Abstract

A neglected source for the text of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations is to be found in the writings of the Byzantine theologian Joseph Bryennius, who seems to have been born about 1350 and to have died before the Council of Florence , probably in 1430/1. He was a monk who was also a scholar, a theologian, and an ecclesiastical diplomat. He spent the years 1382–1402 in Crete , and was sent in 1406 on a mission of ecclesiastical diplomacy to Cyprus. Otherwise the greater part of his life was spent in Constantinople; from about 1402 to 1406 he lived at the monastery of Stoudios, from 1416 to 1427 at that of Charsianeites. He was a court preacher, and as a theologian upheld the claims of the Greek Church against the Roman; among his published works are twenty-one Discourses on the Trinity maintaining the Greek Orthodox position.