Bessarione (original) (raw)
FLORIN WEBSITE © JULIA BOLTON HOLLOWAY, AUREO ANELLO ASSOCIAZIONE, 1997-2024: MEDIEVAL: BRUNETTO LATINO, DANTE ALIGHIERI, SWEET NEW STYLE: BRUNETTO LATINO, DANTE ALIGHIERI, & GEOFFREY CHAUCER || VICTORIAN : WHITE SILENCE: FLORENCE'S 'ENGLISH' CEMETERY || ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING || WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR || FRANCES TROLLOPE || HIRAM POWERS || ABOLITION OF SLAVERY || FLORENCE IN SEPIA || *CITY AND BOOK CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII,*VIII**|| MEDIATHECA 'FIORETTA MAZZEI' || EDITRICE AUREO ANELLO CATALOGUE || FLORIN WEBSITE || UMILTA WEBSITE ||RINGOFGOLD WEBSIT E || LINGUE/LANGUAGES: ITALIANO,ENGLISH || VITA
New: Dantevivo || White Silence Per la versione in italiano, Bessarioneit.html
THE ACADEMIA BESSARION 
takes its name from discovering over sixty years ago a scholar's house in a garden, and coming to realize it was Cicero's definition of happiness as having a library and a garden. We sought something more fluid than a print publication, one that allowed for human voices, productive interactions among scholars, coming together as they did in Renaissance Academies and also in Parisian bluestocking salons, where women as well as men, bass and treble, could be heard. We wanted international spontaneity, a non-Brexit going beyond boundaries and frontiers, a thinking outside of boxes, a scholarly journal transgressing that genre, reaching outside of race, gender, class, and being human voices echoing, dialoguing with, those of the past: classical, medieval, Renaissance, Victorian, modern, in a living continuum. We use the Cardinal Bessarion and his casina in Rome, echoing Cicero's definition of happiness as a library in a garden, as our frame because of a long ago memory. Thus, we began a Zoom discussion group on Dante's Vita nova on Tuesday, 10 November 2020, at 8.00 p.m., European time, imagining ourselves as being in that edifice. Our alternate universe to the pandemic. The recorded Video of our first meeting is at Bessarion1.mp4; its transcript atBessarion1.html. It is also translated into Italian. Following that, on Tuesday 8 December 2020 at 8,00 p.m. European time, we discussed Florence and the Seven Acts of Mercy: Bessarion2.mp4; its transcript atBessarion2.docx. Our third meeting was held, December 5, on Pilgrimage and Literature, Bessarion3.mp4. We held the fourth meeting, February 2, Bessarion4.mp4, with Danuta Shanzer in Vienna on St Monegundis in the context of the Desert Fathers, etc. The fifth, March 2, was on the anti-slavery Abolitionists and Florence, particularly those in this Florentine so-called English Cemetery, which collects their books, its Powerpoint, Bessarion5.pptx, and Zoom video, Bessarion5.mp4 (titled 'The Color of Stone' and needs proof of age because of nude statues!) The sixth, April 6, was on the Dantisti buried in this Cemetery, such as Joseph Garrow, Robert Davidsohn, Adolfo Mussafia, etc, Bessarion6.mp4 While May 4 was on Julian of Norwich with Cardinal Adam Easton, Bessarion7.mp4. Then, June 1, on our Cardinal Bessarion, Bessarion8.mp4. July 6 was on Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, Bessarion9.mp4. Participants, as Academicians, together decide what topics to discuss at these monthly Zoom meetings. An additional contribution is a hypertexted autobiography: GodsAcre.mp4. Bessarion10 è sulla presentazione del libro, Opere di Brunetto Latino, Maestro di Dante Alighieri (avanzare il file fino a 10 per l'inizio), the English version on my just-published book, Il Tesoro di Brunetto Latino, Maestro di Dante Alighieri. August 3rd was on the Bicameral Mind, literature, architecture and education at Bessarion11.mp4. September 7 was with Luke Penkett on the Norwich Castle Manuscript at Bessarion12.mp4, suggesting