Anna Notaras

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Anna Notaras ( Greek Ἄννα Νοταρᾶ Anna Notara , * before 1453; † July 8, 1507 in Venice ) was a daughter of the last Eastern Roman megas Doux Loukas Notaras . After the fall of Constantinople she supported the Greek community in exile in Italy and was a patron of the collection and printing of liturgical and ancient Greek scriptures in Venice.

Life

Anna Notaras was born as the daughter of Loukas Notaras , the last Megas Doux of the Eastern Roman Empire . She and her two sisters had been brought to safety in Italy by their father before the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Notaras, who as a high Byzantine official maintained close contacts to banks in Genoa and Venice, had invested a large part of his fortune there, so that the three women in Italy were financially independent. Notaras himself and the rest of his family, with the exception of the youngest son Isaac, also called Jacob (* 1439), in whom the Sultan had taken a liking and whom he had included in his seraglio, perished in the massacres after the conquest of Constantinople. It was not until 1460 that Isaac escaped from Adrianapolis and fled to Italy, where he met his three sisters again. In 1472 Isaac and Anna Notaras of Siena acquired the Castello di Montauto and land in the Maremma , where 100 Greek families were to settle and largely manage themselves according to their plans. The project failed and Anna went to Venice in 1475, where her niece Eudokia Kantakuzena had been staying for some time.

Anna refused to attend a Roman Catholic church and campaigned for the Senate to allow the Greek community of Venice to have its own church. On June 8, 1475, she received permission from the Council of Ten to set up an oratory in her house, in which the liturgy could be celebrated according to the Greek rite . In 1494, at her instigation, the Senate gave the Greek community of Venice permission to found a brotherhood .

Anna Notaras had various liturgical texts in her possession and also acquired Greek manuscripts in Venice. Venice was then the undisputed center of European book printing . Anna Notaras promoted her own printing company that only published texts in Greek. The most expensive undertaking of the Kallierges publishing house, which brought out only a few books in total, was the publication of the Etymologicum magnum in 1499. The printing of this extensive Greek dictionary was financed by Anna Notaras, with its administrator Nikolaos Vlastos , the humanistic scholar Marcus Musurus and the Printer and typographer Zacharias Kallierges, who also designed the typefaces . The Venetian printer Aldus Manutius had an almost inexhaustible basis for the edition of classical texts in Greek through Cardinal Bessarion's donation of his library to the Serenissima. Manutius and other printers in Italy subsequently adopted Kallierges' types.

Anna Notaras died of old age in Venice, her grave is unknown.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ El Exilio Italiano, Part III: Ana Notaras y la Comunidad Griega de Venecia.
  2. ^ El Exilio Italiano. Part III: Ana Notaras y la Comunidad Griega de Venecia.
  3. ↑ Jonathan Harris: The End of Byzantinum. Yale University Press, 2010.
  4. ^ Lito Apostolakou: Anna Notaras. ( Memento from April 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Notaras, Anna
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Patroness for the collection and printing of liturgical and ancient Greek writings in Venice
DATE OF BIRTH before 1453
DATE OF DEATH July 8, 1507
Place of death Venice