SOURCE: "An Unpublished Funeral Oration on Anna Comnena," in Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological, Vol. 188, No. 8, 1962, pp. 1-12.

[In the following excerpt, Browning examines a document from the middle of the twelfth century which lends insight into Anna's quest for a philosophical system.]

The Byzantinist has one advantage over the student of classical antiquity—unless the latter happens to be a papyrologist. With a little diligence and a minimum of good luck he can easily unearth unpublished texts and find himself producing an editio princeps. And however often one has turned over the leaves of a manuscript and laboriously read words which have remained unread for perhaps five centuries or more, it never loses its thrill. Yet one must admit that the advantage is less than it seems. The classical scholar's texts are usually worth reading from some point of view, while what the Byzantinist finds is so often empty rhetorical verbiage. Byzantine funeral orations are notorious for their lack of information on the life of the deceased. Yet they never tell us absolutely nothing if we read them alertly, and they are sometimes remarkably informative on the ideas and values of the times. When the subject is a major figure of medieval Greek literature about the details of whose life we are very much in the dark, even the most trifling addition to our knowledge is welcome. It is this thought which encourages me to present a hitherto unknown Byzantine writer of the middle of the twelfth century—George Tornikes, Metropolitan of Ephesus—and to dwell in particular on his funeral oration on Anna Comnena.

I shall try in my remarks to avoid involvement in technicalities of dating and prosopography which are of exclusively Byzantine interest. George Tornikes, Metropolitan of Ephesus, is in fact not a wholly unknown figure. Six of his letters were published by Spyridon Lampros in 1879 in his edition of the works of Michael Choniates, Metropolitan of Athens, to whom he wrongly supposed these letters to be addressed. And the same scholar thirty-seven years later described in some detail the unique manuscript of Tornikes' works (N.E. 13, 1916, 13-22). His description has been superseded only in the last few months by that in the magnificent first volume of the new catalogue of the Vienna Greek manuscripts by Herbert Hunger. Yet the great reference works on Byzantine literature—those of Krumbacher and Beck—do not mention him. Historians of the period, like Chalandon and Paolo Lamma, pass him over in silence. And even the diligent Brockhoff, in his dissertation on the history of Ephesus in the Middle Ages (Jena, 1905), fails to list him among the bishops of that city. On the few occasions when he is mentioned, he is tacitly or explicitly identified with a namesake who was Professor of Rhetoric in the Patriarchal School in Constantinople at the end of the twelfth century. Indeed it is to this mistaken identity that we owe the publication of the six letters by Lampros more than eighty years ago.

The corpus of Tornikes' works survives in a single manuscript of the early fourteenth century, now in the National Library in Vienna, which is a treasure-house of unique twelfth-century texts, cod. Vindob. phil. graec. 321. The corpus comprises twenty-five letters to named and usually easily identifiable addresses, three prooemia to inaugural or ceremonial lectures delivered by Tornikes at the Patriarchal School, a confession of faith made in connection with a well-known theological controversy in the middle fifties of the twelfth century, a letter drafted for the emperor Manuel I to Pope Alexander III, and a very long funeral oration on Anna Comnena, with which I am now principally concerned. None of these texts has been published except in trifling excerpts.

From his works one can gather something of Tornikes' life and career. On his father's side he belonged to a wealthy Macedonian or Thracian family, allegedly of Armenian origin, which in 1047 provided an unsuccessful claimant to the imperial throne. His mother was a niece of an archbishop of Bulgaria, perhaps of the great Theophylact. We hear of a brother named Leo, who was for a time in Athens, doubtless on government service, and of a cousin Euthymius, his special protégé, who held a junior appointment on the staff of the Patriarch. As such posts were generally the prelude to a distinguished ecclesiastical career, we may tentatively identify this Euthymius with Euthymius Tornikes, bishop of Patrae, who was expelled from his see by the Latins in 1204. This prelate was a nephew of Euthymius Malakes, bishop of Neae Patrae, theologian and scholar, and lifelong friend of Eustathius, for whom he composed a still surviving funeral oration. So George Tornikes may also have been related to Malakes and have known Eustathius as a young man.