you also look at Bessarion12.docx. Our thirteenth session was held on Julian's Editors, the manuscripts of Julian of Norwich's Showing of Love and their preservation: Bessarion13.mp4. Bessarion14.mp4 is sadly on Plagiary and the Gendering of Editions', which I wish I did not have to make. The 15th is on the 'Purple Gospels', Bessarion15.mp4 The 16th is 'From Graves to Cradles', Bessarion16.mp4. The 17th, on the bilingual book, Mary's Dowry, at Bessarion17.mp4 Bessarion 18 is in two parts, the first from Thomas Hill, Art Librarian, Vassar College, http://artlibrary.vassar.edu/wvkr/audio/Bessarion.mp4 and Bessarion18.mp4, these talks on Apuleius' Cupid and Psyche tale embedded in his_Golden Ass_, related to liberal education that liberates the Others (of gender, race, class, etc.) Bessarion19.mp4 is Professor Carlo Illuminati Porcari speaking on the illuminated Commedia Paris-Imola manuscript. Bessarion20.mp4 is on Dante's Florence in Hypertext, Bessarion21 on In God's Image: Neuroscience and Theology, Bessarion22.mp4 on Dante's education, Bessarion23.mp4 is on the Dante book I am in the process of finishing, Di questa commed ìa , lettor, ti giuro: A Study of Dante and his Circle. Bessarion24.mp4 is on Warwick in an Italian Frame, Walter Savage Landor and John Robert Glorney Bolton. Bessarion25.mp4 is on Sarah Parker Remond. Bessarion26.mp4 is on a Life in Books. Bessarion27.mp4 is on John Ruskin's Guild of St George, etc. Golden Ring or Laurel Garland: Elizabeth Barrett Browning and her Circle was our 28th Academia encounter, Bessarion28.mp4.Bessarion29 continued on women writers and Florence. Bessarion30 was on George Eliot, Frederic Leighton, Guido Biagi, Romola and Florence. Bessarion31 is a preview of our City and Book X, Florence and India, conference. Bessarion32 was on the Certosa and Saint Birgitta of Sweden. Bessarion 33 was on Piers Plowman. Bessarion 34 on Santa Maria Nuova Hospital and Florence's English Cemetery. Those who wish to participate as Academicians (open to all) in these discussions can request invitations. Contact for requesting Zoom Meeting ID.
Le versioni in italiano si trovano a Bessarioneit.html, poi a Bessarion1it.mp4 sulla Vita nova; Bessarion2it.mp4, sulle Sette Atti di Misericordia; Bessarion3it.mp3, su pellegrinaggio; Bessarion4it.mp4 sull'agiografia;Bessarion5it.mp4; su 'Nero è Bello!'; Bessarion6it.mp4 sui Dantisti nel Cimitero degli Inglesi; Bessarion7it.mp4 sulla Giuliana di Norwich e il Cardinale Adam Easton; Bessarion10it.mp4 su Brunetto Latino, maestro di Dante Alighieri (avanzare il file fino a '10' per l'inizio); Bessarion11it.mp4 sulla mente bicamerale; Bessarion12it.mp4 sul manoscritto di Norwich Castle; Bessarion13it.pptx sui manoscritti di Julian di Norwich; Bessarione15it.mp4, sui Vangeli purpurei; Bessarion16it.mp4 su 'Dalla tombe alle culle', sul libro La Dote di Maria, Bessarion17it.mp4; il professor Carlo Illuminati Porcari parla sul manoscritto Parigi-Imola dell'Inferno di Dante e le sue miniature,
Bessarion19it.mp4. L'autobiografia si trova a CampoSanto.mp4 (inizia a 2 minuti). Bessarione34 è sull'Ospedale Santa Maria Nuova e il Cimitero degli Inglesi a Firenze. E abbiamo creato un libro su tutti questi discorsi, EffigeDio.mp4
THE FRESCO IN THE HOUSE OFCARDINAL BESSARIONE
I was twenty-one, when I saw it, with my first-born child in my arms. The garden, the house, were a dream landscape, beautifully kept, the custodian placing on the great refectory table a basket of fresh cut flowers. Cicero said happiness is a garden and a library. Have loved the fresco's Fibonacci curves, its naturalness, not one straight line, ever since; now copying it on my library rooms' ceilings around their chandeliers, on Orthodox Roma baby's cradles, and as paintings for gifts. Painting these in a library in a garden in Florence.
Once the Casina in Rome of Cardinal Bessarione, on the Appian Way near the St Sebastian Gate, was beautifully kept, as when I saw it. See, for instance, the photographs on Europeana. But it came to be abandoned, the walls ruined by damp. I should love to live there and restore it as we have Florence's English Cemetery.
Cardinal Basil Bessarione (
Βασίλειος Βησσαρίων), 1403-1472, was the learned, bearded Greek scholar who came with manuscripts to Italy in the Renaissance and was created a Roman Catholic Cardinal Bishop and Latin Patriarch of Constantinople. He had accompanied the Emperor John VIII Paleologus in 1437 to bring about the union of the Orthodox and Catholic faiths and, 6 July 1439, he read the declaration of the Greek Association of Churches in Florence's Duomo in the presence of the Pope and the Emperor. Resented in Byzantium, he then chose to live in Italy, establishing an Academy, like Plato's, for the study of Greek philosophy, and was a friend of Nicholas of Cusa. He presented his library of 548 Greek manuscripts and 337 Latin ones to the Biblioteca Marciana, St Mark's Library, in Venice, as well as a reliquary of the True Cross, in 1468, Bellini painting him with the latter, that painting now in London's National Gallery. The reliquary has been restored by the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence.
National Gallery, London Reliquary, Accademia di Venezia, restored, Florence, Opificio delle Pietre Dure
Also Piero della Francesca painted him, again following the Loss of Constantinople. as one of the three, the first bearded figure on the left in the group gathered in the foreground where, in the background, is the Flagellation of Christ.
It was Cardinal Bessarione whom the great Renaissance painters used as their model for the austere St Jerome in his study, hard at work translating the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into Latin as the Vulgate.
Antonello da Messina, St Jerome in his Study, National Galley, London. The wooden platforms used by medieval writers kept them from the illnesses they would have had if their feet touched the tiled ceramic, stone or marble floors.
Though this story omits that Jerome was funded and aided in his work by the two noble Roman ladies, mother and daughter, Paula and Eustochium. It would be another Cardinal who remembered this, Cardinal Adam Easton of Norwich (1338-1397), who effected Birgitta of Sweden's canonization and likely supported Julian of Norwich in her writing of a similar book of Revelations, of the Showing of Love.
Indeed, a Venetian manuscript leaf, now in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, actually portrays Cardinal Adam Easton, at the bottom of his musical composition of the Visitation Office he promulgated, as Cardinal Basile Bessarione with his long white beard.
Cardinal Adam Easton as Cardinal Basil Bessarione as Cardinal Jerome
This morning (now sometime ago!), this scholar has been painting these roundels again. If you want one let me know, funds to benefit the Romanian Orthodox Roma living in utter poverty on Florence's streets. (We have now seen that the Roma no longer have to sleep under the Innocenti's arcade in the Piazza della Santissima but their poverty decidedly continues. These funds help them have library schools in their homes for their children in Romania, their mothers staying with them instead of begging in Florence's streets, to undo their illiteracy. While we teach the alphabet to their fathers working on this cemetery's restoration.)
