Fall Of Constantinople Research Articles

Portuguese and Other European Missionaries in Africa: A look at their linguistic production and attitudes (1415–1885)

This study looks at some of the works produced by Catholic missionaries in Africa from the pre-dawn of the Modern Era (Fall of Constantinople, 1453), in particular the Fall of Ceuta (1415), to the Berlin Conference (1884–1885). Particular emphasis will be placed on the linguistic production of a few Franciscan, Augustinian, Capuchin, Dominican, and/or Jesuit clerics, working under the aegis of the Portuguese Crown, who — with the invaluable help of native assistants, usually members of the clergy or closely affiliated with the Church — compiled the first grammars, word lists, glossaries, and dictionaries of the indigenous languages with which they worked and interacted on a daily basis. Their endeavour, though meritorious and not always free from preconceived ideas of the ‘other’, paved the way for future studies in the field.

El acebo y el Rey sin fe

Research literature on the extraction of alum, the mineral salt basic to the economy of Christian Europe, entirely passes over the Iberian deposits in production between the fall of Constantinople and the commencement of the Papal operation at Tolfa in 1463. The sites of these are here identified, with an indication that their mineralogical formation is not that of the classic volcanic strata of Tuscany and Mazarron. The much repeated theory on the way alum-bearing rock was located is shown to be suspect, and the pre-Mazarron history of Spanish alum is given its context in the turbulent politics of the mid-century dynastic confrontations.

Mission Delayed: The Russian Orthodox Church after the Conquest of Kazan'

Muscovy's active period of eastward expansion began with the conquest of the Khanate of Kazan’ in 1552. By the seventeenth century, one observer claimed that the conquest of Kazan’ was the event that made Ivan IV a tsar and Muscovy an empire. With this victory, the tsar claimed new lands, adding to his subjects the diverse animistic and Muslim population of Turkic Tatars and Chuvashes, and Finno-Ugric Maris, Mordvins, and Udmurts. The conquest of Kazan’ provided both the Metropolitan of Moscow and Ivan IV (the Terrible) an opportunity to transform the image of Muscovy into that of a victorious Orthodox power and to justify the title of its Grand Prince as a new caesar (tsar). Since the conquest was the first Orthodox victory against Islam since the fall of Constantinople, commemorations of it were immediate, including the construction of the Church of the Intercession by the Moat (St. Basil's) on Red Square.The incorporation of the lands and peoples of Kazan’ has served traditionally to date the establishment of the Russian Empire. Accounts of the conquest have emphasized the victory of Orthodoxy against Islam, with the Russian Orthodox Church and its Metropolitan as the motive force behind this expansion. The conversion of the Muslims and animists of the region is portrayed frequently as automatic, facing little resistance. More recently, scholars have criticized this simplistic account of the conquest by discussing the conversion mission as a rhetorical construct and have placed increasing emphasis on the local non-Russian and non-Orthodox resistance to the interests of the Church and state.

Greek-Romanian Symbiotic Patterns in the Early Modern Period: History,Mentalities, Institutions - I

<p>The patriarchal decree validating the establishment of the Wallachian archdiocese in 1359; a series of documents pertaining to the early history of the Koutloumousiou monastery on Mount Athos; the surviving redactions of Patriarch Niphon II's lost vita; the proceedings of the interrogation of a Greek priest arrested by the Polish authorities on charges of conspiracy and espionage; and an emphatically digressive section in Matthew of Myra's verse chronicle known as <em>History of Wallachia</em>. This article, of which the first part is presently published, offers a discussion of these textual materials - which span four crucial centuries of Balkan history and represent an intriguing variety of discursive practices and traditions. It aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of the intricate mechanisms that generated a climate of toleration, mobility and inter-ethnic contact in the Ottoman Balkans, enabling a symbiotic relationship between Greeks and Romanians, which found its vital space in the semi-autonomous and strategically located Danubian principalities, and endured throughout the early modern period despite having been severely undermined by opposing tendencies and conflicting interests. The two sections at hand focus on the Bishop of Myra's pivotal text, as well as on written records related to the early, and yet formative, contacts between the nascent Romanian states and the late Byzantine Empire; in the two remaining sections, which will appear in the next volume of <em>The Historical Review</em>, this endeavour will be brought to a conclusion by means of a (necessarily selective) presentation of evidence dating from the period after the fall of Constantinople and up to the beginning of the seventeenth century.</p>

Post-Imperial Third Romes: Resurrections of a Russian Orthodox Geopolitical Metaphor

Shortly after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, a Russian Orthodox monk nominated Russia as the ‘Third Rome’, or successor to the Roman and Byzantine empires. Some analysts have seen Muscovite Third Romism (that allegedly persisted into the Bolshevik era of the Soviet Union) as the Russian equivalent of the USA's Manifest Destiny, and other concepts used to rationalise imperialism. This paper attempts to broaden and deepen similar interpretations of the major geopolitical dictum coming from Russian Orthodoxy: questionably a direct justification for Russian imperialist messianism and far from being just a feature of the past, this metaphor is an essential element of post-imperial Russian geopolitical discourse as evident in its usage in writings of politically diverse authors. The paper focuses on resurrections of the metaphor in post-imperial Russia nowadays, and, ultimately, broadens our understanding of ‘religion as geopolitics’ nexus by presenting the too frequently overlooked field of Russian Orthodoxy-related geopolitics.

Deficit, recovery and the vis nervosa

Physicians have long sought to explain neurological deficit and recovery on the basis of alterations in the agent of nervous action. The ancient Greeks knew that the brain influences muscles and they showed experimentally that the effects were mediated by nerves. Galen believed that the agent of action was the animal spirits. Ideas began to change with a new approach to knowledge and the revival of experimentation that followed the arrival in Venice of ancient Greek manuscripts after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. In the mid-18th century the notion of animal spirits was replaced by that of the vis nervosa and speculation began that the agent might be electrical. This was established by the mid-19th century. The nature of conduction in nerve was clearly different from that in a wire but how it took place remained uncertain until Hodgkin and Huxley proved the ionic hypothesis in the mid-20th century. In the following decades the membrane mechanisms of conduction failure and restoration were elucidated, with practical consequences in the form of improved diagnostic methods and the potential for more rational approaches to treatment. The demonstration that adaptive cortical plasticity contributes to recovery raises the possibility of new strategies for neurological rehabilitation.

Le monastère de la Source à Constantinople et ses deux recueils de miracles. Entre hagiographie et patriographie

The monastery of the Virgin of the Source (Θετόκος τῆς Πηγῆς) at Constantinople, remarkable for both its duration and its renown, is known particularly from two collections of miracles compiled at a great distance in time from each other : one in the second half of the tenth century and the other in the last years of the reign of Andronicus II Palaeologus (1282-1328). In tracing the monastery’s history from its origins (6th c.) until the fall of Constantinople (1453) the article analyses the literary and social aspects of the two documents. Although the anonymous author of the first collection combines accounts of a patriographic nature with healings of prestigious figures (the imperial family and high dignitaries), the author of the second collection, Nicephorus Callistus Xanthopoulos, also describes the healings of ordinary people, thus giving his work a hagiographical function. The study ends with two tables arranged by names, illnesses and the various means of healing employed in the two collections.

Re-viewing Le Morte Darthur: Texts and Contexts, Characters and Themes (review)

