Download PDF | CFHB 8 , The letters of Manuel II Palaeologus : text, translation, and notes, By George T. Dennis, Dumbarton Oaks 1977.
317 Pages
FOREWORD
Ten years ago Fr. Raymond J. Loenertz suggested that I undertake the task of editing and translating the Letters of Manuel II Palaeologus. With the aid of a grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, I was able to begin preparing a critical edition of the text and organizing material for a commentary. The project, particularly the work of translating the letters, proved more complicated than I had anticipated. Other problems, not all of my making, also caused delays, with the result that this book appears much later than I had hoped. Undoubtedly it is still imperfect, but to attempt to remove all the imperfections would cause further postponement. of its publication. I should apologize, then; both for the delays and for the imperfections.
While.the importance of Manuel's ο for studying the history of Byzantium in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth cénturies has long been recognized, relatively little use has been made of them. The basic reason for this is that, as they stand, they are difficult to understand and to interpret. An edition; therefore, of the Greek text without-a translation into -a modern language would be of limited use to scholars..
Two problems concerning the translation should be noted.. The first; is its accuracy in rendering the Greek original. In this regard I have done my best and received valuable help from others. Manuel composed his letters in a rhetorical Greek which is not always clear and at times seems deliberately obseure. Some words and passages, after lengthy study, still admit of two legitimate but different interpretations. Eventually though, only one can be chosen. I have generally pointed out such difficulties or given alternate translations in the notes.
The second problem concerns the manner of translating the Emperor's artificial Greek into readable, modern English. A literal translation would have resulted frequently in meaningless phraseologies. Hopefully without distorting the meaning, I have had to take some liberties with the Greek; leaving out, for example, all sorts of transitional words. When a phrase exactly translated made for an artificiality incompatible with the formal yet conversational tone of the original, I have not hesitated to redo it as a writer in English might have phrased it. At other times I have employed a more orless literal translation for certain passages which I think were meant to sound pedantic or intended to be obscure or open to different interpretations.
In the course of this decade I have had reason to be gratefül to many people for their encouragement, assistance, or at least non-interference. First, I would like to express my gratitude to the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation for financial aid granted me in 1964—65 to begin research on this book. My thanks are of course due to Fr. Raymond J. Loenertz, O.P., who, despite serious illness and other preoccupations, always generously gave of his time and advice. Thanks are due also to Fr. Joseph Gill, S.J., for his help with the translation.
I owe special thanks to Professor Ihor Ševčenko of Harvard University, who devoted far more time and energy in going over the text and translation than his editorial duties required and whose suggestions have made the work much more accurate than it would otherwise have been. I am also much indebted to Professor Thomas West of the Catholic University of America for generously going over the translation in the final moments and helping to make it into readable English. I am grateful, too, for the assistance and the suggestions of many others: the late Fr. Vitalien Laurent, A.A., Fr. Jean Darrouzés, A.A., M. Charles Astruc of the Bibliothéque Nationale, Professor Donald Nicol of the University of London, Professor Erich Trapp of the University of Vienna, Professor Leendert G. Westerink of the State University of New York at Buffalo, Professor Speros Vryonis, Jr. of the University of California at Los Angeles. I am grateful for the support and understanding of my colleagues at Loyola University of Los Angeles and at the Catholic University of America, and in many ways, great and small, to the staff at the Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies.
Whether the results of my efforts prove satisfactory will be disputed by scholars. What I do here is present these results to provide further material from which the reader can more easily and better understand the author of the letters, his friends, and the times in which they lived.
Washington, D. C. George T. Dennis, S.J. 21 June 1974, 624 years after the birth of Manuel Palaeologus.
