Maximus Planudes

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Maximus Planudes

Maximus Planudes (c. 1260 – 1330), was a Byzantine Greek grammarian and theologian

Theology

Theology is the study of the existence or attributes of a deity or gods, or more generally the study of religion or spirituality. It is sometimes contrasted with religious studies: theology is understood as the study of religion from an internal perspective , and religious studies as the study of religion from an external perspective....
who lived and worked during the reigns of Michael VIII Palaeologus and Andronicus II Palaeologus.

as born at Nicomedia

Nicomedia

Nicomedia was founded by Nicomedes I of Bithynia at the head of the Gulf of Astacus which opens to the Propontis. In earlier antiquity, the city was called Astacus or Olbia ....
in Bithynia

Bithynia

Bithynia was an ancient region, kingdom and Roman province in the northwest of Asia Minor, adjoining the Propontis, the Thrace Bosporus and the Euxine ....
, but the greater part of his life was spent in Constantinople

Constantinople

Constantinople was the empire capital of the Roman Empire , the Byzantine Empire , the Latin Empire , and the Ottoman Empire . Strategically located between the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara at the point where Europe meets Asia, Byzantine Constantinople had been the capital of a Christendom empire, successor to ancient ancient Greece...
, where as a monk

Monk

A Monk is a person who practices religious asceticism, the unconditioning of mind and body in favor of the realization of one's true nature, and does so living either alone or with any number of like-minded people, whilst always maintaining some degree of physical separation from those not sharing the same purpose....
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

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
remarkable at a time when Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city, with 2,724,347 residents in an urban area of some ....
and Italy

Italy

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Encyclopedia

Maximus Planudes (c. 1260 – 1330), was a Byzantine Greek grammarian and theologian

Theology

Life & Work

He was born at Nicomedia

Nicomedia

Nicomedia was founded by Nicomedes I of Bithynia at the head of the Gulf of Astacus which opens to the Propontis. In earlier antiquity, the city was called Astacus or Olbia ....
in Bithynia

Bithynia

Constantinople

Monk

Latin

Rome

Rome is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city, with 2,724,347 residents in an urban area of some ....
and Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia....
were regarded with hatred and contempt by the Byzantines. To this accomplishment he probably owed his selection as one of the ambassadors sent by Andronicus II in 1327 to remonstrate with the Venetians

Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy, the capital city of the Italian regions Veneto, a population of 271,251 . Together with Padua, Italy, the city is included in the Padua-Venice Metropolitan Area ....
for their attack upon the Genoese settlement in Pera

Pera

Pera may refer to:Places* Pera Orinis, a village in Cyprus* P?ra, a Portuguese parish in the district of Faro in the Algarve* Beyoglu, a district in Istanbul that used to be called Pera...
. A more important result was that Planudes, especially by his translations, paved the way for the introduction of the Greek language

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
and literature into the West.

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

Grammar

Grammar is the field of linguistics that covers the conventions governing the use of any given natural language. It includes morphology and syntax, often complemented by phonetics, phonology, semantics, and pragmatics....
in the form of question and answer, like the Epurlluara of Moschopulus

Manuel Moschopulus

Manuel Moschopulus , Byzantine Empire commentator and grammarian, lived during the end of the 13th and the beginning of the 14th century and was an important figure in the Palaeologan Renaissance....
, with an appendix on the so-called "political" verse; a treatise on syntax

Syntax

In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing Sentence s in natural languages. In addition to referring to the discipline, the term syntax is also used to refer directly to the rules and principles that govern the sentence structure of any individual language, as in "the Irish syntax"....
; a biography of Aesop

Aesop

File:Aesop pushkin01.jpgAesop , known only for the genre of fables ascribed to him, was by tradition a Slavery in Ancient Greece who was a contemporary of Croesus and Peisistratos in the mid-6th century BC in ancient Greece....
and a prose

Prose

Prose is writing that resembles everyday Speech communication. The word "prose" is derived from the Latin prosa, which literally translates to "straightforward"....
version of the fable

Fable

A fable is a succinct story, in prose or verse, that features animals, plants, inanimate, or nature which are anthropomorphized , and that illustrates a moral lesson , which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim ....
s; scholia on certain Greek authors; two hexameter

Hexameter

Hexameter is a literature and poetry form, a Line consisting of six metrical foot, as in the Iliad. It was the standard epic metre in Greek and became standard for Latin too....
poems, one a eulogy of Claudius Ptolemaeus— whose Geography was rediscovered by Planudes, who translated it into Latin— the other an account of the sudden change of an ox