Reviewed by: Re-viewing Le Morte Darthur: Texts and Contexts, Characters and Themes Cheryl Taylor Whetter, K. S. and Raluca L. Radulescu , eds, Re-viewing Le Morte Darthur: Texts and Contexts, Characters and Themes ( Arthurian Studies, 60), Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 2005; cloth; pp. xi, 165; 6 b/w plates; RRP £40; ISBN 1843480359. This book's conventional title acknowledges its comparatively late arrival in the field of medieval Arthurian studies. However readers who persist will be rewarded with significant new facts and challenges to received notions, as the 're-viewing' advances the Malory debate in several areas. P. J. C. Field's introduction elucidates the book's subtitles by noting that the first three essays focus on text, the next three on geography and politics, and the last four on theme and genre. Since Walter Oakeshott's momentous discovery of the Winchester manuscript in 1934, textual study of the Morte has produced equal measures of agony and ecstasy. The exhilarating discoveries arrived at through minute textual observations in the two essays that open this collection clearly belong in the latter category. Takato Kato's analysis of 'Corrected Mistakes in the Winchester Manuscript' concludes that the archetype of the manuscript and of Caxton's print cannot have been Malory's holograph; that at least one intermediate copy intervened between the archetype and Winchester; and that the Winchester scribes were not the unthinking mechanical copyists postulated in Eugène Vinaver's first manuscript edition. D. Thomas Hanks' essay, 'Textual Harassment', demonstrates [End Page 236] the 'omnipresent' and 'radical' bibliographical and lexical changes that Caxton and Wynkyn de Worde introduced in negotiating the transition from manuscript to print. Hanks' pictorial reconstruction of Malory in the act of composition is a model of engaging scholarly writing. He further defends the importance of the bibliographical text by contending that modern editing 'eliminates much of the Middle Ages from medieval works' including features of presentation chosen by the author as part of the message (p. 45). The third textual essay, by Thomas H. Crofts, bases a consideration of fifteenth-century historiography on an analysis of Caxton's preface. Crofts argues that after ingeniously constructing a provisional historicity for Arthur as an English Worthy, Caxton edits the Morte Darthur as a series of exempla for readers' moral upliftment. Meg Roland's sketching of the geographical-textual world view that Caxton imported into his edition forms a bridge to the collection's political studies. Roland suggests that divergences from Winchester in Caxton's text mediate an intensification in East-West polarization following the fall of Constantinople in 1453. More limited in geographical scope is Robert Kelly's application to the Morte Darthur of Paul Strohm's notion of the 'structuring idea' to be drawn from a text's 'larger environment'. Under this theory, Malory's Arthurian world can be recognized as incorporating such contemporary realities as the king's failure to control border regions and the intense North-South conflict featured in the Wars of the Roses. The third essay in this group, by Dhira B. Mahoney, begins by summarising the binary values attached in medieval aristocratic life to public, open, masculine spaces as opposed to private, enclosed, feminine spaces. This provides a foundation for persuasive, culturally-informed interpretations of climactic episodes in the Morte that involve penetration of Guenevere's chamber or curtained bed. In the final group, essays by Lisa Robeson and Raluca L. Radulescu confirm that analysis of repeated words or phrases, as modelled in publications by Field and R. T. Davies, is a fruitful approach to Malory, who creates his most powerful effects by manipulating surfaces. Robeson's survey of the word 'worship' concludes that the Morte Darthur understands men's and women's worship in parallel terms, and that the sexes depend on each other for maintaining their worship. She is thus able to challenge the judgment that Malory presents women purely as objects or commodities. Radulescu traces escalating occurrences of the phrase 'oute of mesure' through 'The Tale of Sir Trystram' and the last two Tales, in order to understand the part played by excess – of anger, love and grief – in the tragedy that overtakes the civilized Arthurian world. [End Page...

Dowry and Inheritance, Gender and Empowerment in the ‘Notarial Societies’ of the Early Modern Greek World

This communication is something of a paradox. The project I am going to discuss here concerns an issue I have been working on for years, but on the other hand it is very much work in progress –and for technical reasons the progress is unfortunately much less advanced than I thought it would be when I first planned my contribution.First of all, the map illustrates what I mean by the term ‘notarial societies’ –mostly the world of the Greek islands – both along the western coast (Ionian islands) and the central Aegean (Cyclades and others), as well as in the south (Crete). The fall of Constantinople (1453) confirmed the Ottoman dominance on the major part of the former Byzantine Empire. However, some islands remained in Venetian hands or under various Latin lords affiliated with Venice (Khios with Genoa): major examples are Crete (until 1669), the Cyclades (to 1566) and the Ionian islands (to 1797). During the 17th century the Venetian presence was still strongly felt in the region. But the local population was – and remained – predominantly Greek in language and Greek Orthodox in religion. Those societies preserved the notarial tradition throughout the period and part of the vast amount of notarial acts has survived, throwing light on aspects of the social life about which there is very little evidence for the ‘non notarial’ parts of the region.Thus, the term ‘notarial societies’ designate those parts of the post Byzantine Greek world that preserved the medieval notarial tradition up to modern times. The extant notarial documents, therefore, outline the realities of populations, which in their majority shared a common language, religious creed and cultural (Byzantine) heritage. At the same time these were societies with differing physical characteristics, varying historical experiences, and different political and administrative framework, which moreover were subjected to variable cultural influences. All these factors are reflected in the significant regional variations that can be observed: take the example of the types of law regulating notarial practice, which offer a vital key for the interpretation of the information gleaned from the documents. At any given place the prevalent legal system might be any mixture of disparate elements: the Venetian law, in territories held by Venice; the customary law, which regulated most legal relations in regions like the Cyclades; and other influences, such as the feudal Frankish code used by the Latin rulers of formerly Byzantine lands; also, the canon law (which was in effect a continuation of Byzantine legal theory and practice) or the Islamic law, in places where Muslims had settled in large numbers.

