Theodore Meliteniotes (;

Constantinople Constantinople (#Names of Constantinople, see other names) was a historical city located on the Bosporus that served as the capital of the Roman Empire, Roman, Byzantine Empire, Byzantine, Latin Empire, Latin, and Ottoman Empire, Ottoman empire ...

, c. 1320 - 8 March 1393) was a

Byzantine Greek Medieval Greek (also known as Middle Greek, Byzantine Greek, or Romaic; Greek: ) is the stage of the Greek language between the end of classical antiquity in the 5th–6th centuries and the end of the Middle Ages, conventionally dated to the F ...

astronomer, a ''

sakellarios A ''sakellarios'' () or ''sacellarius'' is the title of an official entrusted with administrative and financial duties (cf. ''sakellē'' or ''sakellion'', "purse, treasury") in a government or institution. The title was used in the Byzantine Empi ...

'' (treasurer) in the

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

bureaucracy Bureaucracy ( ) is a system of organization where laws or regulatory authority are implemented by civil servants or non-elected officials (most of the time). Historically, a bureaucracy was a government administration managed by departments ...

, a supporter of

Gregory Palamas Gregory Palamas (; ; – 1357/1359) was a Byzantine Greek theologian and Eastern Orthodox cleric of the late Byzantine period. A monk of Mount Athos (modern Greece) and later archbishop of Thessalonica, he is famous for his defense of hesyc ...

and an opponent of the reunion with the

Catholic Church The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

. He became ''didaskalos ton didaskalon'', i.e. the director of the Patriarchal School in 1360.

Works

Theodore wrote an

exegesis Exegesis ( ; from the Ancient Greek, Greek , from , "to lead out") is a critical explanation or interpretation (philosophy), interpretation of a text. The term is traditionally applied to the interpretation of Bible, Biblical works. In modern us ...

on the

Gospels Gospel originally meant the Christian message (" the gospel"), but in the second century AD the term (, from which the English word originated as a calque) came to be used also for the books in which the message was reported. In this sen ...

and a poem on Sôphrosynè (Temperance) which may be attributed to him.

Tribiblos

Theodore's main work is his Astronomical ''Tribiblos'', in three books, whose autograph manuscript is preserved (Vaticanus gr. 792), was composed before 1352. The work deals with an assortment of mathematical and astronomical issues and draws from some earlier Greek authors like

George Pachymeres George Pachymeres (; 1242 – 1310) was a Byzantine Greek historian, philosopher, music theorist and miscellaneous writer. Biography Pachymeres was born at Nicaea, in Bithynia, where his father had taken refuge after the capture of Constantinop ...

and

Theodore Metochites Theodore Metochites (; 1270–1332) was a Byzantine Greek statesman, author, gentleman philosopher, and patron of the arts. From c. 1305 to 1328 he held the position of personal adviser ('' mesazōn'') to emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos. Life ...

. The second book is devoted to

Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy (; , ; ; – 160s/170s AD) was a Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were important to later Byzantine science, Byzant ...

, whose calculations he explained in the manner of

Theon of Alexandria Theon of Alexandria (; ; ) was a Greek scholar and mathematician who lived in Alexandria, Egypt. He edited and arranged Euclid's '' Elements'' and wrote commentaries on works by Euclid and Ptolemy. His daughter Hypatia also won fame as a mathema ...

. Finally, in book 3 he devotes himself to Persian astronomy, drawing especially from George Chrysokokkes, whose work he corrected in many places. In all of them, he explicitly condemns

Astrology Astrology is a range of Divination, divinatory practices, recognized as pseudoscientific since the 18th century, that propose that information about human affairs and terrestrial events may be discerned by studying the apparent positions ...

, dissociating his Astronomy from the Persian tradition represented by Chrysokokkes. The pedagogical character of the ''Tribiblos'' is obvious and it may have been used to give senior astronomy training to the Byzantine clergy.

References

* "Meliteniotes, Theodore.
Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography
2008. Encyclopedia.com. 11 September 2011. *Alberto Bardi, ''Persische Astronomie in Byzanz. Ein Beitrag zur Byzantinistik und zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte''. Munich: Utzverlag, 2020.

External links

* Evangelos Venetis
"Theodore Meliteniotes"
Encyclopaedia of the Hellenic World, Asia Minor {{DEFAULTSORT:Meliteniotes, Theodore 1320 births 1393 deaths Byzantine astronomers Byzantine theologians 14th-century Byzantine writers 14th-century Byzantine scientists 14th-century Eastern Orthodox theologians 14th-century Greek astronomers