Teodoro Gaza

Teodoro Gaza (ca. 1398 – ca. 1475) (em grego: Θεόδωρος Γαζής; em latim: Theodorus Gazes), também Teodoro Gazis ou Teodoro Tessalonicense^[2]^[3] foi um humanista grego,^[4] um tradutor de Aristóteles e um dos acadêmicos gregos que foram líderes do renascimento do conhecimento no século XV na chamada Renascença Paleóloga.

Vida e obras

Teodoro nasceu numa ilustre família^[5] grega^[6]^[7] em Tessalônica, na Macedônia^[8] por volta de ca. 1400, quando a cidade estava sob o jugo do Império Bizantino. Com a captura de sua cidade natal pelos turcos otomanos em 1430, ele escapou para a Itália.^[9] Durante os três anos em que viveu em Mântua, ele rapidamente adquiriu um bom conhecimento de latim sob a tutela de Vittorino da Feltre, se sustentando enquanto isso ministrando aulas de grego e copiando manuscritos clássicos antigos.

Em 1447, ele se tornou professor de grego na recém-fundada Universidade de Ferrara, para onde um grande número de estudantes de toda a Itália foram atraídos pela sua fama como professor. Entre eles estavam Rodolfo Agrícola. Ele tomou parte do Concílio de Siena (1423) e no Concílio de Basileia-Ferrara-Florença (1438-1439), com o objetivo de reunir novamente as Igrejas latina e ortodoxa. Em 1450, à convite do papa Nicolau V, ele foi a Roma, onde ele passaria alguns anos sob a tutela de seu patrono traduzindo antigos manuscritos de Aristóteles e outros autores gregos para o latim. Lá, ele continuou lecionando: há um reporte de que, numa certa ocasião, o papa Sisto IV contratou Gaza para traduzir obras de Aristóteles para o latim, com o pagamento acertado numa certa quantidade de peças de ouro; porém, ao receber o pagamento, Gaza ficou insultado com a quantidade paga e atirou furiosamente o dinheiro no Tibre^[10] Entre os seus estudantes estavam Demétrio Calcondilas, um dos principais acadêmicos do Renascimento, e Andrônico Calisto, um primo de Teodoro Gaza.^[11]

Após a morte de Nicolau (1455) e incapaz de viver por conta própria em Roma, Gaza se mudou novamente para Nápoles, onde ele foi agraciado com o patrocínio de Alfonso, o Magnânimo, por dois anos (1456-1458). Logo depois, ele foi apontado pelo cardeal Bessarion para um benefício na Calábria, onde ele passou os últimos anos de sua vida, onde morreu em 1475 e foi enterrado no mosteiro basiliano de San Giovanni a Piro.^[12]

Após a morte de Gaza, ele foi lembrado pelos autores do Renascimento e elogiado pelas suas habilidades; uma carta escrita ao papa Sisto IV por Ermolao Barbaro em 1480 inclui um detalhado elogio das habilidades de tradutor de Teodoro de Gaza:

“	Não faz muito tempo, Sua Santidade, sofremos uma grande e incomparável perda na pessoa de Teodoro Gaza. Aquele grego superou todos os latinos na tarefa de escrever e traduzir. Se ele tivesse vivido mais, ele poderia ter enriquecido a língua latina neste campo também. Ele o fez de fato nos mais perfeitos livros de Aristóteles, "Sobre os Animais", e de Teofrasto, "Sobre as Plantas". Na minha opinião, ele é o único a desafiar a própria antiguidade. Eu me dedico a honrar e imitar este homem. Eu admito e confesso que seus escritos me ajudaram. Eu os li com uma curiosidade não inferior à que li M. Túlio [Cícero], Plínio, Columela, Varrão, Sêneca, Apuleio e outros que precisamos conhecer em nosso campo de estudo	”
	— Carta de Ermolao Barbaro ao papa Sisto IV, 1480^[13].

Na campanha perpetrada por Gemisto Pletão contra o aristotelianismo, ele contribuiu com sua parte na defesa. Sua influência sobre os humanistas foi considerável, principalmente pelo sucesso com que ele ensinou a língua e a literatura gregas. Em Ferrara, ele fundou uma academia para contrabalançar a academia platônica fundada por Pletão em Florença.

Obras

Suas traduções eram de altíssima qualidade, tanto em qualidade quanto no estilo, às versões em uso antes de sua época. Ele devotou particular atenção à tradução e exposição das obras de Aristóteles sobre as Ciências Naturais.

