Makarov D.I. On a Hybrid Antique and Christian Substantiation of Politics in Theodore Metochites’ Sententious Notes, Chs. 62 to 82. In: Byzantium, Europe, Russia: social practices and the interconnection of spiritual traditions. Collection of scientific articles. Iss. 4 ...

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Abstract

In the Chs. 62 to 82 of his Sententious Notes, a basic work for the fourteenth-century Byzantine secular philosophy, the Great Logothete Theodore Metochites (1270–1332), who held his appointment since 1317, according to the more refined dating by Kostis Smyrlis, deliberated upon a presumed futility of the Antique philosophico-political tradition represented by Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Sceptics, and Epicurus, and substantiated the notion of Christian politics. Simultaneously with Dante, who was composing his Divine Comedy, Metochites in the 10-es of the 14th century reconstructed the Chora monastery in Constantinople and embellished it with a new set of mosaics, the central among the latter being the depiction of Christ’s healing of the suffering people. Following the lead of Nectarios Zarras, we single out Theodore’s idea that a politician, like a philosopher, must do good and beautiful works, thus healing human souls. Chora, in (or next to) which the most part of the Notes was written, had just become a place of such a healing. In the chapters under analysis Metochites tried to reconcile the concepts of fate and of the Divine Providence, trying to subsume the former, unlike Gregoras, to the latter notion of pronoia, while at the same time taking from the philosophy of Plato, despite its verbal and verbose criticism, a number of notions, such as the truth of beings, this one being so close to Heidegger. But some other Platonic ideas were strongle rejected by Theodore, like the one concerning a possible attainment of citizens’ unanimity within a political system due to the efforts of a politician. For Metochites, the beauty of politics is something hidden, unlike that of painting, and apophatic, bearing more resemblance to the unseen God.