Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 6.djvu/524

 GEORGE

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GEORGE

As usually in the case of such medieval chronicles, the only part to be taken seriously is the account of more or less contemporary events. The rest is interesting as an example of Byzantine ideas on the subjects, and of the questions that most interested Byzantine monks. George describes his ideal and principles in the preface. He has used ancient and modern sources (all Greek, of course), has especially consulted edifying works, and has striven to tell the truth rather than to please the reader by artistic writing. But of so great a mass of material he has chosen only what is most useful and necessary. In effect, the questions that seemed most useful and necessary to ecclesiastical persons at (Con- stantinople in the ninth century are those that are discussed. There are copious pious reflections and theological excursuses. He writes of how idols were invented, the origin of monks, the religion of the Saracens, and especially of the Iconoclast controversy that was just over. Like all monks he hates Icono- clasts. The violence with which he speaks of them shows how recent the storm had been and how the memory of Iconoclast persecutions was still fresh when he wrote. He writes out long extracts from Greek Fathers. The first book treats of an astonishingly miscellaneous collection of persons — Adam, Nimrod, the Persians, Chaldees, Brahmins, Amazons, etc. In the second book, too, although it professes to deal with Bible history only, he has much to say about Plato and philosophers in general. George Hamartolus ended his chronicle with the year 842, as a colophon in most manuscripts attests. Various people, among them notably "Symeon Logothetes", who is probably Symeon Metaphrastes, the famous writer of saints' lives (tenth century, see Krumbacher, 358), continued his history to later dates — the longest continuation reaches to 948. In spite of his crude ideas and the violent hatred of Iconoclasts that makes him always unjust towards them, his work has considerable value for the history of the last years before the schism of Photius. It was soon translated into Slav languages (Bulgarian and Servian) and into Georgian. In these versions it became a sort of fountain-head for all early Slav (even Russian) historians. As a very popular and widely consulted book it has been constantly re- edited, corrected, and rearranged by anonymous scribes, .so that the reconstruction of the original work is "one of the most difficult problems of Byzantine philology" (Krumbacher, 355).

Combefis first published the last part of Book IV of the chronicle and the continuation (813-948) under the title, Bioi run viw HaaiKiav, in the " Maxima biblio- theca (Scriptores post Theophanem)" (Paris, 1685; reprinted, Venice, 1729). The first edition of the whole work was edited by E. de Muralt: "Georgii monachi, dicti Hamartoli, Chronicon ab orbe condito ad annum p. chr. 842 et a diversis scriptoribus usq. ad ann. 1 143 continuatum ' ' (St. Petersburg, 1859). This is the edition reprinted in Migne, P. G., CX, with a Latin translation. It does not represent the original text, but one of the many modified versions (from a Moscow twelfth-century MS.), and is in many ways deficient and misleading (see Krumbacher's criticism in "Byz. Litt.", p. 357). A critical edition is still wanted.

NoLTE, Ein Exzerpt aus dem zum grossten Teil nock tingedruck- ten Chronicon den Georgios Hamartolos in Tuhinger Quarlal- schrift (1862), 464-68; de Boor, Zur Kmntnis der Wdtchronik des Georgios Monachos in Hi^torische Vntersuchungen, Arnold Schafer. . . gewidmet (Bonn, 1882), 276-95; Hirbch, Byzan- linische Sludien (Gottingen, 1876), 1-88; Laocheht, Zxir Textuherlieferung der Chronik des Georgios Monachos in Byz. Zeilschrift (Munich, 1895), 493-51.3; Krumbacher, Byzan- linische Lilteralur (2nd ed., Munich, 1897), 352-358, with further bibliography.

Adrian Fortescue.

George of Laodicea. See Semi-Arians.