Gaza era tido em grande estima pela maioria de seus contemporâneos eruditos, mas ainda mais alta na de acadêmicos da geração seguinte. Sua gramática grega (em quatro livros), escrita em grego, impressa pela primeira vez em Veneza (1495) e traduzida parcialmente por Erasmo em 1521, ainda que contivesse seus defeitos - especialmente em sintaxe - foi, por um longo tempo, o principal livro didático no assunto.

Suas traduções do grego para o latim foram muitas e incluem:

Problemata, De partibus animalium e De generatione animalium de Aristóteles
A Historia Plantarum de Teofrasto
A Problemata de Alexandre de Afrodísias
A De instruendis aciebus de Eliano, o Estrategista
A De compositione verborum de Dionísio de Halicarnasso
Algumas Homilias de João Crisóstomo.

Ele também verteu para o grego a De senectute e a Somnium Scipioni, de Cícero, com muito sucesso na opinião de Erasmo; com mais elegância que exatidão, de acordo com o julgamento mais frio dos acadêmicos modernos. Ele foi também o autor de dois curtos tratados chamados De mensibus e De origine Turcarum.

Ver também

Lista de humanistas do Renascimento

Referências

↑ Soudavar, Abolala (2008). Decoding old masters: patrons, princes and enigmatic paintings of the 15th century. [S.l.]: I.B.Tauris. p. 47. ISBN 1845116585. Sylvia Ronchey has identified two portraits of Theodore of Gaza, one with a white beard among the Medici retinue (fig. 84a) and the other with a black beard in a Botticelli painting at the Uffizi (fig. 84b)
↑ Coates, Alan; et al. (2005). A Catalogue of Books Printed in the Fifteenth Century now in the Bodleian Library. [S.l.]: Oxford University Press. p. 236. ISBN 0199519056. Theodorus Graecus Thessalonicensis Texto "ie Theodorus Gaza " ignorado (ajuda)
↑ Geanakoplos, Deno John (1989). Constantinople and the West: essays on the late Byzantine (Palaeologan) and Italian Renaissances and the Byzantine and Roman churches. [S.l.]: Univ of Wisconsin Press. p. 69. ISBN 0299118843. That Gaza was born in Thessalonica seems clear from the epithet Thessalonicensis (in Latin) or Thessalonikeus (in Greek) found in his own treaties as well as those of Italian humanists.
↑ Wollock, Jeffrey (1997). The noblest animate motion: speech, physiology and medicine in pre-Cartesian linguistic thought. [S.l.]: J. Benjamins Pub. p. 77. ISBN 9027245711. Soon afterward, another Greek Humanist, Theodore Gaza (1398-1478), warmly supported by Cardinal Bessarion (1403-ca.l472), was called in to retranslate the Problems and a number of other texts of Aristotle.
↑ Dalzel, Andrew (1821). Substance of Lectures on the Ancient Greeks, and on the Revival of Greek Learning in Europe. [S.l.]: A. Constable & Co. p. 400. OCLC 10091987. Theodore Gaza, a youth of an illustrious family of Thessalonica, arrived in that country.
↑ Bisaha, Nancy (2006). Creating East and West: Renaissance humanists and the Ottoman Turks. [S.l.]: University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 77. ISBN 0812219767. Filelfo, who had commissioned a Greek, Theodore Gazes, to write a history of the Turks for him, may have arrived at this conclusion
↑ Surtz, Edward L. (1957). The praise of pleasure: philosophy, education, and communism in More's Utopia. [S.l.]: Harvard University Press. p. 139. OCLC 248237281. Constantine Lascaris and Theodore Gaza, both fifteenth- century Greeks, as grammarians
↑ Barnhart, Clarence Lewis (1954). The New Century cyclopedia of names, Volume 2. [S.l.]: Appleton-Century-Crofts. p. 1704. OCLC 123650044. Teodoro Gaza; English, Theodore Gaza; Greek, Theodoros Gazes.] b. at Salonika, in Macedonia, c1400; d. in Italy, 1478. Greek scholar, resident in Italy after the capture of his native town by the Turks, and a professor of Greek at Ferrara (1447-50).
↑ Milner, Henry (2009). The Turkish Empire: The Sultans, the Territory, and the People. [S.l.]: BiblioBazaar. p. 87. ISBN 1113223995. Theodore Gaza, one of these exiles, escaped from Saloniki, his native city, upon its capture by Amurath.
↑ Geanakoplos, Deno John (1989). Constantinople and the West: essays on the late Byzantine (Palaeologan) and Italian Renaissances and the Byzantine and Roman churches. [S.l.]: Univ of Wisconsin Press. p. 87. ISBN 0299118843. In the service of these persons he (Theodore Gaza) continued his work of copying Greek manuscripts in his elegant hand and especially under the aegis of Sixtus IV, again took up the task of translating Aristotle’s works into Latin. It is reported that on one occasion, when Sixtus paid him a number of gold pieces (not so much, it seems, for his elegantly rendered Latin version of Aristotle’s De animalibus as for the cost of the expensive gold binding of the manuscript), Gaza angrily cast the money into the Tiber river..
↑ Diller, Aubrey (1983). Studies in Greek manuscript tradition. [S.l.]: A. M. Hakkert. p. 260. ISBN 902560837X. He had put Bessarion in touch with Andronicus Callistus, who was his kinsman. Callistus was cousin (consobrinus) of Theodore Gaza, who remembered him so in his will .
↑ Geanakoplos, Deno John (1989). Constantinople and the West: essays on the late Byzantine (Palaeologan) and Italian Renaissances and the Byzantine and Roman churches. [S.l.]: Univ of Wisconsin Press. p. 88. ISBN 0299118843. There in Calabria, historically so long tied to the Byzantine East, Theodore Gaza died obscurely, doubtless in 1475, and was buried in the Basilian monastery of San Giovanni de Piro..
↑ Beullens, Pieter ; Gotthelf, Allan. «Theodore Gaza's Translation of Aristotle's De Animalibus.» (PDF). www.duke.edu. Consultado em 23 de novembro de 2009. Arquivado do original (PDF) em 14 de junho de 2010. However, it adds a dedicatory letter to Matthäus Lang, a councillor of Emperor Maximilian, and a long quotation from the preface by Ermolao Barbaro to his translation of Themistius’ paraphrasis of Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, written in 1480 and dedicated to none other than Sixtus IV, in which he includes an elaborate appraisal of Gaza’s translating abilities: Not long ago, Your Holiness, we suffered a great and incomparable loss in the person of Theodore Gaza. That Greek man outdid all Latins in the task of writing and translating. If he had lived longer, he would have enriched the Latin language in this field as well. He did that indeed in those most perfect books of Aristotle’s On Animals and Theophrastus’ On Plants. In my view, he is the only one to challenge antiquity itself. I have set myself to honour and imitate this man. I admit and I confess that I was helped by his writings. I read him with no less curiosity than I read M. Tullius, Pliny, Columella, Varro, Seneca, Apuleius, and the others that one needs to examine in this kind of study.

