Dialogues and Debates from Late Antiquity to Late Byzantium

297 Pages·2017·1.91 MB·English

by  Averil Cameron

Dialogues and Debates from Late
Antiquity to Late Byzantium

Dialogues and Debates from Late Antiquity to Late Byzantium offers the first
overall discussion of the literary and philosophical dialogue tradition in Greek
from imperial Rome to the end of the Byzantine empire and beyond. Sixteen
case studies combine theoretical approaches with in-depth analysis and include
comparisons with the neighbouring Syriac, Georgian, Armenian and Latin tra-
ditions. Following an introduction and a discussion of Plutarch as a writer of
dialogues, other chapters consider the Erostrophus, a philosophical dialogue in
Syriac, John Chrysostom’s On Priesthood, issues of literariness and complexity
in the Greek Adversus Iudaeos dialogues, the Trophies of Damascus, Maximus
Confessor’s Liber Asceticus and the middle Byzantine apocryphal revelation dia-
logues. The volume demonstrates a new frequency in middle and late Byzantium
of rhetorical, theological and literary dialogues, concomitant with the increasing
rhetoricisation of Byzantine literature, and argues for a move towards new and
exciting experiments. Individual chapters examine the Platonising and anti-Latin
dialogues written in the context of Anselm of Havelberg’s visits to Constantino-
ple, the theological dialogue by Soterichos Panteugenos, the dialogues of Niketas
‘of Maroneia’ and the literary dialogues by Theodore Prodromos, all from the
twelfth century. The final chapters explore dialogues from the empire’s Georgian
periphery and discuss late Byzantine philosophical, satirical and verse dialogues
by Nikephoros Gregoras, Manuel II Palaiologos and George Scholarios, with spe-
cial attention to issues of form, dramatisation and performance.
Averil Cameron was Warden of Keble College Oxford from 1994 to 2010 and
formerly Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine Studies at King’s College Lon-
don, UK. She is currently the chair of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research.
Her most recent books are Byzantine Matters (2014), Dialoguing in Late Antiq-
uity (2014) and Arguing It Out. Discussion in Twelfth-Century Byzantium (2016).
Niels Gaul is A. G. Leventis Professor of Byzantine Studies at the University of
Edinburgh, UK and the author of Thomas Magistros und die spätbyzantinische
Sophistik (2011).

Dialogues and Debates
from Late Antiquity to Late
Byzantium

Edited by
Averil Cameron and Niels Gaul
First published 2017
by Routledge
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© 2017 selection and editorial matter, Averil Cameron and Niels Gaul;
individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Averil Cameron and Niels Gaul to be identified as the authors
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Contents

List of contributors viii
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction 1
AVERIL CAMERON AND NIELS GAUL
1 Plutarch’s dialogues: beyond the Platonic example? 8
ELENI KECHAGIA-OVSEIKO
2 Erostrophus, a Syriac dialogue with Socrates on the soul 20
ALBERTO RIGOLIO
3 The rhetorical mechanisms of John Chrysostom’s On Priesthood 32
ALBERTO J. QUIROGA PUERTAS
4 Literary distance and complexity in late antique and early
Byzantine Greek dialogues Adversus Iudaeos 43
PATRICK ANDRIST
5 Prepared for all occasions: the Trophies of Damascus and
the Bonwetsch Dialogue 65
PETER VAN NUFFELEN
6 New wine in old wineskin: Byzantine reuses of the
apocryphal revelation dialogue 77
PÉTER TÓTH
vi Contents
7 Dialogical pedagogy and the structuring of emotions in Liber
Asceticus 94
IOANNIS PAPADOGIANNAKIS
8 Anselm of Havelberg’s controversies with the Greeks:
a moment in the scholastic culture of disputation 105

ALEX J NOVIKOFF
9 A Platonising dialogue from the twelfth century: the logos of
Soterichos Panteugenos 123
FOTEINI SPINGOU
10 The six dialogues by Niketas ‘of Maroneia’:
a contextualising introduction 137
ALESSANDRA BUCOSSI
11 Theodore Prodromos in the Garden of Epicurus 153
ERIC CULLHED
12 ‘Let us not obstruct the possible’: dialoguing in
medieval Georgia 167
NIKOLOZ ALEKSIDZE
13 Embedded dialogues and dialogical voices in Palaiologan
prose and verse 184
NIELS GAUL
14 Nikephoros Gregoras’s Philomathes and Phlorentios 203
DIVNA MANOLOVA
15 Dramatisation and narrative in late Byzantine dialogues:
Manuel II Palaiologos’s On Marriage and Mazaris’
Journey to Hades 220
FLORIN LEONTE
Contents vii
16 Form and content in the dialogues of Gennadios Scholarios 237
GEORGE KARAMANOLIS
Bibliography 252
Index 276
Contributors

