DIMITRIE CANTEMIR AND THE PHANAR PALACE
By Clifford Endres
It is an honor and a pleasure to be in Prince Cantemir’s home town among so many distinguished scholars of his work. As for me, I cannot claim this distinction; I am here more informally, as Dimitrie Beyzade’s neighbor. The story begins in the early 2000’s when my wife and I moved into an old Greek house—Rum evi in Turkish––in a district of Istanbul on the Golden Horn now known as Fener. Historically its name was Phanarios, or the Phanar. Our house was built around the turn of the twentieth century on land that once formed part of the Vlach Saray grounds, on which the Cantemir Palace is situated. The palace itself—an imposing if decaying mansion—stood on the hill above and behind us. I knew little about it other than that it had once belonged to a Prince Dimitrie Cantemir, who was associated with historical Moldavia and Wallachia and was important to Turkish classical music.
Luckily I soon had the good fortune to meet Professor Mihai Maxim, Director of the Dimitrie Cantemir Romanian Cultural Institute in Istanbul. While the circumstances of our meeting were less than happy––what brought us together was the vandalizing of the newly opened Dimitrie Cantemir Museum in a room of the palace––the occasion motivated me to learn more about the distinguished scholar, statesman, and composer and his neighorhood.
What I learned was that the Phanar of 300 years ago, far from being the somewhat run-down district of the present day, had played a central role in Balkan politics and in the rise of Hellenic culture in Renaissance Europe. Moreover, the Cantemir Palace had hosted the Metochion Library, a repository for some two hundred years of manuscripts invaluable to the world of biblical and classical scholarship. How did all this come to pass?
Actually the Prince tells us much of the story himself in his magnum opus, The History of the Growth and Decay of the Othman Empire. As you know, Dimitrie came to Istanbul with his father in 1688 at the age of fifteen. His first place of residence was the Boğdan Saray, or Moldavian Palace, which stood near the Phanar on a hill called Petra; it had been the residence for visiting Moldavian nobles since 1504. In 1693 he bought a palace on the Bosphorus where, as the History tells us, he enjoyed entertaining and making music with friends from the elite classes of Constantinople. Political pressures, however, compelled him to relinquish it a few years later. In 1700 he married Cassandra Cantacuzenus, the daughter of Sherban Cantacuzenus, voyvode of Wallachia, and began constructing a palace of his own on foundations laid down by his father-in-law twelve years earlier. These foundations were on a hill—our hill—within the Vlach Saray enclosure that had been in the possession of the Cantacuzenus family for centuries. In Cantemir’s words:
Near that quarter [Phanar], when I was at Constantinople, I raised a Palace on a high Hill called Sanjaktar Yokushu; the building was elegant, and afforded a Prospect over almost the whole City and Suburbs. Under Sultan Mahomet IV, my Father-in-law Sherban Cantacuzenus, having raised from the Valley Walls of 25 Cubits high, levelled the Ground for a Garden, and had now raised the first Wall of his House . . . when he received an order to proceed no farther, because he could already look into the Imperial Palace called Tersane Serai. At length, by the Intercession of the prime Visier Ali Pasha, I obtain'd leave of the Emperor to carry on the Building of my Palace on the old Foundations, which I had hardly finish'd, when I was, as it were, thrust into the Principality of Moldavia. (History, p. 105)
From this description we may draw a few inferences. One is that there was a view from the Phanar across the Golden Horn to the Sultan’s hunting lodge on the other side (known today as the Aynalıkavak Koşku). Secondly, we can see that Cantemir was on better terms with the Sultan than his father-in-law had been. But walls “25 Cubits high”? If walls of such a height once existed, they do so no longer. Unfortunately we have no pictures of the original palace––neither architectural drawings, nor historical engravings or paintings. Skarlatos Byzantios (who incidentally was born in Iaşi), writing in the mid-nineteenth century, refers to the palace as “a stately mansion of five stories.” Yet today only two stories are to be seen, three if one counts a disused basement. Without doubt the original structure was larger than what we have now, however, so possibly the lost section would have fit Skarlatos’s description.