Ligações externas

«Theodorus Gaza (c. 1400-1475)» (em inglês). Encyclopædia Britannica (11ª edição). Consultado em 23 de dezembro de 2011
"Theodore of Gaza" na edição de 1913 da Enciclopédia Católica (em inglês). Em domínio público.

Bibliografia

Para uma lista completa das obras de Gaza, veja Fabricius, Bibliotheca Graeca (ed. Harles), x.
Nancy Bisaha, Creating East and West: Renaissance humanists and the Ottoman Turks, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. ISBN 0812219767 (em inglês)
Deno J. Geanakoplos, `Theodore Gaza, a Byzantine scholar of the Palaeologan "renaissance" in the Italian Renaissance', Medievalia et Humanistica 12 (1984), 61-81 and in *Deno J. Geanakoplos, 'Theodore Gaza: a Byzantine Scholar of the Palaeologan "Renaissance" in the early Italian Renaissance, c. 1400-1475', in Geanakoplos, Constantinople and the West, University of Wisconsin Press, 1989, pp. 68–90. ISBN 0 299 11884 3 (em inglês)
Jonathan Harris, Greek Émigrés in the West, 1400-1520, Porphyrogenitus, Camberley UK, 1995. ISBN 1 871328 11 X (em inglês)
Fotis Vassileiou & Barbara Saribalidou, Short Biographical Lexicon of Byzantine Academics Immigrants in Western Europe, 2007. (em inglês)
N.G. Wilson, From Byzantium to Italy. Greek Studies in the Italian Renaissance (London, 1992). ISBN 0 7156 24180 (em inglês)

