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Cyriac of Ancona at Thessaloniki*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Michael Vickers
Michael Vickers*
Affiliation:
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
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Extract

At some time in 1431, Cyriac of Ancona visited Thessaloniki, a visit that seems hitherto to have passed unnoticed by scholars who have worked on the history and monuments of that city. A brief account of his stay is to be found in the life compiled by Cyriac’s friend Francesco Scalamonti and completed in 1464. A manuscript copy of Scalamonti’s work by Felice Feliciano is preserved in the Biblioteca Capitolare in Treviso, but the only published version is of a further copy of the Treviso manuscript printed by G. Colucci in 1792. Since the account includes a reference to an otherwise unknown monument of Aemilius Paullus in Thessaloniki and also throws light on what seems to have been the earliest recorded inscription there, it has been thought worthwhile to discuss some of the points raised by the passage.

Type
Research Article
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 2 , 1976 , pp. 75 - 82
Copyright
Copyright © The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 1976

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References

1. Treviso, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS. I. 138.

2. Colucci, G., Antichità picene, XV (Fermo, 1792), p. lxxxiii Google Scholar. For a useful summary of Cyriac’s travels in Greece, see Bodnar, E. W., , S.J., Cyriacus of Ancona and Athens (Collection Latomus, XLIII [Brussels, 1960])Google Scholar, chap. 1. See too Lehmann, P. W., ‘Cyriacus of Ancona’s visit to Samothrace’, in , P. W. and Lehmann, K., Samothracian Reflections (Bollingen Series, XCII [Princeton, N.J., 1973]), pp. 3–56 Google Scholar. Also useful is Weiss, R., ‘Ciriaco d’Ancona in Oriente’, in Pertusi, A., ed., Venezia e l’Oriente fra tardo medioevo e rinasimento (Civiltà europea e civiltà veneziana, aspetti e problemi, 4 [Venice, 1966]), pp. 323–37 Google Scholar, though the date of Cyriac’s death should be revised to 1452 in the light of Ch. Patrinelis, G., EEBS, XXXVI (1968), 152–62 Google Scholar.

3. It is through the kindness of Fr. Bodnar and Professor Mitchell that I am able to print a text that is much closer to the Treviso manuscript than Colucci’s transcription.

4. Guerrini, L., ‘“Las Incantadas” di Salonicco’, Archeologia Classica, XIII (1961), 40–70 Google Scholar, pls. 13-28.

5. Ch. Bakirtzis, in a paper delivered at the Second International Symposium ‘Ancient Macedonia’, Thessaloniki, 1973, and forthcoming in the proceedings.

6. Laubscher, H. P., Der Reliefschmuck des Galeriusbogens in Thessaloniki (Berlin, 1975)Google Scholar.

7. Cousinéry, E. M., Voyage dans la Macédoine, I (Paris, 1831), pp. 25–7 Google Scholar, pl. 3; L. Heuzey and Daumet, H., Mission archéologique de Macédoine (Paris, 1876), p. 272 Google Scholar, pl. 22 bis.

8. Ibid., p. 20. The substantive publication of Cyriac’s records and interpretation of Trajan’s arch at Ancona is Campana, Augusto, ‘Giannozzo Manetti, Ciriaco e l’arco di Traiano ad Ancona’, Italia medioevale e umanistica, II (1959). 483–504 Google Scholar.

9. Livy, xxxiii, 27.

10. Livy, xxxvii, 3.

11. Cf. M. Pallottino, EAA, I (1958), pp. 588-99, s.v. ‘Arco onorario e trionfale’.

12. Kähler, H., Der Fries vom Reiterdenkmal des Aemilius Paullus in Delphi (Berlin, 1965)Google Scholar.

13. Both the Forum and the church of St. Demetrius appear in the same photograph in Schoder, R., , S.J., Greece from the Air (London, 1974), p. 216 Google Scholar.

14. Khitrovo, Mme B. de, Itinéraires russes en Orient (Geneva, 1889), p. 147 Google Scholar. On the history of the site and the cult, see now Vickers, M., ‘Sirmium or Thessaloniki? A critical examination of the St. Demetrius legend’, BZ, LXVII (1974), 337–50 Google Scholar.

15. Kiel, M., ‘Notes on the history of some Turkish monuments in Thessaloniki and their founders’, Balkan Studies, XI (1970), 142 Google Scholar.

