1 A Forger’s Fancy¹

“In the hierarchy of evil things—as a famous Italian intellectual, Giorgio Manganelli, stated—a critical edition deserves, within the world of a philologist, the same dignity of a perfect crime.”² Some of the writings of Nicholas of Methone’s corpus, dedicated to the procession of the Holy Spirit and the debate on the Filioque, received in fact their editio princeps during the second half of the nineteenth century thanks to the work of a fascinating Greek forger, Costantinos Simonides. Known for producing fictitious texts, Simonides fabricated manuscripts and papyri, even readjusting ancient texts with false interpolations, which are often indiscernible from the original text.³ Providing a new edition of Nicholas of Methone’s surviving works on the Filioque,⁴ my first concern was to explore the actual role played by Simonides in their modern transmission and to understand to what extent his interventions possibly transformed their original textual facies. Who is not afraid of a forger? Immediately after his escape from Leipzig—where he was imprisoned for the scandal of his fake manuscript of Uranius, which even involved Wilhelm Dindorf⁵—Costantinos Simonides devoted himself to the study of Nicholas of Methone between 1857 and 1858, during his short stay in Munich and, later, after his arrival in England. Simonides published, on different occasions, the text of two works of Nicholas of Methone: in 1857, in the third and final volume of the scholarly magazine Memnon (Μέμνων σύγγραμμα ἀρχαιολογικόν) published by Simonides himself in Munich,⁶ and in 1858, in the volume ᾽Ορθοδόξων Ἑλλήνων θεολογικαὶ γραφαὶ τέσσαρες.⁷ Simonides mainly worked on Nicholas of Methone’s text as an actual philologist. The only, most notable falsehood in the forger’s work on the theologian is the fabricated biography of Nicholas, which Simonides first published in 1857. The biography was then reprinted in 1858, 1859 and 1865, together with a lithographed portrait of the bishop, within the preface of a collection of Byzantine theological writings, Ὀρθοδόξων Ἑλλήνων θεολογικαὶ γραφαὶ τέσσαρες, published by Simonides in London. Simonides’ chronological reconstruction attempted to emend the one that had been erroneously proposed by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century scholars (for example Fabricius) and that had identified two different personalities with the same name who held the episcopal seat of Methone between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries based on the witness of a poem by Nicephorus Blemmydes (1197–1272), which mentioned a certain Νικόλαος νέος Μεθώνης. Simonides placed Nicholas’ floruit in the full thirteenth century and did not endorse the hypothetical existence of a second, later Nicholas of Methone.⁸ In his preface, he claimed that all the details about Nicholas’ life were from the third book of a work on illustrious monks of Mount Athos written by a certain hieromonk, Stephen from Athens. This work was, indeed, Simonides’ imagination, but it must be added that all modern scholars tend to reject, as did Simonides, Fabricius’ distinction between the two Nicholas.⁹ Costantinos Simonides had, without a doubt, a great role in the modern rediscovery of Nicholas of Methone and, in particular, Nicholas’ corpus on the Holy Spirit, but if one tries to understand how the profile of Nicholas of Methone—as an author and theologian—has been progressively eroded and devalued during his modern reception, one should definitely conclude that a scholar’s prejudice could be much stronger than a forger’s fancy.

2 A Charge of Plagiarism

From the nineteenth century onwards, Nicholas of Methone has been generally considered a plagiarist by modern scholarship.¹⁰ In 1831 Cardinal Angelo Mai published for the first time an unknown and otherwise unattested fragment of a presumed and lost Refutation of Proclus’ Elements of Theology, written by the late antique rhetorician Procopius of Gaza. He derived this fragment solely from f. 61^r of the manuscript Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, gr. 1096. However, it was soon realized that the long Procopian fragment actually coincided verbatim with Chapter 146 of the Refutation of Proclus’ Elements of Theology—actually his opus magnum—which a wide manuscript tradition attributes univocally to Nicholas of Methone and whose text had been made available only a few years earlier, in 1825, thanks to Johann Theodor Voemel.¹¹ The quaestio methoniana, born during the nineteenth century, is still ongoing.¹² The debate involved two opposite readings of Nicholas’ profile as a twelfth-century author: i.e. the idea of those who believed that Nicholas’ Ἀνάπτυξις was to be considered entirely a case of “plagiarism” from a supposed, lost Refutation by Procopius of Gaza and, on the other hand, the hypothesis which believed that the Procopian attribution of the Vatican fragments was totally erroneous: a charge of plagiarism vs. a case of misattribution.

Indeed, the charge of plagiarism directed against Nicholas of Methone was not limited to his Refutation alone, but also involved a large part of his other writings, especially the polemical treatises. Although the profile of Nicholas of Methone as an author has long been debated, his remaining theological production has generally flowed very little into this debate. In many cases, however, even Nicholas’ theological production shows traces of numerous textual repetitions that have led nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship to the idea of plagiarism.¹³ The “plagiarism hypothesis” was certainly facilitated by the availability of these texts in a complex and intricate manuscript tradition, as well as in bad and dated critical editions. The corpus of his four writings on the Filioque, for example, is still particularly understudied and kept outside of a broader evaluation of Nicholas of Methone as an author, in relation to the theoretical horizon and the concrete practices of Byzantine authorship.

