One aspect of Petrarch's hostility was his belief in the superiority of Latins over Greeks in matters of culture and history. In a letter to Boccaccio dated March 1, 1365, Petrarch rails against the Calabrian monk Leontius Pilatus for fancying himself Greek rather than Italian: “Our Leontius is really a Calabrian, but would have us consider him a Thessalian, as though it were nobler to be Greek than Italian.” After proceeding in his description of Pilatus by mocking his long, shaggy beard and hair, and naming various character flaws such as a lack of virtue and wisdom, Petrarch informs Boccaccio that Pilatus had the gall to ask him to write to the Byzantine emperor on his behalf. Petrarch ridicules the very notion. In the same letter, he criticizes the Byzantines for their persistence in referring to their empire as Roman: “the Greeks call Constantinople another Rome. They have dared to call it not only equal to the ancient city, but greater in monuments and graced with riches. But if this were true on both counts as it is false (I would say it without offense to Sozomen who wrote this) surely no little Greek, however impudent, would dare to call them equal in men, arms, virtues and glory.”
In an earlier letter to Cardinal Giovanni Colonna, Petrarch argued that a Greek cannot rightly consider himself nobler than an Italian because “whoever says this would also say that a slave is more noble than a master.” Petrarch supports this assertion by pointing to ancient Greece's subjection under the Roman imperium. Petrarch was a proud Italian who rejected Greek pretensions to the Roman name. The very idea that Greeks were Romans, for him, was absurd. The real Romans, Petrarch implies, were Italians who spoke Latin; they became masters of the world, sweeping up all of Greece in the process. The only true descendants of the ancient Romans are those who now occupy Italy, while the modern-day Greeks are no more than the descendants of an enslaved and subjugated people who unjustly usurped the dignity of the Roman Empire. For Petrarch, the Greeks were nothing more than former Roman slaves who later pretended to call themselves Romans. As he argues in his Itinerarium ad sepulcrum Domini, the Byzantine Empire became famous for its emulation of the Roman Empire, but it was not the real Roman Empire.
In 1354 the idea appears again a letter to Nicholas Sygeros—a letter written in thanks for a manuscript of Homer that the Byzantine official had sent to him. Petrarch's gratitude to Sygeros did not restrain him from discrediting the Byzantine emperor, who still styled himself “Roman Emperor”; Petrarch instead calls him “emperor of Constantinople” (constantinopolitanus imperator), as opposed to the real Roman emperor.
Despite his great love of learning and antiquity, Petrarch did not fully appreciate ancient Greek culture either, and disliked even more strongly the modern Greeks who lived among the ruins of ancient Hellas. The reason for his aversion was not only ethnic or cultural, but also religious: in the centuries before Petrarch's birth, the Latins and Greeks had become sharply divided by religious faith and sentiments, consecrated by the Eastern Schism of 1054. Petrarch, as an Italian and a Latin, was a staunch Catholic. His consuming passion for both ancient Rome and the Catholic faith shaped his condescension toward Greece—ancient and modern—just as it did toward Islamic countries. Petrarch argued that all these lands were once under Rome's benevolent aegis; breaking away from Roman rule only sent them into cultural decline, political anarchy, heresy and schism.
Petrarch's antipathy for the Greeks went beyond cultural criticisms; on a few occasions his message became bellicose, as in his letters to the rulers of Venice and Genoa. In these letters he begs the two governments to stop fighting one another and to embrace their connection as fellow Italians. Much worthier battles, he argues, can be fought against the Muslims and even against the schismatic Greeks. Religious antagonism played a very large part in Petrarch's views of Byzantium, as can be seen in his letter to Doge Giovanni da Valente, who took office in 1352, and the Council of Genoa. Petrarch repeats his plea for a cessation of war among Italians in exchange for a joint attack on Byzantium and the Holy Land:
“Yea indeed, not only do I not grieve, but I greatly rejoice over the deceitful and indolent Greeklings who dare nothing on their own. I desire to see that infamous empire, that seat of error, destroyed at your hands, if by chance Christ has chosen you avengers of their wrongs, if He assigned to you that vengeance which all Catholic peoples have unfortunately deferred.”With this statement the Greeks are compared to Muslims or to heretics such as the Albigensians and Bogomils—groups whose existence was believed to pose a great danger to the Christian faith, which therefore could only be met with crusade.
Petrarch's resentment of the Greeks intensified over time. In a letter to Pope Urban V written in 1366, Petrarch urged a return to Rome and aid to the beleaguered Christian East. While he encourages the pope to lead a crusade to Constantinople to help the Byzantines push back the Turkish advance, he also advocates a return of Latin rule to Constantinople. He believed that the arrogant, schismatic Greeks—who hate the Latins so much that they reconsecrate their churches when a Latin so much as enters them—needed to be punished for their hatred and schism. He even goes so far as to advocate a crusade against Byzantium. According to Petrarch, Jerusalem is possessed by enemies, while the Byzantines, as heretics, are “worse than enemies” (peioris hostibus):
“The fact remains that a great sea lies between us and our enemies who now hold Jerusalem. So, as matters now stand between us and them it is no small effort. ... On the other hand, nothing stands between us and these petty Greeks except our lethargy and our laziness, since, while they have the utmost hatred, they have no power, and it is a simple matter for any two Italian states that want to [attack]; if you would begin to favor it, I can guarantee you that whether together or just singly they can either overthrow that unwarlike empire or lead it back to the bosom of the Mother Church.”Petrarch's friendship with several Greek scholars, we may assume, would have been greatly complicated, if not impossible, had they not been Roman Catholics. This was certainly the case with Coluccio Salutati, an Italian humanist who expressed even greater ambivalence toward the Byzantines a generation later. Salutati saw them as schismatics stubbornly steeped in error who possessed numerous character flaws. For certain Greeks, such as the Byzantine scholars Demetrius Cydones and Manuel Chrysoloras, Salutati expressed only esteem. Yet this admiration by no means extended to the Greeks as a people. Byzantium was not a breeding ground for great scholarship in Salutati's eyes. On the contrary, Cydones and Chrysoloras were rare exceptions among the Greeks: “I perceive you have appeared, like a light in darkness, for the study of literature, almost lost among the Greeks, because the minds of all are taken up with ambition, pleasures and avarice.”
