Books by Divna Manolova
This is the first volume to explore the commentaries on ancient texts produced and circulating in... more This is the first volume to explore the commentaries on ancient texts produced and circulating in Byzantium. It adopts a broad chronological perspective (from the twelfth to the fifteenth century) and examines different types of commentaries on ancient poetry and prose within the context of the study and teaching of grammar, rhetoric, philosophy and science. By discussing the exegetical literature of the Byzantines as embedded in the socio-cultural context of the Komnenian and Palaiologan periods, the book analyses the frameworks and networks of knowledge transfer, patronage and identity building that motivated the Byzantine engagement with the ancient intellectual and literary tradition.
A Companion to Byzantine Science, Jan 13, 2020
This first book entirely devoted to Byzantine science is the result of the hugely diverse goals, ... more This first book entirely devoted to Byzantine science is the result of the hugely diverse goals, contexts, and accomplishments of the different scientific fields that developed through this civilisation’s eleven centuries of existence (4th-15th C.).
The introductory chapter focuses mainly on the modern vs Byzantine conceptions of science and to the semantic fields covered by this term, then and now, whereas the first two chapters analyse the Christianisation of pagan science and the beginnings of Byzantine science as well as its teaching during the Byzantine civilisation. Thereafter follow eleven chapters that cover the following fields: Logic, Arithmetic, Harmonic Theory, Geometry, Metrology, Optics and Mechanics, Theories of Vision, Meteorology and Physics, Astronomy, Geography, Zoology, Botany, Medicine and Pharmacology, Veterinary medicine, Science of warfare and Occult Sciences.
This volume, organized by topic, with essays by distinguished scholars offers the most comprehensive and up-to-date history of byzantine science currently available. It is an important editorial venture, aimed not only at specialists, including students of the history of Byzantine science, but the wider public, to all readers interested in medieval history in general.
Publications by Divna Manolova
Byzantine Science
Oxford Bibliographies in Medieval Studies, 2024
Zbornik radova Vizantoloskog instituta, 2023
The Historia Rhōmaïkē was written and circulated in Constantinople in several installments since ... more The Historia Rhōmaïkē was written and circulated in Constantinople in several installments since the 1340s. It recounts events in Byzantine history from the period from 1204 until ca. 1359. Today the work is preserved in more than forty manuscripts, two of which–Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, codd. Vat. gr. 165 and 164–were partially copied, annotated, and revised by Gregoras himself. The pinakes, marginal, and chapter titles in both codices indicate that the latter were designed as an edition of the first seventeen books of the History. The present paper studies Gregoras’ historiographical project and a selection of his letters and hagiographical works in order to explore Gregoras’ self referential remarks on ‘novelty’ and ‘innovation’, as well as his reflections on the aesthetic value of variety and the pleasure the latter can incite. It also adduces as evidence some of the ‘editorial’ decisions the two Vatican manuscripts preserving the Roman History display, such as the chapter division and its relationship to the pinax of each volume, and the role of marginal titles in guiding the readers’ emotional response or alternatively, in directing how the text should be performed. Gregoras’ remarks on novelty and its relation to diversity and perception indicate his concern with the reception of his literary production, which in turn, reaffirms the importance of rhetoric in Palaiologan Byzantium.
A Letter to John Tornikes on the Duties of Friendship and on Constantinople’s Delights. Translation and Commentary
Sources for Byzantine Art History, vol. 3: The Visual Culture of Later Byzantium (1081-c. 1350), 2022
Translation co-authored with Paul Magdalino. In Sources for Byzantine Art History, vol. 3: The Vi... more Translation co-authored with Paul Magdalino. In Sources for Byzantine Art History, vol. 3: The Visual Culture of Later Byzantium (1081-c. 1350), edited by Foteini Spingou, 630–42. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022.
The Diagram as Paradigm: Cross-Cultural Approaches, 2022
Edited by Jeffrey F. Hamburger, David Roxburgh, Linda Safran. Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Symposia a... more Edited by Jeffrey F. Hamburger, David Roxburgh, Linda Safran. Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Symposia and Colloquia series. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2022.