The forger Simonides, in fact, played very little role in the process through which Nicholas’ figure was under-esteemed, and silently shifted to that of an insignificant compiler, or even a plagiarist. One might even wonder if Nicholas’ polemical works have ever been regarded and studied as actual twelfth-century documents in themselves. The answer seems to be that, unfortunately, they have not. If Byzantine literature is generally understudied and undertheorized,¹⁴ Byzantine theological works are usually even left out of any attempt to re-write a comprehensive literary history of Byzantium. This “liminal literature” still needs to be included within a wider discussion about literature in Byzantium.¹⁵

If Nicholas’ role in the development of the Filioque debate has been under-esteemed by scholars from the nineteenth century onwards—insofar as he was considered a mere compiler or even a plagiarist (as Ehrhard apud Krumbacher, Petit, Michel called him)¹⁶—one could wonder if “plagiarism” is indeed a conceptual category fitting with the fluid nature of twelfth-century theological and polemical literature and a proper one to describe works in which the writings of the Fathers and of contemporary anti-Latin authors often converge, being incorporated, quoted, modified, re-adapted, re-elaborated. As Alessandra Bucossi has recently showed, one of the main twelfth-century trends in Byzantine polemical literature was that of developing mainly logical arguments on the model of Photius’ Mystagogia, in addition to the traditional use of quotations from the Fathers of the Church. This is the reason why twelfth-century polemical authors increasingly quoted recent, or even almost contemporary, works in addition to traditional patristic auctoritates. For instance, Theophylact of Ohrid, Eustratios of Nicaea, Nicholas of Methone himself, to mention just a few of these authors, limited their use of patristic quotations as much as possible and rather preferred the usage of logical/philosophical demonstrations, often quoting and reusing each other without any indication of these “borrowings”.¹⁷ Thus, the term “plagiarism” is probably not so useful to describe the complexity of a literature on the edge between past and present, between tradition and transformation. One could even wonder if traditional categories, like those of authorship, originality, and intertextuality, are effective and useful tools to understand and describe the fluid magma of this production.

3 Adversus Latinos de Spiritu Sancto

If one tries to evaluate Costantinos Simonides’ work on Nicholas’ textual tradition, it would be certainly surprising to discover that it was mainly the actual work of a philologist. During 1858, Simonides published the editio princeps of Nicholas’ main theological treatise on the procession of the Holy Spirit (Adversus Latinos de Spiritu Sancto; inc. Βασιλεῦ οὐράνιε, παράκλητε ἀγαθέ (…); RAP 368)¹⁸ in his volume, Ὀρθοδόξων Ἑλλήνων θεολογικαὶ γραφαὶ τέσσαρες. His textual reconstruction was based—as the forger himself declares—on a Mount Athos manuscript, partially collated with some other manuscripts (Oxford, Bodleian Library; Barocci 215, diktyon 47503 and München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, gr. 28, diktyon 44471).¹⁹ I have been able to identify the manuscript, which was the main Vorlage of Simonides’ edition, in a fourteenth-century manuscript currently preserved in Athens, at the National Library of Greece, MS 477, diktyon 2773.²⁰ The forger owned the manuscript as attested by an autograph dedication to the National Library of Greece, dated 1858 and signed by Simonides himself.²¹ Folia 1–12, containing Nicholas’ text, show numerous modern annotations that can be found both in the margins and in the line spacing, in red and black. Simonides’ autograph notes were written during his preliminary work on the edition of the text. An analytical examination of all these marginal and interlinear annotations highlighted that the notes in red systematically refer to variants found by Simonides in the Munich manuscript (i.e. gr. 28), while those in black generally refer to alternative lessons of the Oxford manuscript (i.e. Barocci 215), collated by Simonides, and to corresponding notes in his apparatus. In this case Simonides’ reconstruction of the text has proved to be quite reliable, even though the textual tradition of this work is indeed much wider than the few manuscripts he knew and used, and the text needs to be completely reconsidered. It is possible, in fact, to identify more than fifty manuscripts, ranging from the twelfth to eighteenth centuries, which contain the text. In many passages most surviving ancient manuscripts (especially those from the thirteenth century) could even allow one to reshape the text printed by Costantinos Simonides on the basis of his later and corrupted source.