Here, Salutati echoes the common Western view of the Greeks. Recall that Petrarch too described them as “deceitful and indolent”. Ancient Romans such as Cato the Censor, Cicero and Juvenal described the Greeks in the same manner, hence the intentionally ironic phrase “Greek honesty” applied by the Romans to dishonest business dealings. Interestingly, these same kinds of classical stereotypes were used by ancient Greeks and Romans to describe Asians, and Petrarch used such terms to describe the Arabs in particular. Thus in Salutati we see a clear example of Byzantium shifting closer to the Oriental world in the eyes of Westerners.
Arriving back on topic, the straightforward and blunt honesty that Salutati takes in his letter to Cydones is remarkable; he does not hold back in expressing his opinion of the Greek people even though Cydones was Greek. Salutati's familiarity is most likely due to the fact that Cydones, unlike the majority of Greeks, was a Roman Catholic who supported Church union. Salutati states:
“But there is one thing about you, by which I am greatly pleased: clearly, I can tell that you are not held by the errors of your race regarding the faith without which we cannot be saved. Thus, my discussion with you is not only with a learned man, but also with a Catholic.”Petrarch held views very similar to Salutari in this regard, and it is interesting to note that all the Greeks whom Petrarch was on friendly terms with were Roman Catholics. Presumably he would have found it very difficult to maintain a friendship with most other Greeks. In the eyes of Petrarch, the mass of modern Greeks who rejected ecclesiastical unity were as great an enemy of the Italians as the Muslim peoples were. More precisely, Petrarch viewed them as an obstacle to crusade and Christian unity; if they could not help the common Christian cause, then they were fair game for destruction by Italian fleets. Many of Petrarch's contemporaries envisioned the Greeks in a triangular relationship with the Latins and the Muslims; they were neither allies, nor full-fledged enemies, but somewhere in between. To Petrarch's mind, the Greeks were clearly closer to being the enemy.
The anti-Latin attitude amongst the Greeks should also not be overlooked. The hostility of Greeks towards the West predated the Crusades and the Eastern Schism of 1054 by several centuries. Indeed, the pride and chauvinism of the Greeks is well known by students of ancient and medieval Greek history. Prideful arrogance combined with a stubborn intolerance of non-Greek customs caused many Greek prelates to denounce Latin customs and anathematize Western traditions as “heretical” as early as the seventh century, namely during the infamous Council in Trullo, held at Constantinople in 692. Several of its canons were later referenced by the Greek patriarch Photius in his anti-Latin diatribes and denunciations of the Western Church in the ninth century.
Another episode characteristic of Greek attitudes was the disdain shown by Emperor Michael III in a letter addressed to Pope Nicholas in 864 or 865, in which he accused Latins of speaking “a barbaric and Scythian tongue”. This caused the indignation of Nicholas, a native of Rome, who promptly responded with a letter dated September 28, 865, rebuking the hypocrisy of the young Byzantine:
“But you have reached such a point of fury that you inflict insult on the Latin language, calling it in your letter a barbarian and Scythian tongue. ... Now, if you call Latin a barbarian and Scythian tongue because you do not understand it, consider how ridiculous it is to call yourself emperor of the Romans, and not to know the Roman tongue... Therefore, cease to call yourself emperor of the Romans since in your opinion they are barbarians, whose emperor you claim to be. For the Romans use this language which you call barbarian and Scythian.”All these incidents took place long before the formal schism between East and West in 1052, but are emblematic of the prolonged anti-Latin attitude which prevailed amongst the Greeks for many centuries. The hostility of the Greeks towards the West was undoubtedly another influence which helped shape Petrarch's own attitude toward the Greeks. After all, if the Greeks so despised the Latins that they denounced both Ancient Rome and the Catholic religion, then why should not Latins detest the Greeks in return?
References:
• Emperor Michael III (Letter to Pope Nicholas I, 864-854)
• Pope Nicholas I (Letter to Emperor Michael III, September 28, 865)
• Petrarch (Letter to Cardinal Giovanni Colonna, June 21, 1333)
• Petrarch (Letter to Doge Giovanni da Valente and the Council of Genoa, November 1, 1352)
• Petrarch (Letter to Nicholas Sygeros, January 10, 1354)
• Petrarch (Letter to Boccaccio, March 1, 1365)
• Petrarch (Letter to Pope Urban V, June 29, 1366)
• Coluccio Salutati (Letter to Demetrius Cydones, February 15, 1396)
