Byzantine Grammatical Awareness in the Letters of Manuel Kalekas

The correspondence of Manuel Kalekas (c. 1360–1410), a distinguished intellectual and theologian of late Byzantium, is preserved primarily in his autograph manuscript at the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (Vat. gr. 1879, dik. 68508), with additional letters in Vat. gr. 486 (dik. 67117) and Vat. gr. 1093 (dik. 67724). This corpus provides an exceptional vantage point from which to explore the intellectual, linguistic, and cultural dynamics of late fourteenth-century Byzantium. Spanning his early years in the imperial capital, his voluntary exile in Pera, Crete, and Italy, and his final period on Lesbos, these letters reveal a complex interplay between language, education, and identity. This paper builds upon research conducted within the ERC project MELA—The MEaning of LAnguage at Ghent University (2023–2025). It examines the degree of grammatical awareness underlying Kalekas’ high-register prose and evaluates the relationship between grammatical theory and linguistic practice. The aim is to demonstrate that the evolution of Byzantine Greek often eluded the rigid frameworks of traditional grammatical instruction. When an author lacks an innate sensitivity to what is conventionally defined as high-register Greek, the apparent uniformity of a monolithic linguistic system—known chiefly from grammatical codices—proves to be a far more fluid and variable reality. Through selected case studies of Kalekas’ morphology and syntax, I will show how ancient grammatical norms were by turns absorbed, adapted, or imperfectly applied, thereby prompting a reconsideration of what ‘literary’ Greek truly signified in late Byzantium, and of the extent to which this notion rests both on modern interpretation and on the individual competence and stylistic sensitivity of each writer.