Maximus Planudes
Maximus Planudes (Máximos Planoúdēs; c. 1260) was a Byzantine Greek monk, scholar, anthologist, translator, mathematician, grammarian and theologian at Constantinople. Through his translations from Latin into Greek and from Greek into Latin, he brought the Greek East and the Latin West into closer contact with one another.
Also recorded as Planudes · Maximos Planoudes
Maximus Planudes

Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana · http: c=Nonnii%20poemata%20dionysiaca#/oro/780 · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Name
- Maximus Planudes
- Born
- c. 1260
- Birthplace
- Nicomedia, Bithynia (modern-day İzmit, Kocaeli, Turkey)
- Died
- c. 1305
- Place of death
- Constantinople, Byzantine Empire (modern-day Istanbul, Turkey
- Occupation
- Ambassador, monk, scholar, anthologist, translator, mathematician, grammarian and theologian
- Nationality
- Byzantine Empire
- Languages
- Ancient Greek
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Documentary summary
Maximus Planudes (Máximos Planoúdēs; c. 1260) was a Byzantine Greek monk, scholar, anthologist, translator, mathematician, grammarian and theologian at Constantinople. Through his translations from Latin into Greek and from Greek into Latin, he brought the Greek East and the Latin West into closer contact with one another.
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gnd · 118942719 · wikidata · Q218672 · wikipedia · Maximus Planudes
In this article
Biography
Biography
He is now best known as a compiler of the Greek Anthology.
Key facts
Key facts
• Name — Maximus Planudes • Ambassador From — Byzantine Empire • Country — Republic of Venice • Term Start — 1295 • Term End — 1296 • Born — c. 1260 • Birthplace — Nicomedia, Bithynia (modern-day İzmit, Kocaeli, Turkey) • Died — c. 1305 • Place of death — Constantinople, Byzantine Empire (modern-day Istanbul, Turkey • Occupation — Ambassador, monk, scholar, anthologist, translator, mathematician, grammarian and theologian
Biography
Biography
Maximus Planudes lived during the reigns of the Byzantine emperors Michael VIII and Andronikos II. He was born at Nicomedia in Bithynia in 1260, but the greater part of his life was spent in Constantinople, where as a monk he devoted himself to study and teaching. On entering the monastery he changed his original name Manuel to Maximus. Planudes possessed a knowledge of Latin remarkable at a time when Rome and Italy were regarded with some hostility by the Greeks of the Byzantine Empire. To this accomplishment he probably owed his selection as one of the ambassadors sent by emperor Andronikos II in 1295–96 to remonstrate with the Venetians for their attack upon the Genoese settlement in Galata near Constantinople. A more important result was that Planudes, especially by his translations, paved the way for the revival of the study of Greek language and literature in western Europe. • Illustration — The early-14th century map of the British Isles from the Codex Vatopedinus 655, sometimes associated with Planudes. He was the author of numerous works, including: a Greek grammar in the form of question and answer, like the Erotemata of Manuel Moschopulus, with an appendix on the so-called "political verse"; a treatise on syntax; a biography of Aesop and a prose version of the fables; scholia on certain Greek authors; two hexameter poems, one a eulogy of Claudius Ptolemaeus—whose Geography was rediscovered by Planudes, who translated it into Latin—the other an account of the sudden change of an ox into a mouse; a treatise on the method of calculating in use amongst the Indians; and scholia to the first two books of the Arithmetic of Diophantus. His numerous translations from the Latin included Cicero's Somnium Scipionis with the commentary of Macrobius; Ovid's Heroides and Metamorphoses; Boethius' De consolatione philosophiae; and Augustine's De trinitate. Traditionally, a translation of Julius Caesar's De Bello Gallico has been attributed to Planudes, but this is a much repeated mistake. These translations were not only useful to Greek speakers but were also widely used in western Europe as textbooks for the study of Greek. It is, however, for his edition of the Greek Anthology that he is best known. This edition, the Anthology of Planudes or Planudean Anthology, is shorter than the Heidelberg text (the Palatine Anthology), and largely overlaps it, but contains 380 epigrams not present in it, normally published with the others, either as a sixteenth book or as an appendix. J. W. Mackail in his book Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology, has this to add of him: • Among his works were translations into Greek of Augustine's City of God and Caesar's Gallic War. The restored Greek Empire of the Palaeologi was then fast dropping to pieces. The Genoese colony of Pera usurped the trade of Constantinople and acted as an independent state; and it brings us very near the modern world to remember that Planudes was the contemporary of Petrarch. He is recorded as one of the first people to use the word "million".
