Ronchey, S. “Bessarione poeta e l'ultima corte di Bisanzio.” Bessarione e l'Umanesimo. Preface by G. Pugliese Carratelli. Ed. G. Fiaccadori. Naples: Vivarium - Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici - Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, 1994. 47-65.

The essay analyses several funeral poems composed in Greek by Bessarion and contained in the Greek Marcian autograph manuscript 533. The poems reflect the author’s cultural and ideological education between sixteen and thirty years of age.  In addition to the Monodia for Manuel II Palaeologus (written in prose, although the model for Bessarion’s later poem), the author examines the tomb inscription in iambs for the ambassador Michael Amiroutzes, the verses on the tapestries representing Manuel and Helena Palaeologi in imperial and monastic dress, and the funeral iambs for Cleopa Malatesta Palaeologina, probably conceived, as those for Amiroutzes, as a tomb inscription. Further, the appendix includes the critical edition of the first and last of these compositions.

The literary and rhetorical analysis of these verses makes it possible to draw a portrait of the young Bessarion’s political thought, his cultural education, and precocious role at the courts of Constantinople and Mystras, in addition to the complex dynastic context of the last Byzantine court (the latter the subject of a brief résumé on the Palaiologoi/Malatesta alliance and the figure of Cleopa).

 

CITED BY

G.L. Coluccia, Basilio Bessarione: lo spirito greco e l’Occidente. Firenze: Olschki, 2009. pp. XVIII-XXI