INTRODUCTION
1. Manuel Ii Palaeologus, Emperor of the Romans
Manuel, the second son of Emperor John V Palaeologus and Helena Cantacuzena, was born in Constantinople on 27 June 1350.! At the age of five he bore the title of despot and was already being used as a pawn in the old game of negotiating for Western aid, à game he would spend much of his life playing. At fifteen he learned another lesson when he was detained as a hostage in Hungary after his father’s vain quest for aid there. At nineteen he had to put what he had learned into practice as governor of Thessalonica, the second city of the Empire. This marked the end of his formal studies in classical literature and writing. He was swept along, as he later remarked, from letters to other cares. “For many things, as though in league, rained upon me then in close succession; difficulties, wrestling with various misfortunes and all sorts of dangers. As though I had been caught up in a whirlwind, I was unable to catch my breath."? Despite Manuel’s penchant for exaggeration, these words are a fairly accurate description of his adult life. While he did find time for some reading and study, for scholarly discussions with Cydones, Cabasilas, Ivanko, and the Moslem Muterizes, and for pleasant literary gatherings, he lamented that they were just interludes, brief, enjoyable moments snatched from a routine of administrative detail, meetings with ambassadors, quarrelsome prelates and monks, tedious journeys by ship or on horseback, and the harsh realities of war.
Negotiations for military assistance led his father to Rome in 1369, where he made a Catholic profession of faith, and then to Venice, where he ran out of money. To his urgent appeal for help his oldest son, Andronicus, turned a deaf ear, and it was Manuel in Thessalonica who gathered the amount needed and in mid-winter 1370-71 sailed to Venice. After obtaining John's freedom, he remained for further negotiations with the Signoria, returning to Thessalonica in the summer or fall of 1371. In gratitude John V confirmed him in his rule over that city and granted him whatever other lands he might be able to occupy in Macedonia.
While Manuel busied himself in Thessalonica, trouble was brewing in Constantinople. John V was cooperating more closely with the Turkish Emir, Murad I, and their eldest sons, Andronicus IV and Saudji-celebi, were also cooperating, but in a slightly different direction. In May 1373 they joined forces to overthrow their fathers. Although Saudji fought on until the end of September, Andronicus was soon defeated and on 30 May taken into custody. For the succession to the throne John now looked to his second son, and on 25 September 1373, at the age of twenty-three, Manuel was proclaimed emperor?
In the summer of 1376 Andronicus escaped and, with Genoese and Turkish troops, entered Constantinople. Áfter some bitter fighting in which Manuel was wounded, John V and his two sons, Manuel and Theodore, were forced to capitulate. They were then subjected to a strict and harsh imprisonment in the Anemas Tower, which Manuel never forgot. Their own escape and recapture of the city in the summer of 1379 sent Andronicus fleeing to Galata, where he and his Genoese allies were besieged for almost two years by John V, who was aided by the Venetians and the Turks.
In the peace treaty of May 1381 John V had to recognize Andronicus as heir to the throne. Manuel, then at the Ottoman Porte, does not even seem to have been mentioned in the agreement, nor was there any mention of him in the subsequent Greco-Genoese treaty of 2 November 1382. His reactions are not recorded, but one significant step he took clearly indicated his feelings.
In October or November 1382 Manuel secretly sailed for Thessalonica and established himself as independent emperor. In opposition to his father's policy, he waged war against the Turks, successfully at first, but by November 1383 the Ottoman army had encircled the city. As he remarks in Letter 8, Manuel tried every expedient, every possible alliance, including ecclesiastical union with Rome, to fend off the Turks. None of these succeeded, and the grumbling and discontent of the citizens at the rigors of the siege increased daily. Finally in April 1387 Manuel and a small group of followers sailed away from the city, which then surrendered. They found temporary refuge on Lesbos, where Manuel wrote his Letter 67 to Cabasilas. Then, after some negotiations, he went to Brusa and made his peace with the Emir Murad.
His rash adventure, however, was not so quickly forgiven by his father, who exiled him to the island of Lemnos. He was there about two years when John V, old and ill, urgently needed him back in Constantinople, for the son of Andronicus, John VII, was attempting to take over the throne. Manuel arrived too late to prevent him from occupying the city, but found safety with his father in the fortress by the Golden Gate. After some unsuccessful attempts, Manuel, with the help of the Hospitallers, was able to drive out the usurper on 17 September 1390.
