The Language of Salvation: Episodes of Latin-Greek Competition from the Renaissance to the Reformation

In 1423, the Byzantine emperor John VIII Palaiologos made Venice his first stop on his journey to the West to secure protection against the Ottomans. Two of the city’s most prominent young patricians, Francesco Barbaro and Leonardo Giustinian, were chosen to make a ceremonial speech; to impress the high guest, they would speak in Greek. A similar display of intercultural competence would have been unthinkable just a few years earlier. In fact, it was only recently, and not without resistance, that Venice began to consider learning Greek. Like the rest of the Italian cities, or the rest of western Europe, and despite its affairs in the eastern Mediterranean, knowledge of this language was a rather rare skill. After centuries of absence, Greek began to make a timid return to the West as part of the humanist programme Full reference in Zotero Library. Oddly enough, the introduction of Greek would signal a paradigm shift, linked to a wider attempt to reappropriate a new Latinitas to counter the decline of Latin poetics in the Middle Ages. Such an endeavour was promised and carried out by prominent intellectuals in collaboration with the powerful lords of various Italian cities. The enemies of the humanist programme targeted Greek learning as the most obvious differentiating factor, but the competition was entangled in a much more varied and complicated dynamic. It became even more complex when, after the collapse of the Byzantine Empire, Greek scholars fled to the West and, as refugees, sought to strengthen their position by exploiting their linguistic and cultural indispensability.

The controversy over the necessity or otherwise of Greek learning in the West very often concealed a competition for resources, power and prestige. The vehicle for such competition was the harsh rhetorical art of invective, with some exceptional cases of such ‘lotte’ as those between Poliziano and Argyropoulos or Trapezountius and Agaso. The genre of invective had already generated a large number of textual controversies among the Italian humanists, as it was an instrument of ideological confrontation on political, religious or cultural issues of disagreement Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library. Used in the controversy between Westerners and Byzantine scholars over Greek learning, it acquired the stench of national-cultural chauvinism Full reference in Zotero Library, reproducing old prejudices and resentments Full reference in Zotero Library. Even so, this scheme is incomplete, since in no case were the conflicting communities defined by ethnic-linguistic labels. The choice of Greek learning divided the Italian humanists just as the community of Greek scholars was not a compact group with common aims and means. Moreover, the presence of Greek intellectuals in the West was marked from the outset by a deep division, which took the form of the philosophical dispute over Plato and Aristotle, with its leading exponents Bessarion and Trapezountius Full reference in Zotero Library. Patronage was often the real, if unnamed, point of contention between intellectuals. The old question of comparison and competition between the two languages and cultures, as old as their encounter since the Roman conquest of Greece (at least since the Horatian ‘Graecia capta serum victorem cepit’), was revived in the Renaissance years with a variety of textual production, ranging from university inaugural speeches to prefaces to publications, occasional polemical texts, rhetorical exercises, and so on. Already in Domenico da Prato’s reaction, around 1420, to the new approach to classical literature, we see how the knowledge of Greek was gradually becoming a millstone around the necks of the older generation of teachers and intellectuals Full reference in Zotero Library.

This dynamic is even more evident in the case of the two patricians we saw welcoming the Byzantine emperor in 1423. Seven years earlier, in 1416, these two young Venetians, both in their twenties, undertook to translate selected chapters of Plutarch’s Parallel Lives.¹Barbaro’s work focused on the pair Aristides & Cato the Elder, while Giustinian translated the Lives of Cimon & Lucullus Full reference in Zotero Library. The task was not easy and by no means an obvious entertainment. Knowledge of Greek language in early fifteenth-century Venice was a rare skill and had only just begun to attract the interest of very limited circles of the local elite. In the prefaces to their translations, they, implicitly, suggested an alternative typology of public figure by putting themselves as living examples of a radical change in the formation of a statesman. Venice at the beginning of the century was a republic focused on business, commerce, administration and politics; the republic’s value system, and consequently the education offered to young patricians, was focused on the study of disciplines with a practical or monetaristic outcome. Barbaro’s and Giustinian’s translations were therefore, of course, linguistic exercises, a task that was probably conceived as a test of linguistic proficiency during their Greek studies with Guarino da Verona, but at the same time a vivid example of a new typology of the learned citizen (Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library). Such a citizen, in the humanist fashion, is inspired through the learning of Greek to desire two unprecedented (for the standards of their environment) goals, glory and immortality:

Who can doubt that the deeds of the most illustrious men and aspirations of the greatest, especially the noble, have fiercely aroused the desire for glory and immortality?²‘Quis dubitat clarissimorum hominum gestis ac maximarum rerum tecordatione nobilis praesertim animos ad gloriae ad immortalitatis studium vehementer accendi?’ Full reference in Zotero Library [All translations are mine unless otherwise stated].

Florentine civic humanism and the desire of a resurgent Venice to compete not only in wealth and power but also in prestige—the symbolic capital of letters—would shape the traditionally rigidly mercantilist views of Venetian society. Marianne Pade has suggested that Guarino, in translating the Plutarchian Life of Dion, implicitly alluded to a platonic ideal of the philosopher-ruler by dedicating the translation to Francesco Barbaro, establishing a kind of a trans-temporal mirroring of Barbaro’s future as a statesman into Dion’s biography (Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library). The study of Greek was for the two young patricians part of a wider humanist challenge to create a new type of man for politics and action. Venice, which was relatively late in the field of humanist studies, could thus compete with Florence, which from the time of Chrysoloras’s teaching and activity in the Florentine Studio and at the Medici court was preeminant in humanist education, decisive in the formation of a new typology of intellectuals, artists and statesmen. A comparison between the Platonic Laws and the Venetian government, in an attempt to flatter the Venetians’s self-image, is also found in the correspondence between George Trapezountius and Barbaro Full reference in Zotero Library.

