Maximus Planudes

{{Short description|Byzantine scholar (c. 1260 – c. 1305)}} {{Infobox officeholder | honorific_prefix = | name = Maximus Planudes | honorific_suffix = | image = | alt = | order =  | ambassador_from = Byzantine Empire | country = Republic of Venice | term_start = 1295 | term_end = 1296 | predecessor =  | successor =  | president =  | pronunciation = | birth_name = | birth_date = 1260 | birth_place = Nicomedia, Bithynia<br />(modern-day İzmit, Kocaeli, Turkey) | death_date = 1305 | death_place = Constantinople, Byzantine Empire<br />(modern-day Istanbul, Turkey) | death_cause = | resting_place = | resting_place_coordinates = | citizenship = Byzantine Empire | party = | other_party =  | height =  | spouse = | partner =  | relations = | children = | parents =  | mother =  | father =  | relatives = | education = | alma_mater = | occupation = Monk, scholar, anthologist, translator, mathematician, grammarian and theologian | profession = Ambassador | known_for = | salary = | net_worth =  | cabinet = | committees = | portfolio = | awards =  | blank1 = | data1 = | blank2 = | data2 = | blank3 = | data3 = | blank4 = | data4 = | blank5 = | data5 = | signature = | signature_alt = | website =  | nickname = | allegiance = | branch = | service_years = | rank = | unit = | commands = | battles = | mawards =  | footnotes = }}

'''Maximus Planudes''' ({{langx|grc|Μάξιμος Πλανούδης}}, ''Máximos Planoúdēs''; {{circa|lk=no|1260|1305}}{{sfn|Fisher|1991}}{{efn|Older sources give 1330; the transliteration varies; the ''Oxford Classical Dictionary'' (2009) uses ''Planudes''.{{sfn|Douglas|Cameron|2009}}}}) was a Byzantine Greek monk, scholar, anthologist, translator, mathematician, grammarian and theologian at Constantinople. Through his translations from Latin into Greek and from Greek into Latin, he brought the Greek East and the Latin West into closer contact with one another. He is now best known as a compiler of the ''Greek Anthology''.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.britannica.com/biography/Maximus-Planudes|title= Maximus Planudes (Byzantine scholar and theologian)|publisher= Britannica Encyclopedia|date= 21 July 1998|accessdate=13 March 2017}}</ref>

==Biography== Maximus Planudes lived during the reigns of the Byzantine emperors Michael VIII and Andronikos II. He was born at Nicomedia in Bithynia in 1260, but the greater part of his life was spent in Constantinople, where as a monk he devoted himself to study and teaching. On entering the monastery he changed his original name Manuel to Maximus.

Planudes possessed a knowledge of Latin remarkable at a time when Rome and Italy were regarded with some hostility by the Greeks of the Byzantine Empire. To this accomplishment he probably owed his selection as one of the ambassadors sent by emperor Andronikos II in 1295–96 to remonstrate with the Venetians for their attack upon the Genoese settlement in Galata near Constantinople. A more important result was that Planudes, especially by his translations, paved the way for the revival of the study of Greek language and literature in western Europe.

[[File:Add 19391 19-20.png|thumb|right|The early-14th century map of the British Isles from the Codex Vatopedinus 655,<ref>British Library. [http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_19391 {{abbr{{!}}Add.{{!}}British Museum Additional}} MS 19391], f 19v-20.</ref> sometimes associated with Planudes.]] He was the author of numerous works, including: a Greek grammar in the form of question and answer, like the ''Erotemata'' of Manuel Moschopulus, with an appendix on the so-called "Political verse"; a treatise on syntax; a biography of Aesop and a prose version of the fables; ''scholia'' on certain Greek authors; two hexameter poems, one a eulogy of Claudius Ptolemaeus— whose ''Geography'' was rediscovered by Planudes,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Dean |first=Riaz |title=The Stone Tower: Ptolemy, the Silk Road, and a 2,000-Year-Old Riddle |publisher=Penguin Viking |year=2022 |isbn=978-0670093625 |location=Delhi |pages=146 |language=English}}</ref> who translated it into Latin— the other an account of the sudden change of an ox into a mouse; a treatise on the method of calculating in use amongst the Indians;<ref>Kai Brodersen, Christiane Brodersen: ''Planudes, Rechenbuch'', griechisch und deutsch. Berlin 2020 (= ''Sammlung Tusculum''). {{ISBN|978-3-11-071192-9}}, superseding the incomplete edition of C. J. Gerhardt, Halle, 1865.</ref> and ''scholia'' to the first two books of the ''Arithmetic'' of Diophantus.