No matter how much the Byzantine emperors preferred to fight among themselves, it was clear that the real power lay with the Turkish Emir Bajezid. The emperors were his vassals, and as such both Manuel and John VII led their contingents to aid Bajezid in combatting his foes in Asia Minor in the fall and winter of 1390. On 16 February 1391 John V died, and Manuel secretly fled from Bajezid's camp, raced back to Constantinople, and assumed power. But in June he again had to take part in the Ottoman campaign in central Asia Minor, a particularly difficult one lasting well into the winter, during which he found time to write a few of his more informative letters. Returning to his capital, he married the Serbian princess, Helena Dragaš, on 10 February 1392, and on the following day they were solemnly crowned by the patriarch.
In winter 1393-94 Bajezid had his Christian vassals assemble in Serres with the intention, so Manuel claimed, of disposing of all of them at once. They managed to escape, however, and Manuel’s inherited policy of cooperation with the Turks was ended. In spring 1394 Bajezid began his long siege of Constantinople, which at times was so severe that Manuel even thought of abandoning the city. A Franco-Hungarian attempt to aid Byzantium ended in disaster at Nicopolis in September 1396, and was lamented by the Emperor at great length in Letter 31. As the situation grew more desperate, Manuel intensified his efforts to obtain military aid from the West. In 1399 a French force under Jean le Meingre, Maréchal Boucicaut, arrived and achieved some minor successes. But more massive assistance was needed. At Boucicaut’s suggestion, so it seems, Manuel decided to make a personal appeal to the Western rulers. He was reconciled to his nephew, John VII, whom he left to govern the city during his absence.
On 10 December 1399 Manuel embarked on & Venetian galley to begin his remarkable journey to Northern Italy, Paris, and London. Although his quest soon proved fruitless, the Emperor did not give up easily and, long after it must have been clear that he would receive little but promises, he continued his negotiations. Not even the defeat of Bajezid by the Mongols at Ankara on 28 July 1402 made him hurry home. He did not leave Paris until the end of November and did not arrive in Constantinople until 9 June 1403.
On his return Manuel was faced with a complexity of problems. The disunity among the Turks after Ankara called for new policy formulations. Matters had to be settled with the Latin powers. The situation in the Morea was as bad as ever. The conflict with John VII flared up again, but he was soon allowed to go off and rule in Thessalonica. There were financial diffi-culties, and there was a serious controversy in the Church revolving around Patriarch Matthew, alluded to in Letters 63-66. Perhaps the best general sketch of Manuel's preoccupations in the period following his return is given in Letter 44. l l
Throughout the rest of his reign Manuel kept up diplomatic contacts with the West, which centered on military aid and ecclesiastical union, although he came to be quite realistic about the latter. In 1407 he lost his brother Theodore, to whom he had been very closely attached. He named his own son, Theodore, to succeed him in ruling the Morea and, about a year later, visited the region in the hopes of establishing order, a perennial problem, as he remarks in Letter 61. Apparently this visit was cut short by the news that his nephew, John VII, had died in Thessalonica on 22 September 1408. He hastened there to install another son, Andronicus, as governor. Back in the capital early in 1409 he found the Empire in proximate danger of being drawn into the wars among the sons of Bajezid. After defeating Suleyman in February 1411, Musa turned to besiege Constantinople. This critical situation, spoken of by Manuel in Letter 57, lasted until July 1413 when Musa, in his turn, was taken and strangled by his brother Mechmed.
Manuel was now free to attend to some pressing problems within what little territory remained to the Empire. On 25 July 1414 he sailed for Thasos, occupied by Giorgio Gattilusio (see Letter 58), and after a siege of three months, returned the island to Byzantine control. He then devoted the fall and winter to administrative matters in Thessalonica. On 29 March 1415 he landed at Kenchreai on the Gulf of Corinth and immediately set to work restoring the Hexamilion, the defensive wall built by Justinian across the Isthmus. The project was completed in less than a month, an accomplishment that greatly impressed his contemporaries. He then directed his energies against the rebellious nobles of the Morea and, in a series of battles and sieges lasting through the summer, managed to subdue them. His reflections on this campaign are expressed in Letter 68.
