ENFOQUES ALGORÍTMICOS

In a letter, sent to an unknown bishop, without any address,401 _{Demetrios Kydones}

mentioned the accusations made by that bishop, that he [Kydones] corrupted the youth and

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believed that the Latins speak righter and truer things than him [the bishop]. And he [the bishop] blithered a lot of other things and the slanders [of the bishop] against him [Kydones] did not have any limit.402

As Kydones comments on the case in the very same letter, he is convinced that the bishop had drunk too much wine before he started to disparage him, making the accusations far less threatening than they could have been if the bishop was sober when he voiced them. It is an open question whether Kydones was correct regarding the mental state of the fulminating bishop, but it is clear that such charges were harsh enough to demand an answer. The letter is presented as the answer given by Kydones and its claim about the drunken speech of the high priest can be understood in more than one way, from an actual representation of what had happened to an attempt to discredit the accusations among the possible audience (both contemporary and posterior) as alcohol-induced blether.

According to Kydones, the bishop accused him with corrupting the youth and preferring the Latins’ claims to those of the bishop because of his perception of the Latin claims being righter and closer to truth, besides a seemingly endless collection of other slanders. As he does not specify the nature of these other accusations, research cannot state much more about them than that Kydones possibly wanted to suggest with the lack of details that these charges did not deserve any more description, being so ludicrous ones.

The two other statements prove to be less evasive for the present analysis. Corruption of the youth was a loaded accusation, as, according to Platon in his Apologia, it was one of the main charges against Sokrates in his case that ultimately led to his death sentence. The process of Socrates was generally represented as an infamous show trial in the culture of Post- Classical Greco-Roman Antiquity, which interpretation was adopted by Byzantium. Therefore, a claim that the bishop accused him with that had a serious potential to invoke this interpretation in the minds of the educated audience, and to frame Kydones as an innocently persecuted intellectual and the bishop and his potential supporters as unjust persecutors. As Tinnefeld stated, the fact that Kydones makes a reference to the nearing Easter, and with that, to the Passion of Christ, could strengthen the impression of an innocent man suffering persecution by wicked people.403

If the anonym bishop complained about the effect of Kydones on Constantinopolitan youth indeed, then he most probably referred to the notable intellectual circle formed around

402 _{ἐμὲ λέγοντα διαφθείρειν τοὺς νέους, πείθοντα δικαιότερα καὶ ἀληθέστερά σου λέγειν Λατίνους· καὶ πολλὰ}

ἄλλα συνείρειν καὶ τῶν κατ’ ἐμοῦ βλασφημιῶν μηδὲν εἶναι πέρας. In LOENERTZ 1960, p. 168.

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the mesazon, who had already been a Catholic at the probable time of the charges, and to the fact that members of this circle were generally tolerant towards Catholicism and the Latins, while many of them had a problematic relationship with contemporary Orthodoxy.404

This provides the logical connection between the first and the second accusations, the latter being the alleged claims of Kydones deeming Latin teachings righter and closer to truth than the teachings of the bishop, that is, Palamite Orthodoxy. This claim had some factual basis, as Kydones has voiced his sympathies towards Roman Catholicism and criticised the contemporary state of Orthodoxy, in texts intended to have a certain publicity, already before the 1370s, notably in his Apologia I, which he wrote around 1363, and in his Oratio pro subsidio Latinorum, dated to 1366, both in a period when even his political influence was relatively strong.405 _{So, if such a charge was brought up by the bishop against Kydones, it was}

far from being a fictitious one, although the degree of awareness of the high priest is uncertain.

Scrutinizing the image of the Latins in the source, the key factors are the claims attributed to the bishop, namely that he accused Demetrios Kydones with believing that the Latins speak righter and truer things than the bishop himself. Regarding the context, there is no reason to doubt that the Latin statements to which the bishop referred, according to the letter, addressed religious subjects. Therefore, the categories of rightness and truthfulness should be understood with a religious meaning.

These categories, precisely not defined in the source, appear as contested by two sides, the bishop, who represents the entire community of Orthodox theologians, and the Latins, who are to be identified with all of the Catholic theologians. It defines the boundary between the Latins and the Byzantines, stressed by the presentation attributed to the bishop, as one of profoundly religious nature.

Religious rightness and truthfulness are absolute categories of great importance for believers, especially for those who make other values depend on the ‘correct’ views on them, usually moral or intellectual qualities. Besides, Byzantine imperial ideology supposed a strong correlation between adherence to Orthodoxy and loyalty to the state. So, if the bishop thought that Kydones regarded the views of Catholic theology righter and truer than the views of

404 _{For the intellectual circle of Kydones and its attitudes towards Roman Catholicism and Palamite Orthodoxy,}

see RUSSELL, Norman: Palamism and the Circle of Demetrius Cydones. In DENDRINOS, Charalambos – HARRIS, Jonathan – HARVALIA-CROOK, Eirene – HERRIN, Judith (Eds.): Porphyrogenita. Essays on the History and Literature of Byzantium and the Latin East in Honour of Julian Chrysostomides. Aldershot, Ashgate, 2003, pp. 153-174, especially pp. 173-174.

405 _{On the Apologia I, the Oratio pro subsidio Latinorum and the views voiced by Kydones on Orthodoxy and}

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Orthodox theology, it was unsurprising if it invoked very disturbing images in his mind. More precisely, with regard to Catholic teaching representing a ‘higher quality’, Kydones, the imperial mesazon, considered Orthodoxy as suffering from certain intellectual and moral problems, and being disloyal to the Byzantine state. The idea of a bishop aware of the religious views of Kydones and fulminating against him for these beliefs was not an unrealistic one.

VI.13. Conclusion

The subjects voiced by the authors of the letters analysed in this chapter encompass a wide range of topics. It involves undefined accusations of heresy, the similarly vague category of innovation, references to the question of the papal primacy, just like such peculiar arguments as weak Catholic theological arguments being connected to Latin moral shortcomings, branding of the Catholic habits as ‘Babylon’, and insinuation of the Unionist camp being motivated not by a search for truth but by a search for Latin gold.

However, the strong negative connotations of these subjects do not explain that their mentions are predmoninantly devices of anti-Latin arguments. The reason behind this phenomenon may be that certain anti-Latin epistolographers of the Palaiologan Era displayed a curious level of creativity as they voiced their rejection of Westerners. It is also worthy of consideration that these occasional ‘creative’ charges may have remained unnoticed by the pro-Latin authors, or they had thought it futile to react to them, concentrating on regularly voiced charges against the Westerners.

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