Byzantine Scholars in Renaissance Italy: Cardinal Bessarion and Other Emigres. Selected Essays.

John Monfasani. (Collected Studies Series, CS485.) Aldershot: Variorum, 1994. $ 95. ISBN: 0860-78477-0

As a Greek scholar and high dignitary of the Byzantine Church and later as cardinal at the Roman court, Bessarion symbolizes better than anyone the translatio studii from Byzantium to Italy in the Quattrocento. Dealing with "Byzantine Scholars in Renaissance Italy," the collection of articles by John Monfasani focuses naturally on the person and the work of the Cardinal Nicenus and his circle.

Published between 1981 and 1994 in the United States, Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland, the articles offer the outcome of thorough scholarly investigation in American and European archives and libraries. The achievements of such methodical research are impressive: Monfasani publishes numerous new texts, such as a letter from Bessarion to Theodore Gaza and the solutiones given by Gaza to philosophical questions, two texts newly discovered in an Escorial manuscript. He also presents a number of important new witnesses of already known texts. Taken as a whole, Monfasani's book brings to light numerous new facts and information concerning cultural history in the time of Bessarion.

Inevitably such detailed studies contain minor errors: the ones we find in the Greek texts have already been noted by other reviewers [Erich Trapp in Jahrbuch der Osterreichischen Byzantinistik, 46 (1996), 492]. One internal contradiction may however be pointed out, not because it is of central importance for Monfasani's work - in fact, it isn't - but rather because it reflects a dangerous tendency of modern scholarship regarding the study of manuscripts: in the eighth article (840) Monfasani attributes the codex Vaticanus graecus 13, one of the major witnesses of Theodore Gaza's Greek grammar, to the hand of Demetrios Trivolis with a (partially erroneous) reference to the Repertorium der griechischen Kopisten (E. Gamillscheg, D. Harlfinger, Repertorium der griechischen Kopisten 800-1600. 1: Handschriften aus Bibliotheken Grossbrittaniens, Vienna 1981). Unfortunately, in Monfasani's previous article (240, n. 13) the same manuscript along with other Greek codices was attributed to George Hermonymos, the first professor of Greek in Paris and teacher of Lefevre d'Etaples, Reuchlin, Bude, and Erasmus. The attribution to Hermonymos is now confirmed by Repertorium der griechischen Kopisten published at the very end of 1997 (3: Handschriften aus Bibliotheken Roms mit dem Vatikan, Vienna 1997, A: 57). But what is Monfasani's final opinion? A note in the corrigenda et addenda at the end of the volume would have been welcome. But this detail shows above all that the increasing number of attributions of unsigned manuscripts to known scribes must be considered with greatest caution.

Among the Greeks of the fifteenth century, George Gemistos Plethon, the teacher of Bessarion at Mistra, is undoubtly one of the most mysterious personalities. In the tenth article "Platonic Paganism in the Fifteenth Century," Monfasani argues convincingly that the author of the Treatise on the Laws was a neo-pagan. On one point, however, his detailed argumentation merits an objection. According to Monfasani the remaining part of Pletho's treatise might be more complete than generally admitted by modern scholars (49-50). This assumption is based on the declarations of one of the few persons who knew the complete text of the Laws, George Scholarios. In his famous letter to the exarch Joseph, Scholarios says that he read the whole work in four hours. Monfasani therefore concludes that the original text was a relatively brief one. Even if the conclusion may be right for other reasons, the use of the Scholarios's letter is here misleading. Actually the letter of Scholarios is a complaint against Pletho which uses all the rhetorical resources at the disposal of one of the most brilliant Greek intellectuals of the time. Such a text should by no means be considered as a reliable historical source, and we should not take Scholarios at his word.

From a general point of view, the most important study to be found in the volume is probably the twelfth article "L'insegnamento universitario e la cultura bizantina in Italia del Quattrocento." In a famous letter Constantine Lascaris, one of the great Greek teachers of the second half of the fifteenth century, is complaining about the miserable living conditions of the Byzantine teachers in Italy. Those otherwise well-attested difficulties, Monfasani tells us, are explained by both qualitative and quantitative reasons, the most important being the inability of Byzantine teaching to satisfy the exigencies of Italian humanists (46). On the whole, Monfasani may be right, but he remains silent on an essential motivation of at least some of the Greeks who went to Italy, such as Manuel Chrysoloras and Bessarion. Their teaching activities had a higher purpose: the political and cultural salvation of the Byzantine Empire. This high ambition was bound to fail at least in its political aspects, and this failure partially explains the bitterness of Bessarion, Lascaris, and other Greeks living in Italy.

These observations, however, concern only details that in no way reduce the value of Monfasani's book, which is undoubtedly one of the major contributions to modern historiography on Bessarion and his circle.

CHRISTIAN FORSTEL Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris