Review

Reviewed Work(s): Byzantine East and Latin West: Two Worlds of Christendom in Middle
Ages and Renaissance by Deno J. Geanakoplos
Review by: Glanville Downey
Source: Speculum, Vol. 43, No. 1 (Jan., 1968), pp. 150-152
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2854817
Accessed: 06-03-2017 10:21 UTC

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 150 Reviews

him that the probable influence of Gower upon Chaucer deserves full considera-
tion and that other influences, thoroughly explored in previous scholarship,
need now to be reevaluated in this new light.
Three appendices (dealing with manuscripts, colophons, and excerpts from
fourteenth-century legal documents), a table of abbreviations, and an index (not
exhaustive) bring to an end "this first complete study of John Gower."
MARTIN M. CROW
University of Texas

DENO J. GEANAKOPLOS, Byzantine East and Latin West: Two Worlds of Christendom in Middle Ages
and Renaissance. Studies in Ecclesiastical and Cultural History. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1966.
Pp. x, 206; 17 plates, S maps, 1 diagram. $6.

PROFESSOR Geanakoplos of Yale University has already made numerous sig-

nificant contributions to our knowledge of East-West relations in the Byzantine
period with two important monographs, Emperor Michael Palaeologus and the
West (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1959) and Greek Scholars in Venice: Studies in
the Dissemination of Greek Learning from Byzantium to Western Europe (Cam-
bridge, Massachusetts, 1962), plus a number of articles in learned journals. The
six related essays collected in the present volume offer scholarly studies of certain
essential elements in the interaction of the Byzantine East and the Latin West
during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, showing the cultural and ecclesiasti-
cal influences of the Byzantine and post-Byzantine East on the West which con-
tinued as late as 1600. The volume is important not only to historians of Byzan-
tium, the MiddleAges and the Renaissance (including Renaissance art historians),
but to scholars concerned with contemporary ecumenical studies. The importance
for the present day of renewed investigation of the Byzantine and post-Byzantine
relations between the eastern and western churches is illustrated by the publica-
tion within a short space of time of two such contributions as Professor Geana-
koplos' book and the monograph of Brother George Every which is concerned
with other aspects of the same theme, Misunderstandings between East and West
(John Knox Press, Richmond, 1966; Ecumenical Studies in History, No. 4).
Few western scholars are as well equipped as Professor Geanakoplos to treat
the themes covered in the present volume. The essays are based on a wide
acquaintance with the sources, including unpublished material in libraries and
archives in Europe, Greece and Russia, plus a thorough knowledge of the volu-
minous secondary material, extending to the works of modern Greek scholars
which are not always readily accessible to western students.
The first essay, "The Influences of Byzantine Culture on the Medieval Western
World," summarizes the contribution of Byzantium to philosophy and science,
literature, medicine, industry, administration, political theory, law, diplomacy,
guilds, "gracious living," religious piety as reflected in music and the liturgy, and
art. This survey is an important reminder that the history of the ecclesiastical
separation has tended to overshadow the very real contribution of Byzantium to
the civilization of the Western world. Often the contributions were original with
Byzantium; and not the least of these contributions, as the author points out

