Theodore Prodromos Research Articles

Hymnography as literature in the commentaries by Gregory of Corinth, Theodore Prodromos, and Eustathios of Thessalonike

Hymnography as literature in the commentaries by Gregory of Corinth, Theodore Prodromos, and Eustathios of Thessalonike

How to lament a fallen mouse? A parody of ancient lament in the Katomyomachia by Theodore Prodromos

How to lament a fallen mouse? A parody of ancient lament in the Katomyomachia by Theodore Prodromos

Οff the Page and Beyond Middle-Byzantine Constantinople: An Epigram by Theodore Prodromos οn a Fresco of the Deposition in Latin-Ruled Naxos (Early Fourteenth Century)

Οff the Page and Beyond Middle-Byzantine Constantinople: An Epigram by Theodore Prodromos οn a Fresco of the Deposition in Latin-Ruled Naxos (Early Fourteenth Century)

From Gregory of Nazianzus to Theodore Prodromos: Texts and Contexts of Greek Biblical Paraphrase

From Gregory of Nazianzus to Theodore Prodromos: Texts and Contexts of Greek Biblical Paraphrase

Marianne Sághy and Robert G. Ousterhout, eds. Piroska and the Pantokrator: Dynastic Memory, Healing, and Salvation in Komnenian Constantinople

Marianne Sághy and Robert G. Ousterhout, eds. <i>Piroska and the Pantokrator: Dynastic Memory, Healing, and Salvation in Komnenian Constantinople</i>

Maximos the Confessor as a Letter Writer: Genre Etiquette in the Letters of the Seventh-century Byzantine Theologian

So far, the collection of letters of Maximos the Confessor (580–662) has not been studied from the point of view of philology. The purpose of this article is to analyse Maximos’ letters as examples of epistolary prose and to find out the extent to which the author follows the etiquette norms of letter writing developed in the Early Byzantine Period. The attention is focused on three motifs related to the theme of friendship: the illusion of friend’s presence; unity of souls; reproach for the lack of letters. It has been shown that Maximos was aware of the letter etiquette norms, and that his letters contained a number of motifs and formulae belonging to the Early Byzantine tradition, but at the same time, Maximos rethought and transformed some already established commonplaces, sometimes entering into a dispute with the previous tradition. In addition, it has been demonstrated that Maximos’ letters contain motifs and clichés correlating with not the Early Byzantine tradition, but rather the letters of later authors, such as Michael Psellos, Theodore Prodromos, and others. It has been supposed that Maximos’ letters influenced later authors, thus forming a link between the Early and Middle Byzantine epistolography.

Cervantes, the Hellenistic Novel and the Byzantine Novel: Theodore Prodromos and The Liberal Lover

Konštantínove listy/Constantine’s Letters is an international scientific journal which has been published in Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra since 2008. The main goal of the journal is to present problems and themes intertwined with the cultural and political history of Great Moravia during the 9th century as well as continuity of Cyrillo-Methodian tradition in later times. Next, there is also space for other adjacent topics connected with Slavonic and Byzantine history, philology, philosophy, literature, cultural relations as well as medieval and early modern age ecclesiastical history and iconography.

By Theodore Prodromos as a Sample of Neoplatonic Commentary to Aristotle’s

by Theodore Prodromos as a Sample of Neoplatonic Commentary to Aristotle’s

Feasting and Reading: Some Suggestions on Approaching Banquet Scenes in Rhodanthe and Dosikles

This paper examines connections between Theodore Prodromos’ Rhodanthe and Dosikles and the production of space in Byzantium in the early twelfth century. Previously, Panagiotis Roilos (2005) has argued that banquet scenes in Rhodanthe and Dosikles may have worked as liminal spaces within the narrative of the text, allowing the satirization and parody of established codes of conduct and communication. We build upon Roilos’ work to propose that interplay between passagesdepicting feasting and performative contexts aligned with satirical elements within the text. This, we argue, rendered the humor and satire more explicit for the gathered audience. We locate the performance of Rhodanthe and Dosiklesin large halls in the households of a group involving the ex-empress Eirene Doukaina and her son-in-law Nikephoros Bryennios. Here we argue, the performance of the text contributed to the production of a space which challenged the emperor John II and his wife Piroska-Eirene’s monopoly on dynastic imperial legitimacy. The article is intended as a case study which raises broader research questions on the spatial dimensions of twelfth-century literature. Suggestions for further research on this topic are offered in our conclusion.

Of false philosophers and inept teachers: Theodore Prodromos’ satirical writings (with a translation of the poem Against the old man with a long beard).