In March 1416 Manuel returned to the capital and continued negotiating with the Western powers, for he knew well that the peace with the Turks was but a temporary one. On the death of Mechmed in May 1421.the war party in Byzantium, including the heir to the throne, John VIII, determined, against Manuel’s advice, to intervene in the Turkish struggle for succession. But they backed the wrong candidate, and when Mechmed's son, Murad II, emerged victorious, he besieged Constantinople in June 1422. John VIII vigorously conducted the defense of the city until the Turks withdrew early in September.
On 1 October 1422, while conducting diplomatic discussions, Manuel suffered a stroke which left him partially paralyzed. The business of government was carried on by John VIII. Manuel never really recovered and, as the end approached, he assumed the monastic habit under the name of Matthew and died on 21 July 1425.
On Manuel as a personality and a literary figure, there seems to be little need to enter into detail in these pages.* It should be sufficient to refer the reader to Manuel's own letters and to the notes given below. A complete listing and study of his extant writings still remain to be done, They represent the sort of literary endeavor one would expect of a well-educated Byzantine. There are the letters, of course, polished and revised for posterity. There are the usual rhetorical exercises: the supposed reply of Antenor to Odysseus, Tamerlane to Bajezid, a benevolent ruler to his subjects, to a drunken man, and so forth. Poetry is represented by his verses addressed to an ignorant person, to an atheist, and by an epigram on Theodore, but more characteristically by religious poetry in imitation of the Psalms and liturgical hymns. Other religious writings include prayers before communion and a meditation on recovering from illness (see Letter 68). In the classical manner he composed Counsels on Imperial Conduct to his son, John VIII, as well as seven ethicopolitical essays addressed to him. We also find an essay on the nature of dreams, a decision in a dispute about being and non-being (see Letter 54), and a rhetorical description (ekphrasis) of a tapestry in the Louvre. His mother and himself are the discutants in his Dialogue on Marriage, which he kept emending until it was entirely deleted (see Letter 62). Among his oratorical works are sermons on the Dormition (see Letter 61), on Sin and St. Mary of Egypt (Letter 52), on Holy Saturday, and the like. More important are his Discourse to the Thessalonians (see Letter 11), his oration on his father’s recovery from a serious illness (see Letter 12), and the lengthy Funeral Oration (epifaphios) on his brother Theodore (see Letter 56). He discussed the study of theology in an essay addressed to Alexis Iagoup, and he also wrote a short work on the Trinity. As a result. of his discussions with a Moslem scholar in Ankara in the winter of 1391, he composed a series of twenty-six Dialogues with a Moslem Teacher (see Letter 20). Finally, as a true Byzantine, he compiled a treatise on the Procession of the Holy Spirit; this was occasioned by a syllogism presented to him by a monk of Saint Denis near Paris in 1400-2, which the Emperor answered in 156 chapters'and which still remains unedited.
2. The Letters of Manuel IT
Manuel's writings are primarily of a rhetorical nature, intended to be read aloud before a select literary circle. As such they reflect the worst characteristics of the rhetoric employed by the Byzantines.’ There is a fundamental dishonesty: while living in one world, they speak from another. It is unimportant whether or not what they say is related to reality; how they say it is what matters. With the world crumbling about him, Manuel could devote himself to composing an oration in the style of Demosthenes or & dialogue in the style of Plato. With Turkish siege weapons pounding the city, he and his friends could calmly sit around in a "theater" and applaud & piece of rhetorical fluff being read to them. It all seems very unreal; yet for generations, indeed for centuries, this was the sort of thing they had been trained to value. Whatever the daily realities might be, it was the "authority of the ancients" that dominated their mentality in almost every sphere of life: law, politieal theory, philosophy, theology, even military science and medicine.? This was especially true in the realm of literature. To them the term Byzantine Literature was meaningless. If one could ask a fourteenthcentury Byzantine to list the outstanding authors of his literature, he would respond with names such as Homer, Plato, Demosthenes, and Xenophon. Classical Greek Literature was the ideal, and one's excellence as a writer depended upon how closely one imitated the classical authors. Originality, and even clarity, were not highly regarded. Excerpts and selected works of certain authors, reproduced in countless anthologies, were proposed to the Byzantine student as models of “fine” writing. In particular, four Hellenistic rhetorical handbooks seem to have formed the basis of all Byzantine writing: these were Apollonius Dyscolus and Herodian on grammar and syntax, Hermogenes of Tarsus on literary style and criticism, and, perhaps most influential, the Progymnasmata, or Rhetorical Exercises, of Aphthonius of Antioch.”
