Socrates the judge: a not-so-platonizing dialogue on the deposition of patriarch Nicholas IV Mouzalon
-
Varvara Zharkaya
and
Lev Lukhovitskiy
Abstract
The article brings under scrutiny an understudied dialogical account about the deposition of the patriarch of Constantinople Nicholas IV Mouzalon (1147-51). A close reading shows that this is not an official record of the proceedings but a piece of fiction that deliberately inverts the generic conventions of the two types of texts indicative of the 12th-century literary landscape, namely 1) minutes of church councils and 2) syllogistic theological dialogues. The anonymous author invites the reader to recognize the all-familiar scheme of the Socratic interrogation but eventually departs from it investing the protagonists (Manuel I Komnenos and Mouzalon) with features that distance them from their Platonic models. The text seems to be inextricably linked to Mouzalon’s canonical dilemma: can an archbishop who previously voluntarily fled from his office be appointed archbishop once again? In fact, the author’s primary concern is not the patriarch but the emperor, a judge-logician who is at one and the same time Socrates and more than Socrates, and the new language able to reflect the changing balance between the imperial and ecclesiastical powers in mid- 12th-century Byzantium.
© 2020 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelei
- Inhalt
- Siglenverzeichnis
- I. ABTEILUNG
- Style et idéologie. De la version longue à la version brève de la Vie de Jean l’Aumônier, due à Léonce de Néapolis
- Picture and text: on the “iconography” of sacred spaces in middle-Byzantine ekphraseis
- A lifetime with Proclus: Psellos as reader
- Bessarionea
- Herennius Philon’s progeny: Ps-Ammonius, Eustathius and the term συγγραφεῖς in postclassical times
- The rhetorical works of the school of Gaza
- New evidence regarding the early history of the Monastery of Vatopedi (Mt Athos): unpublished sigillographical material
- Un fantôme historique : «l’autre Theophane»
- Socrates the judge: a not-so-platonizing dialogue on the deposition of patriarch Nicholas IV Mouzalon
- II. ABTEILUNG
- The Petra Papyri V, besprochen von Theresia Schusser
- Byzantine poetry from Pisides to Geometres: texts and contexts, volume 2, besprochen von Baukje van den Berg
- Le Commentaire de Théodoret de Cyr sur l’Epître aux Romains, besprochen von Wolfram Kinzig
- Iberische Halbinsel und Marokko; Johannes G. Deckers, Guntram Koch. Konstantinopel, besprochen von Martin Dennert
- Ἰμπέριος καὶ Μαργαρώνα, besprochen von Carolina Cupane
- Византийский Понт и Грузия, besprochen von Rudolf Stefec
- Nachrichten
- Totentafel
- Nachruf Joachim Kramer (15. 5.1936–11. 9. 2018)
- Tafelanhang
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelei
- Inhalt
- Siglenverzeichnis
- I. ABTEILUNG
- Style et idéologie. De la version longue à la version brève de la Vie de Jean l’Aumônier, due à Léonce de Néapolis
- Picture and text: on the “iconography” of sacred spaces in middle-Byzantine ekphraseis
- A lifetime with Proclus: Psellos as reader
- Bessarionea
- Herennius Philon’s progeny: Ps-Ammonius, Eustathius and the term συγγραφεῖς in postclassical times
- The rhetorical works of the school of Gaza
- New evidence regarding the early history of the Monastery of Vatopedi (Mt Athos): unpublished sigillographical material
- Un fantôme historique : «l’autre Theophane»
- Socrates the judge: a not-so-platonizing dialogue on the deposition of patriarch Nicholas IV Mouzalon
- II. ABTEILUNG
- The Petra Papyri V, besprochen von Theresia Schusser
- Byzantine poetry from Pisides to Geometres: texts and contexts, volume 2, besprochen von Baukje van den Berg
- Le Commentaire de Théodoret de Cyr sur l’Epître aux Romains, besprochen von Wolfram Kinzig
- Iberische Halbinsel und Marokko; Johannes G. Deckers, Guntram Koch. Konstantinopel, besprochen von Martin Dennert
- Ἰμπέριος καὶ Μαργαρώνα, besprochen von Carolina Cupane
- Византийский Понт и Грузия, besprochen von Rudolf Stefec
- Nachrichten
- Totentafel
- Nachruf Joachim Kramer (15. 5.1936–11. 9. 2018)
- Tafelanhang