While Fabricius had mentioned the possibility of ascribing this work to the presumed second, younger Nicholas of Methone on the basis of the poem by Blemmydes mentioned above, Simonides, although confusing Nicholas’ chronology, attributed this work to the Nicholas, bishop of Methone, under discussion. According to Simonides, Fabricius misinterpreted Blemmydes’ expression, Νικολάῳ λάμψαντι νέῳ Μεθώνης,²² where Nicholas was called νέος compared to Nicholas of Myra.²³ On the other hand, some nineteenth-century scholars (e.g. J. Dräseke), trying to refute Simonides’ views, erroneously accepted Fabricius’ distinction between two different Nicholases of Methone and consequently misinterpreted the authorship of this work.²⁴ But, indeed, strong stylistic and conceptual analogies can be found between this work and the other treatises written by Nicholas himself on the Holy Spirit: one could compare the distinction of the breath (ἐμφύσημα) of Christ with the actual procession (ἐκπόρευσις) of the Spirit, a core argument of Nicholas of Methone’s other writings, as developed both in his Adversus Latinos de Spiritu Sancto²⁵ and in the syllogisms 30–38 Demetrakopoulos.²⁶ Nicholas of Methone’s Adversus Latinos de Spiritu Sancto contains no textual hints nor other explicit elements useful to date the writing: it could just be presumed that the main Adversus Latinos de Spiritu Sancto was composed together with at least a part of the collection of syllogisms, the so-called Refutationes theologicae doctrinae Latinorum.²⁷ Moreover, a twelfth-century manuscript (Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. gr. 200, diktyon 55932, f. 114–116) and some thirteenth-century manuscripts of Niketas Choniates’ Thesaurus orthodoxae fidei (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. IX.24, diktyon 16112 and Oxford, Bodleian Library, Roe 22, diktyon 48403) also reveal the existence of a versio brevis and collections of excerpts from this text. One single manuscript, today in Venice (Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, gr. IV 58, diktyon 70442, f. 210^v–219), even erroneously ascribed Nicholas of Methone’s Adversus Latinos to the authorship of the patriarch Nicholas IV Mouzalon.²⁸

4 Syllogisms (or Refutationes theologicae doctrinae Latinorum)

In 1857, in his rare journal Memnon, Costantinos Simonides published the editio princeps of Nicholas of Methone’s Κεφαλαιώδεις ἔλεγχοι or Refutationes theologicae doctrinae Latinorum (inc. Ὡμολόγηται ὅτι καὶ ἣ ὅλη Θεότης μονάς (…); des. (…) διὰ τῆς τοιαύτης κατατομῆς καὶ συμφύρσεως; RAP 19831),²⁹ claiming to have based his edition on an unknown and mysterious Athos manuscript. However, a closer analysis of his edition shows indeed a mix of variants that the Greek forger must have found in some very late manuscripts, such as the Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, gr. 1261, diktyon 50870 (16th century) and in two other late manuscripts in München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, gr. 65, diktyon 44509 (16th century) and gr. 66, diktyon 44510 (16th century). The text is a collection of chapters containing short propositions on the topic of the double procession of the Holy Spirit. Themes, arguments and doctrines—recurring elsewhere in Nicholas’ theological corpus—are presented in a synthetic way, also quoting (as it normally happens in this kind of literary genre) from previous authors such as Photius or Theophylact of Ohrid.³⁰ Such collections of syllogisms, built on quotations even from contemporary authors, are in fact typical of twelfth-century literature.³¹ Today, the text of Nicholas’ syllogisms still has its reference edition in the nineteenth-century publication by the Greek scholar Andronikos Demetrakopoulos, based, as he stated, on a second-hand transcription from a single sixteenth-century codex, the Mon. gr. 66. Therefore, although Demetrakopoulos’ publication was supposed to replace and improve Simonides’ editio princeps, unfortunately it failed to do so and was even defined by Athanasios Angelou as an “uncritical edition of a text which appears to have undergone various successive abridgements throughout its long history”.³² For example, at the end of the text, Demetrakopoulos omitted without any reason the three final syllogisms of the collection (i.e. the syllogisms νζ´, νη´ and νθ´ of Simonides’ edition),³³ although they are attested by the entire manuscript tradition (including the Mon. gr. 66, employed by Demetrakopoulos himself): he probably believed that they were an addition of a later compiler. The syllogisms themselves and their textual history still represent a labyrinth for modern readers, and reconsidering the manuscript tradition, it is possible to identify at least three different versions of the text, whose mutual relationships are still completely unexplored.

A long version (versio longa) of the syllogisms is attested in three fourteenth-century manuscripts from Venice and Moscow³⁴ and includes around sixty chapters (κεφάλαια), inc. Ὡμολόγηται ὅτι καὶ ἡ ὅλη θεότης μονάς (…); des. (…) διὰ τῆς τοιαύτης κατατομῆς καὶ συμφύρσεως. This version circulated both autonomously and incorporated within the unpublished part of the first Syntagma by Nicholas-Nektarios, abbot of Casole (13th century).³⁵ Nicholas-Nektarios of Casole did not re-elaborate the text (for example, adding extra syllogisms) but simply incorporated the text of the longer version within his own work. We can be sure of the fact that the versio longa was well-known in the middle twelfth century because the Latin advisor of Manuel Komnenos, Hugo Eterianus, in his De sancto et immortali Deo, recently edited by Pietro Podolak and Anna Zago, quotes some excerpta from Nicholas’ text in the same sequence in which they appear in Demetrakopoulos’ Greek edition.³⁶ If Eterianus, in 1176–1177, while writing his De Sancto et immortali Deo, could quote the syllogisms 44, 45 and 51 of the “long” version, the surviving versio longa is not to be considered as a versio aucta by a later compiler.

A short version (versio brevis), about thirty chapters (κεφάλαια), inc. Ὡμολογημένου τοῦ ὅτι τὸ ἐκπορεύεσθαι ἰδίωμα (…), des. (…) ἢ ἄλλου πνεύματος καὶ ποῖον τοῦτο, is the one incorporated within Niketas Choniates’ Thesaurus orthodoxae fidei, and is transmitted by the three of the most important thirteenth-century witnesses of Niketas Choniates’ theological work.³⁷ The fact that Choniates inserts a shortened version of a text in his compilation should not surprise us: it was not infrequent that Niketas Choniates included some abridged versions of the works he selected for his Panoplia, as happens in the case of other texts by Nicholas³⁸ or in the case of an abridged version of the De azymis et de processione Spiritus Sancti by Theodore of Smyrna.³⁹ The short version of Nicholas’ syllogisms also had an autonomous textual transmission. In fact, it is also preserved in some manuscripts that apparently are independent from Choniates’ ones.⁴⁰ The date of composition of this version should be possibly dated before the middle fifties of the twelfth century, since Gerhoch of Reichersberg’s De investigatione Antichristi quotes a series of passages from this text.⁴¹ At the same time, only during the thirteenth century is it possible to find some traces of the existence of the versio brevis in the Greek indirect tradition of Nicholas of Methone’s syllogisms, namely in the text of the De unione Ecclesiarum by the patriarch John Bekkos where it is quoted verbatim.⁴² The text of Nicholas of Methone’s syllogisms was so successful that a manuscript, the Athens, National Library of Greece, Μετόχιον Παναγίου Τάφου 494, f. 67–79, diktyon 6891, which contains theological writings by Meletius Pegas and Nathanael Chycas, even preserves a seventeenth-century demotic paraphrase of the syllogisms.⁴³

In the modern reception of the syllogisms, it is possible as well to observe another significant case of misattribution, which once again involved Nicholas of Methone in a charge of plagiarism. Modern scholarship has believed that the syllogisms were partly plagiarized by Nicholas of Methone from a previous work by the patriarch Nicholas IV Mouzalon,⁴⁴ the so-called De processione Spiritus Sancti, inc. Δέσποτά μου ἅγιε (…), des. (…) ἢ ἄλλου πνεύματος καὶ ποῖον τοῦτο (RAP 3656), in particular, because the short version of Nicholas of Methone’s syllogisms seems to correspond verbatim to the final part of Nicholas IV Mouzalon’s work on the Holy Spirit (i.e. Chapters 33–66 of Zeses’ edition of the De processione Spiritus Sancti by Nicholas IV Mouzalon). Indeed, the misattribution originated from the fact that Mouzalon’s modern editor, Zeses, thought that the two texts had a close connection, trusting only one very late and corrupted manuscript, the Bucharest, Biblioteca Academiei Române, gr. 318 (= Litzica 560), diktyon 10390 (15th–16th century), 339–370, which accidentally omitted the attribution to Nicholas of Methone and therefore, erroneously merged the two texts.⁴⁵

5 Ad magnum domesticum, Memoriae contra Latinos and the False Attribution to Niketas Stethatos of the Contra Latinos et de processione Spiritus Sancti

It is possible to provide some other examples from Nicholas’ corpus to show how our understanding of these works in their own context, i.e. the twelfth-century Byzantine theological debate, has been frustrated more by some scholars’ enduring prejudices, than from a forger’s fancy. In 1866, Andronikos Demetrakopoulos published the text of another theological work by Nicholas, the so-called Ad magnum domesticum (inc. Τὰς ἀφορμὰς τῶν παρόντων (…); des. (…) εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων ἀμήν, RAP 19828),⁴⁶ but unfortunately with a significant number of lacunae and only on the basis of the manuscript in Moscow, Государственный исторический музей (GIM), Synod. gr. 366 = Vladimir 239, diktyon 43991, while the manuscript tradition is wider.⁴⁷ This fundamental work, dated by Dräseke to around 1147 and probably addressed to the megas domestikos John Axouch,⁴⁸ contains some of the main arguments of Nicholas’ doctrinal elaboration on the Holy Spirit; but, unfortunately, it has been considered as partly plagiarizing a former text by Niketas Stethatos, although this is certainly not the case.⁴⁹

Around the same time, in 1897, the Russian archimandrite Arsenij Ivačenko published in Novgorod the Greek text and the Russian translation of an anti-Latin theological text on the procession of the Holy Spirit—Nicholas of Methone’s Memoriae contra Latinos (inc. Τὸ περὶ τοῦ ἁγίου πνεύματος λέγειν περὶ θεοῦ λέγειν (…), des. (…) προχείρως εἴχομεν δοῦναί σοι; RAP 19835)—which he found within the collection of writings of a fourteenth-century manuscript, today in Moscow, Государственный исторический музей (GIM), Synod. gr. 366 = Vladimir 239, diktyon 43991, which is the only witness of most of Nicholas of Methone’s theological works.⁵⁰ Arsenij published the text attributing it to the bishop of Methone on the basis of the title he found in the rubric of the manuscript: tit. Νικολάου φιλοσόφου ἐπισκόπου Μεθώνης ἀπομνημονεύματα (memories) ἐκ τῶν ἐν διαφόροις λόγοις γεγραμμένων κατὰ Λατίνων περὶ τῆς εἰς τὸ Ἅγιον Πνεῦμα βλασφημίας. The text, in fact, is a dense patchwork of excerpta, memoriae or memoranda, recollected from other works by Nicholas of Methone himself concerning pneumatological doctrines and the Filioque: from the Adversus Latinos de Spiritu Sancto, the Refutationes theologicae doctrinae Latinorum or Κεφαλαιώδεις ἔλεγχοι, and, finally, the letter/oration Ad magnum domesticum, probably addressed to John Axuch, about the Holy Spirit and the Pentecost.

In 1930, however, the German scholar Anton Michel published in his volume Humbert und Kerullarios, on the basis of some manuscripts of Niketas Choniates’ Thesaurus orthodoxae fidei, the so-called Contra Latinos et de processione Spiritus Sancti (inc. Τὸ περὶ τοῦ ἁγίου πνεύματος λέγειν περὶ θεοῦ λέγειν (…), des. (…) ἰδιότροπος ἑκατέρου ἡ πρόοδος καὶ μονότροπος; RAP 19631),⁵¹ a text identical to the Memoriae contra Latinos but with some minor differences. Michel titled the work Ἑτέρα σύνθεσις κατὰ Λατίνων, ἐν οἷς βλασφημοῦσιν εἰς τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον λέγοντες ἐκ τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦτο ἐκπορεύεσθαι, and attributed it to the eleventh-century author Niketas Stethatos, even though the attribution to the monk of Stoudios (τοῦ Στηθάτου) appears only in one manuscript and was signed by a later hand.⁵² Around twenty years ago, Alexei Barmin proposed revoking the attribution of Niketas Stethatos to this text,⁵³ yet several scientific contributions are currently trying to understand and contextualise this fundamental text within the framework of the thought and extant production of the monk of Stoudios.⁵⁴ However, my research on the manuscript tradition has found some important pieces of evidence that might allow us to reconsider the debate about this text, which has even been called “the foundational text of Byzantine anti-Latin polemic”,⁵⁵ or “the most sophisticated Orthodox response to the Western teaching of the filioque”.⁵⁶

These pieces of evidence aim to show that the two presumed different texts simply represent different moments of the textual transmission of a single work, which should indeed be considered as a collection of excerpta—ἀπομνημονεύματα, memoriae or memoranda—by Nicholas of Methone himself. The latter would hence likely change our analysis of the intellectual and theological debates contemporary to the events of 1054,⁵⁷ although this will not be discussed in detail in this paper.⁵⁸ Anton Michel believed that the Ad magnum domesticum represented an emblematic case of Nicholas’ plagiarism from the presumed work of Stethatos. The attribution of Nicholas of Methone’s Memoriae contra Latinos to Niketas Stethatos should certainly be considered a mistake in recent scholarship, although it is true that the text of the Memoriae contra Latinos shows a great number of textual borrowings, particularly from Nicholas’ Ad magnum domesticum de Spiritu Sancto. So, to add some textual pieces of evidence, let me provide some cases of the interesting textual correspondences between these two works to show that they both may indeed be attributed to Nicholas of Methone. Both Ad magnum domesticum de Spiritu Sancto and the Memoriae contra Latinos, for instance, devoted several passages to the clarification of a passage by Gregory of Nazianzus’ Or. 41, In Pentecosten,⁵⁹ particularly to his usage of the word οὐσιωδῶς, employed by Gregory as referring to the manifestation of the Spirit at Pentecost. I will not explore the philosophical background and implications of these texts, but I would like to highlight, from a purely philological point of view, the consistency of the inter-textual coincidences and correspondences between the two works. According to both Ad magnum domesticum and Memoriae contra Latinos, the word τις, in Gregory’s text, could be understood as a reference to Aristotle and, consequently, both provide an interesting “Aristotelian” explanation of the word (οὐσιωδῶς) used in the passage quoted from Gregory’s oration, arguing that the term is to be understood in reference to the Aristotelian idea of “first substance” (according to Aristotle, Categoriae V).⁶⁰

In the Ad magnum domesticum, 208 Demetrakopoulos we can read:

