Teaching Virtues: The Didactic Project of Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos
Teaching Virtues: The Didactic Project of Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos

Summary/Abstract: In contrast to the western intellectual tradition where the systematization of virtues in moral treatises often triggered political and constitutional debates, the Byzantines approached virtues mainly from a didactic perspective which involved the imitation of exemplary models. By and large, it appears that in Byzantium, authors were more preoccupied about how virtues could be instilled into others rather than about how virtues underpinned broader political or philosophical refl ection. This article looks at three diff erent texts written in the early fi fteenth century by the emperor and rhetorician Manuel II Palaiologos: Foundations of an Imperial Education (c. 1406), Seven Ethico-Political Orations (c. 1410), and the still unedited Confession to his Spiritual Fathers, David and Damian (c. 1416). I explore the development of Manuel’s approach to the topic of rulers’ virtues. From the Foundations to the Confession his idea of ethical behavior underwent several changes as he constantly added new elements and shifted his perspectives or frameworks of reference. The study attempts to answer several questions: What categories of virtues did the emperor approach? How did the emphasis on certain virtues change and what caused this shift? And how did the emperor achieve his didactic intention? In answering these questions I look at the theoretical grounding of virtues on the one hand, and at the strategies of achieving didactic authority through the modulations of the authorial voice, on the other hand. I argue that the three texts under investigation constitute interrelated sections in a broad didactic project which the emperor prepared for his son and future emperor, John VIII.

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