ISBN 9780884024866
Emotions through Time: From Antiquity to Byzantium, 2022
Edited by Douglas Cairns, Martin Hinterberger, Aglae Pizzone, and Matteo Zaccarini. Emotions in A... more Edited by Douglas Cairns, Martin Hinterberger, Aglae Pizzone, and Matteo Zaccarini. Emotions in Antiquity. Mohr Siebeck, 2022.
Introduction: Byzantine Commentaries on Ancient Greek Texts
Byzantine Commentaries on Ancient Greek Texts, 12th-15th Centuries, 2022
This introduction sets forth the approach to Byzantine commentaries on ancient Greek texts taken ... more This introduction sets forth the approach to Byzantine commentaries on ancient Greek texts taken in this volume: it places the Komnenian and Palaiologan commentaries firmly within their intellectual and socio-cultural contexts and examines the process of commenting on ancient texts as a deliberate and culturally significant choice made by the commentators. We define commentary both in a narrow and a broad sense. In the narrowest sense, commentaries are concerned with explaining an ancient text and the knowledge related to it, often in a didactic context. Defined more broadly, commentaries include treatises on ancient literature and paraphrases of ancient authorities, which likewise demonstrate how these texts were read and taught. In the broadest sense, commentaries can be any literary texts that creatively engage with ancient texts and thus shed light on Byzantine attitudes towards their ancient heritage. The very practice of composing commentaries on ancient texts was a creative and targeted enterprise of identity building. The introduction discusses different kinds of Byzantine commentaries on ancient poetry and prose within the context of the study and teaching of grammar, rhetoric, philosophy and science, and introduces some of the key figures of the Komnenian and Palaiologan periods.
Figures and Mirrors in Demetrios Triklinios's 'Selenography'
Interfaces: A Journal of Medieval European Literatures, 2021
This article is available open access through the 'Interfaces' website. The link is provided. Alt... more This article is available open access through the 'Interfaces' website. The link is provided. Alternatively, you can find it through its DOI number.
This article is about the interplay between diagrammatic representation, the mediation of mirrors, and visual cognition. It centres on Demetrios Triklinios (fl. ca. 1308–25/30) and his treatise on lunar theory. The latter includes, first, a discussion of the lunar phases and of the Moon's position in relation to the Sun, and second, a narrative and a pictorial description of the lunar surface. Demetrios Triklinios's Selenography is little-known (though edited in 1967 by Wasserstein) and not available in translation into a modern scholarly language. Therefore, one of the main goals of the present article is to introduce its context and contents and to lay down the foundations for their detailed study at a later stage. When discussing the Selenography, I refer to a bricolage consisting of the two earliest versions of the work preserved in Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, graecus 482, ff. 92r–95v (third quarter of the fourteenth century) and Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, graecus 2381, ff. 78r–79v (last quarter of the fourteenth century). I survey the available evidence concerning the role of Demetrios Triklinios (the author), John Astrapas (?) (the grapheus or scribe-painter), and Neophytos Prodromenos and Anonymus (the scribes-editors) in the production of the two manuscript copies. Next, I discuss the diagrams included in the Selenography and their functioning in relation to Triklinios's theory concerning the Moon as a mirror reflecting the geography of the Earth, on the one hand, and to the mirror experiment described by Triklinios, on the other. Finally, I demonstrate how, even though the Selenography is a work on lunar astronomy, it can also be read as a discussion focusing on the Mediterranean world and aiming at elevating its centrality and importance on a cosmic scale.
(with Divna Manolova), Science Teaching and Learning Methods in Byzantium”, in S. Lazaris (ed.), A Companion to Byzantine Science and Medicine (4th-15th C.), Leiden: Brill, 2020, 53-104.