The competition between the various city-states of the Italian peninsula for the title of the new capital of letters—the new Athens—became an important parameter in the general, complex and harsh network of competing communities for a new system of values that placed the prestige of the excellence in letters, arts and sciences at the forefront. But not everyone was happy with the paradigm shift suggested by Guarino’s disciples. Their correspondence Full reference in Zotero Library shows that a circle of opponents began to raise their voices against the new tendency introduced by these translations, and Lorenzo de Monacis, the coryphaeus of the opponents, argued against the usefulness of Greek (Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library). It is difficult to understand the reaction of de Monacis, a diplomat and man of letters, who was Chancellor of Crete, a Greek-speaking island under Venetian rule, and a historian who used Greek sources in his own works Full reference in Zotero Library. As Pertusi suggested, the clash between de Monacis and Barbaro-Giustinian, indicated two different approaches to Greek antiquity, language and culture: de Monacis represented the old school of Venetian instrumental use of the textual testimony of ancient authority, while the two young patricians promoted a function of antiquity that had a paradigmatic effect in the present in fields such as letters, public oratory and even the values and mentality. In his reaction, we can detect a sense of being left behind, a fear of danger, and a resentment that a circle of high-ranking public servants, who had always been oriented towards the Latin tradition, were being replaced by a tendency that turned to Greek antiquity to find a meaning for the present Full reference in Zotero Library. De Monacis’s categorical denial of the usefulness of Greek culture in his contemporary Venetian public life aimed to disqualify the translations of Barbaro and Giustinian as an example of a humanistic activity and venture with letters that was not useful for the foundations and goals of the community. This was a persistent argument, deeply rooted in the Greek-Roman intercultural communication since antiquity, which was renewed in the Renaissance and which, as we shall see, persisted during the fifteenth century, mainly on the Italian peninsula, until it moved north of the Alps in the next century, to continue deep into the seventeenth century, accompanying the arguments of reformist scholars trying to establish a new relationship with the Greek logos. In this expanded temporal and spatial scope, we can observe how the conceptualisations of a new relationality to old languages (perceived as cultural systems, textual traditions, worldviews and mentalities) shape communities by supporting and stimulating their imaginations and narratives of shared origins, ideas, ideals or values ‘held together by consensus’ (Kelleter/Albers: Community), while at the same time being held together in contestation and agonism, assembled in complex linkages of ‘hegemonic claims and resistance stances’ (Spatzek/Pechlivanos: Competition) that articulate notions of identity enacted as gestures of kinship or disaffiliation.

Byzantine scholars in Italy: de litteris Graecis

As increasing numbers of refugees streamed westwards after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Westerners began to view them more critically and even hostilely Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library. Byzantine and Western humanists adopted an often antagonistic approach not only to cultural heritage but also to the distribution of resources, patronage and teaching positions. Italian cultural hegemony catalysed the emerging competition among European humanists. Byzantine scholars in Italy entered the emerging competition with an obvious dichotomy: their own binary cultural reference to both Rome and Greece; seemingly abandoning their Roman claim in order to embrace their Greekness as their distinguishing feature and advantage Full reference in Zotero Library. At the same time, a public dispute over Platonism revealed the internal contradictions and divergent orientations within the communities of Byzantine scholars, but also their intention to control and monopolise the epistemic orientation in their new cultural environment. The harsh reaction to such intentions revived prejudices held since the time of Giovanni Conversino Full reference in Zotero Library and took the form of anti-Greek polemics by Western scholars such as Annius of Viterbo or Poliziano. For Byzantine émigré scholars, the inaugural discourses in Italian institutions represented an extraordinarily privileged platform to address the intellectual milieu of the host environment. Inaugural speeches at the beginning of a teaching appointment were a well-established tradition in the West Full reference in Zotero Library, while the Byzantine intellectuals invited to teach the students and to address a much wider audience on the occasion of the first formal opening were inveterate orators, trained in the millennia-old Byzantine oratory. However, orations were only one version of verbalised competitive approaches; other aspects of public life were used to thematise conflicting views of cultural supremacy and functioned as fields for harsh Greek-Latin competition. John Argyropoulos, for example, avoided arguing directly on the issue of Latin dependence on Greek in his inaugural speeches Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library in the Florentine Studio, but in his classroom he made his views on the subject clear enough to provoke Poliziano’s irate reaction by accusing Cicero of being ‘ignorant, not only of philosophy, but also of Greek letters’ (Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library). The ‘lotta’ between Argyropoulos and Poliziano encapsulates the tension that arose when Byzantine attitudes of cultural supremacy were performed at the same time and in the same place as Italian humanist pride, which in some cases looked like outright cultural chauvinism.

Argyropoulos’s teaching, otherwise admittedly successful, displeased the Italians for another reason: his ambiguous attitude towards Leonardo Bruni’s translations of Aristotle, first praising them and later expressing reservations about their validity. The field of translation, so important for humanist self-confidence and epistemic awareness, was the main battleground for the clash among Italians, humanists vis à vis scholastics, and between Italians and Byzantines. Some of the most famous ‘lotte’ between Georgios Trapezountius and his opponents were fought in this field. In the same vein, Michael Apostolius’s Exhortation from Gortyna Full reference in Zotero Library, suggested the need for Westerners to approach Greek letters through the study of Greek grammar and not through Latin translations.³Apostolious’s views on Greek superiority over the West are subtly expressed in this text. He admits that Greek civilisation is in decline while Europe is in its first stages of flourishing, and he strongly reminds his Western readers that some Greek scholars teach Latin in the West, but no Western teacher of Greek is known in Greece Full reference in Zotero Library.

            Theodoros Gazes

Only a few orations by Byzantine scholars have survived, delivered on the occasion of official appointments to teach Greek in Italian institutions of higher education. Theodoros Gazes’s prolusion De litteris Graecis is the first known work of this kind Full reference in Zotero Library. On taking up teaching in the Studium Ferarriense, he gave a public inaugural address, highlighting the difficulties in the host environment. Several years after the first such inaugural address by Chrysoloras in Florence,⁴Delivered in 1397; the speech did not survive. it seems that the Byzantines were still struggling to persuade Italian scholars to study Greek language and literature (i.e. philosophy and rhetorics). The structure of Gazes’s speech followed ancient patterns, drawing on Ciceronian and Hermogenian rhetorical traditions Full reference in Zotero Library, and is built around an argument that focuses on the utility and possibility of the enterprise under discussion; it is more or less the same structure that we find in all the prolusions produced on the Italian peninsula in this century, whether written by Greeks or Italians. A fundamental argument in Gazes and in all his successors is the example of ancient Rome as a culture that achieved prosperity and glory because it consciously looked to Greek language and culture as a primary source of valuable learning. Gazes presented a complex web of interdependencies between Greek and Latin in ancient times: he suggested that every important figure in Roman history had a Greek education, and such a choice was quite obvious when one considers the familiarity of the two literatures from the moment that all Greek achievements in science, philosophy, rhetoric and literature were adopted, translated or imitated by Latin authors Full reference in Zotero Library. Cicero’s De Oratore provided Gazes with rich arguments for the usefulness of Greek, while the Greek language spoken in southern Italy was another way for Gazes to arouse the interest of his Italian audience.

