Besarione (Cardinal) – Wikipedia

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Bessarione , per century perhaps Basilio ( in modern Greek: Bessarion , transliterate: Bessaríōn ; Trebisonda, January 2, 1403 – Ravenna, November 18, 1472), was a Byzantine Cardinal, Humanist and Philosopher.

Letters and prayers , 1471

Birth and studies [ change | Modifica Wikitesto ]

He was born in a large and poor family in Trebisconda, then the capital of the small empire commanded by Mega Comneni. His alleged Comnena origin – affirmed by more late sources and kept silent by all his contemporaries who instead want it of modest origins – is difficult to ascertain. For centuries his name was considered Giovanni, but more recent studies have shown that he was Basil. Very young (1416-1417), and after completing his elementary studies in Trebizonda, he moved to Constantinople, where he continued his studies at the rhetorician Giorgio Crisococca and became Munich Basiliano assuming the name of Bessarione, saint of the fourth century.

Ecclesiastical and political career [ change | Modifica Wikitesto ]

In 1423 he went to Egypt. The subsequent important stop was the years spent at Giorgio Gemisto Pietone in Mistra, near the ancient Sparta, in the destroyed Morea, where it was introduced to the Platonic philosophy (1430/2-1436). Cartofilace and successful diplomat between the Byzantine courts, he soon obtained the estimate of the emperor Giovanni VIII Paleologo.

At the Council of Ferrara and Florence [ change | Modifica Wikitesto ]

In 1437 he was appointed Archbishop of Nicea and in 1438 he came to Italy with Cardinal Cusano, first in Ferrara, then in Florence, to discuss, together with the large Byzantine delegation and the emperor himself, the union of the two churches, in the hope of Getting western help against the Ottomans who became more and more threatening against Constantinople.

While before the Council of Ferrara Bessarione it belonged to the Byzantine party against the Union, during the Council he proved to be an advocate of the union of the Roman Church with the Orthodox one. On philological and theological bessarione bases he showed that a debated step of the text of San Basilio (prominent figure of the Orthodox Church) supported positions equal to those of the Church of Rome, while the copies of the text that had not the offending step were all very recent. The main dogmatic question that divided the two churches was the one of the Filioque , concerning the relationship within the Trinity between the Son, the Father and the Holy Spirit: significant, in this regard, is the debate that, during the Council, took place between Bessarione and Ludovico da Parano, present as a bishop of Forlì . But the reasons that divided the two churches were deeper. The ecclesiological and historical-political reasons were so complex that it seems more difficult to overcome than dogmatic ones.

This hostility of the Byzantines towards Latin Christians had started in 1054, with mutual excommunication, but had further deepened after the fourth crusade of 1204, which instead of pointing against the Turks to regain Jerusalem, had destroyed the Byzantine empire with the conquest And the looting of Constantinople and the division of the Byzantine territories among the powers that had taken part in the “Crusade”, especially the Venetians. On July 6, 1439, however, by the explicit will of the emperor to reach a compromise, he was read, in the presence of Pope Eugene IV and the emperor himself, by Cardinal Cesarini in Latin and Bessarione in Greek the decree of the union of churches.

The difficult return to Constantinople [ change | Modifica Wikitesto ]

Shortly after the Italian mission Bessarione returned to Constantinople, where he and the other proponents of the Union found a hostile climate between the population and the clergy, in particular the monks, while a part of those who had signed the Union decree now there ‘They abandoned. Given this climate and the appointment as Cardinal by Pope Eugenio IV on 18 December 1439, with the title of the Saints XII apostles, communicated to him while he was in Constantinople, Bessarione went back to Italy again in 1440, from which he never returned to the ‘Byzantine Empire.

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Funeral monument in Bessarione in the basilica of the Holy Apostles in Rome.