ἐπειδὴ οὐσία λέγεται μὲν καὶ νοεῖται καὶ τὸ καθόλου τε καὶ κοινόν, ὡς ὁ καθόλου ἄνθρωπος καὶ ἡ ἀνθρωπότης, λέγεται δὲ καὶ τὸ καθέκαστον καὶ παρὰ τοῖς φιλοσόφοις λεγόμενον ἄτομον, ὡς οὗτος ὁ ἄνθρωπος, ὁ Πέτρος τυχὸν ἢ ὁ Παῦλος, ὃ καὶ πρώτην οὐσίαν Ἀριστοτέλης εἶναι μάλιστα βούλεται, πρὸς ὃν τάχα καὶ τό, ὡς ἂν εἴποι τις, οὐσιωδῶς ὁ Θεολόγος προσθεὶς δόξειεν ἂν ἀποτείνεσθαι, μεταφερομένου δὴ καὶ εἰς τὸ θεῖον τοῦ τῆς οὐσίας ὀνόματος καὶ θεωρουμένου ὡσαύτως κἀκεῖ τοῦ τε κοινοῦ καὶ τοῦ ἰδικοῦ.

Since with the term “in substance” we say and mean the universal and the common, like the human in general or humanity, while we call “particular” what is called by the philosophers “individual” (παρὰ τοῖς φιλοσόφοις λεγόμενον ἄτομον), like “this man”, whether it is Peter or Paul, what Aristotle certainly considers to be the first substance, to which the Theologian would seem to allude by adding the words, “as someone might say, in substance”, being in this way the name of the substance shifted towards the divine and both the common and the particular are contemplated in it.

Indeed, a closer look at the text of the Memoriae contra Latinos shows that the passage is quoted almost verbatim from the Ad magnum domesticum:⁶¹

ἐπεὶ καὶ οὐσία λέγεται μὲν καὶ τὸ καθόλου τε καὶ κοινὸν ὡς ὁ καθόλου ἄνθρωπος καὶ ἡ ἀνθρωπότης, λέγεται δὲ καὶ τὸ καθ’ ἕκαστόν τε καὶ ἄτομον ὡς οὗτος ὁ ἄνθρωπος ὁ Πέτρος τυχὸν ἢ ὁ Παῦλος—ἣν καὶ πρώτην καὶ μάλιστα κυρίως οὐσίαν ὁ περιττὸς τὴν ἔξω σοφίαν Ἀριστοτέλης φησίν, ὡς οὐκ ἐπινοίᾳ κατὰ τὴν καθόλου φανταζομένην, ἀλλὰ πραγματικῶς καὶ ὄντως ὑφισταμένην καὶ φανερῶς κατανοουμένην καὶ ὁρωμένην.⁶²

Since both the universal and the common are called “substance”, like man in general and humanity, but the particular or the “individual” is also called in this way, like “this man”, whether it is of Peter or Paul—what Aristotle, excellent in pagan wisdom, undoubtedly calls first substance and substance in the most proper sense, as it is not conceived abstractly by thought, but concretely and truly subsistent and manifestly visible and knowable.

A preliminary analysis of Stethatos’ corpus has shown that the use of some of these conceptual and stylistic frameworks, frequently employed in both Nicholas’ Ad magnum domesticum and Memoriae contra Latinos, is not otherwise attested in the writings of the eleventh-century author. The use of the same framework can also be found elsewhere in Nicholas’ theological corpus. For instance, one could compare Chapter 60 of Nicholas’ Refutatio institutionis Platonicae Procli:

Εἰ πάντων τὸ ἓν μόνον αἴτιον, οὐδὲν ἕτερον οὔτε πλειόνων οὔτε ἐλασσόνων αἴτιον, πάντα δὲ τὰ ὄντα καλὰ καὶ οὐδὲν ἕτερον ἑτέρου κατὰ τὸ εἶναι κρεῖττον ἢ χεῖρον εἰ μὴ κατὰ ἀρετῆς ἢ κακίας ἀνάληψιν. ἃ δέ φησιν οὗτος ὅλα τουτέστι τὰ ἁπλούστερα καὶ καθολικώτερα, ταῦτα οὐδὲ κυρίως εἰσίν, ὅτι μηδὲ καθ’ ἑαυτὰ ὑφεστήκασιν, ἀλλ’ἐν τοῖς μερικωτέροις καὶ μάλιστα τοῖς καθ’ ἕκαστα θεωρεῖται. διὸ καὶ Ἀριστοτέλης πρώτας οὐσίας καὶ κυρίως εἶναί φησι τὰ καθ’ ἕκαστα, δευτέρας δὲ λέγεσθαι τὰ γένη καὶ τὰ εἴδη καὶ μᾶλλον τὰ εἴδη ἢ τὰ γένη. εἰ δὲ καὶ σύγκειται τὰ μερικώτερα ἐκ τῶν καθολικωτέρων, ὡς ἐκ μερῶν ὅλα, ὥσπερ τὸ μὲν καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐκ τοῦ εἴδους καὶ τῶν κατ’αὐτὸ ἰδιωμάτων, τὸ δὲ εἶδος ἐκ τοῦ γένους καὶ τῶν συστατικῶν διαφορῶν, πῶς οὐ μέρη τὰ ἁπλούστερα καὶ καθολικώτερα τῶν συνθετωτέρων καὶ μερικωτέρων. ὥστε καὶ εἰς τοὐναντίον τῷ σοφῷ περιστραφήσεται ἡ ἀπόδειξις.⁶³

