This volume inaugurates the series, Theandrites: Studies on Byzantine Philosophy and Christian Platonism, edited by Frederick Lauritzen and Sarah Klitenic Wear. It is intended to encourage the tracing of Platonic ideas and terminology as they move throughout the Eastern Roman Empire and the Byzantine Orthodox world. This tradition embraces the Greek texts studied and translated in the Syriac and Arabic worlds, which became the means of access to the Greek philosophical tradition (not least Aristotle) in the Western Middle Ages. At the same time the Greek philosophical tradition continued in the Greek-speaking world and eventually made contact with the Latin-speaking world through Byzantine thinkers such as Bessarion (1403–72) and George Gemistos Plethon (c.1355–1452/4). The series is very much to be welcomed (another volume in the series has just appeared, on Theodore Metochites). The period – nearly a millennium – from the late Neoplatonists until the Renaissance has seemed almost airbrushed from the history of philosophy: until recently the only survey of the period was published in 1949, as the appendix to E. Bréhier's history of philosophy, Basil Tatakis, La Philosophie byzantine, a remarkable work, largely dependent on what can be gleaned from Migne's Patrologia Graeca, a notoriously unsatisfactory source. It was not translated into English until 2003, by which time serious study of the Byzantine philosophical tradition was becoming possible, with the publication of critical texts of the pagan Neoplatonists – Plotinus, Proclus and Damascius, followed by Byzantine philosophers or philosopher/theologians, such as Dionysios the Areopagite, Maximos the Confessor, John Damascene, Photios, Michael Psellos, John Italos, Gregory Palamas, Plethon, Bessarion, when the Greek tradition is relayed to the Italian Renaissance, for example, Marsilio Ficino, many of whose works have only in this century been critically edited. This century has seen, too, surveys of Byzantine philosophy by the Bulgarian scholar, Georgi Kapriev (2005), symposia, such as Byzantine philosophy and its ancient sources (ed. Ierodiakonou, 2002), The ways of Byzantine philosophy (ed. M. Knežević, 2015), Christian Platonism: a history (ed. Hampton and Kenney, 2021, covering more than the Byzantine period), as well as The Cambridge intellectual history of Byzantium (ed. Kaldellis and Siniossoglou, 2017).

The Byzantine platonists, 284–1453 is also a symposium, originating in a conference held in the Scuola Grande di san Marco in Venice in October 2019. After two papers by Lloyd P. Gerson on the ‘Personhood of the One’, setting out clearly the incompatibility of Plotinus’ doctrine with Christian Trinitarianism, and Carl O'Brien's discussion of Basil the Great's use of Platonic themes in his development of his Trinitarian theology, in which these themes are assimilated through his biblical exegesis – themes such as the notion of time, the knowability of God and the metaphysics of light – Mark Edwards seeks to introduce some conceptual clarity, beginning his paper by affirming that ‘[w]hen we say of an ancient Christian writer that he is a Platonist, we mean, or ought to mean, one of two things: either that he treats Plato as an authority on matters of doctrine, or that he gives an axial place in his system of thought to tenets that are distinctively Platonic’ (p. 32). Edwards goes on to develop this requirement, initially in general terms, and then with particular reference to Gregory of Nyssa, with a preliminary discussion of Origen (as in his influential book, Origen against Plato, 2002), showing in both cases that to assess either thinker as a ‘Platonist’ cannot be allowed (despite Gregory's apparent modelling of his dialogue On the soul and the resurrection on Plato's Phaedo). There follow a series of mostly brief studies on particular aspects of individual thinkers, arranged chronologically. Sarah Klitenic Wear discusses how both Cyril of Alexandria and Proclus use the language of interaction between, respectively, the members of the Trinity and the doctrine of the henads, both envisaging an unmixed unity of beings distinguished by their idiotēs. John F. Finamore considers Proclus’ treatment of the Platonic doctrine of the tripartite soul in his commentary on the Republic; Marilena Vlad the way in which the One manifests its presence at all levels of reality in Damascius’ understanding. There follow two papers on Dionysios the Areopagite: one by Ilaria Ramelli who seeks to elucidate what she claims is a double reference system to ‘pagan’ and Christian doctrines; Ivanović discusses the inseparability of body and soul in the Areopagite. Skliris finds intimations of the later Palamite distinction between God's essence and his activities in Maximos's doctrine of participation. Franz Lauritzen finds reference to the Parmenides in George of Pisidia's Hexaemeron, which suggest that he knew the debates in Neoplatonic circles about the first hypothesis of that dialogue. George Diamantopoulos shows how Nicetas Stethatos finds a mystical dimension in the cardinal virtues as preparing the soul for union with God. Denis Walter discusses how John Italos treats the terms authypostaton and authyparkton in relation of a passage in his mentor, Michael Psellos. Christian Förstel finds a kind of selective Platonism in Nikephoros Choumnos, adopting Platonic doctrines compatible with Christian dogma, but then interpreting them in a way consistent with Platonism. Timur Shchukin looks at an early work of Palamas's, his Logos on Saint Peter of Athos, and the notion of self-reversion of the intellect from the sensual and passionate and then beyond itself (more inward) to contemplation of and union with God, for which he finds parallels in Plotinus’ Ennead v. 3 (an important notion in Proclus, too: see Elements of theology, 15–17), though the notion is treated differently in Plotinus and Palamas. The last two papers take us into the Italian Renaissance. Denis J.-J. Robichaud discusses the way in which Dionysios is to be seen as a Platonist (rather than Neoplatonist), deriving his doctrine of erōs directly from Plato's Symposium. Stephen Gersh, presently working on a critical edition of Ficino's commentary on Plotinus, looks at the account of Plethon's lectures at the Council of Florence inspiring Cosimo Medici with the idea of an academy, of which Ficino was a prominent member, observing, however, that Ficino's indebtedness to Plethon is only manifest much later, in the 1490s: which leads to a discussion of the nature and extent of Ficino's debt to Plethon.

This volume contains a series of landmarks on the Byzantine inheritance of the Platonic tradition, marking out in diverse ways the Byzantine reception, but without suggesting any general theme. One wonders whether the nature of the engagement between Christianity and Platonism might not be better captured by thinking of Platonic Christianity, rather than Christian Platonism.