Download PDF | John W. Nesbitt - Byzantine Authors_ Literary Activities and Preoccupations_ Texts and Translations Dedicated to the Memory of Nicolas Oikonomides-Brill ,2003.
295 Pages
PREFACE
This volume was born from a wish to honor the memory of a man who was for many of the contributors both a mentor and a friend. From this wish evolved the idea of publishing a group of texts and translations. The authors were free to choose their texts and as a result the contributions are of varying length and content. The longest, the De obsidione toleranda (chapter eight), is a military manual, an instruction booklet on techniques of countering the investment of a town or fort. The publication of Prof. Sullivan’s translation provides the opportunity to reprint the (Brill) Greek text of 1947.
In contrast with defensive tactics, the two orations (chapter seven) which Dr. McGeer has translated reflect on imperial military policy and the outward expansion of Byzantium into Moslem territories. Dr. McGrath (chapter 6) has translated a text which offers a glimpse of the precarious nature of the practice of Christianity within the borders of Islam.
In a much lighter vein are Prof. Magdalino’s translation of an ekphrasis (chapter one) celebrating the merits of a cake decorated with signs of the zodiac and Prof. Dennis’s translations of letters of Psellos (chapter 4) describing the ribald doings of a monk named Elias. Dr. Nesbitt’s text (chapter 3) on Helena’s discovery of the cross is offered as a contribution to the history of pilgrimage. Prof. Miller’s texts (chapter 2) provide a valuable insight into the educational activities of the Orphanotropheion of St. Paul and the teaching techniques in vogue among instructors at this orphanage. Prof. Duffy and his student have contributed a hagiographical text relating some five miracles of the popular Egyptian saint, St. Menas.
The volume presents a wide spectrum of literary genres and topics which claimed the attention of Byzantine writers and their reading public.
The editor gratefully acknowledges the help of Dr. McGrath in resolving computer-related problems. He also wishes to thank Dr. McGrath, and his wife Carla, for help with proofreading. Thanks are also expressed to Dr. Karen Rasmussen for her patience in formatting this book and preparing the Adobe Acrobat version from which it is printed.
COSMOLOGICAL CONFECTIONERY AND EQUAL OPPORTUNITY IN THE ELEVENTH CENTURY. AN EKPHRASIS BY CHRISTOPHER OF MITYLENE (POEM 42)
Paul Magdalino
Although published a century ago, the poems of Christopher of Mitylene deserve to be better known for their rich information on the realities and mentalities of Byzantine secular society.' A short article by Nikos Oikonomides remains the best introduction to this material.’ It therefore seems fitting that a collection of translations dedicated to Nikos’ memory should include one of Christopher’s least known and more unusual pieces.* As an ekphrasis, or rhetorical description, it is singular in three ways: in describing a piece of confectionery, in celebrating a work of art by a woman, and in attesting to a type of representation which is hardly ever encountered in Byzantine art of the medieval period.
.. ina circle the Zodiac in dough, to his cousin
I saw the heavens as works of your fingers. For from modest but smooth dough, you have stretched out the heavens for us like a curtain,* and you have adorned it with houses of the stars. By houses I mean the double sextet of the Zodiac, which you have put forward as symbols of the virtues and passions, most vividly for all people: Leo for the manly, Taurus for the savage, Gemini for fornicators’ and Virgo for the continent, Cancer for the twisted, most fittingly, Libra for the just, and Sagittarius for the malevolent. Capricorn is for those whose bed has been dishonoured, while for the senseless, Aries is wisely chosen.
Aquarius is appropriate to the dropsical, speechless Pisces to all quiet types, and Scorpio to all stinging slanderous tongues. These are the houses of the wandering stars. Two trios of duck eggs keep the exact shape of the Pleiades, while the hens’ eggs you may understand as the planets, Mercury, Moon, Sun and Jupiter, Venus, Mars and Saturn too, for though they may be fixed and established, they are still seven in number. Of the five larger eggs, the middle one is to be taken as the star of Orion, for Scorpio aspects him diametrically, signifying the ancient wound just as it happened.° But the other four acquire a novel significance. For the four positions of the four eggs are a most exact fourfold fixation of the four cardinal points, of the ascendant, that is the east, of the setting, that is dusky evening, of the meridian, that is mid-day, and the anti-meridian, the northern quarter.
