Tag: Demetrios Kyzikenus

In my first post about Demetrius of Cyzicus (fl. ca. 1028) I wrote that the Greek work against the Jacobites etc.,…

… was composed between 1026-28 by the deeply obscure Demetrius, Metropolitan of Cyzicus. What little is known about him can apparently be found in H.G. Beck, Kirche und theologische Literatur im Byzantinischen  Reich (Munich, 1959), p.532, although I have not looked.

Well, I have now located this volume, and others, and I find that I was misled by my reference, and rather more is known.  But anyway, let’s start with the Beck paragraph, and then give a ChatGPT translation of it.

Ein Günstling des Kaisers Konstantinos VIII. und besonders des Kaisers Romanos Argyros war der Metropolit von Kyzikos, Demetrios. 1028 ist er durch seine Unterschrift unter ein Synodaldekret bezeugt. 1037 ließ er sich ohne Glück in eine Konspiration gegen den Patriarchen ein. Wahrscheinlich ist er der Verfasser einer „Ἔκθέσις κατ’ ἐπιτομὴν τοῦ τῶν Ἰακωβιτῶν δόγματος“, die er im Auftrag des Kaisers Konstantinos verfaßt haben will und ihm widmet. In addition to the Traktates you can read, you will be able to leave them in a very thick place. Mit der vieldiskutierten Narratio de rebus Armeniae hat der Traktat nichts zu tun, ebensowenig Demetrios mit der Abfassung der einem Isaak zugeschriebenen Invektiven gegen die Armenier (S. 533 u. 628). If these are the versions of literary products in which they are published, they are included in the unglücklichen bibliographischen Umständen zu verdanken.

Demetrios is also the Kanonist hervorgetreten. Wir kennen eine Μελέτη über die Verwandtschaftsgrade und einen kanonischen Bescheid über einen Sonderfall der Verwandtschaftsgrade. Fünf, vielleicht sechs Logoi über verschiedene juristische Fragen sind noch unediert.²

• Gegen die Jakobiten: PG 127, 878–885 (unter dem Namen des Philippos Monotropos), der fehlende Anfang und Schluß: G. Ficker, Die Erlasse des Patriarchen Alexios Studites, Kiel 1911, 22–23; – die μελέτη: PG 119, 1097–1116 and Rhalles-Potles V 354–366; – Bescheid: PG 111, 1116–1120 and Rhalles-Potles V 366–368.

² Ehrhard 79, 1. 89; – DTC IV 264–265 (L. Petit); – LTK III 202 (A. Michel); – DHGE XIV 208–210 (J. Darrouzès); – G. Garitte, Narratio de rebus Armeniae, Louvain 1952 (im Kommentar ausführliche Diskussion des gesamten Zuteilungsproblems mit kritischer Sichtung der Literatur).

Running this through ChatGPT gives us:

A favourite of the emperor Constantine VIII, and especially of the emperor Romanos Argyros, was Demetrius, metropolitan of Cyzicus. In 1028 he is attested by his signature on a synodal decree. In 1037 he became involved, unsuccessfully, in a conspiracy against the patriarch.

He is probably the author of an “Abbreviated Exposition of the Doctrine of the Jacobites,” which he claims to have composed at the commission of the emperor Constantine and dedicated to him. From the conclusion of the treatise it emerges that he had already previously delivered an opinion on the same subject.  Note that the treatise has nothing to do with the much-discussed Narratio de rebus Armeniae , nor does Demetrius have anything to do with the composition of the invectives against the Armenians attributed to Isaac (pp. 533 and 628). The fact that these three different literary works were brought into connection with one another is due solely to unfortunate bibliographical circumstances.

Demetrius also distinguished himself as a canonist. We know of a Meletē (=study/treatise) on degrees of kinship, and of a canonical ruling concerning a special case involving degrees of kinship. Five, perhaps six, logoi (=discourses) concerning various legal questions are still unpublished.²

• Against the Jacobites : PG 127, 878–885 (under the name of Philippos Monotropos); missing the beginning and ending: G. Ficker, The Decrees of Patriarch Alexios Studites , Kiel 1911, 22–23; the meletē : PG 119, 1097–1116 and Rhalles–Potles V 354–366; the canonical ruling: PG 111, 1116–1120 and Rhalles–Potles V 366–368.