The decadence of these two great local traditions of Greek knowledge was a consequence of the neglect of letters and science in the Middle Ages; joining his voice to that of the Italian humanists, he blamed the medieval scholastic tradition of bad translations as the cause of the separation between the Greek and Latin worlds. The strategy adopted by the speaker here was to describe the Greek language not as an asset to be acquired but as a loss to be recovered. By associating the lost ability with the period of the highest political, moral and cultural status of ancient Rome, the orator winked at the humanists, who also saw in the Middle Ages the reason for the broken connection of contemporary culture with the glorious times of Roman antiquity. In this way, the recovery of the Greek language was presented as a sine qua non for the recovery of elegantia and the prototypes of moral life and political action, as described by Quintilian’s perspective of eloquentia as a tool for the formation of the Roman citizen as a moral individual Full reference in Zotero Library. Gazes suggested that the very heart of humanism, its highest aspiration, depended profoundly on the study of Greek Full reference in Zotero Library. His ultimate aim was not to exalt the superiority of Greek over Latin; he understood that in order to win his Italian audience, he must flatter their Latinitas and convince them that the study of Greek was related to it. Gazes seemed to be aware that the priorities and sensibilities of Western scholars were different from those of the Byzantine emigrants; he knew that the success of his courses might be jeopardised if he described the culture of his audience as secondary or derivative. Even so, the Byzantine conviction of the superiority of Greek culture and especially Greek letters was a bias that must be taken into account in most cases. Gazes seemed to tread carefully and with discipline, using many targeted examples from the glorious Latin past to underline the obligation to the Greeks. Finally, in order to entice his audience, he promised a valid, complete and correct text of Aristotle for his lessons, since the text he had at his disposal had nothing to do with all the corrupted manuscripts that have led to such misunderstandings of the Greek philosopher in the West, a problem that has been exacerbated by poor Latin translations Full reference in Zotero Library. Access to the original textual truth, cleansed of the debris of centuries of scholastic misinterpretation, was the Byzantines’s most attractive gift to the West, and they used it as a bargaining chip to attract and retain sponsors, patrons, finances and symbolic capital. Gazes concluded by saying that the way for mortals to attain glory and immortality was through the study of Greek. Before referring to the objective difficulties of learning the language.⁵It was due to the endogenous difficulties of the Greek language, but above all to the lack of tools such as dictionaries, grammar books and, in general, the absence of propaedeutic material for linguistic mediation. Only the legendary Erotemata by Chrysoloras, with the modifications made for the Western students and a compendium of it by Guarino before 1414, were available in the first half of the century Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library.

Gazes says, in a strikingly dramatic argument, that mortals can only become immortal by studying Greek. His reference to glory and immortality (as in Giustinian’s preface) functions here not so much as a rhetorical commonplace, but as a prelude to a discourse on salvation. In a germinal stage, it refers here to the priority of spiritual over material goods (learning Greek as a source of excellence rather than wealth); in time, as we shall see, it develops into a more complex discourse on salvation of the individual and the community, understood in teleological terms.

            Andronikos Kontovlakas

Andronici Contoblace natione Greci oratio in laudem litterarum Graecarum is the title of the discourse delivered by another Byzantine scholar, Andonikos Kontovlakas, as the inaugural speech of his Greek courses. Kontovlakas came to Italy after the fall of Constantinople, lived close to Bessarion in Rome and later taught Greek, mostly privately but also publicly, in Venice, Bologna and Brescia until he moved to Paris and later to Basel, where he was the teacher of Johannes Reuchlin for several years Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library. The editor of Kontovlakas’s prolusion suggests that it was probably written during his Venetian years, sometime between 1453 and 1458, when he most likely began teaching in Bologna Full reference in Zotero Library. The speech survives in two versions, the second of which appears to be an abbreviation to be used on another occasion, and emphasised the importance of Greek, not per se, but as an aid to the mastery of Latin Full reference in Zotero Library. In Kontovlakas’s oratio, the attempt to emphasise the dependence of Latin on Greek followed two strategies: first, he alluded to the Greek origin of the Latin language and to the impossibility of excellence in any art or science in the Latin-speaking world without recourse to the Greek sources; second, he cited as evidence for his argument a long list of famous Roman authors who confirmed their debt to Greek letters. From Priscian to Quintilian, from Horace to Cato, ancient authorities affirm that all disciplines, from philosophy to rhetoric, are inaccessible without Greek knowledge.

Indeed, in no way will anyone be able to receive the first elements without learning from the Greeks; so closely is the discipline of the Greeks connected with everything, that nothing is deep or perfect without it.⁶‘Profecto nullo modo quispiam prima elementa absque licteris Grecis accipere poterit, adeo connexa est hijs omnibus disciplina Grecorum, ut nihil sit altum nec perfectum sine ipsa’ Full reference in Zotero Library.

At the end of his argument, Kontovlakas referred to the moral primacy of Greek learning. Greek is the cause of the most profound things, to a person who is fully conversant in Greek all paths of knowledge are open; the learned are distinguished from the uneducated and the brutes, and mortal men are made immortal, a reference that echoes the Isocratic ‘scientia sola omnium immortalis est’ Full reference in Zotero Library, placed few lines before the Hesiodian tailpiece.