The eggs themselves signify the foursome of winds, blowing from the four points of heaven.’ For Zephyr comes out of the west, Apeliotes from the eastern parts, while Notos proceeds from the south, and as for the Arctic wind, even if explanation falls silent, the very name shows whence it blows. What then of the quartet of pastry finials which cap the eggs? This is the quartet of seasons in the sky, for as the wise rhapsody bears witness, the seasons dwell at the gates of heaven.
I would even have seen here what the starless sphere of heaven looks like, were it not completely invisible to mortal men; for it is fashioned and is present here, but is not seen: that is its nature. So wise and resourceful in her mind is the creator of this new sky. O all wise Providence of God the Word, what arts you bestow even upon women, what minds you implant in them too! Others may talk of men like Pheidias, Zeuxis indeed and Parrasios, Polygnotos the actually unknown, Polykleitos who rather is inglorious, and Aglaophon of the murky intellect, even the resourceful hands of Daidalos: it is all trash and bombast, nothing any more. But let the script admire the novel art-works of all women, saying, ‘Who gave to female nature a consummate knowledge of textiles, and every aspect of the science of embroidery?’*
Not wishing to go in for mass generalization, I would rather marvel at the art of one woman, who has skilfully given me such a work to behold. But you, O glory of virgin women, I wish to address you yourself: if you make these things out of flour and dough, what, I want to know, will you make with warp and woof? But as one can learn from what you have crafted, you would indeed in the art of weaving also surpass all Penelopes and Helens, amen I say unto thee, and women of Lesbos too.
The poem evokes a loaf or cake sculpted with representations of the twelve signs of the Zodiac, and studded with eighteen eggs, from differ- ent birds and of different sizes, symbolising the Pleiades, the seven planets known to the ancient and medieval world (the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn), the star of Orion, and the four cardinal points. It is not clear that all the symbolism expounded by the poet was intended by the confectioner, and this makes the confection somewhat difficult to visualise in detail. Nevertheless, since the representations of the Zodiac appear to be unambiguous, it is reasonable to suppose that they formed a band around the rim of a circle of baked dough, with eggs set before the figures of Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn; these eggs were surmounted with crusts, which were probably fashioned in the form of personifications of the four seasons.
Bread decorated with eggs is attested in Byzantium by the twelfthcentury canonist Theodore Balsamon, in his commentary on canon 23 of the Council in Trullo. Balsamon records that one Easter, at a village in Thrace, he observed the local peasants, both men and women, coming to the parish church after vespers and presenting the priest with gifts of food which included “birds’ eggs set together in bread dough” (uet& opvWetov @dv év Coun &ptov cvvnvopévov).’? Such loaves are still baked as part of traditional Easter fare in Modern Greece. Another traditional practice, though more associated with weddings than with Easter, is the confection of ornamental loaves encrusted with finely-wrought figures, foliage and other designs.
In recent practice, the two types of confection are not combined, being made for different occasions, and with different types of dough, baked to a different finish in each case. The Easter bread tends to be simply shaped, with braiding the most elaborate form of ornamentation, and it is soft enough to eat, whereas the wedding bread is baked hard almost to the consistency of plaster of Paris.
Almost as unusual as the medium of representation is the design itself. Although the artistic representation of the Zodiac was well established in the secular culture which Byzantium inherited from antiquity, surviving examples are very rare, and Christopher of Mitylene’s poem is the only literary attestation. Of the two extant zodiacal cycles earlier than the thirteenth century, one is part of a complex celestial diagram illustrating an eighth-century manuscript of Ptolemy’s Handy Tables (Vat.gr.1291); the diagram has a precise astronomical significance, which, however, continues to elude satisfactory explanation." The other representation is depicted on the opus sectile floor of the katholikon of the Pantokrator monastery.’ Executed c. 1130, it is closer to the work described in our ekphrasis not only in date, but also in its inclusion of the four seasons, depicted in personification at the four cardinal points.
The rarity of the zodiacal cycle in Byzantine art is possibly to be explained by the church’s condemnation of astrology, although the Zodiac had been thoroughly tamed for Judaeo-Christian use,” and representation of it did not necessarily serve an astrological agenda; in itself, it could signify the solar year or stand as a two-dimensional symbol of the heavenly spheres. It is evidently in this non-astrological sense that Christopher of Mitylene chooses to interpret his cousin’s handiwork. He assigns no qualities or influences to the planets, and while he alludes to their zodiacal houses, he does not comment on the association between planetary positions and zodiacal signs which was the essence of astrology, and he does not even specify the locations of the eggs representing the planets on the loaf.
