Manuel Philes

The article deals with the problems of genre definition in the work of Manuel Philes. Previous scholarship has claimed the existence of a genre of ‘begging poems’. I argue that poems connected with pleas cannot be regarded as one genre. Instead, most such texts are verse letters, as can be demonstrated from internal textual evidence. Such evidence includes the address of living individuals, the vocabulary of writing and sending, formal elements of letters and various motifs and functions associated with epistolography. The literary mode of pleading, which occurs frequently in verse letters, but also in other genres such as epibateria and propemptika, should be distinguished from the hitherto completely neglected genre of epistolary poetry. In general, one should avoid the term ‘begging’. Its pejorative connotations fail to do justice both to the literary quality of the poems, and to the literary games in them that subvert the status of both the sender and the addressee. Philes often deals with the problem of reciprocation and asserts the legitimate character of his claims. Although connected to pragmatic aims, there are manifold ways of constructing pleas literarily. Typical themes and motifs are the suffering ‘I’, the topos of the begging intellectual and the pleas for a cloak, which are used creatively in various contexts. Both the genre of verse letters and the literary mode of pleading have many facets in Philes’ poetry, showing the versatility of the author and his ability to use his texts for his own purposes.

This article presents the critical edition of eight hitherto unpublished poems by Manuel Philes together with a translation and a commentary. The poems are verse letters addressed to various high-ranking individuals. Poem 1 is addressed to the emperor, whose power is emphasised in a request to help Philes escape from his misery. Poem 2 is a fragment likewise addressed to the emperor. Poem 3 is a consolatory poem for a father whose son has died. In poem 4, Philes addresses a patron whose wife hurried to Constantinople after she had become the object of hostility of unknown people. Poem 5 is addressed to the month of August and deals with the return of a benefactor of Philes to Constantinople. In poem 6, Philes writes on behalf of an unnamed banker and asks the megas dioiketes Kabasilas to judge the latter justly. Poems 7 and 8 are tetrasticha
including a request for wine.

Hochsprachliche rhetorische Texte waren ein wichtiges Mittel der sozialen Positionierung in Byzanz. Von besonderer Bedeutung war dabei die enkomiastische, d. h. lobende Dichtung. Das Buch widmet sich den enkomiastischen Gedichten des wichtigsten Dichters der Palaiologenzeit, Manuel Philes (ca. 1270 – nach 1332), dessen Werk trotz seiner Bedeutung weitestgehend unerforscht ist. Die Arbeit bietet eine Untersuchung von etwa 17.000 Versen, d.h. etwa 2/3 des von Philes überlieferten Werkes, und verbindet eine philologische mit einer kulturwissenschaftlichen Analyse. Zunächst stehen literarische Fragen, insbesondere die Gattung, Motivik und Formelemente im Zentrum. Darauf aufbauend werden die literarischen und sozialen Funktionen der Gedichte modellhaft erläutert. Schließlich werden die Umstände der Produktion und Rezeption untersucht, insbesondere die Motivationen für das Verfassen von Gedichten, die Darbringung der Texte in schriftlicher und mündlicher Form sowie Fragen der Rekontextualisierung. Diese Monographie bietet die erste komplexe Analyse von Manuel Philes’ Werk und gewährt tiefe Einblicke in das literarische und soziale Leben in Konstantinopel.

Manuel Philes’ œuvre contains a large number of hitherto neglected verse letters. Many of these have been treated as “begging poems.” This term, however, is not suitable as a genre name nor does it suffice to describe Philes’ epistolary poetry. In order to come to a better understanding of these texts, this essay offers a comparison with the prose letters of Philes’ contemporary Theodore Hyrtakenos. Hyrtakenos’ and Philes’ letters have several topics and addressees in common. Moreover, they both belonged to the same social class: educated men with strong connections to the wealthy elite to which they themselves did not belong. This comparison raises questions such as: Is there a crucial difference between prose and verse? Which textual features must be understood as individual characteristics of the authors and which are genre conventions? What are the (literary, social, pragmatic) functions of these letters?

This paper aims to provide a preliminary insight into the reception of the Psalms from the point of view of two Greek paraphrases. The first text I take into account is the so-called Metaphrasis Psalmorum, written in dactylic hexametres and dating to the fifth century. This text is anonymous, although traditionally attributed to Apollinaris of Laodicea (IV century). The latter is a rewriting of the Psalms in political verses (decapentasyllables) carried out by a well-known Byzantine poet, Manuel Philes (XIII-XIV century). A comparative analysis of the above-mentioned paraphrases can shed light on the appreciation of the Psalms in two different historical contexts. These two texts, whose investigation still lacks some philological work, share remarkable affinities, as they are both versified rewritings of the same literary source and they are both faithful to the original text. However, some major dissimilarities cannot be overlooked. On the one hand, the hexametric metaphrasis conveys some typical elements of late antique Christian poetry. It contributes to the establishment of a highbrow poetry with Christian content, which can benefit from the use of the Homeric metre and the Homeric language. On the other hand, Manuel Philes' Metaphrasis of the Psalms is situated in Later Byzantium and is grounded in a well-established, thousand-year old tradition of Christian poetry. Moreover, it is connected with the characteristic Byzantine taste for (prose) rewritings. The texts resulting from the process of rewriting are profoundly influenced by the cultural role that they perform in their own historical context. The author of the Homeric Psalter strives to reshape the Psalms by means of an unmistakably epic language. Conversely, Manuel Philes is more cautious when dealing with the biblical text. He adopts the political verse as the main poetic mark of his paraphrase and slightly alters the source text, following the path of Byzantine rhetoricians and hagiographers.

In recent years, scholarship has turned its attention to the historical setting, the Sitz im Leben, of Byzantine poetry. In this context, the most prolific poet of the early 14th century, Manuel Philes, was taken into account. However, due to the vast number of texts transmitted under his name (more than 30,000 verses in more than 150 manuscripts!) no attempt has been made to look at the full picture of how his poetry was read. Without aiming at a complete evaluation, I shall offer an overview of the ways of reception. Philes’ poems were read in a variety of different contexts: from private readings of verse letters over performed enkomia to epigrams inscribed on public buildings. The form of reception also altered the way of how Philes was perceived as an author: from self-conscious reflections of an authorial ‘I’ in letters to the total absence of the author in inscriptions. The example of Manuel Philes shows the wide presence of poetry (and literature in general) in Late Byzantine society.

According to a number of epigrams by Manuel Philes, four women personifying the cardinal virtues Prudence, Fortitude, Justice and Temperance were painted on one of the inner walls of the Blachernai palace of Andronikos II (r. 1282-1328). Together they expressed the emperor’s character and good rulership. Until now, it has been assumed that the image of four cardinal virtues does not appear elsewhere in Byzantine art and that the painting for the Blachernai palace was executed by an artist who was well acquainted with the Western iconographical tradition (Katzenellenbogen, 1939 repr. 1964; Mango, 1972 repr. 1986).
Based on both written and visual evidence, my paper demonstrates that this iconography has predecessors in the imperial art of the twelfth century. I propose that the origin of the painting in the Blachernai palace should be sought in Komnenian Byzantium rather than in the West.