Reconstructing Byzantine Constantinople: intercession and illumination at the court of Philippe le Bon

This article discusses three texts produced for Philippe le Bon, Duke of Burgundy, in the years following the fall of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire, to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. These texts deal with the West's painful experience of the postcolonial frontier between itself and Constantinople in the wake of this event. I look at the theme of intercession in two verse laments, Guillaume Dufay's ‘Lamentatio Sanctae Matris Ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae’ (1454), and Jean Molinet's ‘Complainte de Grèce’ (1464). I compare the use of this theme with the role of illumination in a manuscript produced for the Duke in around 1458 (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, fonds français, 9087), and containing Bertrandon de la Broquière's Voyage d'Outremer, a prose account of a journey to the Orient. The theme of the Church (Ecclesia) as intercessor in the laments, and the representation of manuscript patronage and of the cities of Jerusalem and Constantinople in the miniatures of the Broquière compilation, serve to bring the fallen Byzantium to the West in textual form. This reconstruction of Byzantine Constantinople may be viewed in theological terms, or it may point to the recovery of the city through the crusade projects of Philippe le Bon.

The Venetian Community--Between Civitas and Imperium . A Project of the Capital's Transfer from Venice to Constantinople, According to the Chronicle of Daniele Barbaro

Beginning with the eleventh century, Venetian historiography was the witness of the development of a new literary genre, meaning the chronicles. Only at Venice's Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana , their number exceeds 300. They are not contemporary sources for High Medieval Venice, but an instrument to reconstruct the image that the Venetians created regarding the surrounding political realities. They are supposed to represent the present paper's 'raw material'. Our proposal intends to emphasise a particular idea: possible Venetian claims for the Roman imperial tradition, more exactly the ideological evolution of this community from civitas to imperium . Although the imperial tendency is not immediately visible in the chronicles, it could be detected on a deeper investigation. It was possible, especially after the fourth crusade, when the fall of Constantinople ('the second Rome') in 1204 represented the proper opportunity for the Venetian community to consider itself as the legitimate heir of the imperial idea. The new title achieved by the Venetian Doge, that was Dominus quartae partis et dimidiae totius Imperii Romaniae ; the title of Dominator or of Podesta ¤ conffered to the Venetian representative at Constantinople during the Latin domination; the intention of the Doge Pietro Ziani (1205-29) to transfer the Venetian state structures to Constantinople. The paper especially emphasises this latter episode, relying upon the chronicle of Daniele Barbaro. Our intention is to accentuate all these features, relying upon the chronicles. They represented the Serenissima's option as a political identity. It supposes to pass from a local representation towards an international one, both of them seen through the eyes of the Venetian community.

Eastern Approaches to Byzantium by Antony s> Eastmond (review)