The commitment to the conservation of classical Greek culture [ change | Modifica Wikitesto ]

In 1442, by the will of Pope Eugenio IV, the Benedictine monastery of San Giovanni Evangelista in Ravenna was granted in Commenda to Cardinal Bessarione. He was commander until 1459. After a stay in Florence he went with the pontifical court in Rome. In 1449 he changed his cardinal title with the suburbicaria headquarters of Sabina, while maintaining the commander of the title of the Saints XII Apostles. Immediately afterwards he opted for the suburbicaria headquarters of Frascati, which he held until 1468, when he returned to that of Sabina, which he then held until his death.

Costantinople fall in 1453, he devoted himself to help the Byzantine learned escaped from the Ottomans. Between 1456 and 1465 he was Archimandrita di Messina and Baron of Land of Savoca . In 1462 he was appointed first abbot commander of the Greek abbey of Grottaferrata. Wanting to save the immense assets of Byzantine culture, he collected numerous works that otherwise would never have been received in the West, constituting a rich library, divided out of two scriptoria , while he was still alive. Among others, he saved numerous works contained in the very rich library of the Monastery of San Nicola di Casole, near Otranto, which ended up destroyed (by the Ottomans) during the battle of Otranto of 1480.

In 1468 he donated his library to the city of Venice; The collection became the initial heritage of the Marciana National Library; [first] the letter of donation, drawn up in Latin (with the title Journal of Literarium D. Bessarionis Cardinal Nice, Bishop of Tusculi and Patriarch of Constantinople, in the serene of the King of the Venetian conferred ) and dated May 31, 1468 From the baths of Viterbiensibus , is kept in the LAT code. XIV, 14 (= 4235) to the FF. 1r-4r. [2] In 1489-90 Aldo Manuzio settled in Venice, where he carried out his editorial activity, to print the volumes of the Bessarione collection [3] .

The diplomatic mission in France and death [ change | Modifica Wikitesto ]

In 1472, despite his age and the bad state of health, he was sent by Pope Sixtus IV to Louis XI of France to plead the cause of a crusade for the liberation of Constantinople. On the return journey, due to the inconvenience, his condition worsened and died in Ravenna, in the house of Antonio Dandolo, his Venetian friend and mayor of the place. [4]

It was during the outward journey for the mission to France that Cardinal Bessarione, coming to Gubbio, stopped there and the day following this, “Monday 28 April 1472 (…) he kept baptism and created Guidobaldo”. [5] Dated April 28, 1472, always in Gubbio, there remains the Bessarione parchment , returned to the public after the recovery announced and archived by the Ministry of Culture. [6]

His body, translated to Rome on December 3 of the same year, was buried in the Bessarione chapel of the Basilica of the Saints XII Apostles.

Bessarione in the series of illustrious men of Federico da Montefeltro’s studio. The picture is hosted at the Louvre Museum.

Basilio Bessarione participated in the election of:

Of Bessarione is famous the booklet in which, on the basis of the original Greek text ( Eàn ) and of ancient authors of the Latin and Greek Church, corrects the text of John 21.22 [7] and sic in and , making it much more suited to the context. [8]

Its greater philosophical work, originally written in Greek, was translated into Latin and entitled The oppressor of Plato (1457-1458). It is a text favorable to Christian Platonism and adverse to the theses supported by Giorgio di Trebisonda in favor of integration, of tomistic inspiration, of Aristotelianism in Christian doctrine.

  • ( THE ) Bessarione (cardinal), Letters and prayers , [Venice], [Christoph Valdarfer], McCCCLXXI. URL consulted on May 3, 2015 .
  • Journal of Literarium D. Bessarionis Cardinal Nice, Bishop of Tusculi and Patriarch of Constantinople, in the serene of the King of the Venetian conferred , From the baths of Viterbiensibus , May 31, 1468.
  • The metaphysics of Aristotle, translated into Latin by Cardinal Bessarione, and went to Italian, with compendium notes of the comment of San Tommaso d’Aquino, from the sac. dr. Giacomo Dal Sasso , Padua, Seminar typography, 1944.
  • Bessarion of Nice, Dogmatic prayer on the union of the Greeks and the Latins Napoli, Vivarium, 2001.
  • Basil Bessarione Against Plato’s slander , Rome, Editions of History and Literature, 2014.
  • Bessarione, Nature deliberates, nature and art , Milan, Bompiani, 2014.