Ψευδοφιλόσοφοι και Αδαείς Δάσκαλοι:Τα Σατιρικά Κείμενα του Θεοδώρου ΠροδρόμουΟρισμένα από τα σατιρικά κείμενα του Θεοδώρου Προδρόμου (όπωςο Φιλοπλάτων, ο Αμαθής, ή το ποίημα κατά μακρογενείου γέροντος)μπορούν να θεωρηθούν ως οι διδακτικές του προγραμματικές δηλώσεις.Επιπλέον δείχνουν πώς αντιλαμβανόταν ο Πρόδρομος την «ὑπόκρισιν»,να προσποιείται δηλαδή κάποιος ότι είναι ένας άλλος.

“Image of the Soul” of a Learned Metropolitan in the Thirteenth Century: Some Notes on John Apokaukos’ Epistles

John Apokaukos (ca. 1155–1233), the metropolitan of Naupaktos, was a church and political figure of the early thirteenth century and an outstanding Byzantine writer. So far the collection of Apokaukos’ letters has been studied mainly as a historical source. This paper has made a philological analysis of his epistles with the question raised how the author’s self is portrayed. This research has shown that Apokaukos’ letters formed an individual image of the author extending beyond epistolary clichés. This image is not without internal contradictions: on the one hand, Apokaukos portrays himself as a decrepit old man, enduring punishment for his sins, and on the other, he appears proud of his achievements and erudition, ready to stand up for his rights or defend the interests of his eparchy. Moreover, when the author speaks of his weakness and insignificance, he is not always serious, for the self-abasement sometimes turns into a caricature: for example, the author emphasizes his gluttony using grotesque comparisons. The author’s image is not static: Apokaukos often portrays himself as a doubter, hesitating over two opinions and changing his position under the influence of circumstances. This paper has analysed the author’s image in Apokaukos’ letters in the context of Byzantine epistolography in the Komnenian renaissance. Some common tendencies have been determined in the epistles of John Apokaukos, Michael Psellos, John Tzetzes, and Theodore Prodromos.

Pseudo-tragica Prodromea: The shadow of pathos over the glitter of the Byzantine secular literature

By analyzing primarily the sources for the 1st through the 3rd books of the verse novel Rhodanthe and Dosicles by Theodore Prodromos the author of the paper attempts to point out an enormous influence exerted by the Euripidean drama on the emergence of motifs, common-places and tropes in this novel, as well as to emphasize, on the one hand, in which mesure these drama-components are consistent with the logical structure of a different literary genre, and on the other, how much they represent a ballast and a purely erudite ornament for the novelist, intended exclusively for the achievement of pathos.

The Dialogue Xenedemos, or Voices, by Theodore Prodromos

This paper offers the first critical edition of the dialogue Xenedemos, or Voices, by Theodore Prodromos (c. 1100-1170), together with an English translation and commentary. This work is dedicated to an analysis of the definitions of the five voices from Porphyry’s Isagoge. The publication of this good-humored scholarly text will allow for a better understanding of the development of logic studies in the 12th century, and also gives further insight into the nature of the tendencies within Byzantine intellectual circles of that period.

The beard and its philosopher: Theodore Prodromos on the philosopher's beard in Byzantium

The following paper analyses Theodore Prodromos’ satire,Against the old man with a long beard. It argues that the text which is heavily based on the ancient tradition of ridiculing philosophers is in fact directed against the twelfth-century fellow teachers of Prodromos.

A Brief History of Self-Reference Notion Implementation in Byzantium

The article presents an overview of implementation of self-referential notions in the logical and theological texts of Byzantine scholars up to the 12th century. The commentaries on Porphyry’s and Aristotle’s theory of definition by John of Damascus, John Italus, and Theodore Prodromos are discussed. It is argued that the Byzantine scholars performed different original implementations of basic logical notions and discovered their self-referential property. The attention is paid to the five predicabilia notions of Porphyry and Aristotelian categories applications in logical, philosophical, and theological Byzantine texts. The authors conclude that the Byzantine solutions resemble some of the modern logical ideas of 20th century.

Theodore Prodromos and the use of the poetic work of Gregory of Nazianzus: Appropriation in the service of self-representation

Gregory of Nazianzus and Theodore Prodromos are two of the most influential poets of Byzantium. And yet, no study has examined the various intertextual correspondences between their poetic works. This article is the first to demonstrate the extensive appropriation of Gregory's work by Prodromos. It is divided into three parts:1the first discusses poems composed by Prodromos in praise of Gregory; the second part attempts to show which of Gregory's poems Prodromos read and his technique of ‘plundering’ words from Gregory's corpus; the third part concentrates on Prodromos’ creative imitation of Nazianzus’ poetry in terms of wording, genre and sentiments, which eventually enabled him to craft part of his authorial self-portrait.

