- Simon Atumano
Simon Atumano was the
Bishop of Gerace inCalabria from23 June 1348 until 1366 and the LatinArchbishop of Thebes thereafter until 1380. Born inConstantinople , Atumano was of Greco-Turkish stock, his surname deriving from the word "Ottoman ." [Setton, "Catalan Domination", 140. His father was a Turk and his motherGreek Orthodox according to a letter dated11 September 1380 .] He was a famous humanist and an influential Greek scholar in theItalian Renaissance .Eccelsiastical and political career
On
17 April 1366 ,Pope Urban VI transferred Atumano to the see of Thebes in reward for his "great integrity." [Ibid, 140.] Atumano did not begin well with theCatalan Company which ruled Thebes as part of theDuchy of Athens at the time. He was described later as "a very lukewarm Catalan." [Ibid, 142, from Mercati.] While the Catalans supported theAvignon Papacy during theWestern Schism , Atumano remained faithful to Rome.In 1379, Atumano assisted the
Navarrese Company underJuan de Urtubia to take Thebes. [Ibid, 143 and 144 n59. Perhaps Atumano trusted theKnights Hospitaller that were with the Navarrese.] The details of the assistance he gave them are unknown, but it put him in further bad stead with the Catalans. However, Atumano got along no better with the Navarrese and sometime in 1380–1381 he fled to Italy, where he was at Rome in the winter of the latter year. He lost 1,500 florins of revenue from Thebes and lived thereafter in poverty "more acceptable in the sight of God," though thePeter IV of Aragon assumed that Atumano would receive a higher dignity from the Roman Pope. From Italy he wrote toDemetrius Cydonius about his worries for his flock and about the blasphemy and lack of respect for law of the "Ispanoi", that is, the Navarrese. [Ibid, 143 n57.]Translation work
Atumano undertook studies of Hebrew while in Thebes. In the mid-late 1370s, he began the composition of a "Biblia Triglotta", a polyglot Latin-Greek-Hebrew bible written a century before the
Complutensian Polyglot . [Ibid, 222.] Whether or not Atumano's interest in Hebrew was ignited by the largeJewish presence in Thebes is unknown, since it appears that the Jewish population there had dwindled significantly by the late fourteenth century. The "Biblia Triglotta", dedicated to Urban VI, was never finished. He did, however, complete a Hebrew translation of theNew Testament and a Greek of the Old.Atumano translated the "De remediis irae" of
Plutarch into Latin from Greek. [Ibid, 141 n51.]Character
Atumano was praised by his contemporary,
Frederick III of Sicily , for his "innate goodness and praiseworthy character" and by his twentieth-century biographer as "no common scholar."Coluccio Salutati , the famousFlorentine humanist, praised him toPetrarch as a "vir multe venerationis": most venerable man. [Ibid.] He was made a citizen of theRepublic of Venice . Even theAntipope Clement VII referred to him as of "bone memorie" (good memory).However, some latter day historians, especially the Catalan
Antonio Rubió y Lluch , have labelled him an untrustworthy scoundrel on the basis of four documents in the archives of theCrown of Aragon inBarcelona dated to 1381 and 1382. In one of the letters, Peter IV of Aragon requests that Urban VI remove Atumano from Thebes and replace him withJohn Boyl , the Bishop ofMegara , exiled from his see since the Florentine occupation of 1374. [Ibid.] According to the letter, Atumano fled to Italy when still a Greek monk on account of nefarious sins for which, Peter claims, he would have been burned alive. In Italy, he succeeded in "parading himself as a man of honour" and so obtaining the archdiocese fromPope Gregory XI . The letter, however, is probably mere calumny, as the "only verifiable information given" is readily falisified: Gregory was not Pope when Atumano received the archbishopric. [Ibid, 142.]ources
*Setton, Kenneth M. "Catalan Domination of Athens 1311–1380". Revised edition. London: Variorum, 1975.
*Setton, Kenneth M. [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-049X%2819560224%29100%3A1%3C1%3ATBBTTI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-O "The Byzantine Background to the Italian Renaissance."] "Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society", Vol. 100, No. 1. (Feb. 24, 1956), pp 1–76.Notes
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