What has been said of rhetoric applies also to epistolography, for one displayed his rhetorical ability as readily in a finely polished letter as in asonorous oration. The publie reading of a letter was often compared to a performance in the theater; on several occasions Manuel compliments his correspondents on the applause their letters received when read before himself and his friends (Letters 9, 24, 27, 32, 34, 44, and 61). Byzantine letters have been described as lacking every element which, ordinarily speaking, characterizes a letter.!! Generally we expect a letter to convey a message of some sort, but the average Byzantine letter was about as concrete, informative, and personal as the modern, mass-produced greeting card. Just as we have a wide selection of illustrated cards suitable for every occasion, so the Byzantine had his formularies of model letters. Most appear to be stylized variations on the theme that distance cannot really separate those linked by genuine friendship. Today we might select a particularly artistic reproduction of a Madonna and Child to convey Christmas greetings to a friend. The Byzantine would delve into his handbook of classical allusions and ornate metaphors to embellish an otherwise stereotyped text. In general, then, Byzantine letters tend to be conventional and impersonal and, one might add, terribly boring.
While personal letters, particularly those of prominent figures in government, are regarded by most historians as excellent primary sources, the Byzantinist approaches the letters in his area with some hesitation, aware of the frustrations to follow. Even the best letters were written according to rules which abhorred proper names, precise dates, and concrete details.!? The criterion of a good letter was the “purity” of its Attic Greek, including such items as the dual, obsolete for over a thousand years. Words and terms designating a specific Byzantine institution or office are rare, for the vocabulary had to be such that a contemporary of Thucydides might understand it. If the Albanians, Serbs, or Turks were not written about in the fifth century 8.c., they must be referred to as the Illyrians, Triballians, and Persians. Byzantine references to the Scythians, or simply to the Barbarians, often reduce the historian to sheer guesswork.!? Persons or places may be identified only as “our common friend," “that man you know," “this once splendid city." If the letter was meant to convey a message, other than generalities about friendship, it was often formulated in such tortuous grammar and syntax as to be practically unintelligible. The real message, if any, was conveyed by the bearer of the letter, either for reasons of security or because of the requirements of style.14 The letter itself was a gift to be treasured, not necessarily understood, by the recipient.
Efforts to utilize these letters as historical sources can be maddening. Yet, if patiently studied, they can often be placed in their proper historical context and further data derived from them.” This is particularly true of letters of the Palaeologan period, for a surprising number of those that have survived, while still enmeshed in archaic rhetorical forms, actually seem to be communicating something. The problem lies in deciphering the message. In some instances this may prove impossible, but in others a close scrutiny of allusions to persons, places, or.events, a careful analysis of terms, and a comparison with established facts may be rewarding. In addition, the student of Manuel’s letters has one advantage, a relatively rare one; in many cases the corresponding letter of Cydones survives and, as may be seen in the following pages, it often clarifies the Emperor’s meaning.
The letters of Manuel may be difficult to understand; nonetheless they are real letters, written to communicate real messages to real people. Some are trivial, others obscure, and many were subsequently edited for publication. The message is not always easy to extract from the verbiage in which it is buried. Manuel shares all the faults of the Byzantine rhetorician: his writing abounds in clichés, worn out proverbs, anachronisms, excessive (and sometimes unclear) allusions to classical authors, belabored and confusing metaphors, wandering parentheses, and what might best be called a studied obscurity. His meaning is often uncertain owing to his repugnance for proper names and his insistence on an archaic vocabulary. The syntax is sometimes so intricately twisted about as to be almost devoid of sense. Still, his letters are actual letters and, written by the Emperor himself, they are historical sources of the first rank and contain a great deal more information about the man and the period than one might suspect.