We do not know when he was born, nor much about his early life, except that he was an intimate of Anna Comnena and her family during her long years of retirement from public life after the death of her father Alexius Comnenus in 1118. He seems to have been a member of the literary and scholarly circle gathered round her, of which I shall have more to say later. He probably also held junior teaching posts in the Patriarchal School. At any rate in 11467 we find him appointed … the junior of the three Professors of Theology, and we have the proem to the inaugural lecture which he delivered on that occasion. Unfor tunately, unlike many inaugural lectures of Byzantine teachers, it tells us nothing of Tornikes' earlier career, but consists largely of laudations of the Patriarch Cosmas II Atticus, to whom he owed his appointment. Some years later he became … head of the Patriarchal School, and later still, but probably before the end of 1154, he … became responsible for drafting the official documents issued by the Patriarch. Literary skill and a command of rhetoric were essential qualifications for such a post in the twelfth century, just as they were indispensable to the corresponding official in the imperial service, the Keeper of the Inkstand…. At this point in his rapid career Tornikes could reasonably look forward to an archbishopric in the provinces; this was the usual reward of a successful career in the Patriarchal School or in the personal staff of the Patriarch. But he seems to have got on the wrong side in the complex ecclesiastical politics of the time, and we have a number of despondent letters from this period describing the hostility shown to him by the patriarchal entourage. In particular he was blamed for his continued loyalty to his former patron, the Patriarch Cosmas II Atticus, whose right to a Christian burial he stoutly defended when the former Patriarch was accused not only of showing undue sympathy towards members of the imperial family then in disgrace, but also of being a crypto-Bogomil. The leader of the opposition to Tornikes at this time was his colleague Soterichus Panteugenes, with whom was associated his successor as Director of the Patriarchal School, Michael ὁ του̑ θεσσᾳ̑λονίκης. Tornikes got his revenge in time, when Panteugenes and Michael were condemned in one of the most celebrated heresy trials of the century. But in the meantime he suffered a setback. In due course, however, probably after a change of patriarchs in 1154, his chance came. He was put on the short list for the Archbishopric of Corinth—the vacancy was possibly due to the death of Gregory of Corinth, though the chronological problems are complex—but withdrew on the advice of a highly placed and no doubt well-informed friend. A little later, possibly in the second half of 1155, he was appointed Metropolitan of Ephesus. Like so many others who had spent their lives in the brilliant and sophisticated but narrow world of the capital, he found the transference to a position of high responsibility in the provinces a traumatic experience. His letters from Ephesus, like those of Michael Choniates from Athens, Michael Italicus from Philippopolis, Basil Pediadites from Corfu, are marked by self-pity and lack of sympathy towards the provincials. Captured by the Seljuks in 1090, recaptured by the Byzantines shortly afterwards, harried by pirates, particularly the notorious Caqa, occupied by the Crusaders in 1147, Ephesus was but a shadow of its former self. We hear in Tornikes' letters of pieces of mosaic falling on the bishop's head as he officiated in the great church of St John the Theologian, around which the medieval town had grown up. Heresy was rife. The local population was ignorant and unfriendly. The Byzantine governor and his court were at Philadelphia, at the end of a long journey over the mountains. In several of his letters Tornikes talks of leaving his diocese and returning to the capital, but they cannot be readily dated. He was probably still in Ephesus in May 1157, and he may have remained there for years. In early summer 1166, however, we find him entrusted by Manuel I with the drafting of a reply to a letter from Pope Alexander III, in the course of negotiations of which we learn something in Boson's contemporary Life of that Pope. He must then have been in Constantinople, enjoying the closest confidence of the emperor. This is his last appearance on the stage of history. By February 1170 the Metropolitan of Ephesus is one Nicolaus.

