the occult sciences in byzantium

PaulMagdalino Maria Mavroudi

The Occult Sciences in Byzantium

La Pomme d'or Geneva

Copyright by La Pomme d'or, 2006 All rights reserved

Cover: Biblioteca Univers'tari di B 1 Graphic design: Miglena ~avo~a 0 ogna, Bononiensis gr. 3632, fol. 361r. Production: Torovino Ltd, Sofia ISBN-10: 954-8446~2-2 ISBN-13: 978-954-8446~2~

Abbreviations

AntCl Antiquite Classique AG Anthologia Graeca AG Les alchimistes grecs BHG Bibiotheca Hagiographica Graeca BMGS Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies BZ Byzantinische Zeitschrift CAB Corpus des astronomes byzantins CahCMCahiers de civilisation medievale, Xe-Xlle siecles CahHistM Cahiers d'histoire mondiale CollByz Collectanea Byzantina CCAG Catalogus Codicum Astrologorum Graecorum, 12 vols. (Brussels, 1898-1953) CCCM Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis CCSG Corpus Christianorum, Series Graeca CFHB Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae CMAG Catalogue des manuscrits alchimiques grecs, 8 vols. (Brussels, 1924-32) CSCO Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium CSHB Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae DOP Dumbarton Oaks Papers ErJb Eranos Jahrbuch GCS Die griechischen christlicher Schriftsteller HAW Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft JOB Jahrbuch der osterreichischen Byzantinistik JSJ Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian,

JRS ODB PG PLP REB RHR

'Hellenistic, and Roman Period Journal of Roman Studies Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium Patrologia Cursus Completus. Series Graeca Prosopographisches Lexikon der Palaeologenzeit Revue des etudes byzantines Revue de l'histoire des religions

SVF Stoicorum veterumfragmenta, ed. H. von Arnim (Leipzig, 1903) TM Travaux et Memoires PmbZ PBE ZRVI

Prosopographie der mittelbyzantinischen Zeit Prosopography of the Byzantine Empire Zhornik Radova Vizantoloskog Instituta

Contents

Preface 9

Introduction 11

Maria Mavroudi Occult Science and Society in Byzantium: Considerations for Future Research 39

Katerina Ierodiakonou The Greek Concept of Sympatheia and Its Byzantine Appropriation in Michael Psellos 97

Paul Magdalino Occult Science and Imperial Power in Byzantine History and Historiography (9th-12th Centuries) 119

Maria Papathanassiou Stephanos of Alexandria: A Famous Byzantine Scholar, Alchemist and Astrologer 163

Michele Mertens Graeco-Egyptian Alchemy in Byzantium 205

t David Pingree The Byzantine Translations of M!ish!i'allah on Interrogational Astrology 231

William Adler Did the Biblical Patriarchs Practice Astrology? Michael Glykas and Manuel Komnenos I on Seth and Abraham 245

AnneTihon Astrological Promenade in Byzantium in the Early Palaiologan Period 265!

Joshua Holo Hebrew Astrology in Byzantine Southern Italy 291

Charles Burnett Late Antique and Medieval Latin Translations of Greek Texts on Astrology and Magic 325,

George Saliba Revisiting the Astronomical Contacts Between the World of Is~am and Renaissance Europe: The Byzantme connection 361

Bibliography 375 Indices

437

-

Preface

The present volume originated as a colloquium organised by the editors and held in November 2003 at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D. C. Earlier versions of all the papers published here were delivered at the colloquium, with the exception of a single one, which the author did not wish to submit for publication. The occasion was entirely financed by Dumbarton Oaks, thanks to the support of the Director, Professor Edward Keenan. The editors gratefully acknowledge the work of Dr Alice-Mary Talbot, Director of Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks, and her then assistant, Caitlin McGurk, in making the practical arrangements for the colloquium. We are indebted to Dr Talbot for sending the manuscript submissions for external review, to the reviewers for their constructive comments, and to the Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Publications Committee for releasing us from the obligation to publish in-house. We are deeply grateful to Krassimira Platchkov for accepting our volume to launch her new publication series, Les Editions de la Pomme d'or. Paul Magdalino would like to thank the British Academy for the award of a Research Readership which relieved him from teaching in 2002-4. Maria Mavroudi is indebted to the Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities at the University of California, Berkeley for a research fellowship that halved her teaching responsibilities during the academic year 2004-05. Finally, the editors and publisher gratefully acknowledge the invaluable help of Thalia Anagnostopoulos in copy editing the

10 Paul Magdalino Maria Mavroudi

volume and compiling the bibliography and copy editing, and of Mariya Spiridonova who compiled the indices.

The volume is dedicated to the memory of David Pingree, who passed on 11 November 2005. The quantity, scholarly range, and quality of the work on the exact and occult sciences that he left behind is simply breathtaking. In almost forty books and well more than a hundred articles and book chapters he edited, translated, and studied texts in Akkadian, Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Arabic, and Hebrew covering chronologically from the earliest antiquity until

th~ end of the Middle Ages and geographically from India to Gibraltar. He was devoted, generous, and kind to those who knew him as teacher, colleague, and friend. Those who never met him cannot but be grateful for the guidance and intellectual

com~anionship that his abundant and pioneering publications will contmue to provide. He is sincerely and sorely missed.

Paul Magdalino and Maria Mavroudi

Introduction

This volume represents the first attempt to examine occult science as a distinct category of Byzantine intellectual culture. There have been studies of particular occult sciences, notably the two most intellectually pretentious, astrology and (to a lesser extent) alchemy, though until very recently far more effort has gone into the editing of texts than into evaluating their contents and contextualising their authors.1 There have also been studies of occult practice, mainly concerned, in the nature of the evidence, with its repression by the authorities and criticism by orthodox religious opinion. But insofar as such discussions have conceived of the occult as a whole, they have defined it in terms of magic. Thus Spyros Troianos analysed the legislation on Byzantine magic;2 Byzantine magic was the theme of a colloquium and a subsequent volume produced by Dumbarton Oaks;3 and a table-ronde on Byzantine magic, involving both editors of this volume, took place in the 20th International Congress of Byzantine Studies, held at Paris in 2001. Each of these initiatives surveyed a variety of

1 The place of astrology in medieval Byzantine culture and religion has recently been studied by P. Magdalino, L 'orthodoxie des astrologues. La science entre le dogme et Ia divination il Byzance (VII' -XIV siecle ), Realites byzantines 12 (Paris, 2006). 1 S. Troianos, 'Zauberei und Giftmischerei in mittelbyzantinischer Zeit', in G. Prinzing and D. Simon, eds., Fest und Alltag in Byzanz (Munich, 1990), 37-51, 184-8. 3 H. Maguire, ed., Byzantine Magic (Washington, D. C., 1995).


practices, different in each case, not all of which could be strictly classified as magical. Yet magic seemed in all cases to offer the most convenient and comprehensive definition. This is equally true in the study of the civilizations most closely related to Byzantium, from Greco-Roman Antiquity to the Renaissance: discussions of magic abound, but discussions of the occult sciences are rare. Why so? (Most obviously, because magic, not being restricted to a learned tradition, is less elitist and more conducive to anthropological research; it has also left vastly more material evidence, in the form of charms, spells and amulets which when they use writing at all evince, for the most part, a low and formulaic level of literacy. The study of occult science requires some familiarity with specialised languages, methods and techniques, whereas the study of magic is freely available to historians and art-historians. Moreover, defining the occult as science tends to deprive it of the religious quality inherent in the concept of magic.

What then, apart from the need to avoid repetition, is the reason for preferring the occult sciences to magic as the theme and title of this collection?,Is occult science not just magic by another name? The answer lies principally in the corollary of the point made above: the concept of magic does not do justice to the learned, literate end of the spectrum. It puts the educated, sophisticated masters of occult knowledge, some of whom, in Byzantium, were leading social figures, in the same category as the drunken old women who were

cari~atured, n_o~ inaccurately according to a recent authority, as the leadmg practltloners of magic in Late Antiquity.4 It also implies that they offered an alternative religion, or a superstitious substitute for orthodox c_ult, which was demonstrably not the case. In any case, occult sctence cannot be regarded simply as the learned and non-superstitious side of magic. Magic entered the vocabulary of the Greco-Ro~an worl~ as a term of opprobrium, connoting the

alt~n, ~uspect ntes of onental Magi.~ Although it came to denote an' obJe~ttve cultural reality, it never lost its negative connotatio~

M~g~c w~s what the cultural Other practised as a substitute for true rehgwn; mstead of serving the true deity it sought to usurp d' . powe b h al ' tvme

r y mec amc or demonic means; its rituals mimicked

M.W. Dickie Magic and M . New York, 200,1). aglclans m the Greco-Roman World (London and

introduction 13

religious cult, but in exclusive, private settings.5 Few men, least of all the learned, were keen to refer to themselves as magoi,,.Oespite, or indeed because of, the natural elision between astrology and astral magic, between the charting of planetary influences and the incantation of planetary spirits, astrologers strenuously denied that their predictions were based on anything other than natural science, and compared their prognostications to the "expert guesswork" of the medical doctor, 'Alchemists, if put on the spot, would no doubt have taken a similar line. This was of course a defensive position, adopted in order to counter charges of sorcery and polytheism, and it does not mean that the practitioners of astrology and alchemy really saw no connection between their knowledge and other types of esoteric learning that were used to predict or to affect the course of nature. However, if pushed to define the connection, they would have done so not in terms of magic but in terms of philosophy. This may strike us as bizarre, and it would certainly be deeply misleading to treat philosophy and occult science as synonymous. Yet intellectual engagement with the occult was rooted in, or sought to cohere with, the philosophical systems of Greco-Roman antiquity, as will be further discussed in this introduction and in a later chapter of this volume. The learned practitioners of the occult had a basic general education including philosophy, and tended to combine their special expertise with a variety of intellectual interests, which made it appropriate to describe them as philosophoi. Philosophos was the generic label for an intellectual in Byzantium. 6 It was also a label strongly coloured by the Late Antique fusion of Pythagorean, Stoic and Neoplatonic traditions which identified philosophy with an ascetic lifestyle and the possession of extraordinary mental and spiritual powers that went far beyond the rational exposition of logic and metaphysics and had much in common with the charisma of Christian holy men-themselves often referred to as philosophers by their apologists.7 It was the philosopher's capacity-or reputation-for learning and contriving paradoxa, extraordinary phenomena, which caught the public imagination in Late Antiquity and shaped the image of the

'See F. Graf, Magic in the Ancient World (Cambridge, Mass., 1997). 6 See ODB, s.v. PHILOSOPHER. 7 E.g. Sozomenos, Kirchengeschichte, ed. J. Bidez and G.C Hansen, GCS 50 (Berlin, 1960), I 12. 8, 13.1, 14.1, lll 14, 38.