On σκορδαψός: gut-knot or eyesore? A tribute toBMGS

Forty years ago, I contributed my first independent article to Volume 1 ofByzantine and Modern Greek Studies, ‘The lament of the Virgin in Byzantine literature and modern Greek folksong’. For this fortieth anniversary issue, dedicated to A. A. M. Bryer, I have, as in the closing words of Theodore Prodromos’ seventh letter to Aristenos (Πεϱὶ Γλώττης), nothing to offer but μικϱαῖς ἀντιδεξιοῦσα σταγόσι, καὶ ταύταις θολεϱαῖς (‘meagre and murky drops’),1further sullied with speculation on possible meanings of a single rare word:skordapsos. Does it mean ‘gut-knot’ or ‘eyesore’? Is it a vulgar form ofchordapsos, an affliction of the intestines (attested in early medical texts)? Or is it a later vernacular term for ‘eye disease’, for which garlic (skordo) was, and remains, a known curative? And does it matter?

Four Byzantine Novels by Elizabeth Jeffreys

Reviewed by: Four Byzantine Novels by Elizabeth Jeffreys Steven Moore (bio) Elizabeth Jeffreys, Four Byzantine Novels. Translated with Introductions and Notes by Jeffreys. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2012 (Distributed in the US by the U of Chicago P). 488pp. $120, cloth. For the Greekless reader, this long-awaited anthology provides an important link between the ancient Greek novel and the novels we read today. The Greeks created what we now call novels at the beginning of the Common Era, peaking in the fourth century with the greatest of them, Heliodorus’s Ethiopian Story. Eight complete novels survive, along with fragments from a dozen or so others, all conveniently gathered in B. P. Reardon’s Collected Ancient Greek Novels (University of California Press, 1989). When the best of them were rediscovered and translated during the Renaissance, they provided the template for the European novel of the early-modern period, as Margret Doody has demonstrated in The True Story of the Novel (Rutgers University Press, 1996). However, few readers are aware that in twelfth-century Byzantium, a handful of writers revived the ancient Greek novel and put their own spin on the genre. What is most striking is how modern, even postmodern, these medieval novels sound. Like Barth and Pynchon imitating the eighteenth-century novel in The Sot-Weed Factor and Mason & Dixon, respectively, the Byzantines set their novels in the past and artificially imitated the Greek of antiquity rather than their own vernacular, all while having some metafictional fun with older forms of fiction and diction. Jeffreys translates and annotates the four that have survived (as in the case with ancient Greek novels, more were undoubtedly written but have disappeared.) The earliest, a novel in verse entitled Rhodanthe and Dosikles, was composed probably in the early 1130s by Theodore Prodromos. [End Page 237] Like Nabokov in Laughter in the Dark, he tells us upfront what his novel will be about, a rehash of the standard topoi of earlier Greek novels: These [are the adventures] of the silvery girl Rhodanthe with the lovely garland and of the valiant and comely youth Dosikles, the flights and wanderings and tempests and billows, brigands, grievous eddies, sorrows that give rise to love, chains and indissoluble fetters and imprisonments in gloomy dungeons, grim sacrifices, bitter grief, poisoned cups and paralysis of joints, and then marriage and the marriage bed and passionate love. (20) Structurally and thematically similar to Heliodorus’s Ethiopian Story, Rhodanthe and Dosikles is essentially a vehicle for various rhetorical set pieces, an opportunity for Prodromos to show off his skill and knowledge and occasionally to make fun of the conventions of the genre. (These novels were read aloud at the imperial court and in the literary salons of Constantinople; they were literally performance pieces. Like ballets, they do not so much tell a story as perform one.) Although nowhere near as complex and ingenious as Heliodorus, Prodromos manages to say some interesting things about dream psychology, military theory, and statecraft while performing elegant variations on the ancient theme of ideal lovers who elope, are separated and suffer various setbacks, and are eventually reunited and married. Narrower in scope but much sexier, Hysmine and Hysminias was written in prose during the 1140s or ’50s and is attributed to Eumathios Makrembolites. Modeled on the second-best of the ancient Greek novels, Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon (late second century), this one is the first-person account of how a young herald named Hysminias met and fell in love with a remarkably forward young woman named Hysmine. Struck by the similarity between their names, and delegated to the ceremony of washing his feet, Hysmine goes for it: The maiden Hysmine, crouching down by my feet and talking hold of them, washes them in the water (this is an honour accorded to heralds); she holds them, she clasps them, she embraces them, she presses them, she kisses them silently and sneaks a kiss; eventually she scratches me with her fingernails and tickles me. (183) [End Page 238] Not surprisingly, Hysminias has an erotic dream that night about her, the first of many in this R-rated novel. Though they engage in some heavy petting, both agree to save...

