GRICE E PALLADIO

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Palladio: GRICE ITALO!; ossia, la ragione conversazionale a Roma antica – Roma – filosofia italiana --  (Roma). Filosofo italiano. Known to have been a philosopher from references to that effect in letters of Theodoret.   Palladio (Roma, Lazio). GRICE ITALO!; ossia, la ragione conversazionale a Roma antica –Known to have been a philosopher from references to that effect in letters of Theodoret.   GRICEVS: Salve, PALLADI! Audio te ex epistulis Theodorēti philosophum haberi: num etiam inter Patres rationem conversationalem coluisti, an tantum verba sancta numerasti? PALLADIVS: Salve, Grice Italo! Verba sancta numeravi, sed non sicut faenerator: apud Theodoretum didici silentium quoque esse argumentum—praesertim cum alter iam tertiam homiliam incipiat. GRICEVS: O praeclare! Ergo cum aliquis dicit “breviter dicam,” tu intellegis: “para te ad longum”—id est implicaturam ipsam in habitu monastico. PALLADIVS: Ita; et cum ego respondeo “bene dictum,” non semper laudo: interdum tantum significo “satis est—nunc panem afferte,” ne philosophia fiat ieiunium sine fine. do not insert any text in document -- let us keep everything in chatbox -- do not use italic, bold or bulleting, and let us keep English as our metalanguage. Who is this Palladio? Did he speak English or italian, was he of Italian ethnicity? what evidence on him do we have? Is he the same famous palladio of paladian villa fame? On the evidence you quoted, this Palladio is not the architect of villa fame. The architect is Andrea Palladio, born Andrea di Pietro della Gondola in Padua in 1508, an architect of the Venetian Republic, and the source of “Palladian” villa architecture. He was an Italian Renaissance architect, active in the Veneto, and he would have spoken varieties of Italian and Venetian, not English. The evidence for him is abundant: buildings, drawings, and his treatise I quattro libri dell’architettura. [en.wikipedia.org], [britannica.com] Your Palladio, by contrast, appears to be a late antique Christian intellectual, very likely Palladius of Galatia, also known as Palladius of Helenopolis, a monk, bishop, and writer associated with John Chrysostom. The key piece of evidence matching your note is a letter of Theodoret of Cyrus addressed explicitly to “Palladius the philosopher.” That gives you direct evidence that at least one Palladius known to Theodoret was regarded as a philosopher. [catholiclibrary.org] So, on your immediate question, “Who is this Palladio?”, the safest answer is: not the Renaissance architect, but a late antique Palladius, most plausibly the Christian writer-bishop known from the fifth century, or at minimum a person named Palladius whom Theodoret of Cyrus addresses as a philosopher. The form “Palladio” in Italian corresponds to Latin/Greek Palladius/Palladios. [catholiclibrary.org], [en.wikipedia.org] Did he speak English or Italian? No, not in the modern sense. If this is the late antique Palladius, he lived in the eastern Roman Empire and would have functioned in Greek, with possible familiarity with other learned languages of late antiquity; there is no reason to think he spoke English, and “Italian” would be anachronistic for him. Palladius of Galatia is presented as a Galatian monk and bishop in the Greek-speaking Christian East. [en.wikipedia.org], [britannica.com] Was he “of Italian ethnicity”? That category is not really usable for late antiquity. If this is Palladius of Galatia, he was from Galatia in Anatolia, not from Italy. So if by “Italian ethnicity” one means anything like a native of the Italian peninsula in a modern ethnic sense, the answer is no. If one means “Roman” in the broad imperial sense, that is a different and much looser category. [en.wikipedia.org], [britannica.com] What evidence do we have for him? We have at least three kinds. First, the explicit address in Theodoret of Cyrus: “To Palladius the philosopher.” That is your strongest piece if your aim is simply to justify calling him a philosopher. [catholiclibrary.org] Second, for Palladius of Galatia more broadly, we have works attributed to him, especially the Lausiac History and the Dialogue on the Life of John Chrysostom. These make him a writer and ecclesiastical intellectual of some weight, even if “philosopher” here may shade into the late antique Christian usage where a monk, ascetic, or learned spiritual author may be called a philosopher. [en.wikipedia.org], [britannica.com] Third, later biographical and encyclopedic traditions identify Palladius of Helenopolis as a monk, bishop, chronicler, and author, though those are secondary witnesses and less probative than Theodoret’s letter itself for the label “philosopher.” [ccel.org], [newadvent.org], [britannica.com] There is, however, one dry caution. “Palladius” is