            Demetrios Chalkokondyles

Demetrios Chalkokondyles’s two discourses on the inauguration of Greek studies at the University of Padua in 1463 survived in the hand of his pupil, Hartmann Schedel, the renowned historian, physician and cartographer from Nuremberg. The structure and argumentation of Chalkokondyles’s discourses were similar to those of Gazes. He was quite straightforward, stating in the incipit that it is common knowledge that Latin owes almost everything to the Greeks. The ‘age-old Byzantine feeling of intellectual superiority to the Latins’ Full reference in Zotero Library makes it difficult for the Greek scholar to harness his impulse and moderate his views before his ‘Latin’ audience. At one point in his speech, Chalkokondyles wonders how anyone could possibly have a firm grasp of the Latin language if they had no knowledge of Greek.⁷‘quo modo quisquam cognitionem plenam eius habere putaverit nisi litteras grecas noverit’ Full reference in Zotero Library. Like the ancient Romans, the orator’s contemporaries were called upon to turn to Greek letters for the sake of their Latin eloquentia; Greek was not seen in its absolute value, but again as an adjuvant, an enhancement to the Latin literal production. His attack on the poor medieval translations, which allowed only a very problematic reception of Aristotle, was an affront to the Avveroists in their own castle, the Paduan University. Chalkokondyles’s intention was to win over the humanists, but not acknowledging Bruni’s translations might have caused discontent. The political implications of his speech became clear in the final part of the discourse. Learning the Greek language was only one aspect of a wider project: saving Greek culture. The emphasis placed on the need for action to save Greek relics in the East was proportional to the benefit that a Western culture could guarantee itself. Venice, by introducing Greek studies into its highest educational institution, the University of Padua, enhanced its own Latinitas and benefited in civic, political and symbolic power. At the same time, the audience was reminded of the supreme value of a language and culture in danger and worthy of salvation. The speaker concluded with an impressive rhetorical image: Greece will be eternally grateful to Venice and will always look at that city, thinking of such an action for its salvation, like those who saw Christ descend into hell for their deliverance from evil, as in Dante’s Inferno.⁸‘et in pristinum  statum redacta inmortales ei gracias pro tali beneficio perpetuo aget, idque non secus ad salutem suam apparuisse existimabit ac illi qui a malo ut in inferno Dantis Christum pro sua liberatione in infernum descendisse viderant’ Full reference in Zotero Library.

            Janus Lascaris

A few years later, in 1472, Chalkokondyles moved to Florence to teach at the Studio. A Greek student of his in Padua, Janus Lascaris, who became one of the greatest scholars and diplomats of his time, was to succeed his mentor as professor of Greek in Florence in 1493, and in the autumn, as was the custom, he delivered his inaugural address⁹Oratio habita in Gymnasio florentino Full reference in Zotero Library. in the city’s cathedral. Anna Meschini was the first to show the density of this prolusion in coded replies and attacks against the enemies of Greek letters in Italy Full reference in Zotero Library. Hans Lamers gave a thorough analysis of the tensions and dynamics that preceded and followed the public performance of the speech, mostly related to episodes of intellectual competition and the tension between humanist factions Full reference in Zotero Library. In particular, we can discern an urge to repel Poliziano’s repeated attacks on Byzantine scholars and rebuke his thesis of an unmediated, Latin-centred reception of the ancient Greeks. Like Chalkokondyles before him, the same Lascaris now felt Poliziano’s venom on his skin. There was all the tension needed to create an incendiary coexistence between the two in the Studio. As Lamers expressed it, ‘[b]oth men taught Greek subjects at the Studio, both wrote Greek and Latin epigrams, and both were eager to gain and maintain support from de Medici’ Full reference in Zotero Library.

Lascaris’s oration was only one materialisation of a competitive tension that found outlet in other forms too, letters and poetry included Full reference in Zotero Library. Lascaris did not abandon the Byzantine view of the superiority of Greek culture, but, perhaps more politically aware, he changed his argumentative strategy. His political awareness, since he assumed for himself the role of the protector of his kinsmen and promoter of the crusade cause for the rescue of the Greeks and the salvation of Greek culture in the East Full reference in Zotero Library, dictated a universalist view and an inclusive strategy in describing Greek and Latin as one and the same culture in different temporal outcomes. He further elaborated on the established theory of the Aeolian origin of Latin, and ‘by insisting upon the Greek origins of Latin, Lascaris created ethnocultural common ground between the Greeks and Romans of antiquity to serve as a basis for Greco-Latin relations in the present’ Full reference in Zotero Library, reinforcing and amplifying his argument with an emotional link between the two people that made Poliziano’s insults against ‘dirty Greeks’ backfire.

            Frangiskos Portos

The tradition of inaugural discourses continued in Italian universities for centuries. The Greek-Latin competition also continued, producing some extraordinary episodes in the cultural history of European humanism, which in the next century shifted the focus from the clash between scholasticism and humanism to the conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism. The Greek-Latin competition entered another phase of its conceptual evolution as we move from the Italian city-states to the reformed German-speaking areas north of the Alps. One of the last Byzantine echoes in this conflict is the voice of Frangiskos Portos Full reference in Zotero Library. Born in Crete in 1511, and a pupil of Arsenios Apostolis (son of Michael, whom we saw addressing the Latins from Gortyna), Portos taught for several years in Modena and Ferrara before leaving Italy, persecuted for his Protestant ideas. In 1561, he moved to Geneva, where John Calvin offered him a post teaching Greek at the Academy. Six discourses of Portos,¹⁰Published by his son, Aimilios, in 1584 together with other philological works written by his father. See Portos 1584. which opened his courses, first in Modena and then in Ferrara, embedded the old concern about the relationship between the two languages. As an indication of the intensity of this issue in the sixteenth century, similar lectures were held at the Accademia dei Filareti in the same years.¹¹Alberto Lollio reported that in 1554 Portos delivered an oration  at the Accademia in praise of the Greek language, which was followed by a praise of Latin by Bartolomeo Ricci and a praise of the ‘Tuscan’ (i.e., the Italian volgare) by Lollio himself (Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library). The competition between Italian cities for the title of ‘new Athens’  was still going on, and the orator flattered his audience by calling their city ‘a small Athens’. The topos of immortality returned in his speeches, where Greeks and Romans win eternal life through their deeds in war and peace. It is interesting that Portos adopted a view of virtue and glory that included both peoples, not as a memory or an ancestral reference, but as an asset of the present. Following the tradition of Byzantine scholars in the West trying to persuade their audiences by focusing on a western perspective of Greek as an auxiliary asset in the West’s attempt to improve its Latinitas, Portos repeated arguments about the utility of the Greek for Latin-speaking students. The competition in the background of his speeches comes to the fore in his fifth oration, in which he refuted the arguments of the enemies of Greek and the academics who denied its utility and refused to learn it. As Ciccolella notes, the fact that Portos’s first oration was delivered in the Studio of Ferrara a century after Gazes’s, helps us to understand the dynamics of such speeches in a diachronic perspective: on the one hand Greek ‘obtained a firm position in the Western curriculum studiorum’ Full reference in Zotero Library, while at the same time it was not so much a coincidence that the speaker still felt the need to explain to his audience why they should learn Greek, and had to argue against a rooted hostility.

