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OUP CORRECTED PROOFS – FINAL, 17/12/2021, SPi
PETER ADAMSON
BYZANTINE AND
RENAISSANCE
PHILOSOPHY
a history of philosophy without any gaps
volume 6
1
OUP CORRECTED PROOFS – FINAL, 17/12/2021, SPi
3
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© Peter Adamson 2022
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First Edition published in 2022
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OUP CORRECTED PROOFS – FINAL, 17/12/2021, SPi
CONTENTS
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xv
Dates xvii
Maps xxi
vii
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C O N TE N T S
viii
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CO NTEN TS
Notes 395
Further Reading 459
Index 473
ix
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OUP CORRECTED PROOFS – FINAL, 17/12/2021, SPi
PREFA CE
I t’s always nice when you’re forced to do something, and then discover that you
should have done it anyway. That’s more or less what happened with this book.
Having covered two traditions of medieval thought in previous installments of the
series, those of the Islamic world and Latin Christendom, there was Byzantium still
to tackle. I am giving Byzantine philosophy (much) more coverage than you might
have expected: many general histories of philosophy cover it fleetingly, or not at all.
Nonetheless, I knew it would not give me enough material for a volume comparable
in size to others in the series. So just for pragmatic reasons, it seemed unavoidable to
combine it with the next topic, philosophy in the Italian Renaissance. Happily, it
turns out that this makes a huge amount of sense in intellectual terms, to an extent
that I myself did not fully appreciate when I first embarked on this part of the
project.
Any overview of either culture will inform you about the links between Byzan-
tium and Renaissance Italy, explaining how an influx of manuscripts and scholars
from the Greek East helped to trigger Italian humanism. But treating the two
philosophical traditions together in one volume, as I will do here—and as no
other book has ever done, as far as I know—reveals a much stronger degree of
continuity. There is a single story of humanist achievement that stretches from early
Byzantine collectors like Photius (or even from late antiquity, if one thinks of figures
like the commentator Simplicius) all the way to the late fifteenth century, when
Ficino rendered Plato’s dialogues into Latin, and early printed editions made Greek
texts available as never before. Nor did the influence travel in just one direction,
given that Latin scholasticism also influenced Byzantine thought (see Chapter 19).
When we divide up the history of philosophy, we tend to overestimate the relevance
of language barriers. In this case it is easy to assume that there must have been a
sharp divide between philosophy written in the Greek East and the Latin West. But
in fact there was extensive overlap between the values, interests, and preoccupations
of Byzantine and Renaissance philosophers, just as there was between the concerns
of late ancient thinkers who wrote in Greek and philosophers who wrote in Syriac
and Arabic.
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PR EF A CE
One way that I’ve tried to bring this out is by exploring certain issues in both
contexts, for example gender (Chapters 12, 29–30), economic theory (Chapters 13,
43), mathematics (Chapters 17, 48), rhetoric (Chapters 9, 24–5), and history writing
(Chapters 10, 41). Some of the same sources will also come up in both halves of the
book. This applies to Aristotle and Plato, of course, but also Averroes (Chapters 20,
46), Plotinus and Proclus (Chapters 6–7, 31–3), and the ancient commentators on
Aristotle (Chapters 11, 44–7). To understand both traditions, we will also need to
familiarize ourselves with the changing technology for the preservation and trans-
mission of texts (Chapters 14, 45).
All of which is not to minimize the distinctive nature of Byzantine philosophy,
on the one hand, and Italian Renaissance philosophy, on the other. Several factors
combine to give Byzantium its special character. If pressed, I would name above all:
the centrality of Constantinople as a seat of “Roman” power (however diminished);
continuity of language and textual transmission from ancient Greek culture; the
concerns of Orthodox Christianity; and the direct challenge posed by neighboring
polities, especially those that were in Muslim hands. Thanks to these features of
Byzantine society, we’ll be seeing monarchial political theories in Byzantium
(Chapter 8) that contrast starkly with the republicanism of medieval and Renais-
sance Italy (Chapters 38–40). Iconoclasm and Hesychasm are unique to Byzantium,
both of them much discussed by historians but routinely underestimated in terms of
their philosophical interest (Chapters 3, 18). Then there is the fact that Greek
Christianity in the Near East went beyond the borders of the Byzantine empire,
and also existed in the lands of Islam (Chapters 2, 16). As for the Renaissance, I need
not belabor its singularity as a transformative period in the history of European
thought. But, aside from the epochal contributions of figures like Bruni, Ficino, and
Machiavelli, I might note that Italian philosophy in the sixteenth century will already
give us a foretaste of what is to come in the seventeenth, thanks to the empiricist
anti-Aristotelianism of Telesio and of course the revolutionary ideas of Bruno and
Galileo (Chapters 51, 53–4). I have stretched past the chronological boundary of
1600 to include some of these figures, especially Campanella, whose works were
well paired with Telesio in natural philosophy, and with earlier utopian treatises
written in Italy (Chapter 42).
This would be a good moment to admit that the title of this volume is both
misleadingly narrow and misleadingly broad. Narrow, in that it speaks of “Byzan-
tine” philosophy. In fact, as just mentioned, we will venture outside the confines of
Byzantium and the Orthodox tradition, to consider Near Eastern Christian thought
more broadly. Also, I will not end the story with the fall of Constantinople, but give
you a quick survey of philosophy in Eastern Greek culture all the way down to the
xii
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P RE F AC E
twentieth century (Chapter 21). As for “Renaissance” philosophy, that term arguably
promises more than I will be offering, in this book at least. As I’ve already noted a
few times, the second part of this volume is only going to deal with the Italian
Renaissance. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Germany, the Netherlands,
France, and the British Isles produced philologists to match anyone Italy had to
offer, like Erasmus and Isaac Casaubon. In the same period, the Protestant Refor-
mation was unfolding, with its untold significance for European history including
the history of philosophy. This then provoked a religious and cultural backlash in
southern Europe, sometimes called the “Counter-Reformation,” though not all
historians like this term. That was the context for, among other things, exciting
developments in scholasticism in the Iberian peninsula. In fact, the story of phil-
osophy in these centuries outside Italy is so rich and diverse that it is going to need a
book of its own.
