Pros mathēmatikous (Against the Professors)

Pros mathēmatikous (Against the Professors)

While the study of the Medieval trivium and quadrivium continued throughout the Renaissance, the arrival in Italy of previously lost or forgotten texts by philosophers of antiquity challenged these entrenched categories. The writings of Sextus Empiricus (ca. 160–ca. 210 BC), whose Pros mathēmatikous (Against the Professors) attacked all branches of the standard curriculum, would exert a strong influence on Western thinkers. This copy of Sextus’s text was written in Italy by the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Russia, Isidore of Kiev (1385–1463). Isidore had traveled to the Council of Ferrara-Florence (1438–45), where he worked alongside Basilios Bessarion (1403–72) to secure the ultimately unsuccessful union of the Eastern and Western churches. Upon returning to Russia, Isidore was imprisoned by a hostile Grand Prince and clergy, and escaped once more to Rome, where he was charged with defending Constantinople and was named its Latin Patriarch by Pope Pius II.

Author: Sextus Empiricus; Scribe: Isidore of Kiev

ca. 1440

Manuscript on parchment, 269 fols.

University of Pennsylvania, Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection, LJS 380

Florence, Ferrara, or Rome, Italy