REVIEWS 535 The collection fromwhich the materialof thisbooklethas been drawnmay be seen by arrangementwith the chief librarian,FrAlexander Nadson at 37, Holden Rd, London NI2 8HS; telephone 020 8445 5358. Forthose unable to visit, and for all interestedin the studyof EastEuropeanbooksJuras Latryk's simply but attractivelyproduced booklet provides a concise and fascinating insightinto a little known but rich corner of the field. It may be orderedfrom the above address(theprice includespostage and packing).It is a bargainthat no Slavoniclibrarianwillwant to miss. School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies ARNOLD MCMILLIN University College London Eastmond, Antony (ed.). EasternApproaches to Byzantium.Papers from the Thirty-third Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, University of Warwick,Coventry,March I999. Societyforthe Promotionof Byzantine Studies Publications, 9. Ashgate/Variorum, Aldershot, Burlington,VT, Singaporeand Sydney, 200I. XXi + 297 pp. Notes. Figures.Plates.Index. ?45-00? APPROACHES to Byzantiumin both the geographicaland mentalsensesarethe focus of this thought-provokingcollection of papers. Understandably, given Anthony Eastmond's own expertise in Georgian art, the emphasis is on the Caucasian neighbours of Byzantium, but consideration is also given to Byzantium's frontiers with Muslim powers further to the south and to the fluctuations in these physical and culturalfrontiersover the period from the tenth to the thirteenthcenturies.The contributorsclearlyfollowed their brief both to inform and to stimulatedebate and, refreshingly,the majorityof the work comes from 'easterners'making reference to Byzantium, rather than Byzantinists looking eastwards, although Jonathan Shepard contributes a characteristicallyperceptivere-appraisalof Byzantineimperialpolicy towards the eastern frontier in the early tenth century and Catherine Holmes and Jean-Claude Cheynet, making particularlytelling use of sigillographicevidence , assess both how Byzantines administered their newly-conquered territoriesin the east and how they attempted to define and defend them in militaryterms. A group of papers on historiographyintroduces non-Greek sources (and, thankfully, the increasing number of English translations!) to a wider readership. After a rather bitty reconsideration by Speros Vryonis, Jr. of research since the publication of his major work on TheDeclineof Medieval Hellenism inAsiaMinor,comes Carole Hillenbrand'sadmirablyclear surveyof historywritingabout the Seljuks,focusingon two events of particularinterest to Byzantinists the Battle of Mantzikert in I07 I and the Fall of Constantinople in I 204 and noting how both these events provided propagandic material for Persianand Arabic writersto use in celebration of the achievements of the leaders of the Turkic nomadic incomers for whom, none the less, they retained a certaindistain.Forthem, Byzantiumwas a state destined to be defeated by the force of Islamic arms. Even for Christian Armenian and Georgian historians, surveyed in two masterly chapters by Robert W. Thomson and Stephen H. Rapp, Jr., Byzantium and its claims to 536 SEER, 8o, 3, 2002 universal rulership were not to be unquestioningly accepted. Thomson demonstrateshow Armenian historiansparticularlydrew on the images and parallelsof the Bible in order to present themselves (contraByzantium)as the new Israelites. Orthodox Georgian historians,whilst developing a model of kingship which accepted the Byzantine basileusas the archetype for the powerful ruler, also made reference to more Near Eastern concepts of rulershipparticularlyin theiruse of sunimagery. Selection of iconography and the messagesthat it broughtis also evident in the visual record. But whilst the Greek inhabitants of thirteenth-century Cappadocia, firmly under Turkish rule, could, as Catherine Jolivet-Levy demonstrates, decorate their churches with frescoes indicating both contact with the Byzantine world and concern for contemporarytheological debates and, in north-western Georgia, the church decorations of eleventh-century Svanet'i,as BrigittaSchradeshows, could drawheavilyon the iconographyof Byzantine warrior saints, the motives of the artists and patrons concerned were markedlydifferent.In Cappadocia, Byzantineidentitywas preservedby reference to Byzantine artistic and theological concerns; the warrior-based Svan society, on the other hand, selected images which had great resonance at a time of Georgian, not Byzantine, militaryexpansion. Similarchoices are evident elsewhere. The decoration of the recently-discovered rock-cut churches of the Georgian Gareja desertpresented by Zaza Skhirtladzeshow affinitieswith both Byzantinedecorativemotifsand those of SyriacChristianity ; in contrast, the well-known exterior sculpture and the lesser-known interior fresco decoration of the Church of the Holy Cross at Aghtamar, depicting the tenth-century Armenian King Gagik Artsrouni and re-interpreted by LynnJones, evoke Islamicprincelyimageryratherthan that of any Christian ruler. Helen C. Evans's discussion of Cilician Armenian royal portrait manuscripts of the thirteenth century provides further...

Seeking classical manuscripts at Mount Athos and seiches at ancient chalkis

The author became aware of Mount Athos (Agios Oros, Holy Mountain or Ancient Acte in classical times), by chance at the end of W.W.II. Some 30 years later the opportunity arose to gain an insight into the searching for classical ancient manuscripts on Athos that went on at the time of the Reformation in Europe. Athos was founded in 963 A.D. in the Easternmost Chalkidikian promontary of Greece (40 miles long and 4–7 miles wide) which is within sight of Istanbul and consists of about 24 individual monasteries. It has changed little since that date and is still, a millenium later, largely mediaeval. It is Orthodox Greek Christian and devoted only to the male sex, all forms of female life being denied access. Intrepid western European scholars of the 16/17th century sought to buy Greek manuscripts after the fall of Constantinople, at Athos. One such adventurer was Gresham Professor of Geometry, John Greaves of Oxford University and we outline the classical and scientific interests of this scholar-traveller. As the ancient Greek city of Chalkis is en route to Athos, the opportunity is taken to remark on the seiches in the straits between island Evvia (Euboea) and the Greek mainland — a phenomenon well noted in ancient Greek literature.

