George Hermonymus ( el, Γεώργιος Ἑρμώνυμος; born before 1435; died after 1503), also known as Hermonymus of Sparta, was a 15th-century
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
scribe, diplomat, scholar and lecturer. He was the first person to teach Greek at the
Collège de Sorbonne
The College of Sorbonne (french: Collège de Sorbonne) was a theological college of the University of Paris, founded in 1253 (confirmed in 1257) by Robert de Sorbon (1201–1274), after whom it was named.
With the rest of the Paris colleges, ...
in
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
.
Life
Although he claimed to originally be from
Sparta
Sparta ( Doric Greek: Σπάρτα, ''Spártā''; Attic Greek: Σπάρτη, ''Spártē'') was a prominent city-state in Laconia, in ancient Greece. In antiquity, the city-state was known as Lacedaemon (, ), while the name Sparta referre ...
, that city no longer existed in the 15th century, so it most likely referred to
Mystra, the second largest city in the rapidly decaying Byzantine Empire of the time. Mystra was located in the hills overlooking the ancient ruins of Sparta, was the centre of a major revival in Greek literature at the time, and was the home of
Gemistus Pletho
Georgios Gemistos Plethon ( el, Γεώργιος Γεμιστός Πλήθων; la, Georgius Gemistus Pletho /1360 – 1452/1454), commonly known as Gemistos Plethon, was a Greek scholar and one of the most renowned philosophers of the late By ...
.
Hermonymus first went to
Milan
Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...
where he worked as a copyist and then to Paris as there was a great need for a Greek teacher and translator at the time. Hermonymus arrived at Paris in 1476, worked as a copyist at the French court.
Later, as a lecturer at the Sorbonne he took advantage of the vast collection of
ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...
books in the libraries of Paris to start his scholarly activities. He became renowned as a teacher of Greek and among his pupils were
Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (; ; English: Erasmus of Rotterdam or Erasmus;''Erasmus'' was his baptismal name, given after St. Erasmus of Formiae. ''Desiderius'' was an adopted additional name, which he used from 1496. The ''Roterodamus'' w ...
,
Budaeus,
Reuchlin
Johann Reuchlin (; sometimes called Johannes; 29 January 1455 – 30 June 1522) was a German Catholic humanist and a scholar of Greek and Hebrew, whose work also took him to modern-day Austria, Switzerland, and Italy and France. Most of Reuchlin's ...
and
Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples
Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples ( Latinized as Jacobus Faber Stapulensis; c. 1455 – c. 1536) was a French theologian and a leading figure in French humanism. He was a precursor of the Protestant movement in France. The "d'Étaples" was not part of ...
.
[Rachel Giese (1934), "Erasmus' Greek Studies", ''The Classical Journal'' 29(7), pp. 517–526.]
Hermonymus was also involved in diplomacy. In 1475 he was sent to the
Kingdom of England
The Kingdom of England (, ) was a sovereign state on the island of Great Britain from 12 July 927, when it emerged from various History of Anglo-Saxon England, Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, until 1 May 1707, when it united with Kingdom of Scotland, ...
by
Pope Sixtus IV, in order to lobby for the release of
George Neville from imprisonment by
Edward IV of England.
Manuscripts written by Hermonymus
*
Minuscule 30 (Gregory-Aland)
*
Minuscule 70 (Gregory-Aland)
*
Minuscule 287 (Gregory-Aland)
*
Minuscule 288 (Gregory-Aland)
*
Minuscule 880 (Gregory-Aland)
See also
*
French humanism
*
Greek scholars in the Renaissance
The migration waves of Byzantine Greek scholars and émigrés in the period following the end of the Byzantine Empire in 1453 is considered by many scholars key to the revival of Greek studies that led to the development of the Renaissanc ...
References
Sources
* Jonathan Harris, ''Greek Émigrés in the West, 1400-1520'' (Camberley: Porphyrogenitus, 1995).
* Jonathan Harris, 'Greek scribes in England: the evidence of episcopal registers', in ''Through the Looking Glass: Byzantium through British Eyes'', ed. Robin Cormack and Elizabeth Jeffreys, Aldershot UK: Ashgate, 2000, pp. 121–6.
* Maria P. Kalatzi, ''Hermonymos: A Study in Scribal, Literary and Teaching Activities in the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries'', Athens, 2009.
External links
The Christian Renaissance.
15th-century Byzantine people
People from Laconia
Greek academics
University of Paris faculty
Greek Renaissance humanists
Medieval European scribes
Greek scribes
15th-century Greek writers
15th-century Greek educators
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