The moral attributes which he attaches to the zodiacal signs are based on a facile and obvious symbolism that has nothing to do with astrological doctrine. He ignores the astrologers’ classification of signs into male and female, diurnal and nocturnal, hot and cold,” and he does not imply that people are born under the signs whose qualities they exhibit. In another poem (no. 92), where Christopher praises the beauty of the night sky, he likens the stars to angels praising God.
The author seems less concerned with the cosmological significance than with the artistry of the work he describes. The point of his poem is to praise a novel work of art, novel because it is fashioned from everyday foodstuffs, and by a woman. The point is emphasised by the rhetorical synkrisis with famous ancient artists — a topos of ekphrasis which Christopher here puts to doubly subversive use. Instead of citing the great exempla from antiquity as models to be emulated, he derides and dismisses them. This was a common device of Christian homiletic, yet the contrast which Christopher draws is not between the outdated absurdities of pagan mythology and the revealed truth of Christianity, but between the inflated reputations of dead males and the unsung but tangible achievements of living women.
One should be wary of reading feminist sentiment into a piece of stylish rhetorical inversion by a male author of the eleventh century, whose works also include a poem celebrating the artistic genius of the spider, complete with an ekphrasis of the spider’s web (no. 122). However, Christopher does not confine his attention to one domestic example or to the domain of home baking, but uses the art of one woman to exemplify the skill of all women as producers of finely woven and embroidered textiles.
Unfortunately, it is not clear from his brief allusions whether he he is referring to domestic production, or to the more commercial and guild-based manufacture which is implied in the description by his contemporary, Michael Psellos, of the festival of Agathe: the yearly occasion, on 12 May, when the women involved in the carding, spinning, and weaving of wool and linen gathered for a religious ceremony followed by dancing." It is also unclear whether he is thinking only of wool and linen textiles, or also envisages the manufacture of the high-quality silks for which Byzantium was famous.’
The elevated terminology which he uses to describe female expertise — the knowledge (yv@o1c) of textiles, the science (émiothun) of embroidery, the art (téxvn) of weaving — would seem appropriate to artefacts at the top of the range. The tenth-century Book of the Eparch mentions women engaged in the silk industry, and women were prominent among the silkweavers of Thebes in the twelfth century.
A cautiously feminist reading of the ekphrasis is appropriate to both the period and the author. The eleventh century was a time when imperial women were especially important on the political scene, and their prominence was recorded by two historians, Michael Psellos and Anna Comnena, who both in their different ways clearly found it remarkable.” Psellos also wrote three gender-specific works which are key sources for the role and image of women in Byzantine society: his funeral orations on his mother and adopted daughter, Styliane,'*
and the text on the festival of Agathe, which provides a unique apergu of a public event organised by and for women. Yet for all his insight and interest, Psellos’ view of women’s place in society shows a condescension which we do not find in Christopher of Mitylene, either in the ekphrasis we have examined or in his other poems concerning women (nos. 52, 57, 61, 66-7, 70, 75-7, 81, 140). Psellos says that his mother was second to none at weaving, but had little time for it; “she was terribly annoyed that she did not have a male nature, and that it was not possible for her to converse fearlessly with letters”."" As for Styliane, he says, one must not imagine that because she was literate, she neglected her ““womens’ work” of weaving and embroidery.” Unlike Psellos, Christopher of Mitylene is not writing from the lofty perspective of the philosopher,”' but approaches mundane, material reality for its own sake and on its own terms.
Although his poems are educated and elegant commentaries on everyday life, they draw simple morals and do not strain to relate their subject-matter to higher levels of meaning or of being. He does not need to relativise the artistic achievements of contemporary women, because it is enough for him to reflect the real value their products were accorded in the home, the market-place and the ceremonial magnificence of the court.
TWO TEACHING TEXTS FROM THE TWELFTH-CENTURY ORPHANOTROPHEION
Timothy S. Miller
Vaticanus Palatinus gr. 92 contains a short poem (folios 145°-46) and a prose essay (folios 207-08) which offer valuable information concerning the Orphanotropheion of Saint Paul, the premier philanthropic institution of Constantinople and, during the twelfth century, one of the capital’s leading educational centers.' Although the Orphanotropheion outranked all other charitable institutions of the Byzantine Empire, no typikon has survived which outlines how the orphanage functioned, nor do any extant hagiographical sources describe the buildings, monasteries, and churches which formed part of this complex institution.’