So much for the man. Now to his funeral oration on Anna Comnena. I propose to say something first on the biographical information which it furnishes, then on the light it throws on the intellectual life of the period, but it will not be easy to keep the two themes clearly separate…. And Tornikes' verbosity, as well as his personal involvement, lead to an almost independent development of certain of the constituent parts. So the final result is not only very long—13,000 to 14,000 words, only slightly shorter than Isocrates' Panathenaicus—but also somewhat complex. Tornikes begins by apologizing for the delay in the delivery of his oration and expressing his astonishment that no one else in Constantinople has delivered a monody on the princess, the subject being so unique. He then turns to the praise of her parents, Alexius I and Irene Ducas. Then come Anna's birth, upbringing and education, her appearance, her betrothal to Constantine Ducas and his untimely death. Then the account of her subsequent betrothal to Nicephorus Bryennius leads to a long digression on the virtues and exploits of the princess's husband. Next comes a long development on Anna's devotion to her mother and the lessons she learned from her. The theme of her care for her parents leads to the account of the death of her father, and the change which it brought about in Anna's circumstances. Her misfortunes and the constancy with which she met them are described with a wealth of literary imagery—the Homeric cormorant, the wimple of Leucothea, etc.—but little precision. Next comes an account of how she spent her enforced retirement in intellectual pursuits, and gathered about her a group of scholars whose work she inspired and directed, and of her own philosophical views—these are expounded at great length. Embedded in this section is an account of the deaths of her mother and her husband. Then Tornikes speaks of Anna's literary work, her letters—which do not seem to have survived—and her History. By a skilful transition—her wide technical competence, her knowledge of medicine, both theoretical and practical, her care of the sick, her care of her sister during her illness—he leads to the story of the princess's last illness, her taking of the veil, and her death. He concludes with a development on Anna's daughter—probably Irene, with whom he was in correspondence—and on the many groups and classes who will sincerely mourn her loss.

Anna Comnena was born in the Porphyry Chamber of the Great Palace at dawn on Saturday, 2 December 1083. The date of her death is unknown: probably after 1148 is the nearest one can get on the internal evidence of her History, and the narrative sources for the middle of the twelfth century say nothing about her. The new text gives a little more precision, but not much more. [It] gives a date before the beginning of 1156, and some years after 1147. Some time had elapsed, he says, since the princess's death. The impression conveyed to the reader is that he is thinking of months rather than years. I should be inclined to date Anna's death to the years 1153-5. Father J. Darrouzès informs me in a letter that he has independently reached the same conclusion. Perhaps we get some confirmation from a long passage in which the speaker compares Anna's relationship to the brilliant men of her age with that of a comet to the fixed stars. In both cases the novelty of the event attracts attention. Now Halley's comet put in one of its regular appearances in April 1145, and was visible from Constantinople; in February 1147 there was another comet, visible the world over; and finally in May 1155 a comet appeared, visible throughout Europe. I should like to think that men's eyes had been raised to it in wonderment just before our oration was delivered.

In any case, Anna must have been over seventy years of age, and have spent some thirty-five years in retirement in her apartments in the monastery … when she died. She preserved to the last, says Tornikes, her rosy complexion. We might at this point glance at our author's description of the princess's appearance, the only one to survive, and one of the few eye-witness descriptions of living persons in Byzantine literature….

Anna's own account of her education is celebrated (Alexiad, Pr. 2; 15, 7 fin.). And she continually thanks her parents for having taken such care over it. The story we find in the oration is slightly different, and perhaps more interesting. Anna was trained by her parents in virtue, but not in λᾳγοι. They did not object to her studying philosophy, which could be safely christianized and in any case tended to moral improvement, but they were strongly opposed to her studying its essential forerunner, grammar, which could not be christianized and was morally neutral to say the least of it. It was dangerous enough for men, far more so for women—and let us remember that Anna was no more than thirteen years old at this time. However, the princess outwitted the vigilance of her parents by taking private lessons … from one of the palace eunuchs, like a maiden having a clandestine assignation with her lover…. Later, after her marriage to Nicephorus Bryennius, she continued her education openly, studying grammar under a palace eunuch—apparently a different one this time—and philosophy under philosophers who combined eloquence, a philosophical ethos, and old age. The final stage in her education was after her father's death and her own retirement from public life, when she gathered around her some of the most learned men of her time, and with them studied Aristotle, Plato, Euclid and Ptolemy—except such of his doctrines as Christianity rejects—rhetoric and history.