14 Paul Magdalino Maria Mavroudi;

philosopher in the formative period of Byzantine medieval culture (5th-9th c.). In the widely circulated sixth-century chronicle of John

Malalas~philosophtzl address secret prayers to the Moon, 8 create talismans,9- and ~~nish into thin air10 in addition to predicting ' eclipses11 and making astronomical discoveries; 12 the "most learned philosopher" Theon of Alexandria (late 4'h c.) is mentioned not only as an astronomer, but as a teacher of Hermetism and Orphism, 13 while Malalas' near-contemporary Proclus features not as the leading Neoplatonist of his generation, but as a dream interpreter for the emperor Anastasius I14 and as the inventor of an incendiary substance which bums a rebel fleet. 15 In the late eighth-century collection of legends about the monuments of Constantinople, the Parastaseis, the city's large collection of ancient statues are full of hidden meanings and sinister powers, and the men who know how to interpret them are philosophers, not magicians. 16

For present-day purposes, however, 'philosophy' is hardly more appropriate than 'magic' as an identifying label for the scientific aspect of the occult. So should this not simply be considered under the heading of science tout court, or should not science and magic be included, without forced and arguably anachronistic separation, under the same broad umbrella? The merits of this approach, which was exactly the one adopted by Lynn Thorndike Jr. in his still valuable. History of Magic and Experimental Science, are expounded by Maria Mavroudi- in her essay in the present volume. Its disadvantage is that broad umbrellas can be unwieldy, and do

8 Ioannes Malalas, Chronographia, ed. H. Thurn, CFHB 35 (Berlin and New york, 2000),44. 9 Ibid., 81,201. 10 Ibid . 202. II Ibid., 118 12 Ibid., 130. "Ibid., 265. 14

_Ibid., 335. He is ca~led PJ_Uclus from Asia, but is surely meant to be identical wtth the famous Atheman philosopher. " Ibid., 330-l. The rebel in question is Vitalian, whose revolt broke out in 512 note that the real Proclus died in 485. 16 Parastaseis syntonwi chroniktJi, ed T Pre er . . . Constantinopo/itanarum, I (Leipzig 1901 ) 19_73. ed g Scrtptores ongmum Herrin, Constantinople in the Earl E' ' tr., comm. A. Cameron, J. Chronikai (Leiden, I984); see furth:r ~ghth ~entu">;: The Pw:astaseis Syntomoi Power', below. agdalino, P, Occult Science and Imperial

Introduction 15

not always cater adequately to special interests, In this case defining the occult as either magic or science, or -~s magic and

'- science combined, risks not emphasizing enough the fact that the ,--Late-Antique and medieval world did articulate a concept of occult

-wliidom that deserves to be considered in its own right. Yet mapping out the stages in the development of the Byzantine understanding of the occult is made difficult by the relative dearth of theoretical texts on the topic that can be dated and attributed to known authors with certainty. Modem scholars must gather much of the Byzantine understanding of the occult by examining not so much direct statements by Byzantine authors but the Byzantine Nachleben (manuscript tradition, quotation by other writers, reception among professional and literary circles) of ancient "classics" of the genre such as the Hermetic corpus, the Chaldaean Oracles, the Testament of Solomon, and the Kestoi of Julius Mricanus, whose initial composition or subsequent usage (or both) can only by approximation be dated, localized, and attributed to an identifiable individual. A notable exception to this state of affairs is the work of Michael Psellos (1018-ca. 1081 or later), who emerges from the surviving

written record as the most learned, prolific and respected authority who best understood and appreciated the philosophical legacy of antiquity.17 Psellos occasionally uses the word an6xQuoc; (apocryphal), the direct Greek equivalent of Latin occultus. Thus, discussing the demon Gillo, who was blamed in folk tradition for killing infants at birth, he says that he has not come across her in his usual ancient sources for demonic names, but only in "an apocryphal Hebrew book" ascribed to Solomon. 18 More often, however, Psellos refers to "hidden" meanings and forces by two almost synonymous words that are suggestive of speech rather than

17 The literature by and on Psellos is immense. For a comprehensive survey of the scene in 2005, see P. Moore, Iter Psel/ianum: A Detailed Listing of Manuscript Sources for all Works Attributed to Michael Psel/os, Including a Comprehensive Bibliography (Toronto, 2005); see also the recent collection of essays edited by C. Barber and D. Jenkins, Reading Michael Psel/os (Leiden, 2006). For the writings discussed in this introduction, see particularly J. Duffy, 'Hellenic Philosophy in Byzantium and the Lonely Mission of Michael Psellos', inK. Ierodiakonou, ed., f(,za.ntine Philosophy and its Ancient Sources (Oxfo~, 2002), 1_39:-56.

Mtchael Psellos, Philosophica minora, I, ed. D. 0 Meara (Lelpztg, 1989), 164.

-

16 Paul Magdalino Maria Mavrou~

sight: WtOQQfJ'tO~ ("forbidden", "secret") and clQQ1J'tOS) ("unspoken", "unutterable", and, by extension, "inexplicable"). He 1 sometimes uses these words to describe Biblical and Christian mysteries, 19 but usually, in his work, they denote the secrets of profane learning. By lopking at the passages in question, we g~t a good idea of what a well-educated Byzantine considered to be

.. occult, and why. .....,.

In his funeral oration on his mother, Psellos says that he has read all the Hellenic and even barbarian books "on spoken and unspoken things (:n:EQL 'tE Qf)'t&v xal. UQQTJ'tWV) . . . and reading all their theology and their treatises and proofs on nature, I was delighted at their depth of thought and the enquiring nature (m::g(egyov) of their discussion".Z0 The content of the "unspoken" material is suggested by the list of authors; apart from Plato and Aristotle and the Pre-Socratics Empedocles and Parmenides, these include Orpheus, Zoroaster and Hermes Trismegistos. In other words this was largely mythical cosmology, concerned with revealing ~he origi~s and secrets of creation.

In the same oration, Psellos writes "I have learned the secret. properties (01JVUJ.IEL ... UQQTJ'tOuc;) of stones and herbs, although I have given their experimental use (:rtEQLEQyov XQ'fiotv) a wide berth".Z1 His treatise On the properties of precious stones ends by

mentioni~g the classical authorities on the subject: "among the more ancient sages, Anaxagoras, Empedocles and Democritus, and among those not so long before our time, Alexander of Aphrodisias a man m_ost capable of discoursing on all matters and especially th~ secret thmgs of nature (:n:egl ... 't&v V WtOQQTJ'tWV t'fl iJOEL)". 27 ~e Proclus, Psellos was fascinated by the "hieratic art" of the Chaldaean_Oracle.s, the MiddiePlaronlcverse texTO!i thehierarchy of cosmic powers attributed to the second-century Julian the Chald~ean and his ~S.t.28 It is not surprising that his comments on th1s congruence of Gnostic, Hermetic and Chaldaean thought" that has been "aptly labelled as 'the underworld of Platonism'", 29 contain several instances of the words

10 Paul Magdalino Maria Mavronl\1

and nQQTJ'tO. 30 In his Chronographia, he alludes to the Oracles as:, a wisdom beyond demonstration, which according to the best. philosophers only the mind inspired by rational enthusiasm can understand. He says that he encountered this wisdom-which he ranks higher than the study of Platonic philosophy and mathematics- "in certain secret books ( MOQQtl'tOL tLOl.

~(~AOL)".31 We shall come across it again. Psellos wrote, at the request of the patriarch Michael Keroularios, a short treatise on alchemy, explaining the principles of the manufacture of gold. He playfully chides his correspondent for dragging him from the sublime heights of philosophy to the mundane level of banausic metallurgy; however, this too is philosophical insofar as it depends on a knowledge of natural science& even though people commonly consider it to be something "ritualistic and ... secret (n:J...em:Lxov ... xal

20 Paul Magdalino Maria Mavroudl -,,

contribution to the idea, are discussed by Katerina Ierodiakonou later in this volume. Here it is important to note that the concept of cosmic sympathy gives coherence to Psellos' sca.ttered references to the occult and thus to the notion of occult science that emerges from his writings. Occult science is for him the study of extraordinary natural phenomena whose exact causes are unknown, although they can be generally explai_ned by the operatio.n of _sym]2i!the~ and ~c~s that all_ow ~ee~mgly unconnected parts of the cosmos to interact. The mvestigatiOn of aporrheta and arrheta is of two kinds. One is the application of experimental methods to produce material results; this involves the performance of rituals, or, more rarely, a mechanical pro~ess, as. in the transmutation of base metal into gold. The other, with which Psellos himself identifies, is the purely theoretical study of the methods employed in experimentation (JtEQLEQyao(a); this derives from a disinterested love of knowledge for its own sake, and it is driven by the curiosity (JtOAUJtQUYfWOUVT]) of an enquiring philosophical mind.