FLORIN WEBSITE © JULIA BOLTON HOLLOWAY, AUREO ANELLO ASSOCIAZIONE, 1997-2019: MEDIEVAL: BRUNETTO LATINO, DANTE ALIGHIERI, SWEET NEW STYLE: BRUNETTO LATINO, DANTE ALIGHIERI, & GEOFFREY CHAUCER || VICTORIAN : WHITE SILENCE: FLORENCE'S 'ENGLISH' CEMETERY || ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING || WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR || FRANCES TROLLOPE || HIRAM POWERS || ABOLITION OF SLAVERY || FLORENCE IN SEPIA || *CITY AND BOOK CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS I, II, III,IV,V,VI,VII,VIII||MEDIATHECA 'FIORETTA MAZZEI'* || EDITRICEAUREO ANELLO CATALOGUE || FLORIN WEBSITE || UMILTA WEBSITE || RINGOFGOLD WEBSIT E || LINGUE/LANGUAGES:ITALIANO,ENGLISH || VITA
New: Dantevivo || White SilenceAnd I recommend from https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2019/2019.08.18/
Scott Kennedy, Two Works on Trebizond. Michael Panaretos. Bessarion. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 52. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019. 294. ISBN 9780674986626 $29.95. Reviewed by John Monfasani, The University at Albany, State University of New York. monf@albany.edu
The volume under review is a welcome addition to the literature in English on the medieval “empire” of Trebizond. Located on the southeastern shore of the Black Sea and established as an independent Greek state in 1204 just before Constantinople fell to the Fourth Crusade, Trebizond retained its independence under the dynasty of the Grand Komnenoi until David Komnenos surrendered to Mehmed the Conqueror in 1461. It played no mean role in the political and economic history of the later Middle Ages. It was integral to developments in Anatolia and all the lands bordering the Black Sea, from Constantinople and the Crimea to Georgia in the Caucasus. It also figured significantly in the rivalry of the Italian maritime states of Genoa and Venice. Nonetheless, the last history we have of it in English remains the nearly century-old Trebizond: The Last Greek Empire of William Miller published in 1926. True, significant studies in English have appeared since then, most notably Anthony Bryer’s and David Winfield’s classic The Byzantine Monuments and Topography of the Pontos in 1985. But until a new synthetic survey in English appears, Anglophone students of Trebizond best profit from the latest scholarship by publications such as this addition to the Dumbarton Oaks text series.
The editor, Scott Kennedy, chose to combine two very different sorts of texts: the late fourteenth-century chronicle of the imperial secretary Michael Panaretos, “a drab but reliable narrative” in the words of A. A. Vasiliev,1 and the consciously literary, fifteenth-century encomium of Trebizond by the future cardinal Bessarion but written at a time when he was still only a Basilian monk. Kennedy’s translation is clear, fluent, and accurate. In the notes he alerts the reader when he is attempting to render a difficult or ambiguous passage. For the Greek text facing the English translation, Kennedy reproduced with only modest changes the long available critical editions of Odysseas Lampsides published in the journal_Archeion Pontou_ in 1958 (Panaretos) and 1984 (Bessarion).
As far as Panaretos is concerned, Kennedy decidedly advances beyond Lampsides by his diligent identification and translation of Turkish names and individuals from Panaretos’s idiosyncratic Greek spelling, and by the dense running commentary on persons and events in his notes on Panaretos. In 2016, Annika Asp Talwar anticipated many of Kennedy’s Turkish identifications in an English translation of Panaretos, in a volume published on the occasion of an exhibit at Koç University in Istanbul, but without his extensive historical documentation. The chronicle itself is a series of factual snippets recording events from 1204 to 1426. Panaretos begins to speak in the first person reporting on events in 1340 and continues to do so up to events of 1386. At some point thereafter, the notices must have been additions made by others. Panaretos provides no coherent narrative, but lots of useful information and often piquant and even touching comments, such as when he laments the death of his two sons. Kennedy includes an excellent map, prepared by Ian Mladjov, of the Black Sea coast from Sinope to Georgia and an inset of the Crimea. He also provides a three-page genealogical chart of the Komnenoi as well as a “glossary of offices, titles, and technical terms.” All in all, a very good package for understanding and exploiting Panaretos.
The irony of Kennedy’s combining Panaretos and Bessarion is that whereas Panaretos’s chronicle is a rich, factual source illuminating events and aspects of medieval Trapezuntine history, Bessarion’s encomium is a literary text in need of illumination through the identification of its sources and the events to which it all too vaguely refers. Its value as a source for the history of Trebizond is limited primarily to its description of the city and especially of the imperial palace. It is unfortunate, therefore, that John Eugenikos’s contemporary, relatively short ekphrasis of Trebizond is not also included in the volume (another regrettable omission is a plan of Trebizond, which would have been useful in reading Bessarion). The main value of Bessarion’s encomium resides instead in what it reveals about Bessarion and his vision of Trebizond and Greek history. Consequently, when and where he wrote the encomium matters a great deal for how we are to understand it and its meaning for Bessarion. Unfortunately, we have no reliable or exact information on the date, place, or circumstances of its composition. Kennedy is agnostic about the date, but he favors the view that Bessarion “wrote the text in Mistra or Constantinople as an intellectual exercise and circulated it among his friends back in Treibzond” (xvii). I doubt the correctness of much of this statement, but we need to review the encomium before discussing its origins.
