Theandrites: Studies on Byzantine Philosophy and Christian Platonism is the first book series to focus solely on philosophy in Byzantium and Christian Platonism (284-1453). This series encourages one to trace Platonic ideas and terminology as they move throughout the Eastern Roman Empire and the Byzantine Orthodox world. This tradition is an essential part of the history of ideas since the Greek texts studied in the Syriac and Arabic worlds originated in the Greek-speaking world during this time frame. Thus Syriac Christians and Arabic Muslims translated texts offered to them by Byzantine scholars and philosophers from the fourth century onward. The same is true during the Renaissance in Italy (fifteenth century), when for the first time since the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, the Latin-speaking world was given proper access to Greek philosophy in the original language by Byzantine thinkers such as Bessarion (1403-72) and George Gemistos Plethon (ca. 1355-1452/54). Book jacket.

Do I dare disturb the universe? It is a question recognized by people around the world. If typed into the internet, hundreds of examples appear. Many know that it comes from one of the best known poems of the twentieth century, T. S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. What many do not know is that Eliot dramatically shifted his views at the height of his fame for writing such dark poetry as this and his also famous The Wasteland, becoming a sincere, devoted Christian. While his poetry is famous because it expresses the loss of a spiritual center in European civilization, a careful reading of it reveals that he was struggling with his Christianity from the beginning, not rejecting it, but trying to make it fit into the contemporary world. If a reader works through his love song for all of the esoteric meanings, as he demands, it quickly becomes evident that he intended it as a struggle between agape, amour and eros. Beginning it with a quote from Dante forces that into place. Though the protestant forms of Christianity have changed their views on these, the Roman Catholic holds fast. Eliot references Michelangelo in the poem, bringing in the great painter of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Most immediately recognize his name and work. Many do not realize how he expressed a similar personal struggle between the desires of the flesh and the spirit. Both of them admired Dante’s Divine Comedy, and its inclusion of amour as a means to salvation. His work is generally seen as the greatest literature ever to come out of Italy, sometimes referred to as the epic representation of St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica, one of the central documents establishing Catholic doctrine. This book explores how these brilliant men struggle with the highest meanings of life in their artistic expressions and perhaps manage to express what Rudolph Otto designates the mysterium tremendum, the experience of a mystical awe, what he calls the numinous or, in more common terms, the experience of God.

This book provides an invaluable tool for gaining access to this major cultural and literary source; it lays out the broad chronological evolution of the poetry; and above all, through a close analysis of the individual poems and a concluding overview, it clarifies both the meaning of the poems and verbal artistry that shaped their construction. The guiding concern of the entire study is to help readers gain acquaintance with a rich and complex genius through sensitive attention to the particularities of his life and linguistic creativity.

George Gemistos Plethon (c. 1360-1454) was a remarkable and influential thinker, active at the time of transition between the Byzantine Middle Ages and the Italian Renaissance. His works cover literary, historical, scientific, but most notably philosophical issues. Plethon is arguably the most important of the Byzantine Platonists and the earliest representative of Platonism in the Renaissance. This book provides a new study of Gemistos' philosophy. The first part is dedicated to the discussion of his 'public philosophy', in the second, most extensive, part of the book the Platonism of Plethon is presented in a systematic way and in the third part the notorious question of the paganism of Gemistos is reconsidered.

Considers how the surviving letters of Michelangelo have a distinctly public character and show us the external man. Many of them are business letters and are thus in reference to his art and sculpture, creating a timeline for his work. In contrast, much of Michelangelo's poetry is more personal, showing his emotional attachment to his family.