Though the necessarily limited survey of texts above does not exhaust Psellos' brief mentions or more extensive discussions on the topic, it does suggest that he provides a coherent Byzantine definition of occult science as a discrete epistemological category, and a Byzantine justification for using the term instead of magic: the various kinds of magic and divination were the applied sciences corresponding to the philosophical theory of cosmic sympathy, and they were scientific, rather than superstitious, insofar as their methods provided material for philosophical abstraction and comparison. But how sound, and how representative of Byzantine realities and attitudes, is Psellos' epistemology of the occult? ~~hove all, how typical, and how true, is the distinction that he -praws between pure and applied occult science? Psellos took his epistemology, like his cosmology, from the Neoplatonic philosophers of Late Antiquity, particularly the 'Divine Proclus'. He followed them in believing that the sympathetic or antipathetic connections between stars, men, animals, plants and minerals could be manipulated to affect and predict future events, and that images could be worked on to

Introduction 21

compel their prototypes. Like them, he regarded these connections as the proper concern of the philosopher, and accepted that the key to learning them lay in the "barbarian" wisdom of the ancient civilisations of the Near East, notably Chaldaea and Egypt. In short, his concept of occult science was based on a model which was several centuries old, and which was fundamental not only to Byzantine tradition, but also to that of Islam, the medieval west, and the European Renaissance. In these traditions, various kinds of magic and divination were associated in ways which both reflect their special, occult status and their connection with other types of learning.

For Byzantium; both "outsider" and "insider" sources can be used to build up a profile of occult learning. The outsider's view is to be found in those legal and literary texts, which, on the whole, present occult practice in a negative light. Here astrology, dish-divining, dream-interpretation, divination from natural phenomena, sorcery in general, and the performance of rituals on statues in particular, tend to be grouped together and criticised in similar terms; they are also usually associated with persons of education who had a place at the imperial couft\37 The insider's idea of the place and identity of the occult sciences within the intellectual spectrum is well documented by two types of sources: the manuscripts containing technical treatises and prescriptions on magic and divination; and astrological texts detailing the characteristics of persons born under each planet and sign of the zodiac. While many manuscripts are exclusively devoted to single disciplines-this is notably the case with astrology-others consist of wide-ranging miscellanies in which treatises on astrology, medicine, numerology, dream interpretation, alchemy, geomancy and lecanomancy rub shoulders with each other and quite different texts. The collections represent the interests, and often the professional tools, of their owners, although it should be noted that since most of them occur in very late manuscripts (14'h-c. and later), they do not necessarily reflect the contexts in which the earlier texts

37 This fact was briefly noted, not without avowed surprise, by H.-G. Beck, Das byzantinische Jahrtausend (Munich, 1978), 268: "Es ist erstaunlich, wie weit verbreitet auch in den hOchsten Kreisen die Praktiken der Mantik waren und was es sonst an zauberischen Krimskrarns gab."

22 t'aUI Magaalmo Maria Mavroudi.,

'

'\hey contain had circulated in earlier centuries. Occasionally, the :: available evidence allows modem researchers to ascertain some , kind of continuity over the centuries in the combination of texts that occur in the surviving manuscripts. Such an unusual example is the fifteenth-century MS Vat. Urbinas gr. 107 that contains the work of Polyainos on military strategy and the Oneirocritika of Artemidoros. 38 While the combination might at first sight appear random or surprising, it is clearly deliberate and rooted in the same mindset as the instructions in the tenth-century treatise On Imperial E-.:peditions which advised emperors to take with them while on military campaigns not only Polyainos but also a manual on dream interpretation.39 The surviving manuscripts and collections of texts associated with the Byzantine encyclopaedic activity of the tenth century provide most of our fragments from the Kestoi; not only the tenth-century encyclopaedists but evidently also their predecessors in earlier centuries (on whose selections the tenth-century anthologies were based) deemed that the Kestoi had a legitimate place in collections on agriculture (the Geoponika), veterinary medicine (the Hippiatrika) and military science.40 Passages from the Kestoi are also copied together with pharmacological chapters from Galen and Dioscorides, as in the fourteenth-century MS Laurent. plut. 74, 23.41

In general, miscellanies from later centuries are not only more numerous but also more variegated thematically. It is impossible to tell whether this reflects a broadening of the occult curriculum or merely "the survival of the fittest". Earlier miscellanies perhaps appear as more homogeneous because they tend to have fewer pages (losing folia over the centuries is a natural process for a book). Later miscellanies tend to be bulkier, and at the same time

" Description in C. Stornajolo, Codices urbinates graeci bibliothecae Vaticanae (Rome, 1895), 163--{i6. 39

The text was first published as 'Appendix ad librum I' in De cerimoniis aulae byzantinae, ed. J. Reiske, I (Bonn, 1829), 467; new edition in Three Treatises on Imperial Military Expeditions, ed., tr., comm. J. Haldon (Vienna 1990) text (C), 106. '

"' See J. R. Vieillefond, Les "Cestes" de Julius Africanus {Florence and Paris, 1970), 68-70 {on the context of the fragments), 77-83 {on the manuscript tradition of the Kestoi). 41 D~scription in A. M. Bandini, Catalogus codicum manuscriptorum bibliothecae medtceae laurentianae, III (Florence, 1770), cols. 125-27.

Introduction 23

personal and idiosyncratic; they rarely reproduce complete works; they may contain texts selected or truncated in a way that renders them incomprehensible and therefore useless to persons other than the professional master who put them together (often copying for his personal use) and his immediate disciples. Subsequent owners are likely to discard such books, especially if these were informally and unattractively copied to begin with, and were eventually soiled and tom apart because of all-too-frequent and unceremonious consultation. Earlier miscellanies may have largely disappeared due to these vicissitudes, while later ones were perhaps saved thanks to the arrival of the printing press, or simply because they had a shorter journey through the centuries. Surviving examples of miscellanies copied between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries include the following: MS Ambrosianus E I 6 sup. of the thirteenth century that contains the Physiologos, a selenodromion, a text on medical prognostication, a number of Christian apocrypha (including the letters exchanged between _AbjaJ" ~and Christ, texts that in the realm of "good" magic are Kriown for their prophylactic properties) and an assortment of astronomical and astrological excerpts.42 The mostly medical miscellany MS Atheniensis 1493 of the end of the twelfth or the thirteenth century also includes a text on divination by using shoulder blades 1 (scapulomancy or omoplatoskopia).43 Among manuscriptsci'the fourteenth century, MS Vat. gr. 178 combines excerpts from Ptolemy's Geography (a text that provides mathematical tools for astronomers and astrologers) with instructions on how to construct an astrolabe and passages on pharmacology and the medicinal properties of plants from Aetius of Arnida and other, unidentified sources.44 In the year 1384, the physician John Staphidakes45 copied in his own hand a manuscript

42 The MS is no. 273 in the catalogue by A. Martini, D. Bassi, Catalogus Codicum Graecorum Bibliothecae Ambrosianae, I (Milan, 1906), 303-4. 43 A 121h-century date is ascribed to the manuscript in, I; and A: ~akke~ion. KaTaA.oyoq Twv x


that he dedicated to the hospital of the monastery of St Panteleemon in Constantinople; only a few folia from that volume survive and now form part of the largely fifteenth-century MS Paris. gr. 2510.46 However, it is possible to identify the contents of Staphidakes' volume because they were faithfully reproduced in the course of the fifteenth century in what is now MS Paris. gr. 2315.47 Staphidakes copied not only texts pertinent to botany and medicine, but also astrology and magic. Among further examples from the fifteenth century one should mention MS British Library, Harley 5596 that treats subjects such as geomancy, palmomancy, basic astrology, demonology, and magic, including the Testament of Solomon.48 MS Paris. gr. 2509 combines astrology (Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos and a variety of anonymous texts) with the Christian symbolic zoology of the Physiologos, the lapidary attributed to Epiphanius, and the alchemical treatise by Nikephoros Blemmydes, as well as instructions on how to calculate the date of Easter and other religious texts, such as the liturgies of St James, St John Chrysostom, and St Basil, and the rites of ordination to various ecclesiastical positions.49 MS Vindob. phil. gr. 162, from the first half of the fifteenth century, combines the Akathist Hymn with the Oneirocriticon of the so-called Achmet and an assortment of prophecies on the future of Constantinople.50 MS Vindob. phil. gr. 287 (from around the same period) reproduces the Oneirocriticon and long passages from the astrological works of Hephaestio of Thebes and Theophilos of Edessa. MSS Bononiensis 3632 (ca. 1440),51 at least in part copied by John, son of Aaron, and Paris. gr.

46 Described by H. Omont, Inventaire sommaire des manuscrits grecs de Ia Bibliothequ~ Nationale, 2 vols. (Paris, 1886-98), II, 275; more details, especially ?,n the phystcal make-up of the manuscript, in CCAG, VIII, 4, 68-70 (no. 88).

See CCAG, VIII, 3, 27-32 (no. 43). MS Paris. gr. 2315 contains a note with an explicit state~ent cl~fying it is identical to its model which had been copied by Ioannes Staphtdakes m 1384 for the hospital of St Panteleemon. 48

Adequate description of the manuscript in CCAG, IX, 2, 14-16 (no. 43); see also ;. C. McCown, The Testament of Solomon (l.eizpig, 1922),13-15.

S~ H. Omont, Inventaire sommaire des manuscrits grecs de Ia Bibliotheque Natronale, II, 274-75. ~ Des~~tion in H. Hunger, Katalog der griechischen Handschriften der ~sterrer~hr~chen Nationalbibliothek, I (Vienna, 1961), 265.

Descnpttons of MS Bononiensis 3632 can be found in c c Me c '~"''h Testament o' s 1o (L own, '. e

. . .' o "'?n. etpztg, 1_922) 21-25; A. Olivieri and N. Festa, 'Iodice dei codtct greet delle Btbhoteche Untversitaria e Comunale di Bologna', Studi italiani

Introduction 25

2419 (ca. 1462)/2 copied by Georgios Meidiates,53 are veritable encyclopaedias of the occult bringing together texts on medicine, botany, astrology, alchemy, geomancy, dream interpretation, and magic. Since both manuscripts include some of the same texts in an identical version and arranged in the same sequence, there can be no doubt that they are related, either directly or through a common ancestor;\ we may be in the presence of two named indiVICfUals

bclOnging to the same "school" of occult thought, or at least to a circle of like-minded and directly communicating professionals.!