To understand how the Orphanotropheion educated its children, organized its administration, and financed its operations, one must analyze a wide variey of sources, from the laws of the emperor Leo I (45774) to twelfth-century literary works such as Anna Komnena’s Alexiad.’ The two texts, published here for the first time, provide new information concerning both the teaching methods used at the orphanage as well as its administrative organization, information which supplements what scholars have gleaned from published sources.
Vaticanus Palatinus gr. 92 was copied in the last decades of the thirteenth century in Southern Italy. It belongs to a large group of manuscripts, which preserve short poems and prose texts used to teach Classical Greek grammar, vocabulary, orthography, and syntax. Some of these short works were extracted from Classical Greek literature, while others were composed by Byzantine teachers to illustrate difficult grammar rules or to introduce unfamiliar vocabulary.*
Vaticanus Palatinus gr. 92 is unusual among these instructional codices in that, beginning on folio 122%, it identifies the Byzantine instructors who composed the original poems and prose essays. As Carlo Gallavotti has demonstrated, many of these author/instructors taught in Constantinopolitan schools of the twelfth century.* This manuscript iden-tifies the author of the poem on folios 145°-46 as “Leo of Rhodes” and that of the prose work on folios 207-08 as “of Rhodes”. Since the manuscript identifies no other author as “of Rhodes”, and both of these texts refer to exactly the same issue, we can safely assume that Leo of Rhodes wrote both texts.
The poem and the prose work prove that Leo of Rhodes taught at the Orphanotropheion of Saint Paul in Constantinople. This Leo is most likely the same man who became metropolitan of Rhodes sometime before 1166.° During the twelfth century, the patriarch of Constantinople and the emperor often selected metropolitan bishops from among prominent teachers at the Orphanotropheion. The emperor John II (1118-43) confirmed Stephen Skylitzes, one of the leading teachers and eventually director of the orphan school (not the orphanotrophos), as metropolitan of Trebizond.’ At the end of the twelfth century, Constantine Stilbes attained the metropolitan see of Kyzikos after beginning his career as a catechism teacher at the Orphanotropheion.* During the same years, Basil Pediadites taught grammar at the orphan school and then advanced to shepherd the metropolitan church of Kerkyra.’ It would, therefore, not be unusual for a teacher at the Orphanotropheion, like Leo, to receive a promotion to an important see such as Rhodes."
Leo wrote both of these texts for teaching. Greek grammar manuscripts, like Vaticanus Palatinus gr. 92, contain many short iambic dodecasyllabic poems such as Leo’s first text. Students used such poems to learn both Classical meters based on vowel length and the more recent stress rhythms used in Byzantine dodecasyllabic poetry. Leo’s second text belongs to a category of teaching tools called schede. The ancient Greek word schedos meant a riddle or puzzle. In the eleventh century, Michael Psellos used the word to describe a teaching exercise, a short essay that provided examples of difficult words or confusing grammatical constructions from ancient Greek.
In the Alexiad, Anna Komnena described students at the Orphanotropheion hard at work recopying schede, exercises she considered to be innovations of her generation." In claiming that schede were a recent innovation, Anna was probably referring to a new type of schedos, associated with Theodore Prodromos and Stephen Skylitzes, both gram-mar teachers at the Orphanotropheion. In a recent article, Ioannis Vassis has shown that authors of twelfth-century schede, such as Prodromos, deliberately used misspellings, tricky elisions, and changes in pronunciation of both vowels and consonants to give their compositions two or more possible meanings. To determine the correct meaning of such texts, students had to rewrite the schede following the strict rules of Classical Greek pronunciation, orthography, and grammar.”
It is also possible to classify Leo’s poem as a schedos exercise since it too contains what appears to be a deliberate misspelling. On line 12 the manuscript reads eic ®>¢, which would mean “into the ear”, echoing the npoc @ta. of line 11. It could also be recast, however, as tows which in the context makes better sense “so in the same way”.
Because of many deliberate misspellings in schede exercises, it is extremely difficult to provide an accurate printed text of such prose compositions. Should it be presented in its form as a puzzle, or should the modern editor recast the text as the students were supposed to recopy it?”
As Vassis has shown, Prodromos prepared difficult schede. Fortunately, Leo of Rhodes wrote easier exercises. The prose schedos edited below has only two passages where strange orthography and elisions make the meaning unclear. Leo seems to have written this schedos primarily to teach his students to observe proper rules of accentuation and to check carefully for proper breathing marks."
