Review of S. Papaioannou, Michael Psellos, Epistulae, Teubner 2019, in The International Journal of the Platonic Tradition, 2022 (original) (raw)

Thirty-nine years ago, Professor Costas N. Constantinides wrote the most accurate and enlightening analysis of the ὕπατος τῶν φιλοσόφων, the only precise title held by an imperial professor in the Palaiologan period. 1 In the present paper written to honour Constantinides' professional career as a specialist in Palaiologan scholarship, libraries, schools and books, as well as in many other aspects of the Byzantine civilisation, I would like to return to a Byzantine teacher, John Pothos Pediasimos, whose career was outlined by our honorand and whose handwriting I myself identified. A recent contribution that questions my identification of the hand of Pediasimos has encouraged me to take up the subject again, which in 1982 raised some issues as well. In order to approach these without repeating the entire corpus of evidence on the hypatos gathered by Prof. Constantinides, the reader is referred to his book. I will add here a few new pieces of information and some considerations about the role of the Church and the court in Constantinopolitan higher education. In the second part of the paper, I will tackle once more the information we have of John Pothos Pediasimos in order to append some new pieces of evidence, especially the attribution to his hand of some notes in Par. gr. 2403.