\

Especially for the Palaiologan period, it sometimes is possible to pull together enough prosopographical information to convey the intellectual make-up not of major figures (which could be considered exceptional), but of the rank-and-file (and therefore, one would hope, closer to an intellectual "average" of the times). For example, towards the end of the fourteenth century, a professional astrologer (perhaps to be identified with John Abramios) evidently was also a practicing physician, or at least was considered enough of a medical authority to be dispatched by the emperor to Alexandria in order to purchase medical supplies.54 In the early fifteenth century, John Kanaboutzes, owner of a manuscript

di filologia classica 3 (1895), 442-56, repr. in C. Samberger and D. Raffin, eds. Catalogi codicum graecorum qui in minoribus bibliothecis italicis asservantur in duo volumina col/ati et novissimis additamentis aucti (Leipzig, 1965); CCAG, IV, 39-46 (only fols. 266ff.); short report on its alchemical contents in CMAG, II. 144 (no. 23) and on its version of the Kyranides ibid., 298-321 (Libri Koeranidum 6); on its astrological contents, see CCAG, IV, 39-46 (no. 18). "Brief description of MS Paris. gr. 2419 in Omont, lnventaire sommaire, II, 256; detailed description of its contents in CCAG, VIII,!, 20-63 (no. 4 ); see also Me Cown, The Testament of Solomon, 25-27; for a description of its alchemical contents, see CMAG, I, 62-8 and 152-63 (nos. 3 and 21). 53 On Meidiates, see H. Hunger, Repertorium der griechischen Kopisten 800-1600. ll (Vienna, 1989), no. 104. 54 On Abramios, see PLP 59; also D. Pingree, 'The Astrological School of John Abramius', DOP 25 (1971), 189-215. As remarked by Pingree, one of the signed autographs of Abramios (MS Marc. gr. Cl. V. 13) includes not only astrological texts, but also a version of the Kyranides; however, Abramios wrote a note that he completed copying "the present book" (t'] JtaQoiiaa ~(fl;\.o) on fol. 117v, while the text of the Kyranides does not begin until fol. 125 (see CMAG, II, 263). Without first-hand examination of the manuscript it is impossible to dectde whether both parts were written by the same hand and were not placed in the same volume at a later date.

26 Paul Magdalino Maria Mavroudi 1 oontruning tho T'"'"'""' of Solomon, wa. olo tho o~mpi!O< of 1 astronomical tables for the latitude of Phokaia (a handy md also for 'l astrological purposes) and of a commentary on Dionysios of ! Halikarnassos dedicated to the lord of Ainos and Samothrake; significantly, he counted a physician named Zoanes among his closest friends. 55

The astrological lists of characteristics induced by planets and signs are largely based on ancient sources. However, the infinite variations from list to list suggest that they reflect the genuine perceptions of Byzantine astrologers. In the case of the occult sciences, they are particularly valuable because they reflect the astrologers' own perception of the intellectual company to which they belonged through the dominant influence of Mercury at their birth. The mercurial professions, according to Vettius Valens (2"d c. A.D.), included "diviners, sacrificers, 'lma:Seers; dream interpreters", together with-among others-doctors, grammarians, lawyers, rhetors, philosophers, military engineers and, of course, astrologers, described as "those who become experts and investigators of celestial phenomena, and whose glorious delight and desire it is to observe the wonderful work for the benefit of others". 56 According to .P~QQ.-Manetho (4'h c.?), a conjunction of Venus and Mercury in the same sign at sunrise will produce 'geometers, mathematicians, astrologers, magicians, famous seers, augurs, and water-diviners who have the gift of dish-scrutiny or necromancy' .57 Hephaestio of ~s (early S'h c.) says that

~ercu~ prod~search into occult things (twv anox~uwv), such as magic, celestial phenomena, practical ~xpenmen~s, a~trology, wonder-working, augury, dream-InterpretatiOn, philosophy and the like".58 Another, probably later

55 On. Kanaboutzes, see PLP 10871; also A. Diller, 'Joannes Canabutzes',

ByZantton 40, (1970),. 271-75 and idem, 'Joannes Canabutzes and Michael Chrysokokkes, Byzantton 42 (1972) 257ff., both reprinted in A. Diller St d' Gr k M T d' . , u tes m

ee . anuscrrpt ra lllon (Amsterdam, 1983), 363-70; on Kanaboutzes' ~;nersh1p of the Solomonic text, see C. C. Me Cown, The Testament of Solomon, ;. Vettius ':al~ns, Vettii Valentis Antiocheni Anthologiarum libri novem ed D 57

1Dgree (LeipZig, 1986), 4. , . . 58 Manetho,:4JJotelesmatica, ed. A. Koechly (Leipzig,l858), IV. 206ff 70 ..... "':;~1':;'._~4rt':::i.-l-;~ Hbri "" ol, D. Pm.;..,. 2 ""- j

Introduction 27

manual, identifies the mercurial characteristics as "a talent for. learning and predicting the future, and the rational science~ knowledge, intelligence and understanding [the causes otl existence, culture, philosophy and geometry, astronomy and the hieratic art, also augury and the hidden arts (ta


material results of the sciences they study. He gives the example of geometry, "which they know and do not know ... they are able to practice it, but do not do so". His other examples all pertain to the occult: astrology, divination, sorcery, oracular incantations. "They belong to philosophy, and philosophy has created them; they are resolved by philosophical method, but on the other hand the artifices of these unscientific sciences ( avEJt~O'tl'HWVWV

bt~

30 Paul Magdalino Maria Mavroudl

mentioning them. It was precisely the manipulation of demons to which the Church objected in magic and divination, making no distinction between good and bad spirits, but identifying all of them with Satan and the pantheon of pagan gods. This, it seems, is why Psellos preferred to declare a position of complete ignorance with regard to occult causation. His other writings show that he thought a lot about demons. His fascination with the Chaldaean Oracles cannot have been totally unrelated to the sophisticated demonology of this text, which for all its high-minded, spiritual concern with the salvation and elevation of the soul, offered a theoretical guide to the hierarchy of cosmic causes and agents and the means for engaging them.66

This interpretation is confirmed by another text of Psellos that has attracted comparatively little attention, perhaps because it is not preserved in the main manuscripts, or printed in the main published collections of his writings.67 His lecture (or letter?) To his students on the ventriloquist is an avowedly idiosyncratic exegesis of an occult Biblical incident, King Saul's encounter with the Witch of Endor (1 Samuel [=1 Kings], 28), the "ventriloquist woman",68 which the English Bible renders as "woman with a familiar spirit". Psellos proposes an analysis of the term "ventriloquist" that earlier commentators, he says, have failed to explain. To do this, he must touch on material commonly considered occult, "although it is in fact not so foreign to philosophical discussion. For nothing is unspeakable to philosophy, but even those things which seem unresponsive to incantations and charms are drawn out and laid bare by philosophical discourse." The existence of demons, material spirits who were once fallen angels and now resent human beings for taking their place in heaven, is commonly acknowledged

66 Cf. P. Athanassiadi, 'Psellos and Plethon on the Chaldaean Oracles' 246: "Wh.en it comes to magical practices Psellos is wholly engrossed by his m~terial and ts eager to tum the slightest hint into a theory with multiple adaptations ... the sheer amount of space that he devotes to the magical aspect of the Oracles betrays a considerable bias in this direction". 67 Michael Psellos, Ad discipulos de ventriloquo, ed. A. Littlewood in 'Michael Psell?s and th.e Witch of Endor', JOB 40 (1990), 225-29; cf. Duffy "The Lonely MtssJon of Mtchael Psellos', 149. ' .. The Greek terms in the Septuagint are ol eyyaO"tQLJ.LUflOL (ventriloquists in general), :t"vft. eyy~~QLJ.LU8o~ (ventriloquist woman), and 1:0 eyyaO"tQLJ.LU90V (the ventn1oqutst sptnt).

Introduction 31

and scripturally attested. For further information on them, however, one has to use the writings of the Chaldaeans and the Egyptians, in particular the Chaldaean Oracles. Citing Proclus' commentary on the Oracles (the "hieratic art"), and using his knowledge of medicine and anatomy, he identifies the ventriloquist spirit as one of the group of demons that colonise various organs of the human body. Because the stomach is centrally located and is in close sympathy with the brain, the heart and the liver, the spirit that lives there both imposes itself on the whole organism and can be compelled by the brain to speak or be silent. Insofar as the spirit foretells the future, most affected persons are willing to give it voice, either their own or another's. For some reason, they tend to be women-perhaps because female bodies are more physically sympathetic to the slack and fluid ventriloquist spirit. Psellos goes on to summarise the Biblical incident, in which Saul compels the woman to summon the shade of the late prophet Samuel from the depths of the earth. Reserving the weightier problem of Samuel's apparition for future discussion, Psellos emphasises, in conclusion, that he is not dogmatising, but showing his polymatheia, his willingness to embrace all forms of learning - and this for his students only. He is not boasting of his occult knowledge, yet not denying it either, for since most people do not even see what is at their feet, even a superficial understanding of arcane and occult matters will allow one to rise above the clouds and see into the ether.

