French Literature Reviews - 2026
Anne-Marie Cheny, Le cercle des byzantinistes. Comment bibliothécaires, savants et voyageurs inventèrent Byzance (XVIe-XIXe siècle)
History, Politics and Society
Preface by Marie-France Auzépy.
Once a field of research is established, the question of its origins tends to fade, as if it had simply been there all along. Yet, the initial moments of discovery often hold an epic quality. What we call “Byzantine studies”—that is, the study of the language, history, art, and civilization of the Eastern Roman Empire throughout the twelve centuries of its existence (330–1453)—has the peculiar distinction of having been born without anyone actually looking for it.
During the 16th and 17th centuries, fascination with ancient Greece ran high, and journeys to the East multiplied. Eager to expand their knowledge and enrich their libraries, numerous scholars dispatched extensive networks of adventurers to hunt for manuscripts. Clerics, diplomats, merchants, scholars, libertines, and sea captains roamed the Ottoman Empire in search of ancient Greek manuscripts. Yet their unfamiliarity with the Greek language led them—through a fortunate mistake—to bring back medieval Greek texts: Byzantine texts. Setting out in search of classical Greece, they encountered the Greek Middle Ages and Byzantine civilization.
This is the story told by Anne-Marie Cheny: the tale of these passionate librarians and irascible philologists, of popes and cardinals, princes, copyists, and their forgotten Greek intermediaries—all those manuscript hunters in pursuit of a body of knowledge they were ultimately to construct.
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An article on this work can be read on laviedesidees.fr...
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Preface by Marie-France Auzépy
By way of introduction
Chronological landmarks
Introduction
Claude Dupuy, a humanist in the heart of the Wars of Religion (Paris, 1595)
A scholar's library
Sheltered from the world's disorders
Chrysostom, Justinian, Leo, and the others
An editor, language professors, and manuscript hunters (15th–16th century)
Johannes Löwenklau: editing “to avoid leading a foolish, routine, and useless life down here”
Chrysoloras, Chalcondyles, and Lascaris, teachers of Greek in the West
Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq, a traveling ambassador
Hieronymus Wolf and Anton Fugger, the union of an irascible philologist and a patron banker (Augsburg, mid-16th century)
From Melanchthon to Fugger
Three unpublished manuscripts
Johannes Herbst: the great forgotten figure
Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc: the stationary adventurer (Aix-en-Provence, first half of the 17th century)
Erudition as sole mistress
An inkwell and a pen
And for a few more books
The precious “Peiresc papers” (Aix-en-Provence, first half of the 17th century)
A paper memory
This is not the Byzantine Empire
French connection
Lukas Holste, a librarian in the service of the Pope (Vatican, mid-17th century)
In search of the “minor Greek geographers”
A piece of the puzzle
La Popelinière: forever the first
The Byzantine du Louvre: a royal affair (Paris, mid-17th century)
The Italian enemy
A monument for eternity
Louis Cousin, Byzantium's first “historian”
Du Vair, Peiresc, Suarez, and Fabrot: an idea and men (Provence, mid-17th century)
Philippe Labbe: a suspect above all suspicion
A Provençal ambition
A historian of Byzantium who didn't wish to be one
Montesquieu: a taste of the unfinished (Château de la Brède, 1731)
A library in a square tower
Indispensable Byzantium
Condorcet, a light in the dark (Paris, 1795)
Ignorance at the heart of decadence
The transmission of the Greek genius
Conclusion
Glossary
Index
Illustration credits
List of figures
Anne-Marie Cheny traces the fascinating historical genesis of Byzantine studies, exploring how sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European intellectuals initially sought classical Greek antiquity but instead encountered the rich civilization of the Greek Middle Ages. Through meticulous archival work, the author highlights the eclectic networks of diplomats, clerics, merchants, and librarians whose expeditions across the Ottoman Empire yielded the foundational texts of the Eastern Roman Empire. By examining figures such as Claude Dupuy, Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, and Louis Cousin, the study illuminates the complex institutional and intellectual processes that gradually shaped a distinct academic discipline from scattered editorial projects and library collections.
This compelling volume will particularly interest historians of scholarship, librarians, and researchers in intellectual history who wish to understand how modern academic fields emerge from unexpected encounters and amateur enthusiasm. Placing the genesis of Byzantine studies within the broader context of European humanism and early modern erudition, Cheny offers valuable insights into the transmission of texts and the construction of historical knowledge. Readers curious about the intersection of diplomacy, travel, and philology during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment will find this exploration of forgotten intermediaries and passionate scholars both illuminating and deeply engaging.