Table of contents
1. Introduction: Questions of (dis)continuity and the ‘why not’ question
2. The... more Table of contents
1. Introduction: Questions of (dis)continuity and the ‘why not’ question
2. The cursus studiorum
3. The educational context
4. Scientific books: The path of learning
5. Fragmenting knowledge
6. Outlining knowledge
7. Other pedagogical strategies
Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik, 2018
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Epistolography and Philosophy
A Companion to Byzantine Epistolography, 2020
The present contribution argues that the study of the interaction between philosophy and epistolo... more The present contribution argues that the study of the interaction between philosophy and epistolography in Byzantium faces a number of methodological challenges. First, the study of Byzantine philosophical literature, including philosophical epistolography, depends on one’s definition of philosophy in respect to its cultural, intellectual, social, and disciplinary context in Byzantium. Second, essential for the examination of philosophical epistolography in Byzantium is the critical assessment of the category of philosophical letter and its relevance to the Byzantine material. Finally, the author argues that one possible venue for examining philosophical epistolography in Byzantium is the discussion of literary friendship and theories of friendship as developed in friendship letters. To illustrate the theoretical approach it proposes, this contribution offers a case study of two letters written by Nikephoros Gregoras (d. c.1360).
Мануил Оловол, Максим Плануд и Боеций: Преводи на παιδεία в късната Византия
Sine arte scientia nihil est: Изследвания в чест на проф. дфн Олег Георгиев, 2019
The chapter is available open access, in Bulgarian, through Zenodo (https://zenodo.org/record/429... more The chapter is available open access, in Bulgarian, through Zenodo (https://zenodo.org/record/4298472#.YxW6uy0RqS4).
[Manuel Holobolos, Maximos Planudes, and Boethius: Translating παιδεία in Late Byzantium] In Sine arte scientia nihil est: Изследвания в чест на проф. дфн Олег Георгиев [Sine arte scientia nihil est: Festschrift for Prof. Oleg Georgiev], edited by Georgi Kapriev, 277–91. Sofia: St. Kliment Ohridski University Press, 2019.
Toward a Historical Sociolinguistic Poetics of Medieval Greek, edited by Andrea M. Cuomo and Erich Trapp. Byzantioς, Studies in Byzantine History and Civilization 12. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2017
Licence: CC BY–NC 4.0; Gold Open Access publication
New Europe College Yearbook 2014–2015, 2018
The present article inquires into the philosophical conceptions of spontaneity and chance, fate a... more The present article inquires into the philosophical conceptions of spontaneity and chance, fate and necessity, free will and divine providence employed by Nikephoros Gregoras (d. ca. 1360) in his historiographical project Historia Rhōmaïkē. Based on examples from Gregoras' letters, First Antirrhetics and his History, the author argues that Gregoras drew on Aristotle and Ptolemy for his views on chance and spontaneity, whereas with respect to historical agency and causality, he emphasized the role of the free individual will which he understood as independent from necessity and fate and reconciled with divine foreknowledge.
Nikephoros Gregoras’s "Philomathes" and "Phlorentios"
Dialogues and Debates from Late Antiquity to Late Byzantium, 2017
‘If It Looks Like a Letter, Reads Like a Letter, and Talks Like a Letter:’ The Case of Nikephoros Gregoras’ Letter-Collection
Medieval Letters. Between Fiction and Document, 2015
Homeric Quotations in Nikephoros Gregoras’ Correspondence: Patterns of Employment
MediterraneoS: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Cultures of the Mediterranean Sea, 2013
Една византийска дискусия относно приятелството в писмата на Никифор Григора. [A Byzantine discussion of friendship: The case of Nikephoros Gregoras’ letter-collection]
The present article reconstructs and analyzes two rhetorical strategies of constructing epistolar... more The present article reconstructs and analyzes two rhetorical strategies of constructing epistolary friendship through the employment of specialized philosophical vocabulary and discussion. Case in point are two late Byzantine letters penned by Nikephoros Gregoras (ca. 1292/1295–1358/1361), a prominent historian, astronomer and philosopher at the Palaiologan court. The first part of the inquiry discusses letter 134, addressed to Ignatios Glabas, metropolitan of Thessaloniki from 1336 to 1341. The second half of the article is dedicated to letter 34, addressed to Maximos Magistros, a monk and later an archimandrite of the Chortaïtes monastery. Both letters seem to be written around the same time, i.e. during the second half of the 1330s. Letter 134 employs Aristotle’s theory of friendship as found in books VIII and IX of Nicomachean Ethics, as well as in Rhetoric. Here, with a subversive maneuver, Gregoras defends the claim that even those not equal in fortune could still be joined by the bond of friendship. Letter 34 exemplifies the opposite strategy: it praises the friendship of those who are the same in nature, employing Plato’s cosmological discussion in the Timaeus, as well as the corresponding commentary by Plutarch. In conclusion, the article argues for the primacy of rhetorical function over philosophical discussion in the two epistolary strategies employed by Gregoras.