Italian humanists: περὶ τοῦ βοηθεῖν

In Angelo Decembrio’s De Politia Litteraria, a work that discussed questions of literary canon and authenticity and was set as a dialogue at the court of Leonello d’Este in the 1440s, Guarino da Verona appeared as an ardent defender of Greek superiority Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library. This type of intellectual dispute in the Italian fifteenth century caused a schism in the communities of local scholars who, like Decembrio or Guarino, defended Greek learning, and others, like Leonardo Bruni or Lorenzo Valla, who felt the urge to argue in defence of Latin. Valla’s adamant position in his Dialectic Disputations on Latin supremacy over Greek was aimed at demonstrating the superiority and self-sufficiency of the Latin cultural and textual tradition. While this was the dominant credo among Italian humanists, we also find major arguments in the opposite direction.

            Basinio da Parma

A few years after the dispute in Venice between Lorenzo de Medicis and the two young patricians, Barbaro and Giustinian, and a couple of years after the fall of Constantinople, a bitter quarrel broke out at the court of Rimini over the priority of Greek over Latin. Under the legendary Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, the city became a small peripheral power, seeking political and cultural validation by competing with other Italian cities as the heir to the Greek learning and the Byzantine legacy Full reference in Zotero Library. The dispute exploded in 1455–1456 and took the form of a literary contest between Basinio da Parma, defender of Greek, on the one side, and Porcelio Pandori and Tommaso Seneca, opponents of Greek, on the other; Malatesta acted as judge. Two schools of humanism, the older Latin-centred one and the novel, which introduced a key element that reserved for itself a ‘better’ Latinitas, competed for value and legitimacy in the form of the patron’s favour. Pandori and Seneca attacked Basinio, accusing him of fetishising Greek and neglecting Latin. In his Graecae lingue laudibus et necessitate, Basinio not only asserted the universal value of Greek learning, but also insisted on its necessity for a proper Latin, and to make his point, he corrected the Latin of his two opponents Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library). In Rome, a few years later (before March 1461), Niccolò della Valle wrote the elegy Ad paedagogum graecis litteris detrahentem, a work in which he challenged an unknown poet of that city who disregarded Greek letters and, above all, the usefulness of translations from Greek Full reference in Zotero Library. Concetta Bianca identified Porcelio Pandori as the first offender and the target of della Valle’s defence of the Greek language Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library. The question seems to have been a burning one in a city where Greek-speaking refugees were increasingly arriving and where the anti-Greek tradition of the Curia dominated. In any case, it is interesting to observe how the competition within the communities of Italian humanists re-emerged in the different geographical and political realities of the peninsula, as agents also moved Full reference in Zotero Library.

            Gregory Tiphernas

An episode in the Italian quarrel over the superiority of Greek took place in the French capital when Gregory Tiphernas, an Italian humanist, pupil of Gemistos Plethon in the Peloponnese, Hellenist and assiduous translator at the court of pope Nicholas V, moved to Paris in 1458 to teach Greek at the university. In his inaugural discourse De studiis litterarum oratio Full reference in Zotero Library, Tiphernas developed the theme of interdisciplinary engagement in scholarship and science Full reference in Zotero Library. But Tiphernas, who in his address to the pope in the preface to one of his translations had already emphasised how beneficial the initiative to translate the Greeks had been for the enrichment of Latin (Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library), turned his argument into a praise of Greek and its usefulness for Latin. But he didn’t stay there. As Cardini argues, Tiphernas proposed a re-foundation of studia humanitatis on a Greek basis, breaking the history of humanism in two and demolishing a large part of his contemporary intellectual milieu, making many of the professors, writers and poets seem ‘irremediably out of time, mere survivors’ Full reference in Zotero Library.

            Pietro Bembo

The entire textual production of the quarrel over Greek in the West was produced in Latin; paradoxically, all the arguments for the superiority of Greek were articulated in Latin. This is not an oxymoron when we consider that this was a dispute at the heart of the Latin-speaking intellectual elites of the Italian peninsula, at a time when knowledge of Greek was in its infancy and had not been sufficiently mastered, at least not enough to argue about Greek in Greek. The first to attempt such a daring venture was Pietro Bembo Full reference in Zotero Library. With his oration Περὶ τοῦ βοηθεῖν τοῖς τῶν Ἑλλήνων λόγοις (On the subject of helping Greek studies), probably completed around 1494 while he was still in Messina, he not only presented a typical praise of the Greek language, but he also took the opportunity to describe the actual condition of enslaved Greeks, the loss of their textual treasures, and urged Venice to excel in saving what remained. Bembo, a student of Konstantinos Lascaris in Messina, Sicily, produced this oration as an exercise and for amusement Full reference in Zotero Library. Although it was arguably never delivered to its addressees, the Venetian rulers, it has the solid structure of deliberative rhetoric, urging the Venetians to act decisively on behalf of Greek culture, and to take concrete steps to save endangered Greek treasures. In Bembo’s oration we can trace multiple layers of competitive tension. A first-level comparison was between Greek and Latin as agents/vectors of cultural achievement:

We derive everything from them, and if someone thinks he can truly learn something purely from our own culture, he is on the wrong track, unless he first has been taught Greek. (Full reference in Zotero Library; see also Full reference in Zotero Library)¹²The translations from Bembo’s Greek oration are by N. G. Wilson in the edition Full reference in Zotero Library.

Second, we see the opposition to inveterate anti-Greek voices as representative of public intellectuals, as opposed to the type of Venetian civic humanism represented by the orator:

I have already heard some people who spend their time in the market say repeatedly ‘What need do we have of Greek? It is enough, quite enough for us if we preserve Latin. Let the Greeks themselves look after Greek’. Full reference in Zotero Library

And then we can trace the concurrence of the Italian cities for the recovery of the classical heritage not only as a symbolic translatio, but as a political choice with immense and immediate effects on the formation of the Venetian citizen in the present and, above all, in the future of the Republic:

if the Greeks, because of their sufferings, do not give thought now to their own interests and in addition, all of us in Italy fail to give thought to the matter, Greek culture cannot survive for long. I do not wish to describe the attitude of all the other Latin states; it would, I think, be a discourse full of ill will and insolence […] It is your task Venetians, yours above all to ponder questions of excellence and culture. (Full reference in Zotero Library; see also Full reference in Zotero Library)

A fourth level of competing tensions can be found in the old rivalry with the old-school Aristotelians who misunderstood and ‘barbarised’ philosophy (Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library). In these intertwined tensions, the trans-temporal perspective becomes a real investment with an impact on the future generations of Venetians, as visible as in Bessarion’s attempt to save the remains of the Greek textual tradition, in the meaningful gesture of donating his library to Venice, for future generations of Greeks.

