Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/362

Rh 848 HARMENQPULUS. Notit. Basil, p. 16, n. (a)), Heimbach {de Basil. Orig. p. 113, 132-7), Zachariae {Hist. Jur. Gr. Rom. Delin. § 49). On the other hand, Ch.Waecht- ler is censured by his editor Trotz {Pracf. ad Waechtleri Opusc. p. 75) for still adhering, like Cave and Bayle, to the ancient belief. The general reception of the more modem opinion, which places Harmenopulus in the middle of the fourteenth century, has been favoured by a circumstantial narrative of his life, resting upon an authority which has deceived many recent writers, but is now known to be utterly unworthy of credit. Nic. Comnenus Papadopoli, in his Praenotiones Mystacfogicae, published in 1696, gives a biography of Harmenopulus, the materials of which he pro- fesses (p, 1 43) to have derived from the Paralipo- vtena of G. Coressius, and Maximus Planudes upon the Nomocanon of Photius. (Fabric. Bibl. Gr. vol. xi. p. 260.) The questionable narrative of Nic. Comnenus, which is the source of the modern biographies, is to the following effect. Harmenopulus was born at Constantinople about A. D. 1320, nearly sixty years after Constantinople had been recovered from the Latins. His father held the office of Caropalates, and his mother, Muzalona, was cousin of the em- peror .Joannes Cantacuzenus. He commenced the study of his native language under the monk Phi- lastrius, and when he attained the age of sixteen years his father thought that it was time to initiate him into Latin literature. Accordingly, the edu- cation of the young Harmenopulus was confided to Aspasius, a Calabrian monk, who was sent for ex- pressly from Italy to undertake this charge. While under this master, Harmenopulus attended the lec- tures of Leo, who was afterwards archbishop of Mytilene, and whom Nic. Comnenus believes to be the same with Leo Magentinus, the commentator on Aristotle. At the age of twenty he devoted himself entirely to jurispradence, under the jurist Simon Attaliata, great-grandson of Michael Attali- ata, the author of a legal compendium. [Attali- ata.] Possessed of a keen and active intellect, he soon mastered the whole extent of the science, and had scarcely attained the age of twenty-eight, when he earned and obtained the title of antecessor, which was usually conferred by the emperors on those only who had grown grey in the successful study and practice of the law. At the age of thirty he was appointed judge of the superior court (judex Dromi). Soon afterwards he v/as in- vited to become a member of the council of the emperor Joannes Cantacuzenus, and, though he was the youngest of the royal councillors, the first place of honour was assigned to him. He discharged the high functions of his office with so much saga- city and prudence, that, after the dethronement of the emperor Cantacuzenus, in 1355, he expe- rienced no change of fortune from the succeeding emperor, Joannes Palaeologus, Upon the death of his father, he was appointed Curopalates in his place, and received the title of Sebastus. Soon afterwards he was named prefect of Thessalonice, and nomophylax. Loaded with honours and wealth (for his wife Briennia was a lady of large fortune), he applied himself to the interpretation of law with an extent of skill and learning which are every where conspicuous in his works. Comnenus (p. 272) professes to refute Maximus Margunius, who is stated to have cited the Orations of Harme- nopulus -f for, says Comnenus, the author of the HARMENOPULUS. Hexabiblus and Epitome of the Canons left no orations. Nay, in the commencement of his com- mentary on the Digest, he calls himself an inelo- quent man, slow of speech, and states that for this cause he left the defence of clients, and betook himself to the more umbratile province of legal meditation and authorship. Besides this com- mentary on the Digest, Comnenus ascribes to him commentaries upon the Code and the No veils, and scholia on the Novells of Leo, and says that he was the author of the Tomus contra Gregorium Palamam, which, is published byAllatius in Gra£cia Orthodoxa (vol. i. p. 780-5, 4to. Rome, 1652), and that he closely followed the jurist Tipucitus, and was far more learned than Balsamo, &c. For fuller particulars relating to the works of Harme- nopulus, Comnenus refers to his own Graeciue Sa- pietitis Testimonium, but we cannot find any mention of this treatise of Comnenus in the catalogues, and it was never seen by Fabricius. We may here stop to remark, that the greater part of the above account is probably sheer in- vention. The title of antecessor is not met with in authentic history under the later emperors — the story of Simon Attaliata, the descendant of Michael Attaliata, is very like a fable — and there is no evidence that the compilations of Justinian were known at Constantinople, in their original form, in the age when Harmenopulus is stated to have com- mented upon them. (Heimbach, Anecdota, vol. i. p. 222.) At all events, they were not likely to be annotated by a practical jurist. To return to the apocryphal biography. About the fortieth year of his age, Harmenopulus, in the midst of the avocations of office, turned his atten- tion to the difficulties of the canon law, a species of study to which the Greeks of the middle agt's were more addicted than to the cultivation of ele- gant literature. In this pursuit he acquired the highest reputation, and became no less celebrated as a canonist than he had previously been as a civilian. He died at Constantinople in 1380, or, according to more exact accounts, on the 1st of March, 1383. A Greek translation of the Donation of Con- stantine the Great to the papal see is attributed to Harmenopulus. It is printed in Fabricius {Bibl. Gr. vol. vi. p. 698). To the catalogues of Lambecius, Montfaucon, &c., we must refer for an account of the manuscripts of a Greek lexicon, and other minor works of this author, which have not been printed. The works by which Harmenopulus is known to the world are the following : — 1. llpox^tpi^v 'NSficou, sen Promptuarium Juris Civilis, seu Manuale Legum, dictum. Hexabiblus. This work (which is cited indifferently by all the above names) is based on the older Prochiron of Basileius Constantinus, and Leo, of which it was intended to correct the errors and supply the deficiencies. In fact, it incorporates the whole of the older work, the portions of which are distin- guished, in the best manuscripts, by the mark of Saturn ( h ), while to the additions is prefixed the sign of the sun (0). In the printed edition of Reiz, the extracts from the old Prochiron are de- noted by an asterisk (*), and the whole of the older original Prochiron has been recently pub- lished in a distinct and separate form by Zachariae with very valuable Prolegomena (Heidelb. 1837). Harmenopulus also, in his preface {Prothcona^