reinvented Transformations of Byzantine Hellenism in Renaissance Italy By Han Lamers LEIDEN | BOSTON Cover illustration: portraits of nine Greek scholars: Cardinal Bessarion, Manuel Chrysoloras, Demetrius Chalcondylas, Theodore Gazes, John Argyropoulos, George Trapezuntius, Markos Mousouros, Michele Tarcaniota Marullo and Ianus Lascaris. Print by Theodoor Galle, Antwerp, around 1600. Courtesy Rijksmuseum Amsterdam (object RP-P-OB-6846). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Lamers, Han, author. Title: Greece reinvented : transformations of Byzantine Hellenism in Renaissance Italy / by Han Lamers. Description: Leiden : Brill, [2016] | Series: Brill’s studies in intellectual history, ISSN 0920-8607 ; Volume 247 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015032908| ISBN 9789004297555 (hardback : alkaline paper) | ISBN 9789004303799 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Renaissance—Italy—History. | Greeks—Migrations—History—To 1500. | Byzantine Empire—History—1081-1453. | Byzantine Empire—Intellectual life. | Italy—Intellectual life—1268-1559. Classification: LCC CB367 .L36 2016 | DDC 940.2/1—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015032908 This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 0920-8607 isbn 978-90-04-29755-5 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-30379-9 (e-book) Copyright 2015 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Contents Preface vii Acknowledgements ix Conventions and Abbreviations xi List of Illustrations xiii List of Maps xiv Introduction 1 1 A Hellenic Alternative: The Emergence of Greekness in Byzantium 28 2 Making the Best of It: The Negotiation of Greekness in Italy 63 3 Freedom and Community: The Secular Greekness of Cardinal Bessarion 92 4 The Greek Tradition as a Combat Zone: Hellenocentrism in the Work of George Trapezuntius of Crete 133 5 Greekness as Cultural Common Ground: Ianus Lascaris’ Attempt at Greco-Latin Ecumenism 166 6 Greekness Without Greece: Michele Tarcaniota Marullo and Manilio Cabacio Rallo 200 7 The Territorialisation of Hellenism: Giovanni Gemisto’s Vision of the Greek World 233 Conclusion: Greece Reinvented 270 Appendices 283 1 Gemisto’s Gallery of Greek Heroes 283 2 Gemisto’s Imaginary Greece 293 Bibliography 314 Index 386 Preface The Great Council Hall in Venice once exhibited a series of paintings on his- torical subjects, begun by Gentile Bellini in 1474 but executed by various paint- ers over several decades. In the scene of the Consignment of the Umbrella, Vittore Carpaccio depicted the pope, the emperor, and the doge at their arrival at the port of Ancona in 1177, when the Venetian prince received, as a token of his autonomy, the umbrella from Pope Alexander III. The painter also incor- porated some prominent figures from the more recent past into the scene. Among them were, dressed in the Greek manner with “quasi-Albanian hats” on their heads, Manuel Chrysoloras, Theodore Gazes, John Argyropoulos, George Trapezuntius, and Demetrius Chalcondylas: five Byzantine Greek scholars who had worked and lived in Italy during the long fifteenth century. Their portraits have rightly been said to constitute a virtual chronology of Hellenic studies in Quattrocento Italy: from the arrival of Manuel Chrysoloras in Florence in 1397 to the death of Demetrius Chalcondylas in Milan in 1511, while Carpaccio was working on his painting.1 Fire destroyed the work in 1577, but Carpaccio’s inclusion of the Greek scholars shows that these men were seen as ornaments to the cultural and intellectual history of Venice, even if they spent most of their active careers outside that city. Their role in the flourishing of Renaissance culture is also recognised in literary sources, most notably in Paolo Giovio’s famous history of illustrious men of letters, published in the year Carpaccio’s painting was lost in flames, which included the biographies of the Greek scholars depicted in Venice, among others, accompanied by their posthumous portraits. Modern scholarship, too, has stressed the eminent importance of these scholars for the transmission of Greek literature from Byzantium via Italy to the Western world. Chrysoloras wrote the first Greek grammar for a Latin audience, Gazes translated works of Artistotle and Theophrastus into Latin, Argyropoulos intro- duced Greek philosophy to his students, Trapezuntius wrote the first human- ist handbook of rhetoric, and Chalcondylas prepared, during his professorship at Florence, the first printed edition of all of Homer’s surviving works (1489). Others—Cardinal Bessarion, Andronikos Kontovlakas, Andronikos Kallistos, Ianus and Constantine Lascaris, Markos Mousouros, and many more lesser- known scholars, copyists, and editors—also greatly contributed to the trans- mission and dissemination of Greek letters in the West. 1 See Brown (1996: 147–48). The description of the scene with the Greeks is in Sansovino (1581: 132r). viii preface At the same time, Carpaccio’s inclusion of the five Greeks in his scene epitomises the rather one-sided way in which the Byzantine intelligentsia in Italy have normally been viewed: as Oriental, Greek foreigners who—instru- mental to the culture that hosted them—contributed to the successes of the Italian Renaissance and Latin humanism. This book reverses that perspective by looking at what men like Theodore Gazes and George Trapezuntius had to say about themselves and how they saw their role in the world. They regarded themselves as Greeks, the descendants and heirs of the ancient Hellenes, and claimed the Greek heritage as their own. They called themselves remnants of ancient Hellas and considered the salvation of Hellenism as their mission. It is my contention that, in view of the fact that the ‘Byzantines’ had tradition- ally seen themselves as Romans, the outspoken and sometimes provocative ‘Greekness’ of the Byzantine intelligentsia in Italy is not so self-evident as it might seem in hindsight, with modern Greek nationalism in mind, but must be regarded as a cultural project that prompts questions and asks for explana- tions. It is one of the more perplexing ironies of history that, exactly at the time that Byzantium, the main centre of Greek culture for centuries, declined and collapsed, a ‘new Greece’ emerged outside the territory of the late Byzantine Empire and outside Greek-speaking lands. This new brand of Hellenism had its roots in Byzantium but assumed new significance as it developed in new directions in Italy. On the basis of largely understudied sources in Greek, Latin, and Italian, this book explores how the transformation of Hellenism began in Byzantium and took hold in Italy during the long fifteenth century (ca. 1390–1520), with particular emphasis on the period from the second half of the fifteenth century onwards: the period also roughly indicated by the Greek portraits once present in the Great Council Hall of this “second Byzantium” at the Laguna. Acknowledgements The present study originated in my doctoral thesis, made possible by a spe- cial grant of the Dutch Council for Arts and Sciences (NWO, Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek). I publicly defended my the- sis at the University of Leiden on 12 June 2013, and I am grateful to the seven members of the examination committee for sharing their thoughts with me on this occasion: Gerard Boter, Jonathan Harris, Joep Leerssen, Nicolette Mout, Judith Pollmann, Anthonya Visser, and Antje Wessels. The better parts of this study pay tribute to the dedication of my supervisors Ineke Sluiter, Anthony Grafton, and Arnoud Visser, whom I want to thank for their ever-encouraging criticisms. I am also grateful to Han van Ruler, Arjan van Dijk, Ivo Romein, and Theo Joppe as well as Brill’s anonymous reviewers, for their valuable assistance in transforming my dissertation into the present monograph. It is exciting to work in a blossoming field such as the study of Renaissance Hellenism. Since I completed my thesis in September 2012, numerous relevant studies, monographs, editions, and translations have continued to appear. In revising my work, I did my best to acknowledge as many of them as I could. Apart from the many more contributions