This text has rightly been cited for its concluding manifesto in favour of polymatheia,69 but its unique importance lies in the clarity with which Psellos combines the demonology of the Chaldaean Oracles with human physiological theory in order to provide a scientific analysis of an undeniably true occult phenomenon which neither the Biblical narrative nor its Christian commentaries had adequately explained. It shows what he, following the Late-Antique Neoplatonists, sought in the occult wisdom supposedly emanating from ancient Egypt and Babylon: the proper identification of the demons who operated the system of cosmic sympathy, and whose existence was only vaguely, if reliably, attested by Christian theology and Greek philosophy. Perhaps better than any other text

69 Duffy, 'The Lonely Mission', Joe. cit.

32 Paul Magdalino Maria Mavooudl!

in Psellos' vast corpus, his piece on the Witch of Endor helps us to understand why, for him, the Chaldaean Oracles as mediated by Proclus were the ultimate not only in occult science, but in the whole curriculum of learning. In this, however, Psellos cannot be regarded as entirely representative of the Byzantine mainstream. He was apparently the first s take a serious intere e Oracles since Proclus, and no-one after litm at them so much attention untt George Gemistos Plethon, the self-declared Hellenist, in the fifteenth century.70 In other ways, too, Psellos is not a comprehensive or accurate guide to the state of the occult sciences in Byzantium. For one, he does not cover their entire spectrum in equal depth. His comments on alchemy neglect the ritual aspects of the transmutation process. His equivocal passages on astrology, which imply that he knew much more about this than he was prepared to say, do not indicate whether he counted it among the occult sciences, or regarded it as the purely natural science that its partisans sometimes claimed it to be. Most seriously, Psellos gives barely a hint of the intellectual exchange, especially in the occult sciences, that had been taking place for over two centuries between Byzantium and the Islamic world. Not only had Muslims, Jews and Christians in the Abbasid Caliphate translated almost the whole corpus of Greek philosophical and scientific texts into Arabic, but scholars in Abbasid Baghdad, and later in Ummayad Spain and Fatimid Egypt, had made significant innovations in many fields including mathematics, astronomy, cosmological theory, astrology and dream interpretation. Their effects were felt in Byzantium from the end of the ~h century. By the mid eleventh century, when

~s~~ was writin~lurriill

34 Paul Magdalino Maria Mavroudf

causes of dreams:74 first among them is divine intervention.75 The idea is far from original and had been expressed earlier by both pagan and Christian thinkers, including Aristotle76 and the anonymous compiler of the Oneirocriticon of Achmet.77 It is also mentioned not without skepticism, by the second-century author Artemido~s of Daldis.78 Psellos returned to dream interpretation in a more extensive text,79 where he attributes the appearance of false dreams to the treacherous intervention of demons. This second opusculum has been understood as Psellos' rehashing of Iamblichos' De mysteriis, III. 2-3;80 yet its assertion that demonic intervention is what causes false dreams is an element absent from both Iamblichos and the text on the veracity and falsehood of dreams by Psellos' student, John ltalos.81 The possible demonic (as opposed to divine) provenance of dreams is also discussed by Aristotle; however, Psellos' understanding of "demon" and the realm of a "demon's" activity is-predictably-different from the ancient philosopher's and in line with the Christian identification of demons with Satan. In fact, the bottom line of Psellos' argument (that truthful dreams come from God while false ones from Satan) though implicitly accepted in hagiographic and monastic literature earlier than the eleventh century, does not, as far as we know, receive theoretical justification in Byzantine texts on philosophy or dream interpretation. Whether by chance or not, it can also be found in at least one Arabic source written about a generation earlier than Psellos' lifetime, the late tenth--early eleventh-century manual TuiJ_fat al-mulak by Abu Al).mad Khalaf ibn Al).mad (937-1008), the

74 Michael PseUos, De omnifaria doctrina, ed. L. G. Westerink (Nijmegen, 1948),

no. 116. " lloAAai 't

36 Paul Magdalino Maria Mavroli4JI

Both the reality and the image of the occult sciences in Byzantiunf. are the concern of this volume, which seeks, above all, to present them in their social and cultural context as a historical phenomenon; The first three chapters consider the occult sciences as a whole. Maria Mavroudi surveys the state of research on the subject and shows how it has suffered from the perceived marginality of Byzantium to the "grand narrative" of the rise of "West~m thought"; she then sets out in search of the figure of the Byzantme occult scientist, and lays down some parameters for studying his social position. The theme of cosmic sympathy, which as we have seen gave philosophical substance to the idea of occult science, i& taken up by Katerina Ierodiakonou; after explaining how the original Stoic theory was modified by the Neoplatonists, she shows how Michael Psellos made his own contribution to the Neoplatonic doctrine. Paul Magdalino analyses the image of occult science and occult scientists that is portrayed in histories of the middle Byzantine period and actually constitutes a substantial proportion of the available evidence.

The themes of these articles come together in the following piece, where Maria Papathanassiou examines the occult interests of Stephen of Alexandria, the last ancient teacher of philosophy, and a key figure in the transmission of ancient science to both Byzantium and the Arab world; she argues for the authenticity of the astrological and alchemical writings ascribed to him, and proposes some interesting interpretations of the examples used in these texts. Alchemy and astrology, the two most 'scientific' of the occult scien~es, are the concern of the next five papers. Michele Mertens exammes the reception in medieval Byzantium of the works of the most re~owned Late-Antique writer on alchemy, Zosimos of Panopohs. David Pingree traces the reception into Greek of works by the eighth-century Abbasid astrologer Masha'allah. William Adler shows how the sources used in the twelfth-century debate ohver the compatibility of astrology with Christian doctrine t emselves reflect a lo t d' f

. ng ra Ilion of disagreement about the role o :s~~logy m the cul~ure ofthe Biblical patriarchs-had Abraham, as the p~ld~~a?, pra~tJsed astrology, or had he rejected it along with th d' Y_ ei_sm 0 his native culture? Anne Tihon looks at the way

e IstmctiOn between astr I d d around 1300 h B . 0 ogy an astronomy was perceive

' w en yzantmm was opening up to new influences in

Introduction 37

both fields from Mongol-dominated Persia. Joshua Holo discusses the perception of the same distinction among Byzantine Jews.

These studies of Byzantine astrology underline the extent to which occult science was a culture that Christian Byzantium shared with both its Arab neighbours and its Jewish subjects. They are complemented by the chapter in which Charles Burnett explores the neglected contribution that Byzantium made to the occult s~tences in the medieval West, through texts on astrology and magic that were directly translated from Greek into Latin. The volume ends on a note of pure science, with a paper in which George S~liba re-examines the question of the missing links between Cop~mtcus and his thirteenth-century Persian precursor, al-Ti1si. In Its broader implications, this last article poses the problem of investigating _and identifying the concrete avenues of contact ~etween .By~antme, Arabic, and Latin science (occult or not) and their receptiOn m early modem Europe.

. Like the original colloquium, the present collecti_on do~s not pretend to be exhaustive or comprehe?sive~~Q_ chaEter Sll.ecifically devotei...L~ "':' Ich_J~ts_

introduction has shown to have been central to the B zantme ll_ollo~ of the occult One reason for this omission is the fact, mentiOned ~agic is already well served in the literature c~mpar~d with the other occult sciences and the theme of occult s~I~nce m general. The other reason . ha !thou m~gical and d_IVlnat~ry texts abound in a e Byzantm ost-B antme manusc . . _ are a most ent'~, and thetr traditiOn h~s ~Iiarat~tudied. It will take several studies like Aun!he Gribomont's thesis in progress on the Book of Solo'!zo~ before w~ can do for Byzantine magic anything like what MI_chel_e Merten~ has done for alchemy in this volume, or what David Pt~~ree has done for astrology, here and elsewhere. But if the trad~twn still

'd 't ofitably be v1ewed on remains impenetrable on the ms1 e, 1 can pr the outside through its image and reputation, the people who

' h here to practised it and the company they kep~~~ t marrdnal t

Maria Mavroudi University of California, Berkeley

Occult Science and Society in Byzantium: Considerations for Future Research

The study of Byzantine science, occult or not, is a topic that modem Byzantinists have probed very little. In order to approach it, therefore, it is useful to become familiar with scholarly paradigms developed in fields neighbouring Byzantine studies and to understand what questions were posed, what answers were provided, and for what reasons, in these neighbouring fields. The present essay will briefly identify a few such paradigms and propose avenues that research on Byzantine science may productively explore in the future.

In the introduction to his magisterial eight-volume History of Magic and Experimental Science (1923), Lynn Thorndike argued in favour of a broad definition of his topic as "including all occult arts and sciences, superstitions, and folk-lore", and emphasized that "magic and experimental science have been connected in their development; that magicians were perhaps the first to experiment; and that the history of both magic and experimental science can be

40 Maria Mavroudl.

better understood by studying them together."' In this way hi~ ~vo~ded ~i~iding ?is mat~r~al ~ccording to the modem categori~s 0~ r~t10nal~ty and superstition and proceeded to discuss 'pseudo-sciences , such as astrology and various forms of divination alon -_

. h 'h d . , , g. Wit. ar . sciences . as, _for example, . medicine and pharmacy, optics, music, the engmeermg of mechamcal devices, the use of the abacus. and the introduction _of Hindu and Arabic numerals. At the same time, he ~ailed atten~10n to the sophisticated philosophical b_ackground required for an m-depth understanding of his topic and SI~nalled that ~arrow d_efinitions of what exactly magic and o~cult science meant m the Middle Ages, especially definitions couched in modem terms, do not reflect the way magic and occult science were thought of during the Middle Ages:

"the ex~ct meaning of the word, 'magic', was a matter of much uncertamty even in classical and medieval times.-. There can be no ~oubt, however, that it was then applied not merely to an operal!ve art, but also to a mass of ideas or doctrine and that 't represent~ a way of looking at the world. This sicte of magi~ ~~ s?~ettmes been lost sight of in hasty or assumed modern 0;:::sd~hitc~.~eem to regard magic as merely a collection

.ea s.