            Scipione Forteguerri

Indicative of the tense atmosphere and of the accusations of their opponents is the fact that all the defenders of Greek felt obliged, at some point in their speeches, to remind that they did not undervalue Latin and their own national/cultural affiliation. Just as Bembo does so emphatically Full reference in Zotero Library, so does Scipione Forteguerri (Carteromachus) in his own oration a few years later. In Venice, in the last decade of the fifteenth century, the number of texts dealing directly or indirectly with the Greek-Latin controversy increased. Some of the prefaces to Manutius’s editions bear witness of this Full reference in Zotero Library. Forteguerri’s discourse was also produced in the same environment of Manutius’s Neacademia. It seems that the Venetian controversy over the supremacy of Greek was still alive at the beginning of the sixteenth century, judging by the fact that another apology of Greek appeared at that time. Forteguerri delivered his inaugural speech for a course on Demosthenes, in which he praised the achievements of the Greeks and ‘declared to be superior to those of other nations in the same ratio as an elephant is to a gnat’ Full reference in Zotero Library. Manutius, as the greatest editor and publisher of Greek works in the original language,¹³Manutius wavered between the two languages for reasons related to the competition he also experienced as a typographer. His conscious choice to persist with Greek was a bold response to the dominant paradigm of an Italocentric, nationally understood and determined appropriation of the Latin past Full reference in Zotero Library. was the supplier of the most important element in the humanist quarrel about the scholastic misunderstandings and misinterpretations of Aristotle. The dispute had already begun in the second half of the previous century, with the protagonists being the professors of the long Averroist tradition of the university of Padua, who opposed the newcomers, the humanists, who proposed a new reading of Aristotle based on the original texts, and the early Byzantine commentators who came to be known in the West around 1453 through the refugee scholars’s books Full reference in Zotero Library.

Forteguerri’s De laudibus literarum graecarum¹⁴After its performance as a public speech, it was published in May 1504 by Aldus Manutius Full reference in Zotero Library. reflected all these entangled dynamics of competition between humanist communities, but at the same time it was embedded with a further competitive vision, proposing a system of rethinking classical antiquity as the basis for a new educational and moral self-reflection of the West.  He perceived the return to Greek as the key to a better ‘humanism’ and urged Venice to seize the opportunity and take the lead among the competing Italian cities (Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library).

            Marcus Antonius Antimachus

Later in the sixteenth century, the Italian discourse on the hierarchy of languages slowly shifted towards the struggle of the vernacular to establish itself as a literary instrument and to require validation as a poetic tool. Indeed, in the same circumstances we saw Portos and his activity at the Ferrarese Accademia, he was preceded by Marcus Antonius Antimachus who, in a discourse at the Studio of Ferrara on the inauguration of his teaching, delivered his De literarum Graecarum laudibus oratio (before 1539), in which Greek language was again seen as a tool of high importance in its utility for the prosperity of the community (Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library). Greek and Latin were seen from the perspective of the competitive tensions regarding the validity of a new linguistic apparatus, the vernacular Tuscan, which had long been used parallel and in competition with Latin in literary production.

            Fabio Paolini

Fabio Paolini’s discourse De Graecis literis cum Latinis coniungendis of 1586 was articulated as a long list of names, an account of all the Western authorities who learned, used and praised the Greek language and Greek letters. As if it were a ‘history of translation and cultural transfer’, his oration gives an account of the Romans who translated or imitated Greek prototypes, but it goes a step further, offering an account of the recent past and the history of the revival of interest in Greek in the previous century, mentioning Cosimo and Lorenzo Medici, Ficino, Pico, the visit of Gemistos Pletho and the commitment to Greek learning and writing of Ermolao Barbaro, Poliziano and others. Writing at a time when the figure of the humanist as a public intellectual was discredited, Paolini presented the knowledge of Greek, an ability of the intellectual elite, as a pivotal element for the prosperity of the community: for Paolini, Greek was not only the source of all languages, it was also the inspiration of all nations (the Germans, the French, the Italians, but also the Etruscans and the Jews), who in one way or another imitated the Greeks in their pursuit of important linguistic, cultural or political achievements Full reference in Zotero Library.

Graecia tranvolavit Alpes: Greek as the language of God

In the first half of the sixteenth century, the competition over the Greek language, its usefulness to Latin (or its primacy over it) in the German-speaking world was dominated by the feisty presence of Philip Melanchthon. Before him, both Erasmus and Reuchlin had been very engaged in this matter. Erasmus, with the publication of the New Testament, the Novum Instrumentum, and the efforts to establish the study of the three sacred languages (Hebrew, Greek and Latin) in Louvain, championed the need to learn Greek and provoked very strong reactions Full reference in Zotero Library. With Reuchlin, on the other hand, the discussion on languages ​​embraced fully the third sacred language, Hebrew, and Argyropoulos’s student often argued directly or indirectly in favour of Greek as well. Though neither ever joined the Reformed Church, Melanchthon’s desire to associate Protestantism with humanism and Greek influenced his later accounts and biographies of the two great German scholars Full reference in Zotero Library; and such an association will resonate loudly in the furious reaction to Greek in this century.

            Petrus Mosellanus

In the wake of the processes for the establishment of the trilingual college of Louvain and the reactions that followed, Petrus Mosellanus’s speech De variarum linguarum cognitione paranda oratio seems to nod towards Erasmus and blast the enemies of good letters Full reference in Zotero Library. Although not a discourse strictly dedicated to the study of Greek, but rather an exhortation to study the three sacred languages, it was the inaugural speech of Mosellanus’s Greek courses at the University of Leipzig. Published in 1518, it encapsulated a dense web of competitive tensions in religious-theological and linguistic-academic environments. It spread rapidly and provoked strong reactions in the universities Full reference in Zotero Library and conflicts between various ecclesiastical authorities and biblical humanists over textual criticism based on the study of the biblical languages.¹⁵Mosellanus clearly echoes Erasmus’s approach to the necessity of Greek learning, and structures his defensive argumentation to present Erasmus as conforming to the demands of the Church Fathers and papal canons (Ut Vetera), which strongly suggest the collation of the original Greek codices. See Full reference in Zotero Library. Mosellanus argued not only for the usefulness of Greek for the elucidation of Scripture—confuting the argument of those who refused to learn Greek that the Greek originals had been manipulated by the Byzantines after the Great Schism Full reference in Zotero Library—but for its fundamental role in all the liberal arts and sciences. In the conclusion of his discourse he went a step further and declared that the study of Greek, together with Latin and Hebrew, was the only way for mortals to experience divinity in their mortal nature; it was a study that could guarantee a way of salvation for human beings and would make them equal to the celestials:

It is the only way by which human nature, forgetting its mortality, can soar to the heavenly, and even to the divinity of its Creator.¹⁶‘Unica est, per quam humana natura suae mortalitatis oblita, ad coelestium, atque adeo Creatoris sui divinitatem subvolare potest’ Full reference in Zotero Library.

