Background

Maximus Planudes was born at Nicomedia, in Bithynia (now Izmit, Turkey), but the greater part of his life was spent in Constantinople. Manuel Planudes, as he was named by his well-to-do family, was probably brought to Constantinople shortly after Michael VIII recovered the city from the Latins in 1261.

Career

When Planudes became a monk, in or shortly before 1280, he took the name Maximus, by which he is now known. He was a leading intellectual and teacher in Byzantium in the early Palaeologan period, first at the Chora monastery and, after circa 1300, at the Akataleptes monastery.

His knowledge of Latin was sufficient for him to translate many theological and classical works into Greek, including a translation of Macrobius’ Commentum in sonmium Scipionis. It has also been claimed that he is the translator of the Aristotelian De plantis from the Latin of Alfred Anglicus. But his primary scholarly interest was the editing of texts and the training of younger scholars, such as Demetrius Triclinius and Manuel Meschopulus, to carry on this work. His school was concerned mainly with editing and commenting on the Greek poets and dramatists, although it did not neglect authors of prose. His editions include Aratus’ Phaenomena, with scholia; Theodosius’ Sphaerica; Euclid’s Elements', Ptolemy’s Geography, pseudo-Iamblichus’ Theologumena arithmeticae; and Diophantus' Arithmetica, with scholia on the first two books.

Another scholarly activity in which Planudes delighted was the compilation of fiorilegia. His anthology of Greek poetry, the Anthologia Plamtdea, is well known; and his Very Useful Collection Gathered From Various Books preserves much of what we possess of John Lydus’ De mensibus.

Planudes’ source may have been his contemporary, Gregory Chioniades, who had studied astronomy at Tabriz in the early 1290s and was using the same forms of the Indian numerals in Byzantium in 1298-1302. The medical works sometimes attributed to Planudes - that on uroscopy, for example - were probably written by Nicophorus Blemmydes.

Achievements

• Planudes is now best known as a compiler of the Greek Anthology, which was a renowned collection of Greek prose and poetry comprising authors from about 700 BC to AD 1000 and edited variously from the 1st to the 11th century.
  
  For historians of science, his most important original work is Calculation According to the Indians, Which Is Called Great, which deals with addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, sexagesimals, and squares and square roots. Although it contains little original material, it is significant for its use of the eastern Arabic form of the Indian numerals.
  
  Another Planudes' achievement was in the establishment of a monastery for laymen and in opening a school by the imperial library. Drawing students from the royal family and nobility, the school gained an academic reputation for its thorough humanities curriculum.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Publius Ovidius Naso

    (Volume 4)

    1822
  • Diophanti Alexandrini Opera Omnia Germa 1893
  • Aesopi Phrygis Fabulae graece et latine: cum aliis quibusdam opusculis, quorum indicem sequens pagella indicabit 1550
  • Anthologia graeca epigrammatvm palatina cvm Planvdea 1894
  • Fabulae romanenses graece conscriptae 1872
  • Laelius et Paradoxa: Somnium 1833
  • Epigrammatum Anthologia Palatina 1864
  • De Callimachi Cydippa: accedunt Aristaeneti epistula 1863
  • Comparatio hiemis et veris 1878
  • P. Ovidi Nasonis Heroides: with the Greek translation of Planudes 1898
  • Das Rechenbuch 1865
  • De la consolation de la philosophie 1871
  • Dionysii Catonis Disticha, de moribus ad filium 1754
  • Comparatio Hiemis Et Veris 1878
  • The fables of Esop, in English VVith al his life and fortune, how he was subtill, wise, and borne in Greece 1628

Religion

In his religious affiliation, Maximus Planudes was a Greek Orthodox.

References

• The Encyclopaedia Britannica
  2015
• A History of Classical Scholarship: From Antiquity to the Modern Era
  2011
• The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium
  1991
• The Oxford Classical Dictionary
  2012