not a unique name. There is also Rutilius Taurus Aemilianus Palladius, a late Roman agricultural writer in Latin, but he has nothing to do with Theodoret’s “Palladius the philosopher” so far as the evidence here shows. He was a technical author on farming, not the person your passage points to. [en.wikipedia.org], [oxfordre.com] So the clean answer is this. No, he is not the famous Palladio of Palladian villas. That one is Andrea Palladio, the sixteenth-century Italian architect. Your Palladio is a much earlier Christian Palladius, very likely the late antique Palladius of Galatia/Helenopolis, or at least a Palladius whom Theodoret of Cyrus explicitly calls “the philosopher.” He did not speak English; “Italian” is also the wrong language label for his world. And “Italian ethnicity” is an anachronistic question in that context. [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org], [catholiclibrary.org] If you like, I can next do one of two things in the same dry register. I can give you a short scholarly note you can use after “Palladio (Roma, Lazio)” explaining why that localization is probably misleading or anachronistic. Or I can give you a revised paragraph, in your preferred neutral English metalanguage, distinguishing late antique Palladius from Andrea Palladio, with just enough learned caution to keep the thing upright. so there is no way to check if the one mentioned by Theodoret was the better known one? I guess the source would have said it otherwise and it's safest to know it is not. Yet, the only evidence is that Th. said he was a philosopher, not that he wrote any doctrine or that such exists, and he would have written in Greek if in Theodoret's circle, right? Yes, that is the safer conclusion. There is no good reason to identify Theodoret’s “Palladius the philosopher” with any later or better-known Palladio simply because the name matches. If the source had meant a very famous and otherwise unmistakable figure, one would expect a more identifying description, or at least corroboration from other sources. In prosopography, name alone is not enough, especially with a name that recurs. So the prudent line is: Theodoret attests a Palladius called a philosopher; beyond that, identity requires further evidence. And yes, your second point is exactly right. The evidence we seem to have is very thin in one precise way and stronger in another. It is thin if the claim is that he was a philosopher with a recoverable doctrine, school position, or extant corpus. A label in a letter does not by itself give us a philosophical system, or even a philosophical text. It tells us social or intellectual standing as seen by the writer. “Philosopher” in late antiquity can also be broader than our modern use. It may indicate a learned Christian intellectual, an ascetic, a monk of philosophical reputation, or a person associated with the philosophical life, rather than an author of a surviving treatise in logic, metaphysics, or ethics. It is stronger if the narrower claim is simply this: Theodoret regarded, or at least addressed, this Palladius as a philosopher. On that point the evidence is direct enough, but it proves only the label, not the doctrinal content behind it. As to language, yes, Greek is by far the likeliest medium if this Palladius belonged to Theodoret’s circle or eastern late antique Christian culture. Theodoret himself wrote in Greek, worked in the Greek-speaking East, and his correspondence belongs to that world. So absent contrary evidence, one should assume that this Palladius operated in Greek, not Latin, and certainly not English. If one wanted to be very careful, one could say: Greek is the default expectation for someone in Theodoret’s orbit, though bilingual competence is never impossible in late antiquity. But Greek is the safe scholarly assumption. So the clean formulation would be something like this. Theodoret provides evidence for a Palladius who is called “the philosopher.” That supports the claim that a person of that name was known in his circle under a philosophical designation. It does not, by itself, establish that this Palladius authored a surviving philosophical doctrine or corpus. Given Theodoret’s milieu, Greek would be the most probable language of such a figure’s intellectual life. It is therefore safest not to identify him with any later or otherwise better-known Palladio unless independent evidence does so. If you want, I can now do one of two very focused things, still in plain chat. I can give you a compact scholarly note of five or six sentences that you can use after the entry, with exactly this caution built in. Or I can draft a slightly fuller paragraph in that dry impersonal register distinguishing three claims: Theodoret’s evidence, what it does not prove, and why Greek is the likeliest language.