If there is one cause of all things, and there is not another cause either of more things or of fewer, then all the beings are good, and nothing is superior or inferior to another in its being, but only in acquisition of virtue and vice. And the things that he calls wholes, that is, the more simple and more universal things, do not, strictly speaking, exist, for they do not subsist in themselves but are contemplated in the more particular things, and especially in the individuals. Wherefore also Aristotle says that the particulars (τὰ καθ’ ἕκαστα) are primary substances and [substances] proper, but the genera and the forms, and more the forms than the genera, are called secondary [substances]. And if the more particular (τὰ μερικώτερα) things are composed from the more universal things, as wholes from parts, e.g. the particular from the species and its properties, and the species from the genus and the constituent differences, how are the more simple and more universal things not parts of the more composite and more particular (μερικωτέρων)? So that the demonstration will be turned round even into the opposite by the wise man.⁶⁴

One could also compare a passage from his work against Sothericos Panteugenos, Adversus Soterichum Antiochiae patr. (Or. 6),⁶⁵ which corresponds verbatim to a passage of Nicholas of Methone’s oration Ad Manuelem Comnenum imperatorem de synodo.⁶⁶ Both the two passages make reference as well to the Aristotelian distinction between first and second substance:

Ἰδέας μὲν γάρ τινας ἀναπλάττει Πλάτων ὁ τῶν παρ’ Ἕλλησι σοφῶν ἐξοχώτατος, οὕτω τάχα τὰ γένη καὶ τὰ εἴδη καλῶν· ὅθεν καὶ τούτων τὰς μὲν καθολικωτέρας, τὰς δὲ μερικωτέρας ἑνάδας φησίν, ἀλλ’ οὐχὶ καὶ ἀνυποστάτους ταύτας εἰσάγει κατὰ τὴν ὑπόθεσιν τοῦ νέου τούτου σοφοῦ· πολλοῦ γε καὶ δεῖ· καθ’ὅσον καὶ πρώτας εἶναι ταύτας καὶ αὐθυποστάτους οὐσίας εἴτουν φύσεις, μάλιστα τὰς καθολικωτέρας, ἐξ ὧν καὶ τὰς μερικωτέρας ὑφεστάναι διισχυρίζεται, ὡς καὶ θεοὺς ταύτας πρώτους καὶ δευτέρους ἀναγορεύειν, κἀκ τούτων αὖθις τἄλλα λέγειν ὑφίστασθαι. Ἀλλὰ ταύτην τὴν Πλάτωνος δόξαν ἀρκούντως ἀνέτρεψεν ὁ μετ’ ἐκεῖνον εὐθὺς τῷ χρόνῳ περιττὸς τὴν σοφίαν Ἀριστοτέλης, ὃς καὶ τερετίσματα τοὺς περὶ τῶν ἰδεῶν τούτων λόγους τοῦ Πλάτωνος εὐστόχως ὠνόμασεν, ὡς μηδὲν πρὸς κατάληψιν τοῦ ὄντος συντείνοντας, μηδὲ ψόφων κενῶν καὶ πρὸς ἁρμονίαν ἀσυντελῶν διαφέροντας. Ὅθεν καὶ οἱ τὸν περίπατον Ἀριστοτέλους διαδεξάμενοι, αὐτὰς δὴ ταύτας τὰς ἰδέας ἐν ἐπινοίαις κεῖσθαι ψιλαῖς ἀπεφήναντο.⁶⁷

Plato, the most prominent among the sages of the Hellenes, fabricates certain “Ideas”; this is how he calls the genera and the species. For this reason, he claims that some of these Ideas are more universal henads, whereas others are more particular; but he does not introduce them as having no real existence, as this new sage [i.e., Soterichos] surmises. Quite on the contrary, insofar as he claims that these are primary and self-subsistent substances or natures, [and are such] to the highest degree the more universal, which give existence to the more particular, he proclaims them to be first and second gods and says that the rest of beings acquire their existence from them. But the extraordinarily wise Aristotle, who came immediately after him in time, abundantly rejected Plato’s doctrine; he successfully called Plato’s arguments in favour [of the existence] of the Ideas “twitterings”, because they do not add anything to our comprehension of being and differ in nothing from empty noises, which are useless for the production of harmony. This is why the philosophers who succeeded Aristotle in the Peripatos declared that these very ideas are simply concepts [in our thought].⁶⁸

