2011-2012 - The Italian Academy - Columbia University

Réka Forrai
I spent the second semester of the academic year 2011-2012 at the
Italian Academy, working on my research project, Papal involvement
in the spread of Greek culture to the Medieval Latin West. My aim with
this project is to demonstrate that there was a strong institutional
involvement in the transmission of Greek learning to the West during
the Middle Ages. I am focusing on the papacy as the most powerful
of such institutions, studying particularly the cases of patronage
between popes and translators, and covering the period from
the papacy of Gregory the Great (590 to 604) to that of Boniface VIII
(1294 to 1303).
Since I was one of the first speakers at the weekly seminar, I
was able to profit from my colleagues’ criticism at a very early stage
of my work. An animated discussion with an interdisciplinary audience
drew my attention to the larger historical frame of my investigation
and to the broader key concepts of my work, such as canon,
censorship and propaganda.
Following up on my colleagues’ suggestions, in the following
months I used the excellent resources of Butler Library to clarify the
theoretical frame of my work and to break down the huge quantity
of material into smaller case studies. I elaborated particularly on the
twelfth-century case of Burgundio of Pisa and his translation of John
Chrysostom’s Homilies on Matthew, dedicated to Pope Eugene III. His
dedication letter is an early example of the censura praevia, a type of
censorship where manuscripts were submitted to authorities before
their circulation began.
During my stay here I also completed a study on the Latin reception
of the Byzantine historian Agathias (born around 532 A.D),
to be published in the series Catalogus translationum et commentariorum.
While unknown in the Middle Ages, his works were recovered
by the humanists. Interest in Agathias followed the discovery
of Procopius, another Byzantine historian reporting on the military
history of the reign of Justinian. The two texts were even featured
together, often, in composite editions. Their reception happened in
two waves: first among the fifteenth-century Italian humanists, then
the sixteenth-century Flemish humanists. Interest in Byzantine his-
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