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M. LAISTNER
Knowledge of Greek in Western Europe during the earlier Middle Ages
Chapter 10 (The Study of Greek) of Laistner's, Thought & Letters in Western Europe - A.D. 500 to 900, N.Y. 1931, pp. 238-250
Page 9
The only man in the West whose knowledge of Greek was comparable to John's was Anastasius. After a stormy career he had become Papal librarian during the papacy of Hadrian II. He states that he had learnt Greek in his youth and subsequently he had excellent opportunities for improving his mastery of the language, since he attended the Eighth Council of Constantinople in 869 as an official delegate. Yet his numerous translations do not impress one with any peculiar excellence. They include versions of some Greek saints' lives and of the Acts of both the Seventh and the Eighth Councils of Constantinople. His Chronographia tripartita is a continuation of Cassiodorus' Tripartite History and shows that Anastasius' primary interest was in the doctrinal disputes which were causing increasing friction between East and West. The Chronographia is an abbreviated adaptation of three Byzantine historians, Nicephorus, Syncellus, and Theophanes, and the translation is sometimes so free as to become a mere paraphrase. His turns of phrase from one language into the other are frequently clumsy and sometimes betray an incomplete understanding of the original. In short, his limitations as a translator were marked and he does not deserve the reputation of a great Hellenist with which he has sometimes been credited. There is therefore a certain irony in the fact that Anastasius presumed to criticize the translation of the Corpus Dionysiacum by John Scotus.[21] In a letter of 875 addressed to Charles the Bald he expresses surprise that John, ille vir barbarus from a remote part of the world, should have attained such mastery of Greek.[22] Indeed, John is singularly blest, since it is the Holy Spirit which has inspired him to fulfil his task. After such patronizing praise Anastasius proceeds to carp at John's translations on account of their excessive faithfulness to the original and their occasional obscurity. This criticism is to some extent justified. But to imply, as Anastasius does, that John himself was confused, is absurd. As his own philosophical magnum opus proves, he himself had mastered the meaning of the pseudoDionysius, even though he could not always make it simply intelligible to others in a Latin translation. Anastasius did not carry out a revision of John's work; but he added some scholia taken from Maximus and John of Scythopolis and also some glosses. Some of this material is preserved in several extant manuscripts, but it is still unpublished.[23] One cannot help feeling that he was piqued that there lived in Neustria one who was a better Greek scholar than himself, and his assumption of modesty in several letters must not be taken too seriously. He admits that his own translations were literal. He expects to be criticized, but comforts himself with the modest reflection that his fate will resemble St Jerome's. Yet one must sympathize with him when he expresses the hope that any critic of his work will come out into the open against him instead of "lacerating his brother's flesh behind his back with the tooth of envy"![24]