Some twelfth-century intellectuals attacked the use of schede. Anna Komnena condemned them as a confusing intertwining of words (xAoKh). Both John Tzetzes and Theodore Balsamon used the same term, ploke, to describe the useless complexity of the schedos exercises, as designed by Prodromos and Skylitzes.’* In place of such schede, Anna Komnena recommended a return to reading the original works of the ancient Greeks."
In preparing this edition, I have reproduced both the poem and the prose schedos, found in Vaticanus Palatinus gr. 92. | have included in the apparatus criticus the words that have been written above the line in smaller letters. The same hand which copied the body of the text appears to have added these superscripted words. The copyist probably included these words to assist students in understanding the text since, in most cases, the superscriptions offer a common synonym for a more obscure Greek word in the text.
TRANSLATION
All teaching is difficult work, but especially teaching children, and even more difficult for those who are very old, such as I am, as even you make known concerning me. Everything you happen to take up, I finish, o chief justice (dikaiodotes), sweeter than honey in your diction, and most illustrious orphanotrophos. For, after wise deliberation, I judge it reasonable and necessary for me to let my words rush forth to reach you, even daring to ask that I have so much strength, a man who expended the strength of his prime in this unyielding service, a man not fortunate in physical strength. For I am not such a man that I am strong enough to serve so long in this mystagogia, already an incorporeal angel. If my being guards its own nature, it is not one of those who suffer no changes, is it? Not at all!
Because you already know, most merciful one, that I have performed beyond all others in the arduous work of the mystagogia for a long period of years, and that I have exerted myself to such an extent in your interest, reverent one, you have judged me especially acceptable, together with the wise arch-shepherd [serving] at that time. If not, then I receive no credit for this long service—at this time twenty years of drudgery, omitting the years in subordinate service. For you yourself know our supervisory position with which I was entrusted along with all the other offices. Although I want to include these in the speech, I restrain myself from reciting them most especially at the present moment.
Most sympathetic one, protect me, bent down in supplication, since I am exhausted by this mystagogia. Give help with your acceptable appeals to the patriarch. May your meeting with him, o honorable one, lead me from the oppressions of winter to reach the spring air. He has rejoiced in what is gracious so that the gates of his mercy appear not to be closed to some, but rather he is stretching wide for the salvation of man. I am confident that [these gates] will be stirred by you and spread wide. Seeing my long suffering, the compassionate one will give his merciful release to me struggling on his behalf. For the rest, speak on behalf of a long-suffering man. You will have Paul as your great colleague whom, with good hopes, I have added as an ambassador to the one under discussion. You appear bold. Today I commission you [ to go] to him. For as much as Paul [is my ambassador] among the saints, so much does this jealousy among mortals disappear.
COMMENTARY REGARDING THE ORPHANOTROPHEION
Both Leo’s poem and his schedos describe how his teaching duties have wearied him and how he longs for the patriarch of Constantinople to relieve him from his labors among “the tribes of young children” (poem, line 8). In the poem, he addresses his appeal to the heavenly patron of the school, Saint Paul. From earlier sources we know that Saint Zotikos founded the orphanage of the capital city, probably in the fourth century, but that the emperor Justin II rededicated the institution to Saints Peter and Paul in the late sixth century when he built a splendid church for the Orphanotropheion."’ Peter gradually receded in importance, and by the twelfth century sources often connected the Orphanotropheion with Saint Paul.'’
In the prose schedos, on the other hand, Leo refers directly to the supervisor of his school, the director of the Orphanotropheion of Constantinople.”’ As in the poem, so also in the prose schedos, Leo mentions only Paul the apostle as the patron of the school where he was teaching. These two instructional texts, thus, provide additional evidence that by the twelfth century Paul had emerged as the sole patron saint of the Orphanotropheion.
Leo’s poem opens by describing youths in a contest (tovg év GptAAn véovs); line 9 refers to weaving contentious words, an expression which clearly refers to Leo’s work in writing schede.” Why were schede contentious and the children of the orphanage involved in contests?