16. For the most recent discussions, see Vickers, M., ‘Fifth-century brickstamps at Thessaloniki’, Annual of British School at Athens, LXVIII (1973), 285–94 Google Scholar; idem, ‘The late Roman walls of Thessalonica’, in E. Birley, B. Dobson and Jarrett, M. (eds.), Roman Frontier Studies 1969, Eighth International Congress of Limesforschung (Cardiff, 1974), pp. 249–55 Google Scholar; and Spieser, J. M., ‘Note sur la chronologie des ramparts de Thessalonique’, Bulletin de correspondance hellénique, XCVIII (1974), 507–19 Google Scholar.

17. Vickers, M., ‘Hellenistic Thessaloniki’, JHS, XCII (1972), 166–8 Google Scholar; cf. Spieser, op. cit., 516.

18. Edson, C. (ed.), Inscriptiones Graecae, X, 2, 1 (Berlin, 1972), nos. 27, 97, 113 Google Scholar (excavated in the Serapeum), 243 (excavated in Plateia Vardariou) and 635 (found in the ruins of the Cassandreotic Gate).

19. Colucci, op. cit., p. lxiv. See too, Vickers, M., ‘Mantegna and Constantinople’, Burlington Magazine, CXVIII (1976)Google Scholar [forthcoming] for a view of a tower of the Land Walls of Constantinople almost certainly derived from a sketch by Cyriac.

20. Berlin, Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, Ham, MS. 254, fol. 81v: Boese, H., Die lateinischen Handschriften der Sammlung Hamilton zu Berlin (Wiesbaden, 1966) pp. 125ffGoogle Scholar. See too Lehmann, P. W., ‘The sources and meaning of Mantegna’s Parnassus’, Samothracian Reflections, p. 106 Google Scholar, n. 86.

21. This is a new transcription for which I am grateful to Fr. Bodnar. It differs in several respects from the one that appeared in his Cyriacus of Ancona and Athens, pp. 154-5.

22. It is impossible to say whether NIKIΣAΣ(for NIKHΣAΣ) was a mistake on Cyriac’s part or that of the stone cutter.

23. Mommsen, Th., ‘Über die berliner Excerptenhandschrift des Petrus Donatus’, Jahrbuch der koniglich preussischen Kunstsammlungen, IV (1883), 77 Google Scholarff., and especially pl. A.

24. Kubitscheck, W., ‘Die Glaubwürdigkeit des Cyriacus von Ancona’, Archaeologisch-epigraphische Mitteilungen ans Oesterreich-Ungarn, VIII (1884), 102–3 Google Scholar.

25. Rossi, G. B. De, Inscriptions christianae urbis Romae septimo saeculo antiquiores, II (1888), pp. 379–81 Google Scholar.

26. Lehmann, K., ‘Cyriacus of Ancona, Aristotle and Teiresias in Samothrace’, Hesperia XII (1943), 117 Google Scholar, n. 13.

27. Bodnar, op. cit., 159-60. It should perhaps be noted that Cyriac’s fidelity in general has been argued by B. Ashmole and Mitchell, C.; the former in ‘Cyriac of Ancona’, Proceedings of the British Academy, XLV (1959), 25–41 Google Scholar and in ‘Cyriac of Ancona and the Temple of Hadrian at Cyzicus’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, XIX (1956), 179-91, the latter in ‘Felice Feliciano Antiquarius’, Proceedings of the British Academy, XL VII (1961), 218.

28. It is also clear mat Scalamonti had misunderstood Cyriac’s notes in suggesting mat the inscription was actually on a tripod.

29. C. Edson, op. cit.

30. Edson, C., ‘IG X, 2, 1: Prolegomena’, Bull, de corr. hellénique, XCVIII (1974), 521–6 Google Scholar.

31. ‘Ciriaco … vide e acquistò codici greci sacri e profani a Chio, Leucosia, Salonicco e più che tutto nei monasteri dell’isola di Taso’. Sabbadini, R., Le scoperte dei codici latini e greci ne’ secoli XIV e XV (Florence, 1905), p. 69 Google Scholar.

32. MS. cit. (n. 1), fol. 51r; Colucci, p. lxxxii (kindly pointed out to me by Fr. Bodnar).

33. Anagnostes, Johannes, De extremo Thessalonicensi excidio narratio, chap. 21, p. 525 Google Scholar (CSHB).

34. Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale, cod. Targioni 49.

35. Targioni-Tozzetti, G., Relazioni di alcuni viaggi etc., V (2nd ed., [Florence, 1773])Google Scholar. (Information in this and the preceding note from Professor Mitchell.)

36. New Catholic Encyclopedia, V (New York, 1967), col. 626.

37. See, e.g., Vacalopoulos, A. E., A History of Thessaloniki (Thessaloniki, 1963), 71–5 Google Scholar.

38. De Rossi, op. cit., pp. 358, 385.