            Philip Melanchthon

With his recurring interventions, Melanchthon left his mark on a radical conceptualisation of the Greek language and its function not only in the intellectual formation, but, above all, in the path of redemption and personal salvation of the reformed Christian. In his speeches, the recurring theme of the importance of Greek learning was interwoven with the refutation of his confessional opponents and his commitment to the Lutheran plan for the abolition of the scholastic teaching. But while for Luther knowledge of Greek is merely a tool for better valid translations and commentaries on Scripture, Melanchthon’s approach to Greek evolved into a vital experiential relationship of the individual with the language that makes revelation possible. Early on, his view of the quasi-mystical function of Greek was expressed in his work on Greek grammar books: first the translation of Gazes’s legendary handbook, and later in his own publication of a Greek grammar Full reference in Zotero Library. He elaborated on this view in his inaugural lecture at Wittenberg in 1518, De corrigendis adolescentium studiis. In this lecture, Melanchthon proposed drastic curricular reforms in which the study of Greek would be central. Presenting a historical perspective on the decline of the West in the Middle Ages, Melanchthon saw the neglect of Greek as a causal factor in the decadence of letters, sciences and even morals in Western societies. He argued that the misinterpretation of Aristotelian philosophy by scholastic teachers was one of the worst symptoms of this development.¹⁷This highly competitive argument is further elaborated at the end of his speech, where he announces the subjects to be taught, promising a re-reading of Homer and Paul (the Epistle to Titus) so that his students can experience the damaging effects of scholastic teaching and translation methods that ignore the Greek language Full reference in Zotero Library. Greek was still and again auxiliary to Latin in this scheme, as the Melanchthonian reforms suggested that a return to Greek allowed for a deeper and more correct appropriation of Latin Full reference in Zotero Library. His approach to Greek would change significantly as he evolved from a Hellenist and biblical humanist to a Lutheran reformer. In his De studio linguarum, an oration read by Veit Dietrich at the Faculty of Arts in Wittenberg in 1533, we find some interesting elements in the development of his thinking on the Greek language. It is striking that in a speech which promised to discuss the three sacred languages, Latin, Greek and Hebrew, the orator concentrated on praising Greek and its superiority to Latin, declaring that ‘the Greek poets as well as the historians are far superior to the Latin ones’ Full reference in Zotero Library. He used two episodes, one of Tifernas’s request to the University of Paris to create a chair of Greek and appoint him as a teacher, alluding to the importance of this language, and the other of Reuchlin’s scholarship next to Argyropoulos and the latter’s statement that the Byzantine exiles had brought Greek over the Alps. At this point, Melanchthon introduced a concept that he would develop in later years, that of the ‘plan’ of divine providence for the salvation of Greek learning after the destruction of Greece by the Turks Full reference in Zotero Library. The attack on both the old scholastic learning and those who neglected or refused to learn Greek is reminiscent of the refutations made by Italian scholars before their audiences a few decades earlier, again referring or alluding to law students and teachers. In his oration De studiis lingue graecae of 1549, he repeated the argument of medieval barbarism as a result of the decadence of Latin, which was a consequence of its distancing from Greek Full reference in Zotero Library. Moreover, this discourse introduced a new, utterly teleological and quasi-mystical understanding of Greek: the language of the Apostles was seen in its providential historical perspective as the language through which God wanted to spread his message to the world. What is more, in retrospect, Melanchthon argued that all the philosophy of the antiquity, the pre-Christian wisdom, was written in Greek by God’s will as a propaedeutic act to the real wisdom and enlightenment that reached the humanity through the same language when the Gospels were written. As Asaph Ben-Tov observes, for Melanchthon Greek was not only ‘God’s chosen vehicle of worldly and eternal benefices to mankind’, but it ended up being in a sense God’s own language Full reference in Zotero Library. Consequently, Melanchthon was the first in the West finally to see Greek not through the lens of Latin learning, arguing for its usefulness to his students, but for the absolute value of a language in which the highest achievements of human thought were articulated, the language of the supreme beauty of its poetic expressiveness, and the language in which divine providence delivered the message of salvation to the world; the language in which one could converse with God, or, as Ben-Tov so strikingly expresses it: ‘[k]nowledge of Greek, for Melanchthon, was no mere useful linguist skill, but the very prerequisite for the emergence and maintenance of any civilisation worth considering’ Full reference in Zotero Library.

            Hieronymus Fröschel

The educational and pedagogical programme of the Reformation was echoed in a graduation speech in Augsburg in 1542, read by a very young Hieronymus Fröschel. It gave an elaborate list of Greek achievements in a range of arts and sciences, from philosophy to medicine and from geometry to meteorology Full reference in Zotero Library. Fröschel’s teacher, Sixt Birck, influenced by Melanchthon in his pedagogical methods and himself a prolific author of Latin works, envisioned a restructured school system in Augsburg that would reflect the post-Reformation enthusiasm for languages, primarily Latin, but also a solid knowledge of Greek Full reference in Zotero Library. The speech was structured as a comparison with Latin culture, demonstrating the primacy of the Greeks, while tracing a brief history of cultural transfer between the two areas.