Nikoloz Aleksidze is a Research Associate at the History Faculty, University of
Oxford (with the ERC project ‘Cult of Saints’), a Junior Research Fellow at
Pembroke College and the author of The Schism: An Interpretive Schema of
Caucasian History (forthcoming 2018).
Patrick Andrist is a Privat-Docent at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland)
and project leader of the ERC project ParaTexBib (Basle). He is the author
of Le Dialogue d’Athanase et Zachée. Étude des sources et du contexte lit-
téraire (2001), co-author of La syntaxe du codex. Essai de codicologie struc-
turale (2013) and has just published a monograph entitled Les codex grecs
adversus iudaeos conservés à la Bibliothèque vaticane (s. XI–XVI). Essai
méthodologique pour une étude des livres manuscrits thématiques (2016).
Alessandra Bucossi is a Research Fellow in Byzantine Studies at Ca’ Foscari
University of Venice. She is author of the editio princeps of the Sacrum Arma-
mentarium by Andronikos Kamateros (2014) and is currently working on the
critical edition of the Six Dialogues on the procession of the Holy Spirit by
Niketas ‘of Maroneia’.
Averil Cameron was Warden of Keble College Oxford from 1994 to 2010 and for-
merly Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine Studies at King’s College Lon-
don, UK. She is currently the chair of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research.
Her most recent books are Byzantine Matters (2014), Dialoguing in Late Antiq-
uity (2014) and Arguing It Out. Discussion in Twelfth-Century Byzantium (2016).
Eric Cullhed is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Greek at Uppsala University.
He has published the first volume of a critical edition of Eustathios of Thes-
salonike’s Commentary on the Odyssey (2016).
Niels Gaul is A. G. Leventis Professor of Byzantine Studies at the University of
Edinburgh, UK and the author of Thomas Magistros und die spätbyzantinische
Sophistik (2011).
George Karamanolis is Assistant Professor of Ancient Philosophy at the Uni-
versity of Vienna. He is the author of two monographs, Plato and Aristotle in
Contributors ix
Agreement? Platonists on Aristotle from Antiochus to Porphyry (2006; pbk
2013) and The Philosophy of Early Christianity (2013).
Eleni Kechagia-Ovseiko is a Supernumerary Fellow at Nuffield College Oxford,
and is the author of Plutarch against Colotes: A Lesson in History of Philoso-
phy (2011).
Florin Leonte has been a College Fellow in Byzantine Language and Litera-
ture at Harvard University’s Department of the Classics from 2013 to 2015
and is now a joint Fellow with the Villa I Tatti/The Harvard Center for Italian
Renaissance Studies and the Research Center for Anatolian Civilisations, Koç
University, Istanbul. He is working on a monograph on the rhetorical oeuvre of
Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos.
Divna Manolova is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie-funded POLONEZ Fellow at the
University of Silesia in Katowice and is currently working on a monograph
entitled Polymathy and Intellectual Curiosity in Byzantine Discourses of Sci-
ence and Philosophy (Thirteenth–Fifteenth Centuries).
Alex J. Novikoff teaches history and mediaeval studies at Fordham University.
A specialist in the European High Middle Ages and in mediaeval interfaith
relations, he is the author of The Medieval Culture of Disputation: Pedagogy,
Practice, and Performance (2013) and, most recently, the editor of The Renais-
sance of the Twelfth Century: A Reader (2016).
Ioannis Papadogiannakis is Lecturer in Patristics at King’s College London.
He is the author of Christianity and Hellenism in the Greek East. Theodoret’s
Apologetics against the Greeks in Context (2012) and is the Director of the
ERC project ‘Defining Belief and Identities in the Eastern Mediterranean. The
Role of Religious Debate and Interaction’.
Alberto J. Quiroga Puertas is Ramón y Cajal Fellow in the Ancient Greek
Department at the University of Granada. He is the editor of the volume The
Purpose of Rhetoric in Late Antiquity: From Performance to Exegesis (2013)
and is preparing a monograph, The Dynamics of Rhetorical Delivery in Late
Antiquity.
Alberto Rigolio is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Society of Fellows in Liberal
Arts at Princeton University. He obtained his doctorate from Oxford and has
published numerous articles on education and especially on Syriac translations
of Greek secular works.
Foteini Spingou is a Researcher on Late Antique Egyptian Art and Manuscripts
for the ERC-funded project ‘Monumental Art of the Christian and Early Islamic
East’, Faculty of Classics, Oxford University. She works on the intersection
of art, literature, and social history in Late Antiquity and Later Byzantium.
Her first monograph is on a unique anthology of eleventh- and twelfth-century
occasional poetry.