His numerous translations from the Latin included Cicero's ''Somnium Scipionis'' with the commentary of Macrobius; Ovid's ''Heroides'' and ''Metamorphoses''; Boethius' ''De consolatione philosophiae''; and Augustine's ''De trinitate''. Traditionally, a translation of Julius Caesar's ''De Bello Gallico'' has been attributed to Planudes, but this is a much repeated mistake.<ref name=Daly>{{cite journal|last1=Daly|first1=L.W.|title=The Greek Version of Caesar's Gallic War|journal=Transactions of the American Philological Association|date=1946|volume=77|pages=78–82|doi=10.2307/283446 |jstor=283446 }}</ref><ref name=Heller>{{cite journal|last1=Heller|first1=H.|title=De graeco metaphraste commentariorum Caesaris|journal=Philologus|date=1857|volume=12|issue=1–4 |pages=107–149|doi=10.1524/phil.1857.12.14.107 }}</ref> These translations were not only useful to Greek speakers but were also widely used in western Europe as textbooks for the study of Greek.

It is, however, for his edition of the ''Greek Anthology'' that he is best known. This edition, the Anthology of Planudes or Planudean Anthology, is shorter than the Heidelberg text (the Palatine Anthology), and largely overlaps it, but contains 380 epigrams not present in it, normally published with the others, either as a sixteenth book or as an appendix.{{sfn|Douglas|Cameron|2009}}

J. W. Mackail in his book ''Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology'', has this to add of him:<ref>[https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2378 ''Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology''] by J. W. Mackail</ref>

:Among his works were translations into Greek of Augustine's ''City of God'' and Caesar's ''Gallic War''{{sic}}. The restored Greek Empire of the Palaeologi was then fast dropping to pieces. The Genoese colony of Pera usurped the trade of Constantinople and acted as an independent state; and it brings us very near the modern world to remember that Planudes was the contemporary of Petrarch.

He is recorded as one of the first people to use the word "million".<ref name="Smith"> {{Cite book |last= Smith |first= David Eugene |authorlink= David Eugene Smith |title= History of Mathematics |publisher= Courier Dover Publications |volume= II |orig-year= first published 1925 |date= 1953 |pages= 81 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=uTytJGnTf1kC&pg=PA81 |isbn= 978-0-486-20430-7 }}</ref>

== Geography (Ptolemy) == According to Berggren & Jones (2000)<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Ptolemy |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hug9DwAAQBAJ |title=Ptolemy's Geography: An Annotated Translation of the Theoretical Chapters |last2=Berggren |first2=J. Lennart |last3=Jones |first3=Alexander |date=2002-01-15 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-0-691-09259-1 |language=en}}</ref> and Mittenhuber (2010)<ref>{{Citation |last=Mittenhuber |first=Florian |title=The Tradition of Texts and Maps in Ptolemy's Geography |date=2010 |work=Ptolemy in Perspective: Use and Criticism of his Work from Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century |series=Archimedes |volume=23 |pages=95–119 |editor-last=Jones |editor-first=Alexander |url=https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2788-7_4 |access-date=2024-07-25 |place=Dordrecht |publisher=Springer Netherlands |language=en |doi=10.1007/978-90-481-2788-7_4 |isbn=978-90-481-2788-7|url-access=subscription }}</ref> many of the extant manuscripts of Ptolemy's Geography can be connected with the activities of Planudes. Within the stemma, manuscript groups UKFN and RVWC both descend from a recension by Planudes; only manuscript X ('''[https://digi.vatlib.it/mss/detail/Vat.gr.191 Vat.gr.191]''') is independent.