Several instructional poems, similar to Leo’s poem presented here, demonstrate that grammar schools of Constantinople held some form of student contests in connection with schede. In two eleventh-century poems, Christopher of Mytilene and John Mauropous, later metropolitan of Euchaita, referred to students engaged in schede competitions.” Moreover, Giuseppe Schird published an anonymous poem, also from the eleventh century, which invoked heavenly assistance for two children participating in a schedos contest.” More recently, Robert Browning cited a nine-line verse composition in Marcianus graecus XI.31 which called on St. Paul to reward the victor in a grammar and schedos competition. Since Paul was the sole patron of the Orphanotropheion, this schedos contest surely took place in the orphanage of Constantinople.” In view of such references to schede contests at grammar schools in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, we can safely assume that Leo’s arduous duties included training students to contend in such events.
In both his poem and his prose schedos, Leo emphasizes how difficult he found working with the children at the orphanage. Leo compares his duties to the slavery of the Hebrews in Egypt when they labored in making bricks for Pharoah (Exod. 1:14). It is not clear why Leo considered his work with the children so difficult. Perhaps he had discipline problems. We know from the frank letters of a thirteenth-century metropolitan of Naupaktos, John Apokaukos, that among the orphans at his episcopal school, some were difficult to control.”
Leo’s schedos also offers some new information regarding the Orphanotropheion’s staff organization. Leo claims to have worked at the school for more than twenty years. He began his cursus honorum in humble positions, but at the time of writing this schedos, he held some sort of supervisory position (€gopeiav), a post he attained after having served in other important offices. Although Leo did not mention specific offices, his schedos clearly reveals that there were several ranks of instructors at the Orphanotropheion.
In the prose schedos, Leo addresses his appeal that he be assigned a post outside the Orphanotropheion to the institution’s director, the orphanotrophos. Leo pleads with the director to obtain a promotion from the patriarch of Constantinople. In his funeral oration in honor of Stephen Skylitzes, Prodromos also described the patriarch as involved in deciding promotions on the teaching staff of the Orphanotropheion, although he also mentioned that the emperor had made the final decision to appoint Skylitzes head of the teaching faculty at the orphan school.”
In both the poem and the prose schedos, on the other hand, Leo viewed the patriarch as playing the key role in personnel decisions at the Orphanotropheion. In neither text does the author refer to the emperor, even though we know from many lists of state officials that the orphanage director was ranked as a member of the imperial bureaucracy. From other sources, it appears that the orphanotrophos dealt primarily with financial and legal issues and functioned as an imperial magistrate. The teachers of the orphanage school, however, received their right to teach from the local bishop, in the case of Constantinople, from the patriarch. Thus, according to Theodore Prodromos, the patriarch confirmed Stephen Skylitzes’ promotion to a high teaching post at the Orphanotropheion by anointing Stephen with holy chrism.”
In the prose schedos, Leo addresses his immediate superior. the orphanage director, as dikaiodotes and orphanotrophos. During the twelfth century, the dikaiodotes had evolved into one of the leading judges of the imperial bureaucracy.” Several other sources of the twelfth century reveal that orphanotrophoi also held important judicial posts. An oration of Theodore Prodromos addressed Alexios Aristenos as both orphan director and nomophylax, a post which by the twelfth century included judicial duties.” According to a speech by Niketas Choniates, the orphanotrophos John Belissariotes had excelled in the study of law.” Leo’s schedos, thus, provides additional evidence that the men who served as directors of the Orphanotropheion of Saint Paul had extensive legal training in Roman/Byzantine law and often filled high-ranking judicial posts at the same time they supervised the orphan home and school.
Both these teaching texts offer internal evidence that Leo wrote them for the students to present in public schede contests. In his poem, Leo specifically mentions that he is not addressing the children who were participating in the competition nor his colleagues who were either spectators or coaching other young contestants. Rather, he is offering a verse prayer to the school’s patron, Saint Paul. Although he implores Saint Paul to present his plea to the patriarch, the flattering references to the head of the church in Constantinople suggest that in fact the patriarch was present at this academic contest. In the case of the prose schedos, on the other hand, it seems that only the orphanotrophos attended the event.
Another twelfth-century source reveals that high officials sometimes attended these student contests. In one of his orations, Constantine Manasses described a contest for grammar students which took place in the presence of the orphanotrophos and the emperor Manuel I (114380).*° Like Leo and Theodore Prodromos, Manasses also taught in the grammar schools of Constantinople and composed a number of extant schede.*' If the emperor presided over some of these events, it is not surprising that the patriarch also attended grammar competitions held in the Byzantine capital, as Leo’s poem suggests.
Link
Press Here
0 التعليقات :
إرسال تعليق