George Of Trebizond

HIERONYMI CARDANI - DE EXEMPLIS CENTUM GENITURARUM

II

George Of Trebizond, 

(born 1396, Candia, Crete [now Iráklion, Greece]—died 1486, Rome [Italy]), Byzantine humanist, Greek scholar, and Aristotelian polemist. His academic influence in Italy and within the papacy, his theories on grammar and literary criticism, and his Latin translations of ancient Greek works, although at times strongly criticized, contributed substantially to Italian humanism and the Renaissance. 

From Crete in 1415, George of Trebizond, at the age of twenty, came to Venice, invited by his patron, the Venetian patrician Francesco Barbaro, for whom he probably translated manuscripts and to whom he probably taught Greek in exchange for Latin lessons. It was George’s primary aim to learn and then to teach Latin rhetoric in Italy, enriched by his background of Palaeologan Greek studies. George studied Latin with the greatest Latinist of the day, Vittorino da Feltre. With his wide background of interests, derived at least in part from the influence of the broad scope of Palaeologan education, he engaged in a very wide range of intellectual activities, including rhetoric, logic, Greek and Latin apocalyptic literature, philosophy, and theology. Most important, through his Latin treatise Rhetoricorum libri V, he brought to the awareness of Western humanists the writer whom Bes-sarion called “the greatest glory of Greek rhetoric,” Hermogenes. (None other than Lorenzo Valla wrote that George was generally considered the most learned rhetorician of Italy in the Latin language.) In the Rhetoricorum libri V, George set forth the contents of Hermogenes’ masterful analysis of ways to move an audience. In this work he was able to fuse the Byzantine Hermogenean rhetorical tradition with the Latin tradition of Cicero, which he greatly esteemed. Some Byzantine scholars, however, tended to denigrate Ciceronian rhetoric, notably John Argyropoulos [...] George’s treatise on rhetoric, after its gradual assimilation by the Italian humanists, became the leading Italian and, later, northern Renaissance rhetorical text, supplementing or even supplanting the rhetorical writings of Cicero and Quintilian. [...] At the request of Pope Nicholas V and Bessarion, George turned into Latin no fewer than eleven major Greek texts, some never before translated, others translated for the first time in the humanist manner. His versions were not infrequently criticized, but they were on the whole well executed, the flaws in most cases being attributable to factors over which he had little or no control. [...] George’s method of translation was sensible: to adhere closely to the original in the case of scientific texts (Aristotle and Ptolemy especially) but to provide a more flexible rendering in the case of the Greek historians and the fathers of the Byzantine church.
His translation of Ptolemy’s capital work on astronomy and mathematics the Almagest (Mathematike syntaxis), which was already available in the faulty twelfth-century Latin version of Gerard of Cremona, was of extraordinary importance for the future development of mathematics and astronomy. Believing that Ptolemy’s text had been corrupted by his Arab translator, George, at the personal suggestion of Bessarion, appended a lengthy commentary to his translation explicating Ptolemy’s Almagest. George’s commentary but not his translation was then evaluated but sharply condemned by the Italian scholar in the Curia, Jacopo da Cremona, who had previously translated Archimedes. George’s version of Ptolemy’s Almagest, nevertheless, subsequently became standard, although, surprisingly, the Greek text was not printed until much later, in 1538. In addition, George rendered into Latin for the first time Pseudo-Ptolemy’s work, the Centiloquium, containing one hundred aphorisms dealing primarily with astrology, a subject contributing no little to the development of Renaissance astronomy. For Nicholas of Cusa, George translated into Latin Plato’s Parmenides Cusanus, though very interested in Platonism and the Dionysian writings, probably never learned Greek well. He himself relates that, when, before the Council of Florence, he represented the papacy in Constantinople, he there sought out Greek manuscripts (probably of Plato) and that it was during his boat trip back home from Constantinople that he conceived the main philosophical ideas for his chief work, De docta ignorantia. [Monfasani J., George of Trebizond. A biography and a study of his rhetoric and logic, Leiden, Brill, 1976]

John Monfasani was able to unravel the skein surrounding the difficulties related to the date of birth of Trebizond :

