Byzantine Literature in the Ottoman Empire (ca. 1450–1650)

From the mid-fifteenth to the mid-seventeenth century, the interest of educated Western Europeans in Byzantine literature was stimulated by a widening knowledge of Classical Greek and by the rise of printing. These two factors operated in Greece itself to a very limited degree. Parts of the country, such as Crete, that were under Italian rule, played host to vernacular Greek texts, some of which had been composed already before 1453 (and thus belong to the byzantinische Volksliteratur). By the first decades of the sixteenth century, isolated copies of such vernacular texts made their way into Ottoman Greece, too. There, especially in Constantinople, the old, pre-1453 patterns of patronage and education lived on thanks to a few wealthy Christians and a few well-read schoolteachers. Some of the latter were also active as scribes. Certain works of the hochsprachliche profane Literatur der Byzantiner which they chose to copy (Manasses’ History, Pseudo-Codinus’ Treatise on Offices, Blemmydes’ two Epitomes, etc.) seem to match the specific preferences of Greek readers in the Ottoman Empire.