Description
Book SynopsisAlthough the immense importance for the Renaissance of Greek émigrés to fifteenth-century Italy has long been recognized, much basic research on the phenomenon remains to be done. This new volume by John Monfasani gathers together fourteen studies filling in some of the gaps in our knowledge. The philosophers George Gemistus Pletho and George Amiroutzes, the great churchman Cardinal Bessarion, and the famous humanists George of Trebizond and Theodore Gaza are the subjects of some of the articles. Other articles treat the émigrés as a group within the wider frame of contemporary issues, such as humanism, the theological debate between the Orthodox and Roman Catholics, and the process of translating Greek texts into Latin. Furthermore, some notable Latin figures also enter into several of the articles in a detailed way, specifically, Nicholas of Cusa, Niccolà Perotti, and Pietro Balbi.
Table of ContentsContents: Preface; The Greeks and Renaissance humanism; The pro-Latin apologetics of the Greek émigrés to quattrocento Italy; Pletho’s date of death and the burning of his Laws; George Gemistus Pletho and the West: Greek émigrés, Latin scholasticism, and Renaissance humanism; The ‘lost’ final part of George Amiroutzes’ Dialogus de Fide in Christum and Zanobi Acciaiuoli; A note on George Amiroutzes (c. 1400-c. 1469) and his moral argument against the transmigration of souls; Cardinal Bessarion’s own translation of the In Calumniatorem Platonis; Niccolò Perotti and Bessarion’s In Calumniatorem Platonis; Cardinal Bessarion’s Greek and Latin sources in the Plato-Aristotle controversy of the 15th century and Nicholas of Cusa’s relation to the controversy; The pre- and post-history of Cardinal Bessarion’s 1469 In Calumniatorem Platonis; A tale of two books: Bessarion’s In Calumniatorem Platonis and George of Trebizond’s Comparatio Philosophorum Platonis et Aristotelis; Aristotle as scribe of nature: the title-page of MS Vat. Lat. 2094; George of Trebizond’s critique of Theodore Gaza’s translation of the Aristotelian Problemata; Some quattrocento translators of St Basil the Great: Gaspare Zacchi, Episcopus Anonymus, Pietro Balbi, Athanasius Chalkeopoulos, and Cardinal Bessarion; Addenda et corrigenda; Indexes.