European and Islamic trade in the early Ottoman state: the merchants of Genoa and Turkey

List of tables Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Introduction 1. Historical outline 2. Money 3. Commodities 4. Slaves 5. Grain 6. Wine 7. Alum 8. Cloth 9. Metals 10. The fall of Constantinople and Ottoman-Genoese relations after 1453 Conclusion: the Latin contribution to the early Ottoman economy Appendices Glossary Place names Select bibliography Index.

TheTristiaof a Greek refugee: Michael Marullus and the politics of Latin subjectivity after the fall of Constantinople (1453)

Almost everything we know of Michael Marullus – Greek exile, Neoplatonist, mercenary soldier – is mediated by his poetry, much of which seems positively to invite biographical decoding. The poet tells us he was conceived in the year Constantinople fell to the Turks (1453), after which his family fled, via Ragusa (modern Dubrovnik), to Italy. Here he grew up under theIliadae … tecta Remi(Siena?), received an excellent education, and from an early age was frequenting the humanist academy of Giovanni Pontano at Naples. Marullus reports that when just seventeen, fate tore him away from his studies and plunged him into a military career (Epig.2.32.71–3). Between wars, both abroad and within Italy, he composed Latin poetry – including four books of controversial ‘pagan’ hymns –, edited Lucretius, and fraternised with such prominent figures in the literary and intellectual culture of the day as Jacopo Sannazaro and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Severed from an eventful life by a fittingly dramatic death, Marullus drowned in an attempt to cross the river Cecina in full flood. His poetic talents were much appreciated in his own time, for example by Leonardo Da Vinci and Thomas More. The love lyrics to ‘Neaera’, though perhaps stiff and conventional to modern taste, inspired Ronsard. His untimely death drew Latin epitaphs from all over Italy.

Nicolaos M. Panayotakis: A Teacher and a Scholar

Nicolaos M. Panayotakis: A Teacher and a Scholar Yannis K. Mavromatis Nicolaos M. Panayotakis began his academic career in October 1971 as a full professor at the University of Ioannina. He taught the whole spectrum of Byzantine literature from Procopius to Bessarion, along with Greek paleography. He simultaneously helped a select group of students to undertake professional work in Byzantine and post-Byzantine literature after their graduation. He was a spiritual parent for his students, providing advice and encouragement in their graduate work. His greatest satisfaction was to see many of his former students in good academic positions. All these students will always remember his kindness and professional integrity, always coupled with a sense of humor and with paternal advice. A large part of his activity in conjunction with his teaching duties was the founding and development of Byzantine and post-Byzantine studies at the University of Ioannina. He also founded the library of Medieval Philology and Byzantine History, which is now one of the richest Byzantinological libraries of Greece. He served as chairman of the Department of Philosophy at Ioannina and was the founder and director of Δωδ≈νη, the annual publication of that department. A large part of his activities related as well to the founding and development of [End Page 3] the University of Crete, where he again gave priority to the library’s enrichment. On undertaking the directorship of the Istituto Ellenico in Venice in 1989, he found its morale low, owing to the absence of a director since 1982. In a relatively short time, he managed to rekindle the institute’s research, educational, and managerial functions. He immediately instituted weekly seminars for all resident scholars. The Θησαυρίσματα were once again published. He initiated the publication of Oriens Graecolatinus as part of the series Bιβλιθήϰη τoυ Eλληνιϰoυ̃ Iνστιύτoτoυ Bενετίας. He also organized international symposia on modern Greek literature, language, and ethnicity. Panayotakis, one of the most distinguished Byzantinists of the medieval and Renaissance periods, concentrated principally on medieval Hellenism, the medieval and modern history of Europe (especially Renaissance and Reformation), Western medieval literature, theater history, and, more generally, the history of European civilization. His extended research in the archives and libraries of Venice, which he began in 1968 and afterwards extended to other cities of Western Europe, brought to the surface a whole new world of unknown scholars, texts, and items directly connected with the culture of Crete during the Renaissance and Baroque eras. Beyond Byzantine philology, the central theme of his research and publications was the study, from both a Greek and European perspective, of the two centuries that followed the fall of Constantinople, because he believed that the concept of neohellenism was established during those two centuries. Panayotakis used to say that he did not belong to the category of scholars who throughout their life rework their doctoral thesis. He counted himself among those who have no compunction about switching from one subject to another since they believe that perfection is unreachable. It is generally accepted, however, that he approached perfection with a scientific precision that, as Stylianos Alexiou has remarked, “is especially useful today when mechanistic and soulless agnosticism or subjective impressionism … does not go beyond the obvious.” This “obvious” is what Panayotakis detested. Displaying un usual research abilities and achieving remarkable results in several fields, he (a) shed light on individuals as well as on the intellectual life of the Latin East (Λατινoϰρατoύμενη’Aνατoλή), especially concerning Greek literary productivity in sixteenth and seventeenth century Crete, (b) discovered the rich, previously unrecognized Italian literary produc tivity in Crete that accompanied Cretan literary productivity, (c) solved the question of the identity of the poet of Erotokritos, (d) was the first to talk about the infiltration of Reformation ideas in Crete, (e) discovered Φραγϰίσϰoς Λεoνταρίτης, the first modern Greek music composer, and (f), with new data, shed fresh light on the Cretan period of Dominicos Theotocopoulos. He left behind a large amount of unpublished material—an [End Page 4] important legacy to his students, who will surely take advantage of this wealth of material, study it and publish it, following in the footsteps of their great teacher. [End Page 5] Yannis K. Mavromatis...