Berger de Xivrey long ago asserted that Manuel’s collected letters had been carefully arranged in chronological order, a view admitted by Loenertz as a good working hypothesis. Examination of the dates proposed for each letter in the present edition tends to confirm this assumption—with some qualification. Letters 62 to 68 were not part of the original collection, and do not fit into the general chronological framework. For a very few letters, e.g., 1 and 2, only a terminus ante quem can be established. A few others contain no chronological indications at all, but if one admits a general sequential order in the collection as a whole, one could cautiously assign a relative dating to those according to their location. Of the first sixty-one letters some forty-one may be dated with certainty, at least as belonging to a particular year or a certain two- or three-year period. About six others may be given a highly probable dating, and another six a probable one. The reasons for proposing these dates are given in the notes. The chronological order of the letters, however, must be interpreted in a broad sense; that is, one cannot prove that they have been arranged in a strict sequence, 1, 2, 3, according to the date they were written, although this is certainly true of some. Rather, we have to imagine the Emperor going through a packet or copybook of letters belonging to a certain period, for example, those he wrote in Thessaloniea from 1382 to 1387 or those he wrote in Western Europe from 1400 to 1403, and selecting the ones he wished to publish.!? From the first packet," then, we have Letters 1 and 2 (perhaps 5), written before 1988. The second group, Letters 3 to. ll, consists of letters written in Thessalonica from 1382 to 1387, but not arranged in strictly sequential order within that period. The third “packet,” Letters 14 to 21, was written while Manuel was campaigning in Asia Minor in 1990-91. The fourth "packet," Letters 22 to 36, contains letters written in Constantinople from 1392 to the end of 1399. The fifth, Letters 37 to 42, consists of those dating from the Emperor's Western journey in 1400-3. The sixth “packet,” Letters 43 to 50, derives from the years 1403-8. The remaining letters, to 61, extend from the end of 1408 to about 1417. The general arrangement of the letters, then, is certainly a chronological one, but the ordering of each letter in a “packet” or grouping is not necessarily sequential.
3. Manuscripts and Editions
The codex Parisinus graecus 3041 has long been regarded as the principal manuscript of Manuel's writings, primarily because of the corrections made in it by the Emperor himself. This was first pointed out by Boissonade in 1844 in connection with the Dialogue on Marriage. In 1853 Berger de Xivrey added to this observation. “The first part [of the manuscript] is laden with corrections and excisions drawn by a practiced hand, which is nevertheless no longer that of a professional copyist. This is evidently the author, who himself retouches his work with a meticulous severity.... Not only phrases, not only entire pages, but all of one work, are ruthlessly crossed out.’?® Legrand in his edition of 1893 was also of the opinion that the corrections "could only have been carried out by the august author of the letters."?? These judgments have not been disputed by subsequent scholars. Close examination of the manuscript reveals that the corrections, both in the Letters and in the Dialogue on Marriage, have been made by the same hand, which is that of a contemporary but not of a professional scribe. Furthermore, while most of the emendations have to do with stylistic matters, some, as in Letter 1, are of such a personal nature that they could only have been made by the author himself as he prepared his work for publication.
In its present condition the manuscript is composed of two distinct parts. The first, fols. 1-136, contains works of Manuel and a few other items and, up to fol. 104, is written by one hand. The second part, from fol. 137 to the end, containing sections of Nicetas Choniates and George Acropolites, was not part of the original manuscript and does not concern us here. The manuscript (ie., fols. 1-136) is composed of seventeen quires of unequal length, although most are quaternions, the quire numbered 2 (β΄) beginning on fol. 2. Each folio was numbered in red at the top right corner, but on most pages it has faded away or been cut off. The numbering which remains was almost certainly done by the same hand that wrote the text and numbered the Letters. Folio 1 of the present pagination was originally fol. 27, for the present fol. 2 is numbered in red as x; the present fol. 104 (the end of the Dialogue on Marriage) bears the original number 130 (ρλ’). There are two watermarks on the paper, both similar to those attested on French and Italian paper from 1392 to 1427.74
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