² Ehrhard 79, 1. 89; DTC IV 264–265 (L. Petit); LTK III 202 (A. Michel); DHGE XIV 208–210 (J. Darrouzès); G. Garitte, Narratio de rebus Armeniae , Louvain 1952 (with a detailed discussion in the commentary of the entire problem of attribution, with a critical review of the literature).

Note that the abbreviations in the above are:

• DHGE = Dictionary of Ecclesiastical History and Geography, Paris, 1912.
• DTC = Dictionary of Catholic Theology, Paris, 1932 ff.
• Ehrhard = A. Ehrhard, Theologie, in: K. Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Literature, 2. Aufl., München, 1897 , 37-218.
• LTK = Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, Freiburg, 1930 ff.
• Rhalles–Potles = K. Rhalles-M. Potles, Σύνταγμα τῶν θείων καὶ ιἑρῶν κανόνων , I-VI, Athens 1852-1859.

This article is a start.  It is shorter than it needs to be, as is perhaps inevitable in so wide a survey of authors.  It clearly draws upon the old DGHE article which goes into much more detail.  It is also notable for the sheer age of the material referenced, even allowing that Beck’s article itself is now seventy years old.  The vague “bibliographical circumstances” are simply the accident that the three texts all appeared one after another in one manuscript and the first editor ascribed them all to Demetrius.  

A kind commenter drew my attention to an interesting article by Zachary Chitwood in GRBS 54 (2014) (online here, pp.300-301) which manages to cover a lot of the background to Demetrius’ anti-Jacobite text in a footnote: 

The introductory and closing paragraphs of the text are printed in Ficker, Erlasse 22–23, while the rest of the text corresponds to PG 127.880–884. The text printed in PG is erroneously ascribed to “Philippus Solitarius” instead of Demetrios of Kyzikos (the likely author); see Dagron, TravMém 6 (1976) 201 n.108; Ficker, Erlasse 23; an analysis of the text and a German translation in Benner, Die syrisch-jakobitische Kirche 123–136.

Abbreviations again: TravMém = G. Dagron, Travaux et Mémoires.  Ficker = G. Ficker, Erlasse des Patriarchen von Konstantinopel Alexios Studites (Kiel 1911).  The Benner item is a thesis, from 1990, which exists in PDF but curiously is not on Academia or somewhere like that.

So we now know something.

Our obscure 11th century Greek cleric, Demetrius, Metropolitan of Cyzicus, had the good fortune to have a poem addressed to him by Christopher of Mytilene.  The latter was a contemporary poet who wrote a collection, Various Verses, of which this poem is number 22.  Even more fortunately the collection then had the good fortune to be edited and translated in the excellent Dumbarton Oaks series:

• Floris Bernard and Christopher Livanos, eds. and trans., The Poems of Christopher of Mytilene and John Mauropous, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 50 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018).

This reprints the 1903 Kurtz edition with an English translation and commentary.[ref]E. Kurtz, Die Gedichte des Christophoros Mytilenaios, Leipzig: Neumann (1903), p.13 (poem 22). [/ref]

Christopher’s verses do not seem to have been popular.  As the editors remark:

Only one manuscript transmits the collection in its entirety: Grottaferrata Z.α.XXIX, which was copied in the thirteenth century, in a milieu of Greek-speaking poets in southern Italy. This manuscript is heavily damaged, because, as Christopher himself seems to have foreseen in poem 103, mice ate away at the book. As often in Byzantine manuscripts, the verse lines were laid out in two columns, to be read from left to right. Since the lacunas often extend over more or less one column, in many poems every other verse is lost. Fortunately, there are some Byzantine poetic anthologies that include dispersed poems of Christopher (mostly not, or wrongly, attributed), which help to reconstruct the complete text. However, those poems transmitted only in the Grottaferrata manuscript remain in their sorry state.