Bessarion was born in Trebizond but educated in Constantinople and Mistra in the Peloponnesus. He describes the oration as a tribute to his native city (§§ 1–5). It is pretentiously long, covering 145 pages in the volume as compared to the 57 pages of Panaretos’s chronicle. It is pretentious in another way. As Kennedy puts it, “Stylistically, Bessarion’s Greek is challenging and demanding” (xvi). After an introduction justifying the composition of the encomium (§§ 1–9), Bessarion makes some general comments on the origin of cities and invokes the deity (§§ 10–12). Then comes a long historical survey as he traces the founding of Trebizond: Athens founded Miletus, which subsequently founded Sinope, which in its turn founded Trebizond. Passing quickly over Athens (§§ 13–14), Bessarion spends considerable time expiating the glorious history of Miletus (§§ 15–23) and provides an interesting ekphrasis of Sinope (§§ 24–28), which suggests that he might have known the city firsthand. He then expounds the geographic and physical virtues of Trebizond (§§ 29–59) as well as the moral virtues and the Greekness of the Trapezuntines down through history (§§ 60–89). A section glorifying the Grand Komnenoi follows (§§ 90–97) before he gives an ekphrasis of the city (§§ 98–110). He ends with another laudatio of the virtue of the Trapezuntine people (§§ 111–121) and an appeal for approbation of his effort (§ 122).
The first thing to be said about its composition is that the encomium was not some idle “intellectual exercise.” It seems to me that Bessarion makes it quite clear that he was commissioned to write it (§ 7), condemning those who under no duress take on tasks beyond their abilities while pleading for understanding of those who willy-nilly (ἐκῶν ἄκων) venture into something arduous. The second point is that he wrote it in Constantinople, not in Trebizond, and certainly not in Mistra. Lampsides, having edited the text, was the first, I believe, to argue for Constantinople. He made an argument ex silentio, namely, that Bessarion does not name or pay obeisance to any contemporary ruler, official, or other figure, something incomprehensible if he were part of an official mission to Trebizond.2 Kennedy adds a telling piece of evidence, although not properly interpreted. At § 36, Bessarion contrasts the steady calmness of the Black Sea to the frequent turbulence of the Aegean, the Hellespont, and “this here sea,” which Kennedy in the notes takes as a reference to the Mediterranean, a conclusion that makes little sense since Mistra is in the middle of the Peloponnesus and Constantinople guards the Bosporus. Rather, Bessarion must mean the Sea of Marmara on the southern shore of the city, which fits nicely in a trilogy with the Aegean and the Hellespont. The third and fourth points, noted by multiple commentators, are (a) that Bessarion’s reference to Trebizond’s submission to Rome “nearly 1500 years ago” (§ 78) would seem to confirm a date for the encomium in or near 1437, since Rome took over Trebizond after the death of Mithridates in 63 BC; and (b) the location of the encomium in Bessarion’s chronologically ordered autograph collection of writings in MS Marc. Gr. 533 (= coll. 778) fits a date of 1436–37: it follows texts written in the mid-1430s and precedes those written at the Council of Ferrara-Florence, in 1438–39. The fifth and last point is that Bessarion clearly had not yet been named one of the spokesmen of the Greek delegation to the Council and therefore had not been officially recognized as a theological expert. Hence, the only expertise he claimed was that over words, a study to which he had dedicated “his whole life” (§ 5). My conclusion is that after returning to Constantinople from Mistra in late 1436 or early 1437, Bessarion was commissioned to write the encomium. One can speculate on the circumstances of the commission, but it is probably significant that he cast the encomium as an address delivered before Trapezuntines rather than as some sort of letter. Since he claimed expertise only in words, I would favor a date in 1436/1437 before he became a teacher in (if not the head of) a monastery in Constantinople and subsequently the bishop of Nicaea.