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Books by Divna Manolova
The introductory chapter focuses mainly on the modern vs Byzantine conceptions of science and to the semantic fields covered by this term, then and now, whereas the first two chapters analyse the Christianisation of pagan science and the beginnings of Byzantine science as well as its teaching during the Byzantine civilisation. Thereafter follow eleven chapters that cover the following fields: Logic, Arithmetic, Harmonic Theory, Geometry, Metrology, Optics and Mechanics, Theories of Vision, Meteorology and Physics, Astronomy, Geography, Zoology, Botany, Medicine and Pharmacology, Veterinary medicine, Science of warfare and Occult Sciences.
This volume, organized by topic, with essays by distinguished scholars offers the most comprehensive and up-to-date history of byzantine science currently available. It is an important editorial venture, aimed not only at specialists, including students of the history of Byzantine science, but the wider public, to all readers interested in medieval history in general.
Publications by Divna Manolova
ISBN 9780884024866
This article is about the interplay between diagrammatic representation, the mediation of mirrors, and visual cognition. It centres on Demetrios Triklinios (fl. ca. 1308–25/30) and his treatise on lunar theory. The latter includes, first, a discussion of the lunar phases and of the Moon's position in relation to the Sun, and second, a narrative and a pictorial description of the lunar surface. Demetrios Triklinios's Selenography is little-known (though edited in 1967 by Wasserstein) and not available in translation into a modern scholarly language. Therefore, one of the main goals of the present article is to introduce its context and contents and to lay down the foundations for their detailed study at a later stage. When discussing the Selenography, I refer to a bricolage consisting of the two earliest versions of the work preserved in Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, graecus 482, ff. 92r–95v (third quarter of the fourteenth century) and Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, graecus 2381, ff. 78r–79v (last quarter of the fourteenth century). I survey the available evidence concerning the role of Demetrios Triklinios (the author), John Astrapas (?) (the grapheus or scribe-painter), and Neophytos Prodromenos and Anonymus (the scribes-editors) in the production of the two manuscript copies. Next, I discuss the diagrams included in the Selenography and their functioning in relation to Triklinios's theory concerning the Moon as a mirror reflecting the geography of the Earth, on the one hand, and to the mirror experiment described by Triklinios, on the other. Finally, I demonstrate how, even though the Selenography is a work on lunar astronomy, it can also be read as a discussion focusing on the Mediterranean world and aiming at elevating its centrality and importance on a cosmic scale.
1. Introduction: Questions of (dis)continuity and the ‘why not’ question
2. The cursus studiorum
3. The educational context
4. Scientific books: The path of learning
5. Fragmenting knowledge
6. Outlining knowledge
7. Other pedagogical strategies
[Manuel Holobolos, Maximos Planudes, and Boethius: Translating παιδεία in Late Byzantium] In Sine arte scientia nihil est: Изследвания в чест на проф. дфн Олег Георгиев [Sine arte scientia nihil est: Festschrift for Prof. Oleg Georgiev], edited by Georgi Kapriev, 277–91. Sofia: St. Kliment Ohridski University Press, 2019.