Hence, George of Trebizond began his long and turbulent life on 3 April 1395. This corrects the very long standing error that he was born on 4 April 1395 or 1396 [2. Commentarii in ps.-Ptolemy’s Centiloquium, aphor. 58. Although this work is printed, 1 will use MSB which George himself corrected, in this instance, f. 55V: “ut verbi gratia ad revolutionem etatis mee 58 anno domini 1453, que fit per tertium diem mensis Aprilis, pcr 13 horas fere precessit coniunctio solis et lune in Piscibus facta. Ascendebat autem in revolutione Capricornus. Ita Piscis erat in tertio loco. Quare quod revolutio pollicebatur nisi nativitas ipsa ab eo aliena fuisset, circa tertium mensem ab eo qui inccpit cum sol fuit in Arietis gradu 22 futurum et sperassem et optassem” (I have condensed the latter part of this text in the translation). This passage is the ultimate source for the date found in L. Gauricus, Tractatus astrologicus, Venice, Curtius Troianus, 1552, f. 61 v; I. Garcaeus Astrologiae methodus, Basel, 1576, 168 (cf. L. Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, 8 vols. New York, 1923-1958, VI, 596); and early historical compilers such as C. Felici, Calendario Istorico, Pars I, 127. cited by Zeno, Dissertazioni, II. 2. From them a false date of Trebizond’s birth has infested modern scholarship. In addition to the typographical error in Garcaeus (1396 for 1395). Gauricus seems to have made the mistake of reading the passage to mean that George was born on the thirteenth hour of 3 April. Since astronomical time was measured from twelve noon, the thirteenth hour would bring one to about 1 A. M., 4 April (using Trebizond’s horoscope, Gauricus decided on 12:20 in the morning).] 

- ASC CAPRI, ruler SA X(close to MC) - MC SCORPIO, ruler MA
-# JU SA in mundo - 

Morinus gives MA for ALMUTEN. There is no particular detriment on this natal chart. 

HYLEG : ASC - ALCHOCODEN : VE - ANAERERE : SA (MA ?)

The following chart shows the primary directional aspects directly from the Morinus software and computed for the year (nearest of the event) corresponding to the PTO key. The protocol is as follows:
- search for in mundo directions;
- searchfor of // or # in zodiaco directions
- data processing by us, later and statistics

 We have 3 directions to investigate:
- SA conj ASC
- #MA conj MO
- SO conj #MA

1)- SA conj ASC : D = 87.66°, (with latitude) so : 80.6 years with key conv. AR : 0.919 and for year of death 1474.5. If not, no direction. Otherwise, without latitude, we have D = 84.9° with 78.06 years, which leads us to 1473.

It should be noted that this direction is only possible if SA is considered as a moving point and  ASC is a fixed point: it is therefore a converse direction of a particular type.

George died well before 1480. We can be even more precise. In the preface to the translation, Andreas bemoaned the fact that since his father’s “life was cut short by the faction of the powerful foe, he [George] was prevented by death from dedicating it.” 18 In the later preface to the commentary, Andreas claimed that his father had never published the commentary, “for when, so as to frustrate Nicenus [Bessarion], our mortal enemy, who desired nothing more than to get a hold of the commentary, death intervened before he could think about publishing it.” 19 In both these quotations Andreas leaves the definite impression that Bessarion, “the powerful foe,” was still alive when his father died. Bessarion died 18 November 1472. Even if Andreas is telescoping events, these statements justify us in believing George died in 1472 or 1473.10 Thus, the two antagonists departed this world nearly together. [Monfasani J., George of Trebizond. A biography and a study of his rhetoric and logic, Leiden, Brill, 1976, p. 234]

2)- #MA conj MO

Note that this direction is taken with latitudes for mundane directions only. For zodiacal direction, we take only significator latitude.

Recall: zodiacal directions in blue, mundane directions in green (left part of the table); Latitudes are used (south latitude for promissor and significator) only for mundane directions; The zodiacal direction (in blue) are affected only by the latitude of the significator (i.e. MO).

 3)- So conj #MA 

results

conclusion

Many points remain unanswered: in particular how latitudes should be used, the way in which parallels should be used (with or without latitude), bearing in mind that certain aspects of counter-parallel can be confused with oppositions (as certain parallels may also, when the latitudes are important, be confused with the conjunction aspects) ... [Similar to the parametric repeated measures ANOVA, it is used to detect differences in treatments across multiple test attempts. The procedure involves ranking each row (or block) together, then considering the values of ranks by columns.]