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Joseph Bryennius and the text of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

D. A. Rees
D. A. Rees
Affiliation:
Jesus College, Oxford
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Extract

A neglected source for the text of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations is to be found in the writings of the Byzantine theologian Joseph Bryennius, who seems to have been born about 1350 (details of his early life are obscure) and to have died before the Council of Florence (1438), probably in 1430/1. He was a monk who was also a scholar, a theologian, and an ecclesiastical diplomat. He spent the years 1382–1402 in Crete (then under Venetian rule), and was sent in 1406 on a mission of ecclesiastical diplomacy to Cyprus. Otherwise the greater part of his life was spent in Constantinople; from about 1402 to 1406 he lived at the monastery of Stoudios, from 1416 to 1427 at that of Charsianeites. He was a court preacher, and as a theologian upheld the claims of the Greek Church against the Roman; among his published works are twenty-one Discourses on the Trinity maintaining the Greek Orthodox position.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , December 2000 , pp. 584 - 596
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2000

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References

1 Meyer, Ph., Byz. Zeitschr. 5 (1896), 74–111Google Scholar, esp. 99–100 and 110.

2 N. B. Tomadakis,O’ Iωσἠø Bρυννιος κά ΚρΤη κάΤᾰ Τ 1400. Μελ⋯Τη Øιλςλςγλκκά ἱσΤςρλκ⋯(Athens, 1947), 66–7. The same is true when he quotes the same passages again in his Σ⋯λλάβςσ ΒνζάνΤλνν μελεΤν κά κελμνων (Athens, 1961), 597–9 (part 6 of that volume is devoted to Bryennius). Tomadakis (1947), 48–52 lists 66 mss. of Bryennius, with an appendix of others reported; he also (46–7) lists 16 unpublished works.

3 Tomadakis (n. 2, 1947), 22; longer list at id. (n. 2, 1961), 509–10.

4 Papadopoulos-Kerameus, A. I., Varia Graeca Sacra (St Petersburg, 1909), 292–7Google Scholar; reprinted by Tomadakis (n. 2, 1961), 503–4.

5 Loenertz, R. J., Pour la chronologie des oeuvres de Joseph Bryennios’, Rev. Ét. Byz. 7 (1949), 12–32Google Scholar; reprinted in Loenertz, R. J., Byzantina et Franco-Graeca, series altera (Storia e Letteratura 145) (Rome, 1978), 51–75.Google Scholar

6 Barker, J. W., Manuel II Palaeologus (1391–1425) (New Brunswick, NJ, 1969), 345Google Scholar, 347.

7 Bergson, L., Fragment einer Marc-Aurel-Handschrift’, Rhein. Mus. 129 (1986), 157–69.Google Scholar

8 On these, however, see F. H. Sandbach's review, CR 31 (1981), 188–9.

9 See, in addition to Dalfen's edition, his Einige Interpolationen im Text von Marc Aurels Τᾰεἰς άνΤóν’, Hermes 102 (1974), 47–57, and id., Scholien und Interlinearglossen in Marc Aurel-Handschriften’, SIFC NS 50 (1978), 5–26

10 Meyer, Ph.,Joseph Bryennios als Theolog. Ein Beitrag zur Kenntnis der griechischen Theologie im 15 Jahrhundert’, Theologische Studien und Kritiken 69 (1896), 282–319.Google Scholar

11 Ševčenko, Ihor, The decline of Byzantium seen through the eyes of its intellectuals’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 15 (1961), 169–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Oeconomos, L., L'état intellectuel et moral des Byzantins vers le milieu du XlVe siècle d'après une page de Joseph Bryennios’, Mèlanges Charles Diehl vol. I (Paris, 1930), 225–33.Google Scholar Oeconomos reprints, from vol. Ill, pp. 119–23 of the Leipzig edition of Bryennius, with a French translation, a discourse from the κεØλάλά πΤκλς ἱπΤκΤά entitled Τνες άἰΤάλ Τὦν κάθ’ μς λυπηρν; he assigns it too early a date, however.

13 See Section IV above on Epictetus at Med. 11.36, where the text has been doubted; cf. J.B. 1.77.

14 I mention Bryennius briefly in my earlier paper;Some features of the textual history of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations’, in Philomathes: Studies and Essays … in Memory of P. Merlan (The Hague, 1971), 183–93.