Lecture by Eirini Afentoulidou on the occasion of the publication of her critical edition of the Byzantine didactic poem “Dioptra” in the Corpus Christianorum Series Graeca.

Online participation via the following link:

https://oeaw-ac-at.zoom.us/j/68787245964?pwd=mQshrqabbUqv63E3UDNIcludoMzYuS.1

Information on the content of the lecture and recommended reading for preparation can be found in the attached files.

The event is part of the IMAFO Lab ‘Wissensgestaltung im Mittelalter/Shaping Knowledg'.

The Dioptra was written in 1095 by a monk named Philippos (Monotropos), about whom little else is known. The main part of the work consists of four books in 7,134 (7,217 in the second edition) ‘political’ verses. They are written in the form of a dialogue between the soul and the body, personified as mistress and servant. The mistress asks questions on theological and anthropological topics, which the servant answers by paraphrasing mostly patristic and biblical passages. Depending on the version, a penitential poem (Klauthmoi / Lamentationes) addressed to one's own soul has been preserved as the prologue or epilogue to the Dioptra. In addition, patristic excerpts collected by Philippos but not put into verse form have been preserved as insertions, appendices or marginal scholia.

The appealing subject matter, the simple language, the ‘political’ verse, but also the fictionality created by personification, which distinguishes the dialogue from Erotapokriseis, and, last but not least, a certain sense of humour contributed to the unusually great popularity of the Dioptra: 79 Byzantine and post-Byzantine manuscripts preserve the Dioptra in its entirety or in excerpts. A further ten manuscripts preserve Greek-language paraphrases.

Recommended reading:

Yannis Papadoyiannakis, Instruction by Question and Answer: The Case of Late Antique and Byzantine Erotapokriseis, in: S. F. Johnson (ed.), Greek Literature in Late Antiquity: Dynamism, Didacticism, Classicism, Aldershot 2006, pp. 91–105:

Charlotte Roueché, The Rhetoric of Kekaumenos, in: E. Jeffreys (ed.), Rhetoric in Byzantium. Papers from the Thirty-fifth Spring Symposium of Byzantine studies, university of Oxford, March 2001. Aldershot 2003, 23-37.

Eirini Afentoulidou – Jürgen Fuchsbauer, Philippos Monotropos in Byzantium and in the Slavonic World, in: W. Hörandner – A. Rhoby – N. Zagklas (eds.), A Companion to Byzantine Poetry. Leiden – Boston 2019, 331-352. DOI: 10.1163/9789004392885_015.

Reading of the Dioptra by the monk Philippos
Provisional german translation by Anneliese Paul (†) and Eirini Afentoulidou in preparation for Corpus Christianorum in Translation.