We may note that the “High hill” mentioned by Cantemir, which he identifies as Sanjaktar Yokushu, is more commonly known as the Fifth Hill—that is, the fifth of Constantinople’s seven hills, a number attesting to the continuity between Old and New Rome. Sancaktar Yokushu is in fact the name of a narrow street snaking from the bottom to the top of the hill. It derives its name from a sancaktar, or standard-bearer, who gave his life while defending the last Byzantine emperor––Constantine XI Dragases––against the enemy host on May 29, 1453. In Cantemir’s words again: “His headless body was found on that of an Ensign-bearer, from whence the place to this day has acquir’d the name of Sancaktar Yokushu” (History, 101).
The Fifth Hill has a second name as well––Petrion Hill. Indeed, the Petrion name is sometimes applied to the Phanar district as a whole. Its source goes back to the sixth century when an official of Emperor Justinian’s court––Petrus Barsymnianos––founded a monastery there. From his time on it became a place of retreat for the Byzantine nobility as well as for devotees of the contemplative life: a scattering of palaces, monasteries, and convents stood in the largely forested area. In 1586 the Ecumenical Patriarchate moved to the Petrion, first to the Vlach Saray and then, in 1601, to a small monastery near the Petrion Gate. This gate, which afforded entrance into the district from the seawalls, was where the marauders of the Fourth Crusade broke into the City in 1204; it was also a key point of entry for the Ottoman invaders of 1453. Today very little remains of the Gate or of the monasteries and palaces of the old Petrion; the Ecumenical Patriarchate, however, still thrives at its 1601 location.
At the time of Dimitrie Cantemir’s arrival the Phanar was the lively center of an intellectual and cultural revival that had begun nearly three hundred years earlier under the Comnenus dynasty and then, perhaps paradoxically, gained momentum after the Conquest. It was a movement fueled by a passionate interest in the literature and philosophy of classical antiquity and was conducted primarily in the reformed Latin and Greek of the early Renaissance. As the Prince notes, the Phanar was
particularly celebrated at this Day, because in the neighborhood of it, the more noble and wealthy Greeks have their Residence. Here stands also the Patriarchal Seat and Cathedral Church, famous, as for other Things, so for its containing the Sayings, Writings, and Acts of all the Patriarchs since Constantinople was taken by the Turks . . . Not far from hence is an Academy built for the instruction of Youth . . . In this Academy are taught Philosophy in all its Branches, and the other Sciences in the old uncorrupted Greek. In my time there flourished here Prelates and Doctors of great Piety and Learning . . . . (History, 99)
In the same vein Skarlatos writes:
It was here that the living flame of Hellenic enlightenment first blazed forth (772) . . . Already within years after the Conquest, the noblest, ablest, and best educated of the Greeks—most of them being clerics of the bishopric of Constantinople—established themselves around the Phanarion Gate and the Patriarchate. In the times of the Nikousioi and Mavrokordatoi, this ecclesiastical elite transformed into a bureaucratic one . . . . (773)
This was the environment in which the Prince found himself and he made good use of it. That he appreciated his good fortune is clear from many remarks scattered throughout the History, such as the following commentary on his teachers at the Patriarchal Academy: “[W]e are not to imagine, with the generality of Christians, that Greece is so far sunk in Barbarism, as not in these latter Ages to have produc’d Men little inferior to the most learned of her ancient Sages.” (99) He names Johannes Cariophyllus (“an excellent Divine and Philosopher”), Balasius Scaevophylax, Antonius and Spandonius (“Peripatetic Philosophers”), and Jacomius (“an accurate Grammarian, from whom, during my Residence at Constantinople, I learned the Elements of Philosophy”). His list continues with Meletius, his mentor in ancient Greek philosophy; Elias Hieromonachus, philosopher; Marcus Larissaeus, grammarian; Metrophanes Hierodiaconus, “chiefly studious of Poetry, and a happy Imitator of the Ancients,” and finally Licinius, “a Greek born in Monemvasia who was both philosopher and chief physician at our court.” (99)
Special praise is given to Alexander Mavrocordato, “celebrated by the learned World on many accounts, Professor of Philosophy, Divinity, and Physic, afterwards Interpreter to the Othman Court. He [has written] Works innumerable, which I now hear are published in Moldavia, by the care of his Son Nicolaus Maucordatus, a Man well vers’d in the Oriental and Occidental Learning.” (99) He concludes with naming “three Patriarchs of eminent Reputation for Learning, one of Constantinople, and two of Jerusalem. . . . Those of Jerusalem were Dositheus, and his Kinsman and Successor Chrysanthus, who is yet, as I hear, alive.” (99)
The Prince’s values are clearly seen here; and no doubt his newly built palace was on the way to becoming a center of culture in in its own right. But it was not to be: before he could establish his household in the new palace he was, as he put it, abruptly "thrust" into Moldavia to fill the post of hospodar for which he had been nominated by Sultan Ahmet III. The Sultan and the Prince were on friendly terms: not only had Cantemir dedicated his Book of the Science of Music to Ahmet but, according to popular tradition, wrote a moving composition for him and performed it on the tanbur at his nomination ceremony. The Sultan reciprocated by bestowing upon the Prince a rare and valuable caftan and, contrary to the usual practice, underwriting his travel expenses to Moldavia (Popescu-Judetz, Three Comparative Essays, p. 40).
