Byzantine Military Treatises in Early Modern Europe: Production and Dissemination of the Manuscripts

The fall of Byzantium and the subsequent westward expansion of the Ottoman state caused a steady flow of Greek migration to the West, where Greeks soon established communities. At the same time, the revival of interest in the classical heritage, namely the Renaissance, created opportunities for those Greeks who possessed calligraphic skills and knowledge of classical Greek and Byzantine literature. Using their social networks and cultural capital, some of these emigrants turned to book production and trade, creating and satisfying the demand for Greek manuscripts. In the face of the Ottoman advance and amid religious turmoil caused by reform and counter-reform movements, certain Byzantine texts gained popularity among the elites of Western Europe -the clergy, diplomats, and warlords- who sought to benefit from the abundant knowledge contained in the texts copied by Greek scribes. The focus of this paper is on the transmission, dissemination, reception, and use of Byzantine military treatises copied between 1450 and 1600, with an emphasis on texts copied in the West in the sixteenth century. Two main groups of people are studied: first, those who produced and supplied such texts, namely scribes, printers, book collectors, or book merchants; and second, various Western political and military figures who needed such knowledge in their struggle against their adversaries. The paper aims to contextualize and explain the surge of copying activity around Byzantine military treatises in early modern Europe in relation to the internal and external dynamics of each group or individual in question, thereby exploring the early modern reception of a particular aspect of the Byzantine culture.