Βαρλαὰμ καὶ Ἰωάσαφ

An Indian prince who spent his childhood amidst the delights of his father’s palace goes out to town one day, where the vision of an old man, a blind man and a cripple makes him feel as though he has just woken from a long dream. From that moment on the luxuriance of the gardens, the company of his handmaidens and the lavishness of the banquets will begin to seem strange and repulsive to him, and his father’s efforts to make him retrieve his lost serenity will all be in vain. This tale, in which many recognise the story of Buddha, was known for centuries in the West as the life of Josaphat, a saint in whose honour churches were erected throughout Christendom, and whose relics travelled from Venice to Portugal, and then from Spain to Antwerp. The first missionaries to arrive in India were somewhat marveled by the discovery that the life of the founder of Buddhism followed step by step the one of a saint that was revered in all of Europe.

The origin of such a paradox is Barlaam and Josaphat, a book written in the 11th century by John of Damascus, as it was then believed, or rather by Eustache the Great, as is more plausibly presumed today. It is a reworked version of the Balavariani, a Georgian text that tells the story of a certain Iodasaph, an Indian prince who left behind a life of pleasures to embrace Christianity against his father’s will. The Georgian source itself derives from the Kitab Bilawar wa-Yudasaf, an Arabic text in which the same prince, named Yudasaf, converts from idolatry to Islam. The latter, in turn, stems from a tradition that developed between Persia and Chinese Turkestan, in which the same character was a Manichean called Budasav. Budasav, finally, was a corruption of Sanskrit “bodhisattva”, the enlightened, in this case Siddharta Gautauma, i. e. the Buddha.

With this course of Ancient Greek Schola Humanistica leads its students to the discovery of one of the most fascinating texts of the Byzantine Middle Ages, whose subtle and arborescent influences reach as far as Jacopo da Varazze, Calderón de la Barca, Shakespeare and Tolstoy. Barlaam and Ioasaph presents itself as an edifying tale set in a legendary India, and one after another, it allows all the places, cultures and faiths it traversed to shine through: Constantinople and the Caucasus, Baghdad and the deserts of Central Asia, the Indus River plain and Kapilavastu, the city at the far end of Nepal where Buddha Sakyamuni was born.

In this module we will face some of the most intriguing passages of Barlaam and Josaphat: the life of the young prince in Abenner, his discovery of pain, his encounter with the hermit from the desert, the apologues told by the latter, the father’s struggle against the Christian faith, the plots of two evil magicians and the prince’s departure for the desert. The module will be further enriched by an introduction in which we will discuss Buddhism in Greek sources and the story of Saint Thomas’ preaching in India, premise of the whole tale.

This part of the course will take place in seminar format via zoom (webinar) every Saturday from 17:00 to 18:15 CET.

Each seminar will be conducted entirely in Ancient Greek (Attic).

Each session will be recorded and made available up for 12 months.

Part 2: Writing and Conversation in Ancient Greek

Each of these sessions will be designed to provide participants with an opportunity to converse with one another and engage with them face to face on the Zoom platform.

Each of these special exercises will likewise be recorded and made available for the duration of the course.

 

Last day to Register: 3th January 2025

Enrollment in both parts or only one part of the course is possible (see the columns below for more information).

 

Program schedule

Enrollment in both parts or only one part of the course is possible (see the columns below for more information).