THE LITERARY LEGACY OF KALLISTOS ANGELIKOUDES: AN ATTEMPT AT SYSTEMATIZATION (original) (raw)

The Chapters of Kallistos Angelikoudes: The Relationship of the Separate Series and their Main Theological Themes, in: Byzantine Theology and its Theological Background, edited by Antonio Rigo, Studies in Byzantine History and Civilization, 4 (Turnhout, 2011), p. 141–159

2011

The article deals with a little studied and partially published corpus of the Chapters composed by Kallistos Angelikoudes, one of the most interesting and enigmatic authors of late Byzantium. The article attempts, for the first time, to trace the relationship between the three surviving collections of the Chapters and makes preliminary observations about the provenance of these three collections. The article also discusses the distinct features of the language of Kallistos, another topic which, so far, has been insufficiently studied. Finally, the article reviews the main themes of Chapters’ theology, attempting to locate them within the intellectual context of the middle and late fourteenth century, also known as the period of the Palamite controversy. The study pays special attention to Kallistos Angelikoudes’ teaching about God’s energies, as it appears in the Chapters, and its place among Palamite teaching of the time.

Once more on the life and handwriting of the hypatos tōn philosophōn John Pothos Pediasimos, I. Garenis – Ch. Dendrinos (ed.), Bibliophilos. Books and Learning in the Byzantine World, Berlin 2021, 313-330.

2021

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.