Regarding Planudes' work in rediscovering the Geography, an hexameter poem survives titled: "του σοφωτάτου κυρου Μαξίμου μονάχου του Πλανούδου στίχοι ηρωικοί εις τήν Γεωγραφίαν Πτολεμαίου χρόνοις πολλοίς άφανισθεισαν, είτα δέ παρ' αύτοΰ πόνοις πολλοίς εύρεθεΐσαν."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Stückelberger |first=Alfred |date=1996 |title=Planudes und die "Geographia" des Ptolemaios |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/24818270 |journal=Museum Helveticum |volume=53 |issue=2 |pages=197–205 |jstor=24818270 |issn=0027-4054}}</ref> which can be translated as "Heroic verses by the most wise monk Maximos Planudes on the Geography of Ptolemy, which had vanished for many years and then had been discovered by him through many toils."<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Ptolemy |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hug9DwAAQBAJ |title=Ptolemy's Geography: An Annotated Translation of the Theoretical Chapters |last2=Berggren |first2=J. Lennart |last3=Jones |first3=Alexander |date=2002-01-15 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-0-691-09259-1 |page=49 |language=en}}</ref> The summary of the poem by Berggen & Jones (2010) is as follows:<blockquote>"What a great wonder, the way that Ptolemy has brought the whole world into view, just like someone making a map showing just a little city. I never saw anything so skillful, colorful, and elegant as this lovely geographia. This work lay hidden for countless years and found no one to bring it to light. But the emperor Andronikos exhorted the bishop of Alexandria, who took great troubles that a certain free-spirited friend of the Byzantines should restore a likeness of the picture worthy of a king."</blockquote>

==Notes== {{notelist}}

==References== {{reflist}}

==Sources== * {{EB1911|wstitle = Planudes, Maximus|volume=21 }} * Editions include: Fabricius, ''Bibliotheca graeca'', ed. Harles, xi. 682; theological writings in Migne, ''Patrologia Graeca'', cxlvii; correspondence, ed. M Treu (1890), with a valuable commentary * {{cite book |last1=Douglas |first1=A. |last2=Cameron |first2=E. |contribution=Anthology |title=The Oxford Classical Dictionary |editor1=S. Hornblower |name-list-style=& |editor2=A. Spawforth |year=2009 |publisher=Oxford University Press}} (Also Oxford Reference Online.) * {{cite book |last=Fisher |first=E. A. |contribution=Planoudes, Maximos |title=The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium |editor=A. P. Kazhdan |year=1991 |publisher=Oxford University press}} (Also Oxford Reference Online.) * P. L. M. Leone (ed.), ''Maximi Planudis epistolae'', Amsterdam (1991). * K. Krumbacher, ''Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur'' (1897) * J. E. Sandys, ''History of Classical Scholarship'' (1906), vol. i

==External links== * {{wikisourcelang-inline|el|Ανθολογία του Πλανούδη|Ἀνθολογία διαφόρων ἐπιγραμμάτων}} * {{usurped|1=[https://archive.today/20121210085201/http://www.ancientlibrary.com/smith-bio/2718.html Planudes]}} from Charles Smith's ''Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology'' (1867), v. 3, pp. 384–390 * [http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext00/7efgm10.txt ''Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology''] by J. W. Mackail (Project Gutenberg) * {{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20051026150823/http://www.ancientlibrary.com/greek-anthology/ The Greek Anthology]}}, books 1–6, translated by W. R. Paton, with facing Greek text (Loeb Classical Library, 1916)

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Planudes, Maximus}} Category:1260s births Category:1330 deaths Category:14th-century Byzantine writers Category:Grammarians from the Byzantine Empire Category:Byzantine writers Category:Byzantine theologians Category:Latin–Greek translators Category:Greek–Latin translators Category:Greek Renaissance humanists Category:Greek Christian monks Category:13th-century Byzantine writers Category:14th-century Eastern Orthodox theologians Category:13th-century Eastern Orthodox theologians Category:13th-century translators Category:People from the Black Sea Region Category:Ambassadors of the Byzantine Empire to the Republic of Venice Category:13th-century Greek scientists Category:13th-century Greek educators Category:14th-century Greek scientists Category:14th-century Greek educators Category:13th-century Greek mathematicians Category:14th-century Greek mathematicians Category:13th-century Greek astronomers Category:14th-century Greek astronomers Category:People from İzmit