Du Fay the poet? Problems in the texts of his motets

The following observations make no claim to either profundity or finality, but attempt to improve on the texts and translations currently available, to comment on their metres (some rudimentary information being given in Appendix A), and to offer a few conjectures concerning authorship. This last question has interested Du Fay scholars, who generally allow him to be the author at least of Salve flos/Vos nunc: whereas Laurenz Liitteken denies him all else, David Fallows writes that ‘Some at least of his song and motet texts are likely to be by him’, singling out Salve jlos for the first-person reference at the end of the motetus; Alejandro Enrique Planchart, having pointed out that Du Fay's literary talent in Latin was recognised at school with a copy of Alexandre de Villedieu's Doctrinale, would give him some others as well. In principle, a composer may write his own text, like Machaut; or collaborate with a poet, as Du Fay evidently did with Périnet in Ce moys de may, and one Nicholas with one William in Argi vices; or be given a text to set by a patron or employer, as when Du Fay was sent texts from Naples on the fall of Constantinople, presumably including 0 tres piteulx, de tout espoir fontaine (OO vi, no. 10).

The Byzantine Tradition after the Fall of Constantinople.John J. Yiannias

<i>The Byzantine Tradition after the Fall of Constantinople.</i>John J. Yiannias

Orthodoxy and Bulgarian Ethnic Awareness Under Ottoman Rule, 1396-1762 Orthodoxy and Bulgarian Ethnic Awareness Under Ottoman Rule

By the year 1453, when the vestigial remains of the Byzantine Empire were destroyed with the fall of Constantinople, much of the Balkan peninsula was already in the hands of the conquering Ottoman Turks. The overthrow of Byzantium in that year was the capstone in a century-long process that transformed an originally militant Muslim Anatolian border emirate into a powerful Muslim empire that straddled two continents and represented a major contender in contemporary European great power politics. Over half of the population subject to the Ottoman sultan were Christian European inhabitants of the Balkans: Greeks, Serbs, Vlahs, Albanians and Bulgarians. With the conquest of Constantinople, Sultan Mehmed II Fatih, the victorious Turkish ruler, faced the quarrelsome problem of devising a secure means of governing his vast, Muslim-led empire that contained a highly heterogeneous non-Muslim population.

Developments in forming technology—An engineering educator's approach

Portugal, it is recalled, has a special place in the minds of educators who know of its geographical explorations and navigational achievements in the 15/16th centuries and which followed on from the fall of Constantinople. The consequences for trade and in science are referred to. The 200th birthday of Charles Babbage, computer pioneer, will soon be celebrated and some facts of his life broadly relevant to engineering are surveyed. The outlook for forming-processes education, it is suggested, should be discussed and some observations on the decline in polytechnic/university experimental work are made. The fewness of experimental plasticity laboratories is bemoaned and the greater employment of force-field methods of analysis is urged for simple teaching purposes. The remarkable new book, The Tula Weapons Factory, offers new historical light on the early manufacture of interchangeable parts, in the 17–19th centuries.