Laonikos Chalkokondyles and Hellenic Identity

• In Event: Visions of the Greek World in Renaissance Art, Literature, and Scholarship II

Abstract

Adapting Herodotus to the fifteenth century, Laonikos Chalkokondyles provided a novel interpretation of Hellenic and barbarian identities. Among the illustrious list of medieval and early modern historians who were writing in Greek, Laonikos was the only one to refer to the inhabitants of the Eastern Roman Empire as Hellenes. Laonikos was also unique among Byzantine historians for reviving a Herodotean model of tyrannical Empire to analyze the Ottoman state. Furthermore, Laonikos’ vision of Hellenic identity echoes that of his teacher, the Neo-Platonist philosopher George Gemistos Plethon as well as Plethon’s other famous student, Bessarion. In this paper, I will explore Laonikos’ linguistic, ethnic, religious, and geographical visions of the Greek world. This vision was widely influential in the Renaissance when we remember that Chalkokondyles’ work was a best-seller which was published in numerous editions in Latin and French translations as well as in the original Greek by the sixteenth century.

Author

• Aslihan Akisik Karakullukcu, Princeton University