Kennedy does a good job in annotating the encomium. The only criticism I have is his failure to note at §§ 41–44 Bessarion’s startling repudiation – already noted by Frederick Lauritzen3 – of the writings of his teacher in Mistra, George Gemistus Pletho, concerning the deleterious influence of merchants and commerce, though he does rightly note that Bessarion also contradicts Plato on this point.
In sum, with these two translations and their accompanying documentation, Kennedy has most helpfully served the interests of not only those who study medieval Trebizond, but also those who work on the towering intellectual figure who by his life and works connected Byzantium to the Italian Renaissance.
Notes
1. “The Empire of Trebizond in History and Literature,” Byzantion, 15 (1940–41): 316–77, at 316. At 333, he referred again to “this drab but truthful chronicle.”
2. “L’eloge de Trébisonde de Bessarion,” Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik, 32 (1982): 121–27; “Περὶ τὸ «’Εγκώμιον εἰς Τραπεζοῦντα» τοῦ Βεσσαρίωνος,” Archeion Pontou, 37(1982): 153–81, at 159–60; and “Ο «Εἰς Τραπεζοῦντα» τοῦ Βεσσαρίωνος,” Archeion Pontou, 39 (1984): 3–75, at 5–6.
3. “Bessarion’s Political Thought”: The Encomium to Trebizond,” Bulgaria Mediaevalis, 3 (2 (2011): 153–59.
Sandra Ducic, whom I would love to have write a plurilingual book on Bessarione, gives the following: 'I will try in the following days to put my hand on Bessarione’s Correspondence; I have copied some of his letters while working on his manuscripts in the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice. By the way have you ever read his passionate epistolary? It might be a source of inspiration for Shakespeare Passionate Pilgrim…will we ever know? I am always moved to tears by Bessarions’s poetical talent. It is very nice that you relate him to the Vita nova! Once I read in the Biblioteca Marciana (especially his missive from February 1453 writ in water (to put is in the words of Keats), while seeing for the first time Venice… these were one of the most precious lines from our history, ‘… 'on February 2nd I wake up to a great mist about a city which seemed to me as God's Paradise, from far away I could contemplate from my ship San Marco 's Cupola which I have never yet seen' … I was sweetly bathed by the divine light of dawn which created in my contrived heart such a joy that I could not stop weeping…” it is my humble translation… But I could measure his feelings and the tone of his soul (who as myself was somehow in exile, as we are all…), and I cannot deny the grief in my own heart for the loss of Constantinople'.
Academia.edu's reviewers comment with the following observations:
Though a little hotchpotch of experiences and events, the article deserves publication.
JBH. Yes, I agree, it is open-ended, etc. But we are also using to the fullest hypertext mark-up language on the webpage, http://www.florin.ms/Bessarione.html, which tends to get lost in .pdf. We are trying to exploit the newest technologies. First we had speech. Then we had cave-painting, Then we had writing. Now we can mix recordings, images, writings, direct transmissions, all together. The way Virginia Woolf described a writer's desk to be, or George Eliot's definition of a novel as a 'baggy monster'.
Cardinal Bessarion was a key figure between East and West in the Late Middle Ages. He is a scholar who, with his language and rhetoric, was able to influence a wide audience in his time. It is a good idea to examine Bessarion's original letters and plan to add them to the literature. Good luck.
JBH: Yes, I am hoping Sandra Ducic carries out her project. Academia Bessarion hopes to be a matrix for scholars.
There are definitely the seeds of an intriguing paper here. The content is engaging and I enjoyed the personal slant. My only suggestion would be to better organise the discussion so that it is clear to the reader what they are looking at - a clearer title and integration of the two parts of the draft.
JBH: Can you accept the concept of the Academia Bessarion as frame, as a base from which to launch multiple discussions, new directions, with Fibonacci curves? The way the human mind and dreams work, outside of time and space, synapsing internationally across boundaries, while memorializing and recomposing these?
