Free Sailing from Byzantium by Colin Wells
Authors: Colin Wells
the only factor. Lectures in Eastern languages were not unknown at the curia, but ancient Greek is difficult. Without the teaching aids that eventually became common, such as grammar books, exercises, vocabulary lists, and above all bilingual Greek and Latin texts (which later humanists would particularly come to favor), the odds were stacked against Petrarch. “I wasn't so lucky as to learn Greek,” he wrote. “I'd thrown myself into the work with eager hope and keen desire, but the newness of a strange tongue and the early departure of my teacher frustrated me in my purpose.”
After several unhappy years in Gerace and a brief and even more unhappy visit to Constantinople on behalf of the pope, Barlaam returned for a third time to Avignon in 1347.
He gave more lessons to Petrarch, but this visit, again of only six months’ duration, was also too short to be productive. Boccaccio, urged on by Petrarch, would have slightly better luck in the 1350s, under the tutelage of Barlaam's student Leonzio Pilato, who had also briefly tutored Petrarch. Pilato, like Barlaam a Calabrian Greek who had sojourned in Constantinople and Thessalonica, was a less than ideal teacher— in Boccaccio's words, “a man of uncouth appearance, ugly features, long beard, and black hair, forever lost in thought, rough in manners and behavior.”
For almost three years, according to an impressively game Boccaccio, they stumbled through Homer together in Greek. Boccaccio even secured for Pilato a position teaching Greek in Florence in the early 1360s, but nothing came of it. It was simply too early for interest to have spread from standouts such as Petrarch and Boccaccio, Renaissance humanism's founders, after all, to their followers. The Italian humanists needed the pressure of greater numbers—and they needed, too, a teacher of Greek who could supply real teaching and the deep inspiration that goes with it. Both were coming, but not for a while yet.
Cydones Translates Thomas Aquinas
Barlaam, despite his abrasiveness, was missed by Byzantium's younger intellectuals. In 1347, the year that he made his second attempt with Petrarch, Barlaam entered into a brief correspondence on theological matters with a talented young Byzantine named Demetrius Cydones, whom he had met on his last visit to Constantinople.
When he met Barlaam, Cydones had recently arrived in Constantinople to seek his fortune. In his early twenties, hehad been born to a noble and recently impoverished family in Thessalonica, the empire's second city. His father, an ally of Andronicus III, had undertaken several sensitive diplomatic missions for the emperor, but Andronicus had died only days after the council condemning Barlaam had adjourned. A bloody and exhausting six-year civil war ensued between Andronicus’ best friend and prime minister, John Cantacuzenos, and an alliance between the patriarch and Andronicus’ widow, Anne of Savoy, an unpopular Western princess who managed to hold power in Constantinople for much of the war's duration. Cantacuzenos eventually won the war, although the political infighting festered for decades. Cydones’ family had supported Cantacuzenos but lost everything in violent riots in Thessalonica against Cantacuzenos’ side.
Cydones was a master of the flowery classical rhetoric prized by the aristocratic Byzantine literati, and in a letter to Barlaam after Barlaam's departure he laments the void it left in Constantinople's intellectual circles. There follow pages and pages of detailed theological discussion; Cydones is clearly eager for Barlaam's reply. Barlaam, still arguing passionately for union between the two churches, died in spring 1348, shortly after writing it. By that time Cydones had entered the service of the victorious Cantacuzenos, who had had himself crowned as John VI soon after winning the civil war.
The new emperor was a complex and subtle man whose career embraced a bundle of contradictions. Grimly realistic politician,
After several unhappy years in Gerace and a brief and even more unhappy visit to Constantinople on behalf of the pope, Barlaam returned for a third time to Avignon in 1347.
He gave more lessons to Petrarch, but this visit, again of only six months’ duration, was also too short to be productive. Boccaccio, urged on by Petrarch, would have slightly better luck in the 1350s, under the tutelage of Barlaam's student Leonzio Pilato, who had also briefly tutored Petrarch. Pilato, like Barlaam a Calabrian Greek who had sojourned in Constantinople and Thessalonica, was a less than ideal teacher— in Boccaccio's words, “a man of uncouth appearance, ugly features, long beard, and black hair, forever lost in thought, rough in manners and behavior.”
For almost three years, according to an impressively game Boccaccio, they stumbled through Homer together in Greek. Boccaccio even secured for Pilato a position teaching Greek in Florence in the early 1360s, but nothing came of it. It was simply too early for interest to have spread from standouts such as Petrarch and Boccaccio, Renaissance humanism's founders, after all, to their followers. The Italian humanists needed the pressure of greater numbers—and they needed, too, a teacher of Greek who could supply real teaching and the deep inspiration that goes with it. Both were coming, but not for a while yet.
Cydones Translates Thomas Aquinas
Barlaam, despite his abrasiveness, was missed by Byzantium's younger intellectuals. In 1347, the year that he made his second attempt with Petrarch, Barlaam entered into a brief correspondence on theological matters with a talented young Byzantine named Demetrius Cydones, whom he had met on his last visit to Constantinople.
When he met Barlaam, Cydones had recently arrived in Constantinople to seek his fortune. In his early twenties, hehad been born to a noble and recently impoverished family in Thessalonica, the empire's second city. His father, an ally of Andronicus III, had undertaken several sensitive diplomatic missions for the emperor, but Andronicus had died only days after the council condemning Barlaam had adjourned. A bloody and exhausting six-year civil war ensued between Andronicus’ best friend and prime minister, John Cantacuzenos, and an alliance between the patriarch and Andronicus’ widow, Anne of Savoy, an unpopular Western princess who managed to hold power in Constantinople for much of the war's duration. Cantacuzenos eventually won the war, although the political infighting festered for decades. Cydones’ family had supported Cantacuzenos but lost everything in violent riots in Thessalonica against Cantacuzenos’ side.
Cydones was a master of the flowery classical rhetoric prized by the aristocratic Byzantine literati, and in a letter to Barlaam after Barlaam's departure he laments the void it left in Constantinople's intellectual circles. There follow pages and pages of detailed theological discussion; Cydones is clearly eager for Barlaam's reply. Barlaam, still arguing passionately for union between the two churches, died in spring 1348, shortly after writing it. By that time Cydones had entered the service of the victorious Cantacuzenos, who had had himself crowned as John VI soon after winning the civil war.
The new emperor was a complex and subtle man whose career embraced a bundle of contradictions. Grimly realistic politician,