Anna Comnena is eloquent on her woes in her History, but she never makes it clear exactly what they were. We know from other sources that she spent the latter part of her life, after the death of her father, in the convent… in Constantinople in semi-retirement, though of course she did not actually become a nun until she was on her death-bed—a fact which we learn from the present oration. The chronicler John Zonaras, whose history ends with the year 1118, tells us in some detail how Anna, who hated her younger brother John II, and still hoped to place the imperial crown on the head of her able, but good-natured and unambitious, husband Nicephorus Bryennius, quarrelled bitterly with her brother over their father's death-bed, and was the prime mover in a plot to assassinate him shortly after his accession (Zonaras, 18, 28-9). The same story is told by Nicetas Choniates, writing at the beginning of the thirteenth century. If true, it would be sufficient explanation of the obscurity in which the rest of Anna's life was passed. Anna's own account of the death of her father gives an idyllic picture of a united family, though she does mention that John went off to the Great Palace before their father had breathed his last. And Anna's striking coldness towards her brother, whom she scarcely mentions in her History, has often attracted attention. Zonaras' story cannot be dated, unfortunately. We know that he was still alive and working on his great compilation of Canon Law in 1159, but his Chronicle may have been completed long before that. What does Tornikes, an intimate friend of the family, have to say? He was clearly aware of an account of the events discreditable to Anna, and implies that it had obtained wide credence, though of course he somewhat baldly denies it…. The probability is that he had the text of Zonaras before him. This is not a very convincing defence of Anna, but then perhaps a funeral oration was not the place for polemical discussion of the events of more than a generation before.

Anna's nephew Manuel I, whom she perhaps scarcely knew, seems to have done nothing after his accession in 1143 to heal the breach with his formidable sexagenarian aunt. He gets a single brief and cold mention in this speech. In any case Anna and Manuel would never have seen eye to eye. Manuel was a Latinophile and a womanizer, and he was an enthusiastic believer in astrology, a science in defence of which he wrote a treatise. The condemnation of astrology which Tornikes in the present speech attributes to Anna may well have been directed mainly at her brilliant but erratic imperial nephew. So far as it is possible to date Manuel's defence of astrology, it is certainly later than 1147, and was probably written not long before 1156.

When death finally came to the princess as she was engaged in consoling one of her sisters—we do not know which—after a recent bereavement, she had been cut off from the sophisticated world of the court for thirty-five years. But she had not been out of contact with the intellectual movement of the time. It was in the closing years of her retirement, as we know, that she composed the history of her father's reign. The present oration furnishes precious information on another of her activities, her philosophical circle. Let us look once again at the passage in question … It seems that Anna not only studied herself—a procedure which would involve lectures or supervisions by specialists—but also organized and inspired, and no doubt paid for, the work of others. In particular we hear of the encouragement of Aristotelian commentators, and especially of the exegesis of works on which no commentary had survived from antiquity. And the name of Michael of Ephesus is mentioned as one who engaged in these activities under Anna's patronage.