Further Thomdik I . d magic , d _e exp ame the necessity to examine medieval

an expenmental scien h beginni h ce as t e result of a continuum ng 10 t e early Christian period "could b b centunes, because the medieval

Greek, Latin, :nd e:t~nd~~t~o~ by vi:wing it in the setting of the much" 3 H 1 Y_ nstlan wnters to whom it owed so

. e a so explamed that ancient science must . any modem understanding of Ages: "The . unavmdably use the vehicle of the Middle

anc1ent authors ar 1 medieval form in s e genera ly extant only in their h ' orne cases there

ave undergone alteratio d . . Is reason to suspect that they fathered upon the I n or a dttwn; sometimes new works were bee m. n any case they h b

ause the Middle Ages t d' d ave een preserved to us extent made them th . s u ~~ and cherished them and to a great

e1r own " Tho d'k fi ' ~--=~-------- m 1 e urther maintained that 1 L. Thorndike A H'

}923),2. , story of Magic and Experimental Science I (New York, 'i::omd~e. History of Magic I 4 ' 'Tb omdi_ke,HistoryofMagic' I' 2.

omdike, History of Magic: I: i-3.

Occult Science and Society in Byzantium: 41 Considerations for Future Research

examining the longue dunfe is more illuminating than investigating a shorter period of time:

"The history of thought is more unified and consistent, steadier and more regular, than the fluctuations and diversities of political history; and for this reason its general outlines can be discerned with reasonable sureness by the examination of even a limited number of examples, provided they are properly selected from a period of sufficient duration. Moreover, it seems to me that in the present stage of research into and knowledge of our subject sounder conclusions and even more novel ones can be drawn by a wide comparative survey than by a minutely intensive and exhaustive study of one man or of a few years. The danger is of writing from too narrow a view-point, magnifying unduly the importance of some one man or theory, and failing to evaluate the facts in their full historical setting. No medieval writer whether on science or magic can be understood by himself but must be measured in respect to his surroundings and antecedents."'

Thorndike's approach is distinguished by its thorough acquaintance with primary sources, many of which were (and some still are) to be found only in manuscripts. Compared with the reference manuals in the neighbouring fields of ancient and Islamic occult science (even those written several decades later), it is also unusual for its chronological organization, as opposed to presenting the primary source material thematically, according to the genre to which a given text is deemed to belong.6 Discussions by genre reflect a

5 1bid . 3-4. 6 A. Bouche-Leclercq, Histoire de Ia divination dans /'antiquite, 4 vols. (Paris, 1879-82) organizes the discussion primarily according to each kind of divinatory method employed in the ancient world and the geographic location where it was practiced (therefore distinguishes between 'divination hellenique' and 'divination italique'). In the field of Islamic studies, T. Fahd, La divination arabe (Leiden, 1966; repr. Paris, 1987), a thoroughly documented study steeped in primary sources, also favours a thematic organization of the material. M. Ullmann, Die Natur- und Geheimwissenschaften im Islam. Handbuch der Orientalistik, L4.2 (Leiden and Cologne, 1972), is organized by topic and includes the following: zoology ('Tierkunde',.including literature on the hunt), botany (Pflanzenkunde), lapidaries (Gesteinskunde), alchemy, astrology, magic, and agriculture (Die Lehre von der Landwirtschaft); Ullmann's Die Medizin im Islam. Handbuch der Orientalistik, 1.4.1 (Leiden and Cologne, 1970); English tr. as M. Ullmann, ls/cmJic Medicine (Edinburgh, 1978) covers some complementary ground, especially in the chapter on medicine and the occult. This categorization unavoidably owes

42 Maria Mavroudi

tradition established towards the end of the nineteenth century, especially in the German-speaking world, and are clearly influenced by the re-thinking of disciplinary boundaries and the re-organization of knowledge (and the institutional structure of universities) along those lines at around the same time. This academic trend produced admirable works that still guide scholarly research, but among its dangers, when applied to the material under discussion, is the over-subordination of ancient and medieval intellectual endeavours to modem categories and definitions, and the blurring of the fact that medieval learning was, to use a modem term, very 'interdisciplinary'.7

something to an illustrious antecedent, the division of the material adopted by Brockelmann in his (to this day irreplaceable) Geschichte der arabischen Uteratur, 5 vols. (1898-42); on the long and difficuit publishing history of tliis work, see J. J. Witkam, 'Brockelmann's Geschichte revisited' in the recent reprint of C. Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur, I (Leiden, New York, and Cologne, 1996), v-xvn. To facilitate his discussion, Brockelmann divided Arabic literature into chronological units and, from ca. 750 (after which date the number of preserved texts and authors is significantly greater than before)

proceed~ to cove~ the literary production of each period by genre and place of producbon acco~mg. to the political fragmentation of the Islamic world. 'Die N~r- ~nd Gehetmwtssenschaften' is the title of Book 2, chapter 17 (I 278-82) whtch ts preceded by chapters on philosophy, mathematics, astro~omy and asti_ol?gy, .geography, and medicine (these categories are repeated, with some vanatton, m the treabnent of subsequent periods, as well). The division according

~~genres was .also follo~ed in another major and extremely useful bibliographic f~rt, F. Sezgm, Geschzchte des arabischen Schrifttums bis ca. 430 H. 12 vols.-(Leiden 1967-), that covers AI b' t . med. . h a tc exts unttl ca. 1038 A.D. and discusses tcme, p armacy zoology t . . agriculture th ' . ' ve ennary sctence, alchemy, chemistry botany,

rna emabcs, astronomy a trol d ' rubrics The bibl" . . ' s ogy, an meteorology under separate Die h~chs:prach:~!reaphtc.J.utdeL~or Byzantine science, occult or not, is H. Hunger,

proJane lteratur der B t. 2 I Altertumswissenschaft XII 5 . yzan mer. vo s., Handbuch der as follows mathematt:c d(Mumch, 1978), where the last six chapters are titled

s an astronomy (astrol ) . botany, lapidaries, alchemy) ed' . . . og~ natural sctences (zoology, due to the vernacular linguls~ tc'?e, mthtary sctence, law, music. In addition, categories, a brief discussion ~ ~!;~ter employed in texts that belong to these remedies, and Byzantine colle~~ions ~~:t~ to astrology. oracular literature, folk Beck, Geschichte der byzantinisch ~ lk 011~ proverbs, m an addendum to H.-G. 7 A similar concern regardin ;n . s lte~atur (Munich, 1971 ). treattnent by Byzantinists acco~ Yzantme hterature and its compartmentalized K.azhdan, People and Power in ;g to ~odem notions of 'genre' was voiced by A.

yzanttum: An Introduction to Modern Byzantine


Certain aspects of Thorndike's work clearly belong to the Zeitgeist of the early 20'h century. Auguste Bouche-Leclercq's Histoire de fa divination dans l'antiquite, 4 vols. (Paris, 1879-82) and his L'astrologie grecque (1899) had already argued (while professing to despise astrology and its sisters) that the study of divination in antiquity is a worthy scholarly enterprise because it can elucidate the history of ideas. The same point had been made in Thorndike's doctoral dissertation titled 'The Place of Magic in the Intellectual History of Europe' and submitted to the "Faculty of Political Science" at Columbia University in 1905. But the vision he presented in 1923 was still pioneering, because Franz Cumont's L'Egypte des astrologues, an attempt to use astrology in order to understand social history, would be published fourteen years later, in 1937, and Otto Neugebauer's famous essay 'The Study of Wretched Subjects', in which he called for a serious investigation into the history of astrology in order to comprehend the transmission of ideas from Antiquity to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, did not appear until1951.8

Though the connection between 'rational' and 'pseudo' science continues to be discussed in recent literature on pre-modem science (obviously because scholars still estimate that it must be explained to their readers),9 the view that 'rational' science and 'pseudo' science are two facets of the same coin is increasingly gaining wider acceptance. 10 Though no longer pioneering in this respect,

Studies (Washington, D. C., 1982), 96-7; a new approach was implemented by idem, A History of Byzantine Literature (650-850) (Athens, 1999). 8 0. Neugebauer, 'The Study of Wretched Subjects', Isis 42 (1951 ), Ill. Compare, also, the remarks of L. Edelstein in 1937: "In the historiography of Greek medicine religious and magical healing, in general, are dealt with only occasionally and very briefly... Since these are factors abhorrent to modem science, they are not interesting to the modem historian either"; see L. Edelstein. 'Greek Medicine and Its Relation to Religion and Magic', Bulletin of the lnstitllle of the History of Medicine 5 (1937), 201-46; repr. in 0. and L. Temkin, eds., Ancient Medicine. Selected Papers of Ludwig Edelstein (Baltimore, 1967), 205-46. 9 See, for example, F. Rochberg, The Heavenly Writing: Divination, Horoscopy. and Astronomy in Mesopotamian Culture (Cambridge and New York, 2004). 10 Some researchers treat the connection between 'rational' and 'pseudo' science as established truth in need of no further elaboration; see the statement of T. Langerrnann, review of P. Travaglia, Magic, Causality and Intentionality: The Doctrine of Rays in al-Kindi (Florence, 1999), in Speculum 77 (2002), 256-8:

44 Maria Mavroudi

Thorndike's work has aged gracefully; its flfSt four volumes that focus on the Western medieval world may still be used as a reference tool by medievalists. An equivalent work was never written for Byzantium, neither in its bibliographic scope (including manuscripts) nor in its articulation of an overarching vision about the intellectual horizons and historic development of magic and experimental science. Given the proliferation and specialization of knowledge as well as the changed conditions in the academia and society at large since the first half of the twentieth century, it is unlikely that such a work will be produced in the foreseeable future. 11 This, of course, does not mean that Byzantinists are completely deprived of research tools. Investigation of the Byzantine occult sciences today is made possible by a much earlier wave of publications, mostly consisting in multi-volume sets publishing primary sources, that appeared between the end of the nineteenth century and the 1930s and 40s, such as the collective catalogues of Greek astrological and alchemical manuscripts, including excerpts from the relevant texts. 12 The analysis of these sources was generally undertaken by their editors in articles rather than book-length studies.13 It is hoped that the recent renewal of the

''The question ~f how to approach the subject of magic is belabored unnecessarily. There now exts~s ~ ~onsensus that, functioning within an appropriate causal framework, m~g1c 1s Just another form of technology or applied science. This should be the sunple .and ac_cepta?le starting point for an investigation in De radiis; much of Travagha s dehberatmn about science versus superstition is thus superfluous." II Th .