Four Byzantine Novels by Elizabeth Jeffreys, trans. (review)

This wonderful book presents for the first time to a modern readership four important yet seldom known novels, dating back to twelfth-century Constantinople: Theodore Prodromos’s Rhodanthe and Dosikles, Eumathios Makrembolites’s Hysmine and Hysminias, Constantine Manasses’s Aristandros and Kallithea, and Niketas Eugenianos’s Drosilla and Charikles. Until very recently, these texts have been largely overlooked, and Elizabeth Jeffreys’s much-needed edition and study is a landmark contribution that will make them available to a wider audience and have a lasting impact on literary scholarship...

Serbs in the poetry of Theodore Prodromos and anonymous Manganeios

Numerous rhetorical writings of the Comnenian period constitute a fruitful field of research, both with respect to historical data, i.e. hard historical facts hidden, though still recognizable, behind the peculiar and somewhat abstract mode of expression of the authors of the twelfth century, and with regard to the poetics of the literary works themselves, i.e. the internal elements characteristic not only for the genre chosen, but also for each particular author. A comparative, historical and literary approach to these works renders their sense clearer and their complex allusions more readily understood. This is a matter of some importance, since allusions constitute one of the basic elements of historical rhetoric, which reached its peak at the time of Emperor Manuel Komnenos (1143-1180), especially during the first half of his reign, i.e. till the end of the fifties of the twelfth century. The poetry of Theodore Prodromes and of the somewhat younger Anonymous ('Prodromos') Manganeios is an excellent example of this intertwining of historical and literary elements, i.e. of the presentation of historical data through rhetorical patterns. One has to concentrate on individual works attempting to determine, as far as possible, the date of composition, the circumstances of writing and the purpose of a particular poem, the occasion for which it was written and the character of the expected audience, in order to better understand both the poetry written by these two rhetoricians and the individual features of the authors, as well as their respective positions in the circle around Emperor Manuel Komnenos. The poems dealt with in the present paper stand out for calling the Serbs by their real name. This naming practice was invariably employed by both rhetoricians in cases when new achievements of the basileus were to be announced and proclaimed immediately after the event, on the occasions of first reports, first celebrations of the new victories and accomplishments of the emperor, in short, whenever precision and accuracy of expression were imperative. Comparable to contemporary news and reports, under these circumstances both Theodore Prodromes and Anony mous Manganeios insisted on the real names of the defeated peoples and on the realistic description of the circumstances under which Byzantine, i.e. imperial, victories were gained. Writing soon after the event, these two poets had neither time nor interest in availing themselves of the artificial, ideologically loaded designations of the adversaries of Byzantium. On the contrary, their aim was to clearly point out the identity of the defeated barbarians by using concrete language and precise naming and to thus announce the emperor's victory over them. Within these limits, they could, of course, deploy their literary skills in different ways and put their poetic art on display through impressive and euphonic images, depicting the ideal of the basileus on the one hand and mocking those who dared stand up against him on the other. In contrast to innumerable encomia dedicated to Emperor Manuel Komnenos on different occasions, also including some writings of the two poets under discussion themselves, the current topicality of some of the their poems bears witness to the short time that had passed between the time they were composed and the event they described. It is in these poems that the Serbs are invariably called by their actual name, without the deployment of synonyms, as to explain or qualify the ethnonym (see in the first place W. Horandner Theodoras Prodromes. Historische Gedichte, Wien 1974, XXX. Recueil des historiens des croisades, Historiens grecs II, ed. E. Miller, Paris, 1881 761-763 (Manganeios, no. 26)). In order to get a better grasp of the overall poetics of these two poets, it is of some relevance to investigate the reasons underlying the use of particular ethnonyms. In this case it is the precise reference to the Serbs as the defeated enemies of the emperor, not to the Dalmatians, which is the name given to the Serbs in many of their poems which summarize the events of the past years and which are consequentially not conceived as depicting current events. An analysis of the poems of Theodore Prodromos and Anonymous Manganeios devoted to Manuel's expedition against the Serbs in 1149 enables us to better assess the documentary value of their verses, the connection of Prodromos' poem with the later historians of the Comnenian period, John Cinnamus and especially Nicetas Choniates, as well as the differences between the two authors (for instance, Prodromos' view from Constantinople as opposed to the position of the immediate witness assumed by Manganeios). What both poets unequivocally confirm in their political verses is that the purpose of a poem dictated the style in which it was written and the strength of rhetoric used in it.