Now the long series of commentaries on the works of Aristotle, which begins in the first century B.C. with Andronikos, the rediscoverer of the Aristotelian corpus, continues without a significant break down to Stephanus of Alexandria and his pupils David and Elias in the seventh century. Then, with the loss to the Arabs of the school of Alexandria, the tradition seems to dry up. John Damascene in the eighth century was profoundly influenced by Aristotle and his commentators, but by his time it had become a closed body of thought; there was no further exegesis or development. Surprisingly, exegesis of Aristotle begins again in the eleventh or twelfth century with two men whose work survives, Eustratius, Metropolitan of Nicaea, and Michael of Ephesus. The former commented upon certain books of the Nicomachean Ethics and sections of the Organon, the latter on other books of the Ethics, sections of the Organon, the Rhetoric, the Physics, the Politics, and a number of the zoological and anthropological works. Eustratius is a well-known figure, a pupil of John Italus, who made a brilliant career in the Church, wrote many works of dogmatic and polemical theology, took part in the discussions with Petrus Chrysolanus in 1112, and found himself charged with heresy in 1117 as a result of an anti-Armenian tract which he had composed. He recanted, but was probably suspended for life. We do not know when he died. The date cited in the handbooks, c. 1120, is the result of a somewhat labile construction by Draeseke.¹ The date of his birth is equally unknown; it could be as late as 1060. As for Michael of Ephesus, nothing at all is known of his life, and up to now all that could be done by way of dating him was eleventh/twelfth century. Tatakis in his recent book on Byzantine philosophy supposes Michael to be a contemporary of John Italus and a predecessor of Eustratius.

The present text fills out the picture in much more detail. Michael of Ephesus' commentaries belong to the years of Anna's retirement after 1118. And they were probably completed by 1138, since after that year Anna was mainly engaged in the composition of her History, originally intended as a sequel to that written by her late husband. Karl Praechter in a well-known paper (G.G.A. 168, 1906, 861) remarks that anyone looking at the list of works of Aristotle commented upon in late antiquity or early Byzantine times is struck by three gaps—the Politics, the Rhetoric, and the zoological and anthropological works. Eight hundred years before Praechter wrote these words, the same point seems to have struck Anna Commena, who had the resources and the connections to remedy the shortcoming. Michael of Ephesus was breaking entirely new ground in his commentaries on the zoological and anthropological works and on the Rhetoric and the Politics. And he was doing it as part of a co-operative scholarly undertaking conceived and guided by Anna Comnena. The list of his own commentaries which he gives illustrates how systematically the plan of Anna or of her advisers was being carried out.²

What of Eustratius? In her History Anna speaks of him with high praise (14, 8). In the proem to his commentary on E.N. I he tells us that it was composed at the behest of a highly placed personage whom he does not name…. So far as I can discover, the identity of this princess—the word need not mean the wife of a reigning emperor in Byzantine usage—has never been cleared up. It is very tempting, and an obvious working hypothesis, to suppose that she was Anna Comnena, and that Eustratius' exegetical work belongs to the years of his theological disgrace. In the commentary on E.N. VI, he speaks of himself as an old man, for what that is worth. And it is significant that he was apparently asked to comment only on E.N. I and VI, while the other books of the Nicomachean Ethics were commented on by Michael of Ephesus and possibly by a nebulous Aspasius—there is some variation in the titles in the manuscripts. No part of the Ethics was the object of comment by more than one of these scholars. This suggests that their commentaries were all prepared as part of the same co-operative enterprise. It may well be that Eustratius was the real inspirer of the whole project.

If some measure of probability can be accorded to our hypotheses thus far, Anna Comnena played a key role in the revival of Aristotelian scholarship in the Byzantine world. It has long been a commonplace that the renaissance of Aristotelian exegesis depended ultimately on the renewed interest in and grasp of the ancient philosophical tradition displayed by men like Michael Psellus and John Italus in the eleventh century. But this remains a vague formulation. The tendency of Psellus and John Italus was Platonist or Neoplatonist rather than Aristotelian. The detailed connection and organizational link is missing. The more one examines Byzantine literature, the more one becomes convinced that it never appears spontaneously; it needs a salon, patronage, institutionalized forms. We know of some of the literary circles of the earlier twelfth century. The Patriarchal School housed one such circle, whose interests, theology apart, lay in the fields of grammar, rhetoric and belles-lettres; Michael Italicus is one of its leading figures. Another centred upon the sebastocratorissa Irene, widow of Manuel's elder brother Andronicus. Poetry was one of its main interests; innumerable occasional poems of Theodore Prodromus can be connected with it; Tzetzes commented on Hesiod and Homer and wrote his Theogony for Irene; and she was the patroness and dedicatee of Constantine Manasses' verse chronicle. We can now add to these Anna Comnena's philosophical circle, numbering among its members Michael of Ephesus and probably Eustratius of Nicaea. It is worth recalling in this connection that it was in Constantinople in the thirties of the twelfth century that James of Venice became acquainted with the Physics, the Sophistici elenchi, and other works of Aristotle, which he subsequently translated into Latin.³ It has been assumed that he found them studied in the University. But we must now reckon with the possibility that he had contact with Anna Comnena's Aristotelian circle. It may be significant that the Sophistici elenchi, one of the works translated by James of Venice, was first commented upon by Michael of Ephesus. It may well be, too, that other works of philosophical and mathematical exegesis will prove to have been composed under Anna's watchful eye in the suite in the … convent, at the head of a valley overlooking the tranquil waters of the Golden Horn. One would look in the first place among the nameless Byzantine scholiasts on Euclid and Ptolemy, who continued the tradition of Proclus and Simplicius. John Tzetzes' unpublished commentary on the Canons of Ptolemy, in cod. Paris, gr. 2162, was probably composed too late to qualify, but one cannot be certain.

