Maximus Planudes ( grc-gre, Μάξιμος Πλανούδης, ''Máximos Planoúdēs''; ) was a

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

Greek monk, scholar,

anthologist In book publishing, an anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler; it may be a collection of plays, poems, short stories, songs or excerpts by different authors. In genre fiction, the term ''anthology'' typically catego ...

, translator,

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

, grammarian and

theologian Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...

Constantinople la, Constantinopolis ota, قسطنطينيه , alternate_name = Byzantion (earlier Greek name), Nova Roma ("New Rome"), Miklagard/Miklagarth (Old Norse), Tsargrad ( Slavic), Qustantiniya (Arabic), Basileuousa ("Queen of Cities"), Megalopolis (" ...

. Through his translations from Latin into Greek and from Greek into Latin, he brought the Greek East and the Latin West into closer contact with one another. He is now best known as a compiler of the ''

Greek Anthology The ''Greek Anthology'' ( la, Anthologia Graeca) is a collection of poems, mostly epigrams, that span the Classical and Byzantine periods of Greek literature. Most of the material of the ''Greek Anthology'' comes from two manuscripts, the ''Pa ...

''.

Biography

Maximus Planudes lived during the reigns of the

emperors

Michael VIII Michael VIII Palaiologos or Palaeologus ( el, Μιχαὴλ Δούκας Ἄγγελος Κομνηνὸς Παλαιολόγος, Mikhaēl Doukas Angelos Komnēnos Palaiologos; 1224 – 11 December 1282) reigned as the co-emperor of the Empire ...

and Andronikos II. He was born at

Nicomedia Nicomedia (; el, Νικομήδεια, ''Nikomedeia''; modern İzmit) was an ancient Greek city located in what is now Turkey. In 286, Nicomedia became the eastern and most senior capital city of the Roman Empire (chosen by the emperor Diocletia ...

Bithynia Bithynia (; Koine Greek: , ''Bithynía'') was an ancient region, kingdom and Roman province in the northwest of Asia Minor (present-day Turkey), adjoining the Sea of Marmara, the Bosporus, and the Black Sea. It bordered Mysia to the southwest, Pa ...

in 1260, but the greater part of his life was spent in

, where as a

monk A monk (, from el, μοναχός, ''monachos'', "single, solitary" via Latin ) is a person who practices religious asceticism by monastic living, either alone or with any number of other monks. A monk may be a person who decides to dedica ...

he devoted himself to study and teaching. On entering the monastery he changed his original name Manuel to Maximus. Planudes possessed a knowledge of

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

remarkable at a time when

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

and

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

were regarded with some hostility by the Greeks of the Byzantine Empire. To this accomplishment he probably owed his selection as one of the ambassadors sent by emperor Andronikos II in 1295–96 to remonstrate with the Venetians for their attack upon the Genoese settlement in

Galata Galata is the former name of the Karaköy neighbourhood in Istanbul, which is located at the northern shore of the Golden Horn. The district is connected to the historic Fatih district by several bridges that cross the Golden Horn, most notabl ...

near Constantinople. A more important result was that Planudes, especially by his translations, paved the way for the revival of the study of

Greek language Greek ( el, label=Modern Greek, Ελληνικά, Elliniká, ; grc, Ἑλληνική, Hellēnikḗ) is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece, Cyprus, southern Italy (Calabria and Salento), southern Al ...

and literature in western Europe. Add 19391 19-20

He was the author of numerous works, including: a Greek

grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structure, structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clause (linguistics), clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraint ...

in the form of question and answer, like the ''Erotemata'' of

Manuel Moschopulus Manuel Moschopoulos ( Latinized as Manuel Moschopulus; el, ), was a Byzantine commentator and grammarian, who lived during the end of the 13th and the beginning of the 14th century and was an important figure in the Palaiologan Renaissance. ''Mo ...

, with an appendix on the so-called "

Political verse Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studies ...

"; a treatise on

syntax In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...

; a biography of

Aesop Aesop ( or ; , ; c. 620–564 BCE) was a Greek fabulist and storyteller credited with a number of fables now collectively known as ''Aesop's Fables''. Although his existence remains unclear and no writings by him survive, numerous tales cre ...

and a

prose Prose is a form of written or spoken language that follows the natural flow of speech, uses a language's ordinary grammatical structures, or follows the conventions of formal academic writing. It differs from most traditional poetry, where the f ...

version of the

fable Fable is a literary genre: a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, legendary creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that are anthropomorphized, and that illustrates or leads to a particular mo ...

s; ''

scholia Scholia (singular scholium or scholion, from grc, σχόλιον, "comment, interpretation") are grammatical, critical, or explanatory comments – original or copied from prior commentaries – which are inserted in the margin of th ...

'' on certain Greek authors; two

hexameter Hexameter is a metrical line of verses consisting of six feet (a "foot" here is the pulse, or major accent, of words in an English line of poetry; in Greek and Latin a "foot" is not an accent, but describes various combinations of syllables). It w ...

poems, one a eulogy of

Claudius Ptolemaeus Claudius Ptolemy (; grc-gre, Πτολεμαῖος, ; la, Claudius Ptolemaeus; AD) was a mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist, who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were of importanc ...

— whose ''Geography'' was rediscovered by Planudes, who translated it into Latin— the other an account of the sudden change of an ox into a

mouse A mouse ( : mice) is a small rodent. Characteristically, mice are known to have a pointed snout, small rounded ears, a body-length scaly tail, and a high breeding rate. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse (''Mus musculus' ...

; a treatise on the method of calculating in use amongst the Indians; and ''scholia'' to the first two books of the ''Arithmetic'' of

Diophantus Diophantus of Alexandria ( grc, Διόφαντος ὁ Ἀλεξανδρεύς; born probably sometime between AD 200 and 214; died around the age of 84, probably sometime between AD 284 and 298) was an Alexandrian mathematician, who was the aut ...

. His numerous translations from the Latin included

Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the estab ...

's ''

Somnium Scipionis The ''Dream of Scipio'' (Latin: ''Somnium Scipionis''), written by Cicero, is the sixth book of ''De re publica'', and describes a (postulated fictional or real) dream vision of the Roman general Scipio Aemilianus, set two years before he oversa ...

'' with the commentary of

Macrobius Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius, usually referred to as Macrobius (fl. AD 400), was a Roman provincial who lived during the early fifth century, during late antiquity, the period of time corresponding to the Later Roman Empire, and when Latin was ...

;

Ovid Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the th ...

's ''

Heroides The ''Heroides'' (''The Heroines''), or ''Epistulae Heroidum'' (''Letters of Heroines''), is a collection of fifteen epistolary Epistolary means "in the form of a letter or letters", and may refer to: * Epistolary ( la, epistolarium), a Christi ...

'' and ''

Metamorphoses The ''Metamorphoses'' ( la, Metamorphōsēs, from grc, μεταμορφώσεις: "Transformations") is a Latin narrative poem from 8 CE by the Roman poet Ovid. It is considered his ''magnum opus''. The poem chronicles the history of the wo ...

''; Boethius' ''

De consolatione philosophiae ''On the Consolation of Philosophy'' ('' la, De consolatione philosophiae'')'','' often titled as ''The Consolation of Philosophy'' or simply the ''Consolation,'' is a philosophical work by the Roman statesman Boethius. Written in 523 while he ...

''; and Augustine's ''De trinitate''. Traditionally, a translation of Julius Caesar's ''De Bello Gallico'' has been attributed to Planudes, but this is a much repeated mistake. These translations were not only useful to Greek speakers but were also widely used in western Europe as textbooks for the study of Greek. It is, however, for his edition of the ''

'' that he is best known. This edition, the

Anthology of Planudes The ''Anthology of Planudes'' (also called ''Planudean Anthology'', in Latin ''Anthologia Planudea'' or sometimes in Greek ''Ἀνθολογία διαφόρων ἐπιγραμμάτων'' ("Anthology of various epigrams"), from the first line of ...

or Planudean Anthology, is shorter than the Heidelberg text (the

Palatine Anthology The ''Palatine Anthology'' (or ''Anthologia Palatina''), sometimes abbreviated ''AP'', is the collection of Greek poems and epigrams discovered in 1606 in the Palatine Library in Heidelberg. It is based on the lost collection of Constantinus Ceph ...

), and largely overlaps it, but contains 380 epigrams not present in it, normally published with the others, either as a sixteenth book or as an appendix. J. W. Mackail in his book ''Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology'', has this to add of him:''Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology''
by

J. W. Mackail John William Mackail (26 August 1859 – 13 December 1945) was a Scottish academic of Oxford University and reformer of the British education system. He is most often remembered as a scholar of Virgil and as the official biographer of the so ...

:Among his works were translations into Greek of Augustine's '' City of God'' and Caesar's ''Gallic War''. The restored Greek Empire of the Palaeologi was then fast dropping to pieces. The Genoese colony of Pera usurped the trade of Constantinople and acted as an independent state; and it brings us very near the modern world to remember that Planudes was the contemporary of

Petrarch Francesco Petrarca (; 20 July 1304 – 18/19 July 1374), commonly anglicized as Petrarch (), was a scholar and poet of early Renaissance Italy, and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited w ...

. He is recorded as one of the first people to use the word "million".

Notes

References

Sources

* * Editions include: Fabricius, ''Bibliotheca graeca'', ed. Harles, xi. 682; theological writings in

Migne Jacques Paul Migne (; 25 October 1800 – 24 October 1875) was a French priest who published inexpensive and widely distributed editions of theological works, encyclopedias, and the texts of the Church Fathers, with the goal of providing a u ...

, ''

Patrologia Graeca The ''Patrologia Graeca'' (or ''Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Graeca'') is an edited collection of writings by the Christian Church Fathers and various secular writers, in the Greek language. It consists of 161 volumes produced in 1857– ...

'', cxlvii; correspondence, ed. M Treu (1890), with a valuable commentary * (Also Oxford Reference Online.) * (Also Oxford Reference Online.) * K. Krumbacher, ''Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur'' (1897) * J. E. Sandys, ''History of Classical Scholarship'' (1906), vol. i

External links

*
Planudes
from Charles Smith's ''Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology'' (1867), v. 3, pp. 384–390
''Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology''
by J. W. Mackail (Project Gutenberg)
The Greek Anthology
books 1–6, translated by W. R. Paton, with facing Greek text (Loeb Classical Library, 1916) {{DEFAULTSORT:Planudes, Maximus 1260s births 1330 deaths 13th-century Byzantine people 14th-century Byzantine people 14th-century Byzantine writers Byzantine grammarians Byzantine writers Byzantine theologians Latin–Greek translators Greek–Latin translators Greek Renaissance humanists Greek Christian monks 13th-century Byzantine writers 14th-century Eastern Orthodox theologians 13th-century Eastern Orthodox theologians 13th-century translators People from the Black Sea Region Ambassadors 13th-century Greek people 14th-century Greek people 13th-century Greek scientists 13th-century Greek educators 14th-century Greek scientists 14th-century Greek educators 13th-century Greek mathematicians 14th-century Greek mathematicians 13th-century Greek astronomers 14th-century Greek astronomers People from İzmit