The apostolic succession is:

  1. ^ Bessarioneo bequest | Marciana National Library . are Marciana.venezia.sbn.it . URL consulted on 9 May 2015 .
  2. ^ 2018. Year Bessarioneo ( PDF ), are anneeuropeo2018.beniculturi.it .
  3. ^ Alessandro March Magno, The dawn of books. When Venice made the world read , Garzanti, Milan 2012, p. 95.
  4. ^ According to some he was poisoned on the instigation of his opponents’ French cardinals. See S.G. Markets, For the chronology of life and writings of Niccolò Perotti , Roma 1925, rist. 1973
  5. ^ Anna Buoninsegni, Rotary Club and State Archive for the recovery of the Bessarione parchment , in Chronicle Eugubin , year IX, n. 27, Gubbio. URL consulted on February 3, 2023 .
  6. ^ Gubbio (PG) – The recovery of Cardinal Bessarione’s parchment . are Archivi.cultura.gov.it . URL consulted on February 3, 2023 .
  7. ^ Giovanni 21,22 . are Laparola.net .
  8. ^ In an era in which the text of the vulgate was almost sacred, it aroused a sensation between the contemporaries, showing the closeness of his ideas to those of Valla – which called him very appropriately Latin Greeks, Latinissimus – del Poliziano and those of other Renaissance champions.
  • Archimandrita Vissarion Kouotsis, Triadology in the Eastern tradition and in Bessarione di Nicea , Edizioni Kalos Typos, Atene 2020.
  • White concept, From Byzantium to Rome. Studies on Cardinal Bessarione , Rome in the Renaissance, Rome 1999.
  • Dessì P. (edited by), The liturgical and liturgical-musical codes at the time of the Commendatario Bessarione, in San Giovanni Evangelista on display, patrimononocultural.unibo.it/sge, 2014
  • Lead Turkish-Bizantine History 1341-1462 , edited by Michele Puglia, Il Cerchio, Rimini 2008, ISBN 88-8474-164-5
  • Gianfranco Fiacadora (Popular of), Bessarione and humanism. Exhibition catalog. Venice, Marciana National Library, April 27 – May 31, 1994 – Naples 1994 Napoli, Vivarium, 1994.
  • John Deno Geanakoplos, Greek Scholars in Venice: Studies in the Dissemination of Greek Learning from Byzantium to the West , Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) 1962. ( IN )
  • Giorgio Sfranze, Paleologist. Greatness and fall of Byzantium , Sellerio, Palermo 2008, ISBN 88-389-226-8
  • Marino Zorzi, The San Marco library, Books, readers, companies in the Venice of the Doge , Mondadori, Milan 1987, ISBN 88-04-30686-6, Capt. II-IV
  • S. Ronchey, Bessarione poet and the last court of Byzantium , in G. fencies (the care of), Bessarione and humanism , catalog of the exhibition, pref. by G. Pugliese Carratelli, Naples, Vivarium – Italian Institute for Philosophical Studies – Marciana National Library, 1994, pp. 47–65
  • S. Ronchey, The last Byzantine. Bessarione and the last rowing of Byzantium , in G. Benzoni (edited by), The Greek legacy and the Venetian Hellenism (Acts of the XL International High Culture Course of the Giorgio Cini Foundation, Venice, 31 August-12 September 1998), Florence, Olschki, 2002, pp. 75–92
  • S. Ronchey, Piero’s enigma. The last Byzantine and the ghost crusade in the revelation of a large picture , Milan, Rizzoli, 2006, 540 pp.
  • Silvia Ronchey, Bessarone’s Fox , in Streets for Byzantium. VII National Congress of the Association of Byzantine Studies, Venice 25-28 November 2009 , edited by A. Rigo, A. Babuin and M. Trizio, Page editions, Bari 2013, pp. 539–551

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