In so far as one can attach political labels to such things, Anna Comnena's circle belonged to the 'outs'. She herself was in semi-disgrace to the end of her days; Tornikes' complaint that no one but himself had thought of commemorating her death bears this out. Eustratius was a man whose career was finished; the Patriarch Cosmas II Atticus, who promoted Tornikes, and whom Tornikes defended after his death, was dismissed after just over a year in office, charged not only with Bogomil sympathies, but also with supporting Manuel's disgruntled relatives.

From time to time in her history Anna mentions this or that point of philosophy. However, the long account of her tenets given by George Tornikes provides a more comprehensive view than we can derive from the History. I shall outline the main points briefly, as they are not of much importance in themselves. Anna may not have really had much of a head for philosophy, Tornikes was probably no philosopher, and I am certainly quite incompetent in this sphere. Anna sees as her task to fit the tradition of ancient philosophy to the requirements of Christian dogma. The series of syntheses which had been made in the past no longer satisfy her entirely. And the tradition of ancient philosophy means to her, as to all Byzantines, Aristotle and Plato, both seen through the spectacles of commentators of late antiquity, who were either pagan Neoplatonists like Simplicius, or Aristotelian heretics like John Philoponus. In general, she says, she finds Aristotle most satisfying. But she objects to his ἀγενησίᾳ̑ (significantly the word seems first attested in Simplicius), that is, to an uncreated universe which leaves no room for providence and in which everything must be ᾲὐτομᾳ̑τον. This is precisely the point in dispute between the schools of Athens and Alexandria in the early sixth century, which led John Philoponus in 529 to publish his De aeternitate mundi contra Proclum. To avoid this difficulty she accepted Plato's δημιουρᾳς but she rejected totally τò πᾳ̑ρ ' ᾲὐτῳ̑ τῶν ἰδεῶν μηχάνημᾳ̑, the Aristotelian criticism of which she regarded as valid. She admired Plato and his followers, the Neoplatonists, and approved many of their doctrines, such as that of the ἀνούσιον ἀγᾳ̑θóν, but preferred Christian explanations of such matters, particularly those of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. However, she borrowed from the Timaeus the circles of the other and the same—men had been confusing themselves by interpreting the Timaeus literally for a millennium—and she accepted Plato's doctrine of the divisions of the soul, but of course rejected his metempsychosis. From Aristotle she borrowed the concept of entelechy. She favoured a διττὴ ἐντελέχεια in regard to the soul—this points to her familiarity with the second book of the De anima—and she frequently illustrated this by the analogies of the lyre-player and the steersman. This leads to another passage of the De anima which, unfortunately for Anna, modern authorities generally regard as a momentary lapse on the part of Aristotle. But John Philoponus in his commentary took it seriously, and the word for steersman used by Tornikes is Philoponus' and not Aristotle's. And both the topic and the imagery alike figure in the surviving writings of Michael Psellus and John Italus. Above all, she was determined to find a physics and metaphysics which would not destroy the basis of ethics, and this to Anna meant an after-life in which our actions are judged, rewarded, and punished. Belief in destiny … was to her something worthy of beasts rather than men. It is significant that it was precisely the Physics and Metaphysics which were neglected in the orthodox Christian-Aristotelian synthesis represented by Leontius of Byzantium and John Damascene.

