Literature, Politics and Manuscripts in Early Palaiologan Byzantium. Towards a Reassessment of the Choumnos-Metochites Controversy

The present essay offers a critical response to Ihor Ševčenko’s assessment of the controversy between Theodore Metochites and Nikephoros Choumnos which has had a lasting impact on scholarship on these two important political and intellectual figures in the reign of Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos. While Ševčenko contended that the feud was an outgrowth of a personal rivalry originating with Metochites’ replacement of Choumnos as the right-hand man of the emperor, this essay argues that it should instead be understood as a conflict of diametrically opposed ideas about the role of literature and philosophy in civic life and society. To that end, first the evidence about the date and background of Metochites’ assumption of the office of mesazōn is reevaluated. This is followed by a fresh look at the “dossier polémique” comprising four successive treatises by Choumnos and Metochites, which, as is shown, bears striking affinities to their previous, “friendly” correspondence. The final part of the essay focuses on the first text of the “dossier” which triggered the quarrel: Choumnos’ Discourse 27, On literary criticism and composition. An earlier version of this text which was unknown to Ševčenko supports the view that it was not intended as an attack on Metochites but rather continued their prior letter exchange. In an appendix, Discourse 27 is for the first time critically edited based on both the earlier and later redactions and rendered into English.