Oxen are bovinae trained as draught animals. Often they are adult, castration males. Oxen are used for ploughing, transport, hauling cargo, threshing grain by trampling, powering machines for grinding grain, irrigation or other purposes, and drawing carts and wagons....
into a mouse

Mouse

A mouse is a small animal that belongs to one of numerous species of rodents. The best known mouse species is the House Mouse . It is also a popular pet....
; a treatise on the method of calculating in use amongst the Indians (ed. C. J. Gerhardt, Halle, 1865); and scholia to the first two books of the Arithmetic of Diophantus

Diophantus

Diophantus of Alexandria , sometimes called "the father of algebra", a title some claim should be shared by a Persian mathematician al-Khwarizmi, born some 500 years after Diophantus....
.

His numerous translations from the Latin included Cicero

Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Ancient Rome philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Constitution of the Roman Republic. Cicero is widely considered one of Rome's greatest rhetoric and prose stylists....
's Somnium Scipionis
Dream of Scipio

The Dream of Scipio , written by Cicero, describes a fictional dream vision of the Roman republic general Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, set two years before he commanded at the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC....
with the commentary of Macrobius

Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius

Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius was a Roman Empire grammarian and Neoplatonist philosopher who flourished c. 430 AD....
: Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar

'Gaius Julius Caesar' , July 13, 100 BC ? March 15, 44 BC,) was a Roman Republic military and political leader. He played a critical role in the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
's Gallic War; Ovid

Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso was a Roman Empire poet known as Ovid to the English language-speaking world, who wrote about love, seduction, and Roman mythology transformation....
's Heroides
Heroides

The Heroides ' , or Epistulae Heroidum , are a collection of fifteen wiktionary:epistolary poems composed by Ovid in Latin elegiac couplets, and presented as though written by a selection of aggrieved heroines of Greek mythology and Roman mythology, in address to their heroic lovers who have in some way mistreated,...
and Metamorphoses
Metamorphoses (poem)

The Metamorphoses by the Ancient Rome poet Ovid is a Narrative poetry in fifteen books that describes the Creation myth and history of the world....
; Boethius'

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

Anicius Manlius Severinus Bo?thius was a Christian or pagan philosopher of the 6th century. He was born in Rome to an ancient and important family which included emperors Petronius Maximus and Olybrius and many Roman consul....
De consolatione philosophiae; and Augustine's De trinitate. These translations were very popular during the Middle Ages

Middle Ages

File:Karl 1 mit papst gelasius gregor1 sacramentar v karl d kahlen.jpgThe Middle Ages of European history are a period in history which lasted for roughly a millennium, commonly dated from the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century to the beginning of the Early Modern Period in the 16th century, marked by the division of Western Christi...
as textbooks for the study of Greek. It is, however, for his edition of the Greek Anthology
Greek Anthology

The Greek Anthology is a collection of poems, mostly epigrams, that span the classical and Byzantine periods of Greek literature.While papyrus containing fragments of collections of poetry have been found in Egypt, the earliest known anthology in Greek was compiled by Meleager of Gadara, under the title Anthologia, or "Garland."...
that he is best known.

The public domain

Public domain

File:PD-icon.svgThe public domain is a range of abstract materials?commonly referred to as intellectual property?which are not owned or controlled by anyone....
Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg, abbreviated as PG, is a volunteer effort to digitize, archive and distribute cultural works, as founder Michael Hart said "To encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks."....
e-book

E-book

An e-book is the digital media equivalent of a conventional printed book. Such documents are usually read on personal computers, or on dedicated computer hardware devices known as e-book readers or e-book devices....
by J. W. Mackail

John William Mackail

John William Mackail O.M. was a Scottish man of letters and socialist, now best remembered as a Virgil scholar. He was also a poet, literary historian and biographer....
, has this to add of him:

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
Petrarch

Francesco Petrarca , known in English language as Petrarch, was an Italy scholar, poet and one of the earliest Renaissance humanism. Petrarch is often popularly called the "Father of Humanism"....
.

External links

from Charles Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1867), v. 3, pp. 384–390
by J. W. Mackail (Project Gutenberg)
, Books 1-6, Translated by W. R. Patton, with Facing Greek Text
at

(Loeb Classical Library, 1916)

Maximus Planudes

Life & Work

See also

Further reading

External links