More accurate, then, would have been to call this volume “Philosophy in Byzan-
tium, Near Eastern Christianity, and the Italian Renaissance,” while the title of a
further planned volume should be something like “Philosophy in the Northern
Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Counter-Reformation.” But faced with a
choice between snappy book titles and strictly accurate ones, I have to admit that
I found the choice pretty easy, and am thus using the labels “Byzantine and
Renaissance Philosophy” and “Philosophy in the Reformation.” More difficult was
the decision of where to place certain figures who cross the Italian/non-Italian
divide. Two prominent cases are Nicholas of Cusa, who was from Germany but
spent time in Italy and was strongly influenced by the humanist climate there, and
Christine de Pizan, who conversely was from Italy but lived and wrote in France.
I have postponed Nicholas until the next book, in hopes of enriching my portrayal
of German philosophical culture in the fifteenth century, while Christine is covered
here, since her works resonate so well with those of the female Italian humanists
(Chapters 28–30).
A related problem is that, occasionally, developments outside Italy had a major
impact on philosophers of the Italian Renaissance. That applies especially to the
printing press, whose impact on all European thought was immense. In Italy this
technology arrived in 1465. While I will touch on its impact here (especially in
Chapter 45), a fuller discussion of print culture is reserved for the volume on the
Reformation, since this invention played such an important role in the dissemin-
ation of ideas from Luther, Calvin, and other reformers. Texts written elsewhere in
Europe will occasionally enter our story too, notably with the case of Thomas
More’s Utopia (Chapter 42). Finally, it almost goes without saying that the astro-
nomical theories of Copernicus made an impression on Italian scientists, especially
xiii
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PR EF A CE
Galileo (Chapter 54). This gives us another foretaste of the seventeenth century,
when I’ll often find it necessary to refer to the influence exercised by thinkers who
haven’t yet been properly covered in the book series, because of the way that texts
and ideas passed from one part of Europe to another. But since the seventeenth
century is two volumes away still (assuming I even get that far), let’s not worry about
that yet. We have plenty to keep us busy, starting with the question of why the
Roman empire didn’t fall until 1453.
xiv
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
L ike other volumes of this series, this book has benefited at every stage of its
development from expert advice. This began with input from several colleagues
on my initial list of topics to cover, and ended with extremely helpful feedback on
the final manuscript from Michele Trizio, Cecilia Muratori, and Melina Vogiatzi. For
suggestions, corrections, and encouragement, I would like to thank both of them as
well as Lela Alexidze, Charles Burnett, Börje Bydén, Thony Christie, Brian Copen-
haver, Sabrina Ebbersmeyer, Christophe Erismann, Guido Giglioni, Dag Nikolaus
Hasse, Judith Herrin, Katerina Ierodiakonou, Giorgi Kapriev, George Karamanolis,
Jill Kraye, David Lines, Andrew Louth, Dominic O’Meara, Robert Pasnau, Oliver
Primavesi, Denis Robichaud, Ingrid Rowland, Quentin Skinner, Okihito Utamura,
and Dimitris Vasilakis. Many of these scholars also kindly agreed to be interviewed
for the podcast series, and I highly recommend listening to those episodes as a
supplement to reading this book.
I am also grateful to Peter Momtchiloff from Oxford University Press for his
support of the book series, and Konrad Boeschenstein for preparing the index. The
podcast series for the relevant episodes was supported by Jim Black, Julian Rimmer,
and Bethany Somma.
I could not keep pursuing this series without the love, patience, and support
I receive from my family: my wife Ursula, my daughters Sophia and Johanna, my
brother Glenn, and my parents Joyce and David. The book is dedicated to two of my
biggest fans (and the feeling is mutual): my Aunt Judy and Uncle Fred.
xv
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OUP CORRECTED PROOFS – FINAL, 28/12/2021, SPi
DATES
d. = date of death
fl. = flourished
Bardaiṣˉan d. 222
Ephrem of Edessa d. 373 Council of Nicaea 325
Constantinople founded 330
Council of Chalcedon 431
Philoxenus of Mabbug d. 523 Reign of Justinian I 527–65
ˉ
Sergius of Reshʿayna d. 536 Code of Justinian issued 529
Paul the Persian fl. mid-6th cent.
Agapetus 6th cent.
David the Invincible 6th cent.
Maximus the Confessor d. 662 Arabs triumph at Battle of 636
Severus Sebōkht d. 666/7 Yarmuk
Athanasius of Balad d. 686
Jacob of Edessa d. 708
George of the Arabs d. 724 Seige of Constantinople 717–18
John of Damascus d. 749 Iconoclasm begins 726
First restoration of icons 787
Charlemagne crowned 800
emperor
Timothy I d. 823 Iconoclasm resumes 815
ˉ Qurra
Theodore Abu d. c.820
Theodore the Studite d. 826
Patriarch Nikephoros I d. 828
ˉ Raˉʾiṭa
Abu d. c.835 End of iconoclasm 843
Leo the Mathematician d. after 869 Macedonian dynasty 867–1028
Photius d. c.893
Arethas d. 932
xvii
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DAT ES
xviii
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DATES
xix
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