Only several months after leaving his beloved city in December of 1710, however, Cantemir joined the Russian forces of Tsar Peter the Great against the Ottoman army in the Battle of Pruth on July 9, 1711. The latter were the victors. As a result, the Prince was designated a “traitor” and his Istanbul properties confiscated. The Bosphorus palace, according to Professor Maxim, was sold to Fatma, daughter of Ahmet III and wife to the same Vizier Ali Pasha who had interceded for the Prince on the building of his Phanar palace. (7)
The history of the latter palace, alas, is considerably less clear than that of the former. Professor Maxim states that he could find no documents concerning it in the Ottoman archives. Yet within ten years of Dimitrie’s departure the second floor had become The Library of the Patriarch of Jerusalem at Constantinople. More familiarly it was known as the Metochion Library for the reason that, like its neighbor at the Vlach Saray, the Church of St. George Metochi, it was a metochi, or dependency, of the Monastery of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. Indeed, perhaps the real owner of the Cantemir Palace property was the Jerusalem Patriarchate rather than the Cantacuzenus family: this is conjectured by both Skarlatos (774) and the Patriarch Constantius (104). According to this version, the land was perhaps purchased by the Patriarch Theophanes in the 1640s, or donated to Jerusalem much earlier by the Wallachian voyvode Michael Cantacuzenus.[1] In any case, however, it is indisputable that the true founders of the Library were the Patriarch Dositheos Notaras and his grandson Chrysanthos, who succeeded him as Patriarch in 1707 (and was, as we have noted, one of Dimitrie’s teachers at the Academy). Carved in stone over the entrance in “uncorrupted Greek” is the following inscription:
The library was established by the care and at the expense of the Most
Blessed Patriarch of the Holy City of Jerusalem, that is, of the eternally[2]
remembered Kyr Dosithei and his grandson and heir (in dignity), Kyr
Chrysanth. Therefore, whosoever dares to deprive it of any book, of
whatever rank or condition may be his, let his part be joined to that
of the traitor Judas and the others who crucified the Lord; and he who
shall pardon the thief, let him also not be pardoned, and so let both be
forever unforgiven and anathema.
1720, the month of August
Chrysanth, by the grace of God
Patriarch of the Holy City and of all Palestine
(trsl. Mihai Maxim and Cristina Birsan)
As Patriarch, Chrysanthos was able to requisition books and manuscripts from a network of monasteries throughout Asia Minor and the Middle East. Among the Library’s holdings, for example, was the earliest surviving manuscript of the New Testament; nineteenth-century European scholars beat a path to the Metochion to consult it. More famous in the twentieth century was the Archimedes Codex. This is a copy in palimpsest of Archimedes’ third-century (B.C.) Method of Treating Mechanical Problems, Dedicated to Eratosthenes. It was made at Constantinople in the tenth century, then overwritten as a prayerbook at Jerusalem in the thirteenth century and used for centuries at the Monastery of St. Sabas in Palestine. It turned up at the Metochion in the 1800s. The only extant text of Archimedes in the original Greek, it is “perhaps the single most important work of the greatest mathematical physicist of antiquity, and constitutes a very great addition to our knowledge of ancient science,” according to author and physics professor John Freely (p. 335). It vanished during the 1918-1923 Allied occupation of Istanbul but re-appeared in Paris in the 1940s and was put up for auction in 1998. It is now at the Walters Art Museum in America. Other bibliophic treasures have made their way from the Metochion to the Bodleian Library at Oxford, the Bibliothèque National in Paris, the Lambeth Palace Library in Britain, and to similar institutions in Europe and America. Nonetheless, the fate of the entirety of the Library’s holdings is uncertain. Many of the books were sent to the National Library of [3]Greece in the 1930s and ‘50s; others were reportedly removed to the Orthodox seminary on the island of Chalki, or Halki (today’s Heybeliada). Today the Library’s rooms in the Palace are empty but for the faded frescoes on the walls and a graceful marble sculpture of the double-headed Byzantine eagle.