Ptolemy's Geography
Ptolemy's Geography
According to Berggren & Jones (2000) and Mittenhuber (2010) many of the extant manuscripts of Ptolemy's Geography can be connected with the activities of Planudes. Within the stemma, manuscript groups UKFN and RVWC both descend from a recension by Planudes; only manuscript X (Vat.gr.191) is independent. Regarding Planudes' work in rediscovering the Geography, an hexameter poem survives titled: "του σοφωτάτου κυρου Μαξίμου μονάχου του Πλανούδου στίχοι ηρωικοί εις τήν Γεωγραφίαν Πτολεμαίου χρόνοις πολλοίς άφανισθεισαν, είτα δέ παρ' αύτοΰ πόνοις πολλοίς εύρεθεΐσαν." which can be translated as "Heroic verses by the most wise monk Maximos Planudes on the Geography of Ptolemy, which had vanished for many years and then had been discovered by him after many years." The summary of the poem by Berggen & Jones (2010) is as follows: "What a great wonder, the way that Ptolemy has brought the whole world into view, just like someone making a map showing just a little city. I never saw anything so skillful, colorful, and elegant as this lovely geographia. This work lay hidden for countless years and found no one to bring it to light. But the emperor Andronikos exhorted the bishop of Alexandria, who took great troubles that a certain free-spirited friend of the Byzantines should restore a likeness of the picture worthy of a king."
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 2 entries
1260
Maximus Planudes born at Nicomedia.
1305
Maximus Planudes died at Constantinople.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
Nicomedia.
Birth place
Constantinople.
Death place
Primary material
Documents and archives
reference work
- Wikidata, structured authority record Q218672: Maximus Planudes
Reputable secondary · Wikimedia Foundation
- “Maximus Planudes”, English Wikipedia, consulted as further reading
Reputable secondary · Wikipedia
authority file
- Gemeinsame Normdatei 118942719, Maximus, Planudes.
Unverified · Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Britannica Encyclopedia. Maximus Planudes (Byzantine scholar and theologian). 21 July 1998.
- 2.British Library. MS 19391, f 19v-20.
- 3.Dean, Riaz. The Stone Tower: Ptolemy, the Silk Road, and a 2,000-Year-Old Riddle. Penguin Viking. 146. 2022. 978-0670093625.
- 4.Kai Brodersen, Christiane Brodersen: Planudes, Rechenbuch, griechisch und deutsch. Berlin 2020 (= Sammlung Tusculum). , superseding the incomplete edition of C. J. Gerhardt, Halle, 1865.
- 5.Daly, L.W. The Greek Version of Caesar's Gallic War. Transactions of the American Philological Association. 77. 78–82. 1946. 10.2307/283446.
- 6.Heller, H. De graeco metaphraste commentariorum Caesaris. Philologus. 12. 1–4. 107–149. 1857. 10.1524/phil.1857.12.14.107.
- 7.Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology by J. W. Mackail
- 8.Smith, David Eugene. History of Mathematics. Courier Dover Publications. II. 81. 1953. 978-0-486-20430-7.
- 9.Ptolemy. Ptolemy's Geography: An Annotated Translation of the Theoretical Chapters. Princeton University Press. 2002-01-15. 978-0-691-09259-1.
- 10.Mittenhuber, Florian. Ptolemy in Perspective: Use and Criticism of his Work from Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century. Springer Netherlands. 23. 95–119. 2010. 978-90-481-2788-7.
- 11.Stückelberger, Alfred. Planudes und die "Geographia" des Ptolemaios. Museum Helveticum. 53. 2. 197–205. 1996. 0027-4054.
- 12.Ptolemy. Ptolemy's Geography: An Annotated Translation of the Theoretical Chapters. Princeton University Press. 49. 2002-01-15. 978-0-691-09259-1.
Bibliography printed in the source article · 7
- Planudes, Maximus. 21.
- Editions include: Fabricius, Bibliotheca graeca, ed. Harles, xi. 682; theological writings in Migne, Patrologia Graeca, cxlvii; correspondence, ed. M Treu (1890), with a valuable commentary
- Douglas, A. The Oxford Classical Dictionary. Oxford University Press. 2009.
- Fisher, E. A. The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Oxford University press. 1991.
- P. L. M. Leone (ed.), Maximi Planudis epistolae, Amsterdam (1991).
- K. Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur (1897)
- J. E. Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship (1906), vol. i
References
Citations
References
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authority file
Gemeinsame Normdatei 118942719, Maximus, Planudes.Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
Partially resolvedreference work
Wikidata, structured authority record Q218672: Maximus PlanudesWikimedia Foundation
Partially resolvedreference work
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Further particulars
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The authorities additionally record the headings Planudes and Maximos Planoudes. His recorded language was Ancient Greek. His recorded confession was Eastern Orthodoxy. Formation and teaching. Each of those relationships is stated by the authority record rather than inferred from style. Recorded as theologian, monk, translator, philologist and writer.
Identity and origins
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
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