From Greece to Ca’ Foscari to study ancient thomist manuscripts

Thanks to a Marie Curie Global Fellowship with the Department of Humanities, Panagiotis Athanasopoulos has just arrived in Venice to analyze manuscripts kept at the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana. During a two-year study, he will analyze unexplored texts that are fundamental to understanding the influences of Latin in the greek world of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, during the formation of the new "Hellenic” identity.

As a classically trained Greek researcher,  Athanasopoulos specializes in Greek and Byzantine studies in philosophy and philology. Since 2013 he has worked on the international project "Thomas de Aquino Byzantinus" which retraces the footsteps of the ancient Byzantine scholars of the Thomistic school, searching for elements that link the Eastern world to the West, digging into the roots of two cultures that have always been closely related throughout history.

The Ca’ Foscari study is titled TASTGCEP: "Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae Ia IIae, translated by Demetrius Cydones, and Bessarion's incomplete translation of the Compendium. A Critical Edition". The aim is to produce a critical edition, of 900 pages, of the Greek translation of the Summa Theologica Ia IIae of Thomas Aquinas and its partial compendium by Cardinal Bessarion. The project will focus on research on the relationship between theology and Catholic and Orthodox intellectual traditions, in particular recostructing the influence of scholastic moral philosophy in the Byzantine world. The philosophical and theological exchanges between the Greek and Latin scholars of the time are hence highlighted in a period of intense intellectual creativity. This study is part of the macro project of Byzantine studies conducted in collaboration with the Royal Holloway University of London and the University of Patras, Greece, now the subject of meetings in Ferrara, Florence and Venice.

Why focus on the figure of Thomas Aquinas to rebuild the roots of the hellenic identity? "Recent studies are bringing to light the influence of the scholastic in the works of late- and post-Byzantine  intellectuals and of the syncretism emerging between Thomism and Orthodox theology" explains Athanasopoulos. "Right in the fourteenth century, in fact, a strong Dominican presence in ecclesiastical and Byzantine religious circles allowed a remarkable expansion of the texts of Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), one of the most eminent figures of the Dominican order. The dissemination was thanks to translations in greek, with which Demetrio Cidone (1324-1398 cc) worked assiduously, which allowed him to build the foundations of humanism and greek Aristotelism, almost a counterpart of the rediscovery of Greek philosophy in the Western world, itself influenced by Arabic translations of Greek texts. As you see, these cultures developed with particular characteristics over the centuries have always been close. Understanding the history of this relationship can help us better understand not only the history of ideas, but also our identity and our role in a united Europe.”

The considerable lack of editions of Thomas Aquinas greek texts has made it difficult until now to draw out the moral philosophy of the late Byzantine era. The systematic analysis of the Summa Theologica, in which important themes of moral philosophy develop, will identify in its Greek translation, still unpublished, the precise steps taken in the late Byzantine texts and the same modus operandi of one of its major Greek translators, Demetrio Cidone. Along with the critical edition, part of the project will be a printed edition of the incomplete Compendium of Cardinal Bessarion translated by Cidone with critical apparatus and sources: important pieces in the larger framework of philological, paleographic, historical and philosophical research in the history of ideas. At the end of two years of research the critical edition will be published in the 'Corpus Christianorum - Graeca' (Brepols) Series.