And so we arrive at an interesting question: What became of Prince Cantemir’s own library? As we are told in the History, he was suddenly and unexpectedly “thrust” into his official duties in Moldavia. Departing Istanbul hurriedly, he had no choice but to leave his books behind. But where? In the newly finished palace? Some years after his departure, as he was completing the History in Russia, he complains about his lack of a library and speaks highly of a book on the Conquest by a Turkish historian:
I found the Book at the house of a Greek at Philippopolis, nor did I ever happen to see any other Copy of it. After my departure it remained at Constantinople, and came, as I hear, into the Hands of John Mavrocordatus, who is now Interpreter to the Othman Court, with other Collections of mine concerning the Affairs and Manners of the Turks. (History, 105)
John was Nicholas Mavrocordato’s younger brother and had himself served as a hospodar before rising to the post of dragoman at the Porte. According to Popescu-Judetz, “[W]e know that when the Prince departed from Turkey, he left behind his books and other collections on Turkish affairs which all fell into the hands of the Great Dragoman Joannis Alexander Mavrodordatos (1709-1716).” (Prince Dimitrie Cantemir, Theorist and Composer of Turkish Music, p. 33) Yet, if so, what happened then? Might they have been absorbed by the Metochion Library? Or sent abroad?
We have noted that the Prince held Chrysanthos Notaras in high esteem for advancing “the new learning” at the Patriarchal Academy “in the old uncorrupted Greek.” (History, 99) Chrysanthos was in fact an international scholar who had studied at Padua and Paris. In 1700 he published the first world atlas (in Greek) at Padua, and in 1716 published a handbook in Latin for students titled Introductio ad geographiam, et sphaeram . . . (Introduction to Geography and Sphaerics) at Paris. Below the title of the latter is a dedication to “Scarlatos Mavrocordatos son of Joannis Nicolaos Alexander Mavrocordatos, the first Greek prince of Wallachia” (my translation). Cantemir’s remark in the History––namely that Chrysanthos "as I hear, is yet alive"–– implies that he has lost touch with Chrysanthos. But Nicholas Mavrocordato, as the dedication above indicates, had not lost touch with him. Indeed, in the course of a career that included serving as voyvode of both Moldavia and Wallachia, Nicholas founded several royal academies and libraries, notably in Bucharest and Iaşi. The model for his academies was the Patriarchal Academy at Phanar. As for the libraries, the books to stock them came from several sources, a principal one of which was, not unreasonably, Chrysanthos Notaras. Chrysanthos, of course, maintained access to the Metochion Library and the Cantemir Palace. Is it too far-fetched to speculate that a number of Cantemir’s books might have ended up in Romania after all, perhaps bearing the bookplate, Ex bibliotheca Alexandros Maurocordati Constantinopolitani?
We must not close without mention of Dimitrie Cantemir’s stature as a humanistic scholar and renowned man of letters. The praise he lavishes on the Patriarchal Academy and the "Greek learning" he obtained there offers a clue to the nature of his own achievement. We may remember that the Academy was related to the “university” founded by Theodosius in the year 425, and that faculty members often moved between the two institutions. The university, like the Patriarchate and the Academy, had traditionally been associated with the Great Church of Haghia Sophia. After falling into disuse during the Latin occupation of 1204-1261, it was revived under the emperor Michael Palaeologus and flourished for the next two centuries. Around 1400 it moved to the Monastery of Saint John the Baptist in the Petrion district, where it operated as the Katholikon Mouseion and became a center for the revival of classical studies, with many students beating a path to its doors from Italy. Two of its best-known professors were Manuel Chrysoloras and John Argyropoulos, both of whom were crucial to transmitting the torch of Byzantine Hellenism to Italy itself. (Geanakoplos, p.96)
Chrysolaras (ca. 1355-1415) left Constantinople in 1397 for Florence on the invitation of the Chancellor of the Florentine Republic, Coluccio Salutati, who famously declared, "I must imitate antiquity, not simply to reproduce it, but in order to produce something new" (Greenblatt, p. 124). His words indicate the atmosphere in which young people such as Leonardo Bruni found the encouragement to drop everything in order to take Chrysoloras’s classes in Homeric Greek. Argyropoulos (1415-1487) experienced difficult days during and after the and finally left the Katholikon for Italy as well Conquest. He too spent most of his career there in Florence but ended his days in Rome. As a celebrated Latinist, he was particularly devoted to bringing together the Latin and Greek branches of antiquity.