e. same 1s_ true even beyond Byzantine studies; cf. Witkam, 'Brockelmann's Geschtchte reVISited', V-XV!!. 12 Catalogu~ Codicum Astrologorum Graecorum (=CCAG), vols. I-XII (Brussels 1898-1953), Catalogue des manuscrits alchimiques grecs (=CMAG) vols I-VIII (Bru~sel_s, 1924-32); CMAG vols. VI-VIII are exclusively dedi~ated. to the publicalion of texts, a proJect that was interrupted b th b ak II. Several alchemical texts were also published wi~ ~ o~t Ire of Worl~ w_ar Ruelle by M Berthelot Col/ ( . e e P of Charles-nmtle 1887-88; re~r. Londo~ 1 96;~ ~~~ d:s :nclens akhimistes grecs, 3 vols. (Paris Athe?iensia, 2 vols. Biblioth~u/ d:\: ~n magic, see_ A. Delatte, Anecdota I'Umversite de Liege, fascs. 36 and 88 (Lie ea:Ite d7 philosophte et Iettres de of publishing the Greek alchemical co g d ~arts, 1927-39). For the history Papyrus de Leyde, papyrus de Stoc:O~s, see the mtroduction by H. D. Saffrey in Les alchimistes grecs 1 (Paris 1981 ) m, fragments et recettes, ed. R. Halleux 13 O . ' , , VII-XV. '

ne exception: A. Delatte La c . and Paris, 1932). ' atoptromancle grecque et ses derivees (Liege


effort to properly edit the surviving Greek alchemical texts under the directorship of H. D. Saffrey (the first volume appeared in 1981),14 and the long-term commitment to publish the corpus of Byzantine astronomers under the supervision of Anne Tihon (the inaugural volume came out in 1983)15 will do much to facilitate the study of the Byzantine occult sciences, even if neither undertaking includes this among its explicit goals. Relatively recent book-length studies by a single author treating any aspect of Byzantine occult lore are exceedingly few: Richard Greenfield's Traditions of Belief in Late Byzantine Demonology (Amsterdam, 1988) discusses a period for which the documentation is by several orders of magnitude more abundant than for the centuries preceding it. Interestingly, a related topic, Byzantine eschatology, has received much more attention, perhaps because its connection with respectable political history is more obvious to modem scholars than the relevance of astrology, geomancy, dream interpretation, palmomancy, scapulomancy, lecanomancy, and magic for the study of political history. 16 Yet both eschatology and divination are equally important for a proper understanding of how political power was yielded anywhere in the medieval world, both East and West. Most recently, Paul Magdalino's L'orthodoxie des astrologues: La science entre le dogme et la divination a Byzance (Vlle-X/Ve siecle) (Paris, 2006), is a book-length study by a single author addressing one of the most important and philosophically inclined Byzantine occult sciences in a chronologically arranged discussion

14 In the series "Les alchimistes grecs" (AG) Papyrus de Leyde, ed. Halleux, AG, I;

of the proj~ted 12 volumes (ibid., XIV-XV), only I, IV.! and X have appeared to date; among them only L'anonyme de Zuretti ou L'art sacre et divin de Ia chrysopee par un anonyme, ed. A. Coline!, AG, X (Paris, 2000), deals with a

~yzantine, as opposed to an ancient, Greek alchemical text. N1cephore Gregoras: Calcul de /'eclipse du solei/ du 16 juillet 1330, ed. J. ~ogenet, A. Tihon, R. Royez, A. Berg, CAB I (Amsterdam, 1983); see the IDtroduction by Tihon, ibid., 7-8; also eadem, 'Un pro jet de corpus des astronomes byzantins', JOB 31 (1981) = Akten des XVI. intemazionales Byzant~nisten~ongress 1.2.1 (no pagination) and R. Browning, 'Projects in dByzantme Phtlology', ibid. 1.1, 3-64. Nine volumes have appeared in the series to ate.

MF b' . . p or a r~ef overvtew of the literature on Byzantine eschatology up to 1993, see p. Magdalmo, 'The History of the Future and Its Uses: Prophecy, Policy and S ro:~ganda', R. Beaton and C. Roueche, eds., The Making of Byzantine History. tu les Dedicated to Donald M. Nicol (Aidershot, 1993), 3-34.

46 Maria Mavrou4!1 .~

-that pays due attention to pre- and early Christian sources, and i& founded on a thorough acquaintance with primary texts, some of which remain little-read by modern scholars. 17

The existing and projected publications that can facilitate the study of the sciences in Byzantium inspire a certain amount of optimism. However, there can be no doubt that the study of Byzantine science (occult or not) is not as advanced as that of its equivalent in the ancient, Western medieval, and even the Islamic world. The reasons for this disparity are worth an attempt at their identification. Could it be attributed to lack of primary source material on which such an investigation could be based? For example, the Middle and Late Byzantine period lack the unmediated primary source material provided by the ancient lead curse tablets or the magical papyri. Yet the identification of physical remains of practiced magic (hardly any have been identified from the Middle and Late Byzantine period), 18 or recent advances in the field of papyrology (within which the study of Arabic papyri remains the least investigated domain), especially since it is pertinent only to a limited geographic location, cannot by themselves explain the developments in the study of magic and occult science. Another explanation may be sought in the fact that Byzantine studies is a relatively young discipline cultivated by a comparatively limited number of scholars; but so is the study of medieval Islam in the Western world, while medieval Islamic science has been studied by modern Western scholars more than its Byzantine counterpart. Closer inspection reveals that modern neglect in the study of Byzantine science (whether rational or pseudo) is coupled with neglect in the study of Byzantine philosophy, the ancient and Islamic counterpart of which is, once again, considerably more advanced. In other words, Byzantinists have paid insufficient attention to both the practical application of science and its philosophical foundation in the

". ~- ~agdalino, L'Orthodoxie des astro/ogues. La science entre le dogme et Ia fo1V!natzon a B~za~ce ~VI/e-XIVe siecle), Realites byzantines 12 (Paris, 2006). . Some matenal1s d1scussed by J. Russell, 'The Archeological Context of Magic m the Early Byzantine Period', in H. Maguire, ed. Byzantine Magic (Washington, D. C., 1995), 35-50. Amulets, phylacteries, protective rings, a protective gold tab(Camle,:~ are presented in I. Ka!avrezou, ed., Byzantine Women and Their World

ndge, Mass., New Haven and London, 2003), 27ff.


Byzantine world. The result is a signi~ca_nt gap in. our derstanding the textual, intellectual, and social Import of science ~n Byzantine history and the study of Byzantine civilization. To

tOr h ' h"l h ' tate this in more concrete terms, a goal t at p 1 osop y , ~ ence' and 'pseudo-science' have in common is to understand SCI , . d h' the forces and laws that move nature and the umverse an or ~ IS son all three may appropriate much of the same theoretical

rea d . , . apparatus; further, both 'science' and 'pseu o-sc1ence asp1re ~o control these forces, or at least use them to control one s surroundings. It is therefore reasonable to expect that all three could be practiced in the same circles, for the ~enefit of, or by, m~ny of the same individuals, and therefore stndes or obstacles ~n the modern study of each necessarily influence our understandmg. of the other two. The intellectual profile and social role of a Byza?tme theologian, ecclesiastic, historian, courtier, bureaucrat, professiOn~! man of letters, cannot be fully appreciated without refere?ce to theu knowledge of what Byzantium understood as science; yet Byzantinists presently lack important tools that wo~ld ~llow them to add this component to the larger picture of Byzantme mtellectual and social history.

The comparison among the fields of ancient~ Byzantine, and Islamic studies allows the conclusion that the most Important reason for t~e relative neglect in the study of Byzantine science, occult or not, IS its perceived role in the history of what we term 'Western thought' The generally accepted grand narrative goes, more or less, as follows: the sciences were born in the ancient Near East, whence already in antiquity they migrated West, am?ng the _Greeks; "':ho gave birth to (Western) philosophy and made It and SCience flou:tsh until (at the latest) the sixth century A.D. At around_ that time science and philosophy died out in the Greek-speakmg world. Thankfully, they were rescued by the Arabs, who translated and adapted the Greek scientific and philosophical heritage as a result of the translation movement from Greek into Arabic in the course of the ninth and tenth centuries, and went on to produce some worth-while science and philosophy of their own. By the eleve~th

. d r the Mushm century both subjects were begmmng to ec me m world but again were rescued by medieval Europe, where a seco~d

' . ' . h" u from Arabic into Latm, translation and adaptatiOn proJect, t Is me

48 Maria Mavroudi c. f

was launched in the twelfth century. It is understood that from then on, and down to our own times, science and philosophy definitely and irrevocably migrated west. Their initial twelfth-century migration was intensified in the course of the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries, when Greek refugees fleeing Byzantium arrived to the West carrying manuscripts of ancient authors and allowed the West to rediscover ancient Hellenic wisdom, this time without an Arabic intermediary. The Greek manuscripts brought to Europe by Byzantine scholars during the Renaissance are understood as the last contribution of the East (whether Arabic or Greek speaking) to Western scientific and philosophical development.

