When the Corpus Hermogenianum, which had formed the backbone of rhetorical education in the Byzantine Empire, came to Europe in the wake of the migration of Byzantine intellectuals, it was an instant success, fueled by the demand of the new bourgeois classes for a practical component in education. Thirty years after the first printed edition by Aldo Manuzio (1508), Hermogenes became central in the pedagogy of Johannes Sturm and Melanchthon, while Aphthonius’ progymnasmata were the best-selling textbook of the Renaissance, later reaching Mexico and South America. The corpus however did not come alone. It was often interwoven with Byzantine pedagogical exegeses. Planudes’ commentary already circulated in France before and after the Aldine edition. An 11th-century copy of the Corpus, Basel Univ. Bibl. F.IV.19, glossed by George Baiophoros in the early 1400s, made its way to Basel, possibly to serve the needs of Latin students learning Greek. In 1571, Andreas Darmarios sold a copy of John Doxapatres’ commentary on On Invention to Antonio de Covarrubias. The Dutch scholar Gerhard Johan Vossius (1577-1649) read his Hermogenes together with John Tzetzes’ commentary. And Antonio Bonfini’s first complete translation of Hermogenes into Latin was offered as a response to George of Trebizond’s take on Hermogenean theory. After discussing progress made in recovering and editing Byzantine commentaries on Hermogenes, this session will explore the notion of “deep receptions,” challenging current historiographies about the transfer of knowledge between East and West. It will thus map an interconnected transnational trajectory, showing how Byzantine material on Hermogenes contributed ideas and theories to the creation of a new European intellectual framework.
This paper addresses the question of how Byzantine rhetoricians perceived their own projects of commenting on Hermogenes and teaching rhetoric by concentrating on the rich tradition of prolegomena, both on rhetoric in general and on the individual Hermogenean treatises more particularly. Various teachers and scholars from Late Antiquity to the end of the Byzantine Empire…
Within the canon of Byzantine commentators on Hermogenes, John of Sardis maintains a notable presence as one of the earliest Hermogenian scholars active during the transitional period between the great authorities of late antiquity and the burgeoning wave of rhetorical scholarship from the late tenth to the twelfth century, exemplified by the commentaries of Geometres,…
Sometimes quantity has a quality all its own. Such is the case with the extensive and unedited commentary on Hermogenes’ On Issues by John Doxapatres (11th century), which this paper contextualizes against the Byzantine exegetical tradition both before and afterwards. Drawing from my work preparing a first edition of the text, I highlight Doxapatres’ contributions…
This paper examines the engagement with Hermogenes by Stephanos Skylitzes, a 12th-century commentator on Aristotle’s Rhetoric and teacher at the Patriarchal School of Constantinople, whose work appears closely tied to his didactic practice. While Stephanos’ interests are particularly directed towards the logical and argumentative dimension of rhetoric—and he never loses sight of Aristotle’s text—he nonetheless…
Often dismissed by modern scholarship as “the most derivative and least satisfactory commentary” on the Corpus Hermogenianum, Maximos Planoudes’ exegesis deserves to be re-evaluated as a deliberate interpretation of the earlier rhetorical tradition. Far from a passive compilation, it offers a revealing snapshot of what was considered essential in the study of rhetoric in late…
Antonio Bonfini (1427–1502) was an Italian humanist active at the court of the Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus, where he taught rhetoric among other subjects. Besides his most popular work, a History of Hungary (1495), he was also famous as a translator of Greek rhetorical texts, among them Philostratus and Hermogenes. His translation of the Corpus…
While the importance of Hermogenes in Renaissance rhetoric has been hardly underestimated, the question of the role played by the mediation of the Byzantine reflections on the corpus has been overlooked. And yet the Aldine edition that brought to the Western public Hermogenes of Tarsus was complete with the “super-commentary” compiled by Maximos Planudes, consolidating…