            Conrad Gessner

The following year, in the third edition of the Lexicon Greacolatinum,¹⁸Prefaces to Greek-Latin lexica in this century were often used as a field for Greek-Latin rhetorics of competition. In Henricus Stephanus’s (Henry Estienne) Thesaurus Graecae Linguae Full reference in Zotero Library, we find republications of the discourses of Forteguerri, Antimachus and Heresbach. It is interesting to note that in subsequent (and sometimes illegal/pirated) reprints, such as that by Johannes Scapula Full reference in Zotero Library, we find the theme still alive and the argumentation continuing in the same direction Full reference in Zotero Library. In his address to his readers, Guillielmus Leimarius, the printer of the Lexicon Graeco-latinum Full reference in Zotero Library, repeats the Ciceronian argument and the motif of the inability to have full access to knowledge by ignoring Greek. In the ‘Laudatiuncula Linguae Graecae’ that follows, the author praises the grace of the Greek language with a wealth of mythological and literary references. On Erasmus, Joseph Justus Scaliger and the poem of Alexander Hegius De Utilitate Graecae linguae, see Full reference in Zotero Library. Conrad Gessner, the Swiss humanist, known for his Biblioteca Universalis and his essential works on zoology and botany, published in the form of a short ‘Praefatio’ the essay De utilitate et praestantia Graecae linguae. At the very beginning of his argumentation, he attacked the pseudo-scholars who pretend to be learned but who, through ignorance or laziness, refuse to admit the central importance of Greek. Gessner did not use mild terms: in sacred and profane wisdom, Greek is as superior to Latin as the sun is to the moon, and in this reflective binary, he established the relationship between Greek, which shines with its own value, authority and dignity, and Latin, which is heavily dependent on it, if it wants to achieve anything in literature, science or piety. David Amherdt locates Gessner’s rhetoric in the tradition of Antimachus, Mosellanus and Melanchthon (Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library). Perhaps what we can add here, with reference to the Melanchthonian discussion of the same theme, is the importance for the reformed Christian of returning to the sources (ad fontes or sola scriptura) and the concept of Greek as a divine gift (Dei donum) to humanity Full reference in Zotero Library. Gessner also developed the idea of divine providence, linking the exodus of Greek scholars to the West with the invention of typography as a unique plan of providence for the salvation of Greek knowledge through its translatio.

            Konrad Heresbach

During the sixteenth century, although the rhetoric in the debate over Greek remained more or less the same, there was a gradual densification and specialisation of the arguments. In Konrad Heresbach’s Oratio in commendationem Graecarum literarum, we notice the intention to present a semi-historical and philological survey of the development of Greek in a complex network of relationships with the other two sacred languages, Latin and Hebrew. Konrad Heresbach, Erasmus’s protégé, humanist and translator of Strabo, Herodotus, Thucydides and the grammar of Gazes, delivered the lecture at the University of Freiburg, where he taught Greek for a year. Although a speech in praise of Greek letters, it has a more complex structure than the standard speeches of this type. Heresbach’s discourse, published in Strasbourg in 1551, traced a scheme of linguistic transfer and evolution from the Adamic origins to his own time, stressing the functional importance of Greek for all disciplines, with particular emphasis on jurisprudence, which was his main field of study, but also the area of harshest opposition to Greek.

            Martin Crusius & Lorenz Rhodoman

Perhaps one of the most striking episodes in this long series of competitions over Greek cultural supremacy is Crusius’s De conseruanda lingua graeca, a speech delivered at the University of Tübingen in 1570. It was at once a historical account and an exhortation to Greek studies in Germany and a systematic philological comparison with Latin, emphasising the stylistic superiority of Greek. In his dedicatory letter, Crusius made it clear that his work was intended to be a counterattack, since ‘it was to be feared that ambitious, ungrateful and disruptive people would seek to destroy the useful arts and sciences that had existed up to that time, and would also do so with the cultivation and methodology of the Greek language’ Full reference in Zotero Library. While the three sacred languages were initially presented as equal in dignity, an attempt to privilege Greek over the other two languages is evident in the beginning of Crusius’s oration, as well as in an oration by Lorenz Rhodoman that echoes some of Crusius’s arguments:¹⁹In a poem in honour of Crusius, written in Greek by Rhodoman, we find a poetic elaboration of the legendary address of Argyropoulos to Reuchlin (‘Graecia tranvolavit Alpes’), in which he speaks of the Muses passing the Alps after the Turks had invaded their lands Full reference in Zotero Library. On Crusius’s and Rhodoman’s recourse to Greek as a way of engaging the Orthodox world in the context of a Lutheran-Orthodox approach in the early stages of the Reformation, see Full reference in Zotero Library. Lorenz Rhodoman’s Oratio de lingua graeca, although it already belongs to the next century (it appeared in 1605), continued this old tradition and argued for the importance and superiority of Greek in the formation of a complete individual. From then on, discourses of this kind, ‘the defence and illustration of Greek’ as Pascale Hummel called them, would continue to appear sporadically, using more or less the same set of arguments, well into the long nineteenth century Full reference in Zotero Library.

Elective communities

Rhodoman, in his argumentation, used an old humanist motif of Greek as the Trojan horse, the device by which the humanists would overthrow Latin scholasticism. If this was the use of the metaphor from the time of Vittorino da Feltre to Erasmus, in Rhodoman’s case the Protestants as ‘Greeks’ would overthrow the Catholics as ‘Trojans’ Full reference in Zotero Library. This combative staging and bellicose climate also prevailed in response to the establishment of trilingual colleges, where, at Oxford, for example, students called themselves ‘Trojans’ to demonstrate their hostility to the ‘Greeks’, while theologians and preachers called the professors and students of Greek degrees of ‘devil’ Full reference in Zotero Library. The dispute over Greek, in the repeated episodes of its appearance and the variety of cultural environments that dealt with it, signified the affiliations and divisions of competing communities. Their arguments evolved very slowly, if at all. But there was a significant shift in discourse from a chauvinistic clash to a more complex cultural competition that went beyond the partition of resources and patronage: it soon reached a symbolic function of value and validation, ending up in a theological-ontological lens of understanding the self in the world. As it developed and spread from the Italian peninsula to the north of the Alps, it ceased to be an exclusive field of competition in the restricted circles of the intellectual elites and became an issue of the masses in their need for ‘contrapuntal’ confessional and cultural self-identification Full reference in Zotero Library.

Either way, ‘Greek’ seems to take on ever new meanings, signifying anew the communities that reflect upon it for their own self-determination. Greek, in its multiple functions for Western self-conception as a defining language in almost every stratum of Western cultural experience, is a language that carries a high symbolic weight; the competition for its place in Western historical and cultural experience encapsulated a discourse of salvation: in Italy it was mostly meant literally, as a direct rescue of its relics and textual tradition; north of the Alps it acquired a metaphorical and almost metaphysical significance of the language itself as an ability and condition for the salvation of the communities that preserved and cultivated it.