Elements of this grand narrative are implicitly or explicitly present in ancient and medieval sources, a fact that undoubtedly contributed to its formulation in modem literature. For example, Ptolemy in the Tetrabiblos explicitly mentions that the Egyptians are those who developed medical astrology the most (1.3), and refers to the Egyptian system of government of the houses (1.20) and the Chaldaean system of government of the triplicities (1.21), implicitly acknowledging the fundamental contribution that these two civilizations made to astrology. 19 Diodorus Siculus in a well-known passage (1.96-98) also discusses the Egyptian origin of science and the benefit that Greek savants derived from it.20 Reference to the Egyptian and Babylonian origins of astrology and science is also made in the world chronicles of the Byzantine period.21 As for the claim that wisdom had migrated from the Greek- to the Arabic-speaking world, it is already expressed in medieval Arabic sources and can be understood as a politically expedient rhetorical attitude employed by the Abbasids in the course of the heightened Byzantine-Arabic military antagonism of the ninth and tenth centuries in order to cast, in the terms used by Dimitri Gutas, 'anti-Byzantinism' in the guise of 'philhellenism' .22 Yet the modem

19 Ptolemy, Tetrabib/os, ed. and tr. W. G. Waddell (Cambridge Mass 1940 repr.

1964), 30-33. ' . "'_Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca historica, ed. K. T. Fischer (post I. Bekker and L. P,tndorf) and F .. Vo~el, 5 vols. (Leipzig, 1888-1906; repr. Stuttgart, 1964). 22 See the contnbution by W. Adler in the present volume. M See D. G~tas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: the Graeco-Arabic Translation

ovement m Baghdad and Early Abbasid Society, 2""- 41h IB'h-J(Jh Centuries (London and New York, 1998), 83-95.


elaboration and completion of the grand narrative articulated above were developed in Western academia the course of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century and for this reason unavoidably reflects ideological assumptions prevalent at the time of European colonialism. As a result, modern study of ancient philosophy and science largely emphasized what was deemed as 'rational' enterprise (along the lines of what the nineteenth century understood and defined as 'rational'); further, questions and answers are framed from a point of view centred on late medieval and early modem Europe (the forerunner of modem Western civilization). Indeed, most scholarly energy was expended and most ink has flowed in order to elucidate the crucial junctures of science's and philosophy's westward journey, in the imagined geography of which the Greek-speaking world in antiquity is reckoned as 'West', while in the Middle Ages as 'East'. For example, the modern study of Arabic astrology was greatly stimulated by the realization that its introduction in the medieval West through translations from Arabic into Latin also created the impetus for the introduction of Aristotelian philosophy in medieval Latin thought/3 and therefore was inextricably linked with developments in Western medieval philosophy (itself a re-habilitated subject in academic research around the same time).24

As far as science and philosophy in Greek of any period are concerned, it is well known that with the exception of finds in papyri, its bulk is retrievable, with more or less difficulty, only from Greek manuscripts of the Byzantine and post-Byzantine period. Yet modern study of these manuscripts has concentrated on extracting from them ancient science and philosophy, while little attention has been paid to what Byzantine manuscripts that include the works of ancient authors can tell us about Byzantine science and philosophy. This neglect is exacerbated by the fact that, in contrast with Islamic philosophy and science, the view about their Byzantine counterparts implicitly or explicitly stated in modern

23 R. Lemay, Aba Ma' shar and Latin Aristotelianism in the Twelfth Century: The Recovery of Aristotle's Natural Philosophy through Arabic Astrology (Betrut. 1962). 24 See the introduction by K. Ierodiakonou, ed. Byzantine Philosophy and Its Ancient Sources (Oxford, 2002), 7.

,.

50 M . M .~ ana avroudi , .;:,. '' !~

scholarship is that there hardly was anything worth talking about.25 In summary, the only reason why Byzantium is important in the history of science and philosophy is not because it added anything significant to the Greek scientific knowledge and philosophical sophistication of antiquity, but because it preserved ancient Greek science and philosophy until the Westerners were able to recover it. Such is the view explicitly adopted in the chapter on Byzantine science by Kurt Vogel in Cambridge Medieval History, 26 which-in spite of its age-remains an indispensable guide on the topic due to its abundant bibliography and the general absence of reference works on Byzantine science. As for Byzantine philosophy, though recent scholarly literature has moved beyond appreciating it merely as a repository of ancient philosophy, by necessity the importance of studying it is still advocated in terms of its role in shaping Renaissance philosophy (a nod to a line of thinking that may attract and sustain a general interest in studying Byzantine philosophy, not an implied comparison or relative evaluation).27

"Evidently, this attitude was internalized, at least until recently, even within the field of Byzantine studies. How else to explain the absence of any panel on Byzantine science at the XVI International Congress on Byzantine studies (1981), remarked upon by Anne Tihon thus: "Au moment de nous inscrire a ce Congres d'Etudes Byzantines, un rapide coup d'oeil sur le programme propose suffisait a nous amener a cette constatation desolante: I' absence de toute section consacre a

l'histo~re de Ia science byzantine" [A. Tihon, "Un projet de corpus des astronomes byzantl~s" (p: I of the _article in. a volume without pagination)]. A panel on Byzantme sc1ence was mcluded m the programme of the XXI International

Cong~s on ~yzantine Studies (2006). For the problems regarding the study of Byzantme philosophy, see the introduction by Ierodiakonou ed. Byzantine Phzlosophy, 1-13. '

~ Cambri~ge Me~ieva/ History IV.2 (Cambridge, 1967), 264: "Byzantium is lffiportant m the h1story of science ... not because any appreciable additions were made to the knowledge already attained by the Greeks of the Hellenistic era but because the Byzantine ed th I'd c ' . s preserv e so 1 toundatlons la1d m antiquity until such ::w~g~~ Westerners had at their disposal other means of recovering this

27 See ODB, s.v. PHILOSOPHY (by 0 O'M ) ''Th .

specific Byzant' h'l h . eara e question of the existence of a . . m~ P I osop Y nsks anachronism if it presupposes a modem

cntenon of what 1s to count as h'l h If . development, it is to be ~ / 1 osop Y phllosophy is seen as a historical philosophy and in th ffi oun 10 Byzantium in the interest taken in ancient provided in tum v~~ ~rts ~ ~evelop and criticize this heritage. This work lerodiak B I. msp_rratlon to Renaissance philosophy." See also

onou, yumtrne Phzlosophy 13 "Only [b tud . B . y s ymg yzantme

Occult Science ana :society m nyzanuum: Considerations for Future Research

51

More recent scholarship has begun to re-evaluate individual pieces of this grand narrative: for example, emphasis and value is no longer exclusively placed on what is deemed as 'rational' enterprise, nor is the pursuit of 'irrational' subjects taken as a sign of intellectual decline. In addition, a rehabilitation of Arabic science and philosophy is taking place: it is now possible to argue that neither entered a state of decline after the eleventh century.28 Regarding Western European intellectual history, the twelfth-century 'renaissance' (in the course of which Graeco-Arabic learning was introduced in Western Europe through translations from Latin into Arabic) in recent re-evaluation no longer looks like the paramount event it had been made to be. 29 The result is dissonance between the older grand narrative and our more recent understanding of the individual components that comprise it. In other words, as the pieces of the puzzle have changed shape, they no longer fit together as neatly as they used to and must be reconsidered not only individually but also as a whole. Any new grand narrative that might emerge will not be complete without taking into consideration the role of Byzantium in the formation of Mediterranean science by contributing to and receiving from the science of its Arabic and Latin speaking neighbours. Since, in any period of human history, the economic and political power of a nation or political entity is a decisive factor influencing the international reception of the culture and science it produces, recent developments in Byzantine studies must be inserted into future thinking regarding Byzantine science and its international role: for

philosophy] will we manage to completely bridge the gap between ancient philosophy and early modem philosophy. In this connection we have to keep in mind the profound impact Byzantine scholars and philosophers of the fifteenth century had on the revival of Platonic studies and Platonism in the Renaissance in the West." 28 For a rehabilitation of Arabic philosophy after the II >h century, see D. Gutas, 'The Study of Arabic Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: An Essay on the Historiography of Arabic Philosophy', British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 29.1 (2002), 5-25; for a refutation regarding Islamic astronomy, see G. Saliba, 'A Redeployment of Mathematics in a Sixteenth-Century Arabic Critique of Ptolemaic Astronomy', in A. Hasnawi, A. Elamrani-Jamal, M. Aouad, eds., Perspectives arabes et medievales sur Ia tradition scientijique et philosophique ~ecque (Leuven and Paris, 1997), 105-22, and esp. 113.

For challenges to the notion of a 12,.-century Renaissance, see C. S. Jaeger, 'Pessimism in the Twelfth-Century "Renaissance"', Speculum 78 (2003), 1151-83.

52 Maria Mavroudi .

example, we are now beginning to discern that not all intellectual, artistic, or technological tradition (and the possibility of "innovation") was lost in the period between the seventh to the ninth centuries,30 but have not yet contemplated what this means for the translation movement from Greek into Arabic that took place in the course of the ninth and tenth centuries. Over the last two decades we have reached a consensus that Byzantium's golden age did not end with the death of Basil II and that the eleventh and twelfth centuries were periods of economic expansion and intensified intellectual endeavour;31 yet we have not begun to map what this may imply for the reception of Byzantine philosophy and science in the Islamic and the Latin world within the political circumstances of the same period, such as the Byzantine governance of the region of Antioch (969-1084) and the creation of the Crusader states soon thereafter. The findings of work done in the fields of art history,32 and, secondarily, law/3 promise that future research focusing on other forms of cultural endeavour will also prove productive.34 Modern lack of interest in Byzantine

"'For a summary of recent work, see L. Brubaker and J. Haldon, Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era (ca. 680-850 ): The Sources (Aidershot, 200 1 ), to be followed by a forthcoming companion volume discussing new conclusions from re-reading the sources. 31 A seminal publication on 12 .. -century economic history: M. Hendy, "Byzantium, 1081-1204: an Economic Reappraisal" Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Slh series, 20 (1970), 31-52; see also the monograph by A. Harvey,

Econom~ Exp~nsion in t~e Byzantine Empire, 900-1200 (Cambridge, 1989). A fuUer articulat10n: A. La10u, ed. The Economic History of Byzantium from the Seventh through the Fifteenth Century, 3 vols. (Washington, D. C., 2002). A

sem~al work on 12th-century cultural history: A. Kazhdan and A. Wharton-Epstem, Change in Byzantine Culture in the 11' and 12"' Centuries (Berkeley 1985). ' 32

Seminal in this. re~ard was the bod

the occult sciences in byzantium

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