Here is the translation of the poem:

22. To Demetrios, the metropolitan of Kyzikos, on his gout

Why do you moan about everything so long and so often?
It is your feet that suffer, gout that consumes you.
Up against these pains, hold the garlands
woven for you by the long-lasting diseases,
whose bitter afflictions you endure—
a disciple of Job, the long-suffering.
Raise your spirits with hopes of trophies,
and do not, do not appear, by the very Trinity,
to be lesser than petty sufferings, you winner of all!
The man proven greater than any passion of the soul,
who has overpowered the principalities and powers of darkness,
and erected a great victory monument in his life,
that man . . .
And where is the sharp mind of Demetrios?
. . .
Let faith be the razor-sharp blade
. . .
let hope be the shield, and divine protection the spear
. . .
. . .
the malicious disease that has attacked you
. . .
and shoots its arrows one after the other
. . .
the vile one, not tolerating those who trample upon him,
. . .
but you should firmly trample on him once more.
. . .
and shatter him; and even if he bites again.
. . .
if you endure the scratches until the end
. . . for praise,
looking at the future and ignoring the present.

Rather outside our period, but interesting to see, and especially to learn about the effect that mice can have on a manuscript of poetry.

Independent scholar Alex Hourani tells me that he has created a Greek text  from manuscripts of a largely unpublished medieval text.  The anti-heretical work, which is referred to under various titles, was composed between 1026-28 by the deeply obscure Demetrius, Metropolitan of Cyzicus. What little is known about him can apparently be found in H.­G. Beck, Kirche und theologische Literatur im Byzantinischen Reich (Munich, 1959), p.532, although I have not looked.[ref]James Morton, “Law and Orthodoxy under the Komnenoi”, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 76 (2022), 145-162, p.151, n.32.  Online here.[/ref]  A page at Dumbarton Oaks tells us that Demetrius was appointed syncellus in 1029, and later made oikonomos of the Great Church, sometime before April 1032.

His Greek text is here:

• https://archive.org/details/expositio-breuis-doctrinae-iacobitarum-demetrii-metropolitae-cyzici-alexander-hourani-2026

The text is there entitled “Expositio Breuiter Doctrinae Iacobitarum” (ἔκθεσις κατ᾿ ἐπιτομὴν τοῦ τῶν Ἰακωβιτῶν δόγματος καὶ τῶν ἀλλων ὧν ποιοῦσι παρὰ τὴν ἐκκλησιαστικὴν καὶ ὀρθόδοξον πίστιν τε καὶ παράδοσιν, “An exposition in summary form of the doctrine of the Jacobites and of the other things which they do contrary to the ecclesiastical and orthodox faith and tradition, written by Demetrios, Metropolitan of Cyzicus“).

However it is also referred to sometimes as “Liber de rebus Armeniae (contra Iacobitas),” and a shortened version of it appears under that title in Patrologia Graeca 127, cols. 880-84, where it is wrongly attributed to Philippus Solitarius. The text was printed from MS. Paris gr. 1315.[ref]Bernadette Martin-Hisard, “Le discours des Georgiens sur leur orthodoxie: les heretiques Armeniens et Pierre le Foulon (VIIe-XIIe S.)”, in: Rivista di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici 47 (2010) 195-264, p.243, n.204.[/ref]

The old McClintock and Strong article on Philip the Solitary mentions the work, and an AI search tells me that the 1648 Combefis editio princeps labelled it “De Fide et Coeremoniis Armeniorum, Jacobitarum, Chatzitzacriorum et Romanorum seu Francorum”.[ref]François Combefis, Novum Auctarium Graeco-Latinae Bibliothecae Patrum, Volume 2, columns 261ff, Paris, 1648, but I have been unable to access the book.  Update: it is here.  It turns out that Combefis gave volume 2 a separate title.  Volume 2 (the Tomus Alter Historicis et Dogmaticus) of the 1648 edition is uniquely titled after its core treatise: Historia Haeresis Monothelitarum sanctaeque in eam sextae synodi actorum vindiciae.[/ref].

A list of manuscripts appears in the Pinakes database here.  Hourani’s text is from MS Real Biblioteca Escorial R. I. 15, MS Sinai Greek 1795, and MS Heidelberg Cod. Pal. Graec. 356, ff. 129-132v. These include a preface indicating that it was composed at the request of Constantine VIII (1025-1028).