George of Trebizond, a Greek scholar of the early Italian Renaissance; l>. in ('rcte (a Venetian posses- sion from 120r)-l09), 1395; d. in Rome, 148G, He

assumed the name " of Trebizond " because his family came from there. He was one of the foremost of the Greeks to arrive in Italy (c. 1420) before the fall of Constantinople. Vittorino da Feltre (1378-1446) taught him Latin, and in return he taught Greek in the famous school at Mantua. After teaching for a time at Venice and Florence he came to Rome, and when Eugenius IV (1431-47) restored the University of Rome (1431), one of its most important professor- ships was assigned to George of Trebizond, who had acquired the highest repute as a master of Latin style. By Nicholas V (1447-1455) he was much sought after as a translator of Greek works — such as the"Syn- taxis" of Ptolemy and the "Pra>paratio Evangelica" of Eusebius. His incompetence, arrogance, and quar- relsomeness led to difficulties with Bessarion, Theo- dore Gaza, Perrotti and Poggio, and he was obliged to leave Rome, and take refuge with Alfonso, King of Naples. Under the pontificate of his former pupil, Paul II (1464-1471), he returned to Rome and was appointed a papal abbreviator, but became involved in fresh quarrels; in 1465 he visited Crete and Byzan- tium, and then returned to Rome, where he wrote the account of the martyrdom of Bl. Andrew of Chios (Acta SS., 29 May). He died resenting' the obscurity into which he had fallen, and was buried in the Min- erva. "George of Trebizond is the most unpleasing of the Greeks of that day. Conceited, boastful and spiteful, he was universally hated" (Pastor, II, 202, note). He sided with the partisans of Aristotle in the controversy raised by Georgios Gemisthos Pleithon (1356-1450). His onslaught on Plato lost him the friendship of Bessarion and led to the latter writing (1464) his great work, "In calumniatorem Platonis", in the fifth book of which he points out 259 mistakes in Trebizond 's translation of the " Laws" of Plato. His numerous translations included the "Rhetoric" and "Problems" of Aristotle, and St. Cyril's "Commen- tary on St. John", but, as Pastor notes, they are al- most worthless (II, 198, note). A list of some forty- six works will be found in Migne, P. G., CLXI, 745-908. Jovius, Elogia doctorutn Virorum (Basle, 1556); Hody, De GrtEcis iltustribus Ungate Grmcm litlerarumque humanarum in- stauraforibus, eorum vitis scriptis el elogiis libri duo; ed. S. Jebb (London, 1742), 102-135; Boemer, De doctis hominibus Lilter- arum GrtEcarum in llalia Inslauratoribus (Leipzig, 1750), 105— 120; Shepherd, Life of Poggio Bracciolini (Liverpool, 1802); VolGHT, Die Wiederbelebung des classischen Allerlhums, oderdas erste Jahrhundert des Humanismus (3rd ed., Berlin), II, 45, 137-143; Pastor, The History of the Popes (Eng. tr.. Lon- don, 1891), II; Woodward, Villorino da Feltre and other Hu- manist Educators (Cambridge, 1897); Gregorovius, Hist, of the City of Rome in the Middle Age-i, Eng. tr., VII, part II (Lon- don, 1900); Sandys, A History of Classical Scholarship, II (Cam- bridge, 190S).

Edward Myers.

George Pisides (or the Pisidian), a Byzantine poet, lived in the first half of the seventh century. From his poems we learn he was a Pisidian by birth, and a friend of the Patriarch Sergius and the Emperor Heraclius, who reigned from 610 to 641. He is said to have been a deacon at St. Sophia's, Constantinople, where he filled the posts of archivist, guardian of the sacred vessels, and referendary. He evidently accom- panied Heraclius in the war against the Persians (622), in which campaign the true Cross, which the enemy had captured some years before at Jerusalem, was recovered. His works have been published in the original Greek with a Latin version and are to be found in P. G., XCII, 1160-1754.

About five thousand verses of his poetry, most in trimetric iambics, have comedown to us. Some of the poems treat of theology and morals, the others being a chronicle of the wars of his day. They are: (1) " De expeditione Heraclii imperatoris contra Persas, libri tres", — an account of the Persian war, which shows him to have been an eyewitness of it; (2) "Bellum Avaric\im", <lescriptive of the defeat of tlie Avars — a Turkish horde, that attacked Constantinople in 626,