The fervent embrace of classical learning undergirded literary Europe for four centuries, and it is in this context that we should see Cantemir’s decision, long after the Byzantine scholars left the Petrion, to compose The History of the Growth and Decay of the Othman Empire in Latin. Let’s be clear: this was not Latinus vulgus, the Latin of the medieval churches and monasteries, but the Latin of the Golden Age as it was revived in the work of Petrarch––the “father of humanism”–– and the poets and scholars who followed in his train. Neo-Latin, as it was called, became not only the literary language of Europe but also the lingua franca of European diplomacy. Indeed, the Ottoman archives of Topkapi Palace are not without a wealth of imperial correspondence in Neo-Latin.
Thus, when Prince Cantemir chose to write in Latin, he was following in the footsteps of Italian authors such as Pontano and Politian (a student of Argyropoulos), but also those of Erasmus in Holland, Thomas More in England, Conrad Celtis in Germany and Casimierz Sarbiewski in Poland––not to mention his old professor Metrophanes at the Patriarchal Academy. Writing near the end of the Renaissance moment and the beginning of the Enlightenment era, he was, in my view, one of the last great Neo-Latin authors. We may—and should, I think––see him as completing a circle of literary influence emanating from Constantinople in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, spreading to the poets and universities of Europe, and finally coming back to shine its light on the Phanar where it was born. In short, he's bringing it all back home.
It was in recognition of the rich history behind contemporary Fener that UNESCO and the European Union have periodically shown interest in supporting the rehabilitation of the area. In the early 2000’s some two hundred houses in the neighborhood were restored. Over the next few years these efforts increased, perhaps aided by Istanbul’s selection as European Capital of Culture in 2010. The Cantemir Palace came in for a share of the attention: in 2006, with EU support, the grounds were cleared of accumulated garbage, the automobile mechanic who had been working beneath the magnolia tree in the courtyard was asked to leave, the stonework was cleaned and repointed, and the walls repaired. In 2007 the Dimitrie Cantemir Museum opened in a small room on the ground floor. It featured photocopies of Cantemir manuscripts and printed first editions in display cases, and a seventeenth-century map of “Turkey in Europe” hanging on the wall. The palace courtyard became the venue for classical-music concerts as well as puppet shows for children and art classes for adults. The upper story of the palace––the old quarters of the Metochion Library––remained closed, but fantasies were entertained of bringing the books back from Athens or, more realistically, re-opening the premises as a neighborhood cultural center.
Alas, however, it was not to be: the museum was broken into by youthful neighborhood toughs who smashed the display cases and stole the map. Closed, it never reopened. The concerts and art classes came to a halt as well. A few years later a small tea stand popped up in the garden for the benefit of the occasional tourist. It did not take long for it to morph into a cafe-restaurant sprawling across the entire courtyard and spilling into the vaults of the palace. Today, on the palace wall behind the crowded mass of tables and chairs is affixed a modest plaque commemorating Prince Cantemir. It is the only indication on the property to remind us of its three-hundred-year-old history.
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[1] Michael Cantacuzenus, nicknamed Şeytanoğlu—son of Satan—by his subjects and the Turks. was a very wealthy man owing to his command of the fur trade with Russia, and amassed a famous library. Living in Anchialos on the Black Sea, he seldom came to Constantinople although he funded numerous pious and secular projects in the Phanar. Unfortunately the Sultan turned against him and had him executed in 1578. His possessions, including his library, were auctioned off in Constantinople. It is said that the majority of the most precious manuscripts were bought by the monasteries of Mount Athos.