There is a discussion and summary of the text in German, see T. H. Benner, “Die syrischjakobitische Kirche unter byzantinischer Herrschaft im 10. und 11. Jahrhundert” (PhD diss., Marburg, Philipps­Universität, 1989), 123–26; see also Z. Chitwood, “The Patriarch Alexios Stoudites and the Reinterpretation of Justinianic Legislation against Heretics,” GRBS 54 (2014): 300–301.[ref]Morton, q.v., n.33.[/ref]

The work is of interest as the first text to explain the term “Melchite”.  Dr H. has also drafted an interesting article on the origins of the term which is on Academia here.  Here is the relevant passage (I have slightly revised the translation which is very literal):

4.  τοῦ τοίνυν δηλωθέντος Ἰακώβου τὸ τοῦ Εὐτυχοῦς δόγμα πεπαῤῥησιασμένως κηρύττοντος, σχίσμα γέγονεν ἐν τοῖς Σύροις. καὶ οἱ μὲν Ὀρθόδοξοι οἰ τῇ συνόδῳ καὶ τῷ βασιλεῖ Μαρκιανῷ ἀκολουθήσαντες, ἐκλήθησαν Μελχῖται· ὡς φρονοῦντες τὰ τοῦ ὀρθοδόξου βασιλέως. ἐπεὶ μελχὶ λέγεται καθ’ Ἐβραίους καὶ Σύρους ὁ βασιλεὺς. οἱ δὲ Εὐτυχιανισταὶ καὶ ἐπὶ τούτοις Μονοθελῆται, οἱ τῷ μοναχῷ Ἰακώβῳ τῷ εὐτελεῖ καὶ ἀνωνύμῳ Σύρῳ πεισθέντες, ὠνομάσθησαν Ἰακωβῖται. καὶ ἔκτοτε μέχρι τοῦ νῦν, οὕτως ἀπ’ ἐκείνου καλοῦνται.

4.  This Jacob preached the doctrine of Eutyches outspokenly, and a schism happened among the Syrians. The orthodox, who followed the synod and the emperor Marcian, were called Melchites, as if they held to the opinions of the orthodox emperor, because a king is called “melchi” according to the Hebrews and the Syrians.  The Eutychianists and also the Monothelites who were persuaded by Jacob, the worthless monk and nameless Syrian, were called Jacobites. Since that time, and until now, they are called as such after him.

Here’s a DeepSeek output for the first section of the text:

An exposition in summary form of the doctrine of the Jacobites and of the other things which they do contrary to the ecclesiastical and orthodox faith and tradition; written by Demetrios, Metropolitan of Cyzicus; at the prompting of the Christ-loving lord Constantine, the purple-born emperor; in which there is also (a section) concerning the Chatzitzarioi:—

(1) Since God has bestowed upon the world your nature, that transcends nature and is truly most kingly as a choice possession, O good-loving lord; and having granted to your might the readiness in all things; in you alone of all men He wondrously mingled things that cannot be mingled: kingship and teaching; the flower of the purple and the power of words; and for this reason you have already turned many of the Hebrews from the error handed down from their fathers; and you have refuted no few of the Athinganoi and Paulicians; and you yourself have been deemed worthy to become the mouth of God, according to the divine oracles; for He who brings out, it says, the worthy from the unworthy, “as my mouth shall he be”.

But now the great and burning zeal for God has stirred you up also to the refutation of the Jacobites; so that these too, holding distorted and blasphemous doctrines, may not escape notice, creeping in under the guise and skin of sheep as wolves, and falsely calling themselves orthodox. In clear and concise language I shall set before your majesty the matters concerning their heresy from the books of the Fathers; adding also the matters concerning the Chatzitzarioi, just as you commanded. And the affairs of the Jacobites stand as follows. …

The “Chatzitzarioi” or Staurolatrians[ref]Andreas Rhoby, “Byzantine Greek Words in English Vocabulary?” online here.[/ref] seem to be an Armenian cross-worshipping judaising group of the period.

Always interesting to see bits like this.