Neilos Doxapatres

Neilos Doxapatres (Greek: Νεῖλος ὁ Δοξοπατρῆς)[1] was a Byzantine Greek monk, theologian, and writer active in Constantinople and Sicily during the first half of the 12th century.

Biography

Born into a native Greek family[2][3][4] of Constantinople,[5][6] he made his career there, where he held various ecclesiastical and secular high offices; deacon of the Hagia Sophia, patriarchal notary, protoproedros of the protosynkelloi and nomophylax.[1][7] At some point he became a monk, assuming the monastic name "Neilos", and left for Sicily.[1] According to the prologue of Neilos' work on the patriarchs, he was in Palermo in 1142/43, at the court of king Roger II of Sicily.[4][5] His signature appears at the bottom of an act, dated 1146, regarding the church of the Martorana in Palermo.[8]

Neilos Doxapatres shares a surname with John Doxapatres, a professor of rhetoric who taught in Constantinople in the eleventh century, but their relationship is unknown.

Works

Two works by Doxapatres have survived:

  • Treatise on the five patriarchs (Σύγγραμμα... περὶ τῶν πέντε πατριαρχικῶν θρόνων καὶ τῶν ὑπ'αὐτοὺς ἀρχιεπισκόπων καὶ μητροπόλεων κτλ. or Τάξις τῶν πατριαρχικῶν θρόνων), a work of geography and ecclesiastical history commissioned by King Roger II of Sicily. In it, Doxapatres explores Byzantine ideas of the Universal Church, which were far removed from those of the papacy (as well as the other Greek theologians active in southern Italy[1]). As a result, the work was very controversial in the West, and only two manuscript copies survive before 1453, but which were translated into Armenian around 1179/80. The first printed edition appeared in Étienne Le Moine's collection Varia Sacra, seu Sylloge variorum opusculorum Græcorum ad rem ecclesiasticam spectantium, 2 vols. (Leiden, 1685).
  • A Useful Inquiry into the Divine Economy in Relationship to Man (Περὶ τῆς ἐξ ἀρχῆς καὶ μέχρι τέλους οἰκονομίας τοῦ Θεοῦ εἰς τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἱστορία ἐπωφελής, καὶ περὶ τῆς χριστιανικῆς πολιτείας ὅπως συνέστη, καὶ κατὰ πάντων τῶν αἱρετικῶν), a vast theological summa apparently conceived of in five books, of which only the first two have survived——although we don't know whether the other three were ever, in fact, written. The first book discusses, in 263 chapters, the creation of man, Paradise, and the Fall; the second devoted 203 chapters to Christ, the second Adam, who repairs the sins for the first and saves humanity through his Incarnation and Passion. Book I was inspired above all by Gregory of Nyssa's On the creation of man and Nemesius's On the nature of man, Book II by the commentaries of Theophylact of Ohrid. Books III and IV, based on their titles, were probably meant to discuss the later history of the apostles and the Church.

The Synopsis Canonum written by Alexios Aristenos was falsely attributed to him.[9]

Editions of texts
  • Patrologia Graeca 132, col. 1083-1114 (Traité sur les patriarcats) and col. 1292–96. First chapter and final paragraph of Book 1 of De Œconomia Dei, based on a publication by Angelo Mai.
  • Finck, Franz Nikolaus, ed. Des Nilos Doxopatres Τάξις τῶν πατριαρχικῶν θρόνων. Vagharshabad (Etchmiadzine), Mayr Athorho, 1902. Greek and Armenian versions.

Bibliography
  • Caruso, Stefano. "Echi della polemica bizantina antilatina dell'XI-XII sec. nel De Œconomia Dei di Nilo Doxapatres." In Atti del Congresso internazionale di studi sulla Sicilia normanna, 403–31. Palermo, 1973.
  • Morton, James. "A Byzantine Canon Law Scholar in Norman Sicily: Revisiting Neilos Doxapatres's Order of the Patriarchal Thrones." Speculum 92.3 (2017): 724–54.
  • Neyrinck, Stefaan. "The De Œconomia Dei by Nilus Doxapatres. Some Introductory Remarks to the Work and its Edition & Chapter I, 40 : Edition, Translation and Commentary," Byzantion 80 (2010): 265–305.
  • P. Van Deun, "Lire les Pères grecs en Sicile normande : le cas du De oeconomia Dei de Nil Doxapatrès", dans B. Cabouret, A. Peters-Custot et C. Rouxpetel (éd), La réception des Pères grecs et orientaux en Italie au Moyen Âge (Ve-XVe siècle), Paris 2020, p. 161‑179.

References
  1. Kazhdan, Alexander (1991). "Doxopatres, Neilos". In Kazhdan, Alexander (ed.). The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. p. 660. ISBN 0-19-504652-8.
  2. Demoen, Kristoffel (2001). The Greek City from Antiquity to the Present: Historical Reality, Ideological Construction, Literary Representation. Peeters. p. 147. ISBN 978-90-429-0971-7. At Roger's court several Greeks were active like Neilos Doxapatres...
  3. Efthymiadis, Stephanos (2016). The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography. Vol. I (Periods and Places). Routledge. ISBN 978-0754650331. For instance, Neilos Doxapatres, a Greek theologian of the Norman period, has been suggested as the author of the vita of St Philaretos (...).
  4. Brotton, Jerry (2012). A History of the World in Twelve Maps. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-1-84614-570-4. Roger also sheltered the Greek theologian Nilos Doxapatres, who fled from Constantinople to Palermo around 1140,...
  5. Glick, Thomas F.; Livesey, Steven J.; Wallis, Faith (2016) [2005]. Routledge Revivals: Medieval Science, Technology and Medicine. Taylor & Francis. p. 189. ISBN 978-1-351-67617-5. A notitia by Nilos Doxapatres, originally of Constantinople, was presented by him to the Norman King Roger II of Sicily in 1143, about the time when *al-Idrisi was working in Palermo on his world geography (...).
  6. Siecienski, A. Edward (2017). The Papacy and the Orthodox: Sources and History of a Debate. Oxford University Press. p. 271. ISBN 978-0-19-024526-9. In 1143 Roger II of Sicily asked Nilos Doxapatres, a native Constantinopolitan serving in Sicily, to answer several questions about the church's patriarchal structure.
  7. Vitalien Laurent, "L'œuvre géographique du moine sicilien Nil Doxopatris," Échos d'Orient, vol. 36, no. 185 (1937): 5–30, available online
  8. Lidia Perria, "Una pergamena greca dell'anno 1146 per la chiesa di S. Maria del Ammiraglio", Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken 61 (1981): 1–24.
  9. Karl Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Literatur (Munich, 1897), 607.
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