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c h a p t e r s i x Political Debates Become Scientific The Era of the Palaiologos The usurper of the throne of Nicaea, Michael Palaiologos (c. 1224–82), proved to be the last great Byzantine emperor. Three years after Michael dethroned the legitimate John IV Laskaris and assumed the title of emperor of Nicaea, in 1258, his army managed unexpectedly to retake Constantinople (on 25 July 1261) and oust the Latin emperor, Baudouin II. As emperor, Michael VIII deployed all his energy and diplomatic skill to restore the city to preeminence and to remove the two dangers that threatened the Byzantine Empire: a crusade by the Latins to retake Constantinople and the Turkish advance in Asia Minor. Michael thought that only one means could ensure the survival of the fragile empire: the union of the Orthodox and Catholic churches. By winning the support of the pope, Michael aspired not only to end the Latin crusade against his empire to the East but also to forge an alliance with the Latins for a joint crusade against the infidel Turks. Michael inaugurated a policy that would last until the ultimate fall of the Byzantine Empire. Negotiations with the Catholic Church proved interminable and resulted in ephemeral unions, the first concluding with an ecumenical council in Lyon (1274). Michael and most of his successors tried to persuade the ruling class of the validity of such a union, but the lower clergy and the general populace refused to submit to a pope or to accept the contentious Western teaching that the Holy Spirit proceeded from both the Father and the Son (as opposed to the Father alone, as stated in the original Nicene Creed). Scholars participated actively in these ferocious debates and sometimes served as theological experts in negotiations with the Catholics. Often their careers depended on the respective fortunes of the unionist and anti-unionist factions. In reconquering Constantinople, Michael wanted to restore Byzantium to its lost splendor. (Once Europe’s largest and richest city, Constantinople itself had shrunk to thirty-five thousand inhabitants under the Latin rulers.) Along with 82 Science and Eastern Orthodoxy the expenditure of intense diplomatic efforts toward the union and toward a joint military effort, the emperor included among state priorities the reopening of the imperial university (or “school of philosophy”). At this time, the most distinguished Byzantine scholar was its great logothetēs, George Akropolites, who was relieved of his administrative duties so he could teach at the new school. Akropolites gave courses on Euclid’s geometry and Nicomachus’s arithmetic; he culminated his science course with Aristotle’s philosophy.1 The new school was very successful, with some students having to wait several years before being admitted. Designed to train the empire’s officials, it may have admitted only state personnel.2 During the time of the Palaiologos dynasty, the state bureaucracy was more than ever staffed by an educated caste. It was the custom for emperors to act as patrons for their young favorites so they could follow advanced studies. Once their education was complete, they were appointed to the administration, either secular or religious. Akropolites’ successor as great logothetēs, George of Cyprus, became patriarch of Constantinople and trained several future church leaders. The small circle of Byzantine intellectuals blended with the top administration of the shrunken empire. Unlike the medieval Latin aristocracy of the same period, the Byzantine aristocracy had to know natural philosophy and the mathematical sciences. While the emperor was restoring the Philosophical School, the patriarchate was restoring the Patriarchal School, designed to educate the senior clergy at a time when the negotiations for the union between East and West required knowledgeable ecclesiastics. From the beginning, alongside theological courses a significant amount of secular teaching was prescribed. Patriarch Germanos III, a man of Nicaea, modeled the Patriarchal School after the schools in Nicaea, where secular and religious instruction coexisted. He asked for permission from the emperor to appoint the enlightened but disgraced Maximos Holobolos to teach the mathematical sciences and natural philosophy. If reports are true that as many as 336 students enrolled in Holobolos’s courses, this would show the favor enjoyed by knowledge in general and the sciences in particular within the clerical circles of the capital at the start of the final Byzantine period. One of the greatest scholars of this period was George Pachymeres (1242– c. 1310), a brilliant student of Akropolites’ at the Philosophical School and author of an advanced quadrivium. He...

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