Nikephoros Choumnos

Nikephoros Choumnos (; 1253 – 16 January 1327) was a Byzantine scholar and official of the early Palaiologan period, one of the most important figures in the flowering of arts and letters of the so-called "Palaiologan Renaissance". He is notable for his eleven-year tenure as chief minister of emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos, his intense intellectual rivalry with fellow scholar and official Theodore Metochites, and for building the monastery of the Theotokos Gorgoepēkoos (Θεοτόκος Γοργοεπήκοος) in Constantinople.

Life

In 1303, after a planned marriage of his daughter Eirene to Alexios II failed, and despite the opposition of Empress Irene, he secured his ties to the ruling dynasty by marrying her to the emperor's third son, the despotēs John Palaiologos (c. 1286–1308). Nevertheless, two years later, he was dismissed and replaced as mesazōn by Metochites. through bribes, the selling of offices and tax farming. These practices were quite common among the Palaiologan bureaucracy, whose corrupt administration was especially burdensome on the Empire's subjects. Part of this fortune was used in the establishment and endowment of the monastery of the Theotokos Gorgoepekoos in Constantinople.

Writings Choumnos was a prolific writer, greatly influenced by the Classics, which he had studied as a young pupil. His works, several of which remain unpublished, include rhetorical pieces, such as the eulogy to Andronikos II, as well as treatises on philosophy, especially on elemental theory, meteorology, cosmology and theology. Several of these treatises often appear to have been composed on the occasion of literary gatherings within the court, sometimes with the emperor presiding. From his extensive correspondence, 172 letters survive.

In his philosophical works, Choumnos proves himself an "ardent and skillful" defender of Aristotle. Nevertheless, he does not embrace Aristotelianism, but is rather interested to provide a rigidly rational philosophical justification for the doctrines held by Christian theology.

According to the French Byzantinist Rodolphe Guilland, "by his love of antiquity, passionate, although a little servile, and by the variety of his knowledge Choumnos heralds Italian humanism and the western Renaissance." Despite her retreat into the convent, she remained very active in the intellectual life of the capital, maintaining a large library, commissioning copies of manuscripts, as well as conversing and corresponding with scholars.