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 Reviews 151

(p. 54), was that Byzantium provided to the West "a living example of a state
with a highly centralized administration and tradition of statecraft under the
rule of public law."
The second essay, "Church and State in the Byzantine Empire: A Reconsid-
eration of the Problem of Caesaropapism," provides a thorough review of the old
and celebrated dispute as to the extent to which the Byzantine Emperor con-
trolled the church, a problem which is basic to the understanding both of the
history of Byzantium and of the way in which the Latin Church visualized the
emperor's role (the author provides a valuable bibliography, pp. 195-196, which
shows the way in which opinions are divided). Against those who believe that
"the emperor was as absolute and infallible in the spiritual as in the temporal
sphere (Diehl)" and that "Caesaropapism incontestably should bear the chief
responsibility for the preparation of the schism (Jugie)," the author maintains
that while on occasion the imperial will could prevail in the external or adminis-
trative aspect of ecclesiastical affairs, the emperors did not normally succeed in
their attempts to revise the dogma of the church. Thus it is not possible to speak
of Caesaropapism in Byzantium. In fact the term is not only inaccurate but mis-
leading. This essay includes a full account of the writings of modern Greek
scholars, which are not always easily available to Western scholars. A further
aspect of the subject is studied in the author's article "Church Building and
'Caesaropapism,' A.D. 312-565," Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, vii (1966),
167-186.
The exposition (p. 74, with note 58) of oikonomia is especially valuable because
this "peculiarly Byzantine concept" is not usually so clearly explained.
The essay on "The Council of Florence (1438-1439) and the Problem of
Union between the Byzantine and Latin Churches" is valuable as a clear and
sympathetic account of the elements which by this time had come to be the basic
issues in the hostility between the Greeks and the Latins. As the author points
out (p. 7), "any modern attempt to unite the two churches must perforce take as
its point of departure the acts and decisions at Florence." An important contri-
bution of this essay is the use of the evidence of the memoirs of the synod of
Silvester Syropoulos, Grand Ecclesiarch of St Sophia in Constantinople, whose
work has tended to be neglected in the West; a new edition by V. Laurent is
promised. A hitherto unknown Greek discourse of Barlaam on the problem of the
filioque is also cited (p. 97, note 53). The essay offers a clear account of the debate
over the filioque, accompanied by a diagram designed to illustrate the Greek and
Latin views of the Trinity.
The three last essays, concerned with Byzantium and the Renaissance, show
how Byzantine culture continued its direct influence on the West even after the
fall of Constantinople in 1453. Enlarging on the author's Greek Scholars in Venice,
the fourth essay, on "the Greco-Byzantine colony in Venice and its significance
in the Renaissance," is the best, and in fact the only modern account of the
cosmopolitan Greek colony in Venice from shortly before 1439 to 1600. In 1478
the colony comprised between four and five thousand persons, a fairly large pro-
portion of the total population estimated by Beloch at no more than 110,000.

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 152 Reviews

By 1580 there were 15,000 Greeks in Venice. The archives of the colony contain
many documents that still await study.
The next essay deals with "the Cretan role in the transmission of Greco-
Byzantine culture to Western Europe via Venice" during the period ca 1204-
ca 1600. No book-length study on the subject has been written, and the author
is preparing a monograph to fill this need; the work will include a discussion of
the Cretan contribution to the culture of Russia and the rest of Slavic Europe in
this period (cf. p. 8, note 14; p. 139, note 1). After 1453 many Byzantine scholars
fled to Crete, which was still in the possession of Venice, and some of the most
important scholars who transmitted the Greek language and literature of West-
ern Europe came from Crete (as did El Greco). Normally scholars who left Crete
went to Venice; some remained there, others went on to other cities in Italy or
elsewhere in Europe. Cretan scholars such as Marcus Musurus, who had a wide
influence on European scholarship, taught in Venice and Padua, and a number of
young men from Crete, passing through Venice, enrolled as students at Padua.
Among these was Constantine Lucaris (1572-1638), who became Patriarch of
Alexandria and then, as Cyril Lucaris, Ecumenical Patriarch (1620-1638); cf.
G. A. Hadjiantoniou, Protestant Patriarch: The Life of Cyril Lucaris, Patriarch of
Constantinople (Richmond, John Knox Press, 1961), pp. 1-17, 22-26.
The final essay is the first study in English of Maximos Margounios (ca 1549-
1602), a Cretan who after study at Padua spent most of his active career in
Venice, where he achieved distinction as a bishop-in-absentia, theologian, editor
of texts for the press, translator, and advocate of union between the Greek and
Roman churches. Unlike most Byzantine theologians, Margounios was well
acquainted with the writings of the Latin fathers. He published a Latin transla-
tion of a dialogue of John of Damascus. His effort to heal the breach between the
churches was based on an original attempt to resolve the problem of the filioque
by distinguishing between two processions, one eternal, the other temporal. The
proposal was unsuccessful but it constituted the "first and only significant at-
tempt on the part of a Greek theologian to bring about a closer understanding
between the two churches after the failure of the Council of Florence" (p. 172).
Margounios possessed a substantial collection of Latin books, classical and theolo-
gical, which he bequeathed to the monastery of Iviron on Mt Athos, where Pro-
fessor Geanakoplos was able to make a preliminary catalogue, published here,
for the first time, as a remarkable example of the owner's interests. Margounios'
correspondence, a good deal of it still unpublished, throws new light on the
transmission of Byzantine ecclesiastical texts to Western Europe and on the
relations between the sixteenth-century German Protestant humanists and those
of the East. Margounios may well be called (p. 165) "probably the most outstand-
ing figure in the intellectual and theological history of the Greek Orthodox
Church during the later sixteenth century."
The illustrations are well chosen and well printed. Some of them reproduce
works of art and portraits which are not often illustrated.
GLANVILLE DOWNEY
Indiana University

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