Nicholas of Methone’s Memoriae contra Latinos still needs to be regarded as a case study of the practices of Byzantine authorship during Komnenian age. In one of the oldest available manuscripts that I have analysed—Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, B 53, diktyon 56262 (13th century)—the text of the Memoriae ends with an explicit reference to Nicholas of Methone’s “personal authorial agency”, and in a certain sense to Nicholas’ own authorial “voice”.⁶⁹ In the manuscript preserved in the Biblioteca Vallicelliana, it is in fact possible to find a brief, but fundamental, passage in which the author of the patchwork—almost certainly, therefore, Nicholas himself—declares that the booklet is a collection of his own excerpts or memoriae (ἀπομνημονεύματα) and writes to an illustrious addressee, saying that he is offering the collection of excerpts of his own previous works as a gift:

Ταῦτά σοι ἐν τῷ παρόντι, πανσέβαστε καὶ πάντιμε κεφαλή, παρ’ἡμῶν ἐσχεδίασται ἀπομνημονεύματα τῶν ἐν διαφόροις λόγοις γεγραμμένων ἡμῖν κατὰ τῆς τῶν Λατίνων εἰς τὸ ἅγιον πνεῦμα βλασφημίας, ὅτι μὴ τὸ τοὺς λὸγους ἔχον βιβλίον προχείρως εἴχομεν δοῦναί σοι.⁷⁰

These notes, which I recalled to my memory, were collected by me in this booklet, venerable excellence, from what I myself wrote in different pamphlets against the blasphemy addressed by the Latins to the Holy Spirit, since I didn’t have at hand a copy of the volume containing the writings in order to give it to you.

We can deduce, therefore, that these pieces of evidence corroborate the idea that Nicholas of Methone’s Memoriae contra Latinos are not borrowing or plagiarizing earlier works, but that indeed the textual correspondences we have analysed in the two writings (i.e. Nicholas’ Memoriae contra Latinos and Ad magnum domesticum) are simply to be considered as interesting cases of Nicholas’ self-quotations; and the Memoriae contra Latinos are indeed to be considered as a mere collection of excerpts from Nicholas of Methone’s previous works on the Holy Spirit. Accordingly, the Memoriae contra Latinos are possibly to be considered as the last work on the Filioque written by Nicholas of Methone, since they contain a consistent series of explicit quotations from the previous ones.

6 Conclusion

The literary “afterlife” of Nicholas of Methone lasted from the twelfth to at least the seventeenth century; his theological texts were quoted, abridged, incorporated, transformed by contemporary and later authors such as Hugo Eterianus, Andronikos Kamateros, Niketas Choniates, and Nicholas-Nektarios of Casole. It was probably only in the nineteenth century that the figure of one of the greatest theologians of twelfth-century Byzantium shifted silently into that of an obscure compiler or plagiarist. We may hope that time is mature enough that one may read Nicholas’ anti-Latin works as twelfth-century documents in themselves. Certainly, Nicholas’ work could have a crucial role for our better understanding of the Filioque controversy and of East-West relations during Komnenian age. Nicholas’ theological corpus needs to be reshaped through a multidisciplinary approach and within different methodological frameworks in order to provide new critical editions of these texts. His textual history needs to be completely reconsidered with a new survey of the manuscript tradition, eventually trying to clarify in detail the nature of any intervention made by Simonides or other modern scholars who edited Nicholas’ texts.

Nicholas of Methone’s philosophical background has been the main focus of recent studies, yet, nevertheless, a great part of Nicholas’ production was dedicated to the debate on theological themes related to the procession of the Holy Spirit and the discussion about the Filioque. These works could well have a crucial role in our overall understanding of Nicholas’ thought, but this fundamental aspect has been almost totally neglected, from both a philological and hermeneutical point of view by scholarly investigations, and Nicholas’ polemical work on the Holy Spirit is still extremely understudied.

Nicholas of Methone, with his charge of plagiarism, represents a “cold case”. However, the theological production of the Byzantine twelfth century offers a promising field for investigating the theoretical conceptions and concrete practices of Byzantine authorship. Amid the presumed anonymity and seemingly repetitive nature of this vast literary output, the tools of a philological analysis could allow us to find the traces of a continual textual transformation, raising the question whether hints of any personal authorial intervention could be found. Thus, the presumed charge of plagiarism which has affected Nicholas’ reputation as an author—with particular regard to his theological production—could be completely revoked if one reconsiders these texts in light of typical twelfth-century practices of composition and circulation of theological literature.

These texts deserve to be reconsidered as twelfth-century documents in themselves. Let me quote, in this respect, some words from one of the scholars who had the most profound knowledge of the twelfth century: in 1989, Alexander Petrovič Kazhdan, in his review of the latest edition of Nicholas of Methone’s Ἀνάπτυξις wrote that “the unity of the Trinity was for Nicholas not an antiquarian question to be considered in connection with philosophical errors of the fifth century, since Nicholas lived and worked when the ‘Latin question’ was the major problem that Byzantium faced […]. Byzantine monarchy, on the one hand, and Western hierarchy, on the other—such was the social confrontation of two worlds, and in this context the Refutation, with its emphasis on the divine ‘monarchy’ and with its rejection of hierarchical emanation, can be read as a genuine twelfth-century document.”⁷¹