An Example of City Encomion in Byzantine Historiography: Cardinal Bessarion’s Encomion to Trebizond

• Main Author: Zeynep İNAN ALİYAZICIOĞLU
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Karadeniz Technical University 2017-07-01
• Series: Karen: Karadeniz Araştırmaları Enstitüsü Dergisi
• Subjects: Cardinal Bessarion; Trebizond; Encomion; Historiography
• Online Access: http://www.ktu.edu.tr/dosyalar/karendergi_86822.pdf
• ISSN: 2458-7680; 2458-9705

Cardinal Bessarion (1403/8-1472) was a priest who was born in Trebizond and educated in Constantinople. Bes-sarion, who settled in Italy in 1440, served the Catholic Church and rose to important positions. Shortly before his death, he left a rich library in the Venice city library. In this study, it is aimed to examine the work, which called Encomion to Trebizond (Εγκώμιον Τραπεζούς) by Bessarion. First of all it will be given briefly information about the work of the type of encomion in the Byzantine historiography, and after that mentioned about the writ-ing phase, physical structure, pressures and transla-tions of Bessarion’s work. Then the content of the work will be evaluated. While making this assessment, it will be given information about the main idea of the work (Bessarion was to motivate Greeks by emphasizing the characteristic features of them like independence, human likeness etc. in the face of the Ottoman Turks threaten-ing the city of Trebizond. He chose the ancient Greeks as examples to motivate them) and the language, discourse style, sources used by the author as well as the scope of the work (including the climatic conditions, physical and geographical structure and the importance of regional trade of the city of Trebizond). Finally, Bessarion’s work will be tried to evaluate in terms of medieval history of Trebizond.