I doubt if much can be made of Tornikes' garbled and rhetorical account. But it is clear that Anna and her colleagues were bent on constructing a philosophical system, and not merely on glossing texts. They were not alone in this in the twelfth century. Michael Anchialus, the future Patriarch, was appointed Professor of Philosophy … about 1165, after the office had apparently been in abeyance for some time. In his inaugural lecture, which I have edited elsewhere,⁴ he lays great emphasis upon the study of Aristotle and upon the support which a somewhat eclectic Aristotelianism can give to religion. He attacks at great length the followers of pagan theology, who believed matter to be uncreated. This is just the point which gave offence to Anna. And it is also, we recall, one of the charges made in 1082 against John Italus, who was also accused of reviving the errors of ancient philosophers on the nature of the soul, and of regarding profane literature as a fountain of truth. In 1156 Soterichus Panteugenes, whom we have already met briefly as an enemy of Tornikes, was condemned, together with a number of leading men of letters and teachers in the Patriarchal School, for heretical interpretation of the liturgy of the Eucharist. Nicolaus of Methone, the leading theologian of the age, expressly connected the heresy of Panteugenes with the Platonic doctrine of ideas, which, he declared, had been refuted by Aristotle. And Nicolaus was no novice in philosophy…. It has been plausibly suggested, too, that Michael Glycas the chronicler, whose heretical doctrines began to attract attention early in the reign of Manuel I, was trying to construct a systematic cosmology of neoplatonizing character.

System-building was not the monopoly of hellenizers and heretics at this time. Euthymius Zigabenus wrote his Dogmatic Panoply and Nicetas Acominatus his Treasury of Orthodoxy to combat the rationalist heresies so attractive to the twelfth-century mind. Neilus Doxopatres, an exalted functionary on the patriarchal staff, who became a monk and went off to Norman Sicily shortly before 1143, composed a great dogmatic summa, on a scale quite unprecedented in the Byzantine world. It was in five books, of which only the first two—comprising between them 466 chapters—survive unpublished.

In a book written seventy years ago⁵ Fyodor Uspenskij argued that throughout the twelfth century a long argument went on between Nominalists and Realists in the Byzantine world, parallel to and not unconnected with that going on at the same time in the Latin world. By and large the Nominalists lean on Plato, the Realists on Aristotle.

We need a new study of the ground covered by Uspenskij seventy years ago. The time is scarcely ripe yet. Too many of the relevant texts still slumber unread in the dust of libraries. But we can begin to see why the tradition of Aristotelian exegesis was taken up again so vigorously after a lapse of nearly four centuries. And this unpromising-looking funeral oration gives a glimpse of the commentators at their work. To be quite fair, Anna Comnena and her circle were probably not quite the first to revive the tradition. Theodore of Smyrna … had composed an exposition of the physical doctrines of the ancients, in which he seems to have dealt with Aristotle at some length. His work is unpublished. But this was only a small beginning. Without the resources at Anna's command the movement might well have petered out. In fact more than a century and a half elapsed before the next great 'wave' of Aristotelian commentaries in Byzantium. We clearly owe much to the drive and inspiration of this astonishing lady, whose memory is enshrined not only in the immortal history of her father's reign, but also in the austere volumes of the Commentaria Graeca in Aristotelem.

Notes

¹B.Z. V (1896), 319-36.

²C.G.A. XXII, 149, 8 ff.

³ Cf. L. Minio-Paluello, Traditio, VIII (1952), 265-304.

⁴Balkan Studies (Thessalonika), II (1961), 173-214.

⁵ F. Uspenskij, Ocherki po istorii vizantijskoj obrazovannosti (St Petersburg, 1891 [1892]), pp. 146-245.