[1] Soudavar, Abolala (2008). Decoding old masters: patrons, princes and enigmatic paintings of the 15th century. [S.l.]: I.B.Tauris. p. 47. ISBN 1845116585. Sylvia Ronchey has identified two portraits of Theodore of Gaza, one with a white beard among the Medici retinue (fig. 84a) and the other with a black beard in a Botticelli painting at the Uffizi (fig. 84b)

[2] Coates, Alan; et al. (2005). A Catalogue of Books Printed in the Fifteenth Century now in the Bodleian Library. [S.l.]: Oxford University Press. p. 236. ISBN 0199519056. Theodorus Graecus Thessalonicensis Texto "ie Theodorus Gaza " ignorado (ajuda)

[3] Geanakoplos, Deno John (1989). Constantinople and the West: essays on the late Byzantine (Palaeologan) and Italian Renaissances and the Byzantine and Roman churches. [S.l.]: Univ of Wisconsin Press. p. 69. ISBN 0299118843. That Gaza was born in Thessalonica seems clear from the epithet Thessalonicensis (in Latin) or Thessalonikeus (in Greek) found in his own treaties as well as those of Italian humanists.

[4] Wollock, Jeffrey (1997). The noblest animate motion: speech, physiology and medicine in pre-Cartesian linguistic thought. [S.l.]: J. Benjamins Pub. p. 77. ISBN 9027245711. Soon afterward, another Greek Humanist, Theodore Gaza (1398-1478), warmly supported by Cardinal Bessarion (1403-ca.l472), was called in to retranslate the Problems and a number of other texts of Aristotle.

[5] Dalzel, Andrew (1821). Substance of Lectures on the Ancient Greeks, and on the Revival of Greek Learning in Europe. [S.l.]: A. Constable & Co. p. 400. OCLC 10091987. Theodore Gaza, a youth of an illustrious family of Thessalonica, arrived in that country.

[6] Bisaha, Nancy (2006). Creating East and West: Renaissance humanists and the Ottoman Turks. [S.l.]: University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 77. ISBN 0812219767. Filelfo, who had commissioned a Greek, Theodore Gazes, to write a history of the Turks for him, may have arrived at this conclusion

[7] Surtz, Edward L. (1957). The praise of pleasure: philosophy, education, and communism in More's Utopia. [S.l.]: Harvard University Press. p. 139. OCLC 248237281. Constantine Lascaris and Theodore Gaza, both fifteenth- century Greeks, as grammarians

[8] Barnhart, Clarence Lewis (1954). The New Century cyclopedia of names, Volume 2. [S.l.]: Appleton-Century-Crofts. p. 1704. OCLC 123650044. Teodoro Gaza; English, Theodore Gaza; Greek, Theodoros Gazes.] b. at Salonika, in Macedonia, c1400; d. in Italy, 1478. Greek scholar, resident in Italy after the capture of his native town by the Turks, and a professor of Greek at Ferrara (1447-50).

[9] Milner, Henry (2009). The Turkish Empire: The Sultans, the Territory, and the People. [S.l.]: BiblioBazaar. p. 87. ISBN 1113223995. Theodore Gaza, one of these exiles, escaped from Saloniki, his native city, upon its capture by Amurath.

[10] Geanakoplos, Deno John (1989). Constantinople and the West: essays on the late Byzantine (Palaeologan) and Italian Renaissances and the Byzantine and Roman churches. [S.l.]: Univ of Wisconsin Press. p. 87. ISBN 0299118843. In the service of these persons he (Theodore Gaza) continued his work of copying Greek manuscripts in his elegant hand and especially under the aegis of Sixtus IV, again took up the task of translating Aristotle’s works into Latin. It is reported that on one occasion, when Sixtus paid him a number of gold pieces (not so much, it seems, for his elegantly rendered Latin version of Aristotle’s De animalibus as for the cost of the expensive gold binding of the manuscript), Gaza angrily cast the money into the Tiber river..

[11] Diller, Aubrey (1983). Studies in Greek manuscript tradition. [S.l.]: A. M. Hakkert. p. 260. ISBN 902560837X. He had put Bessarion in touch with Andronicus Callistus, who was his kinsman. Callistus was cousin (consobrinus) of Theodore Gaza, who remembered him so in his will .

[12] Geanakoplos, Deno John (1989). Constantinople and the West: essays on the late Byzantine (Palaeologan) and Italian Renaissances and the Byzantine and Roman churches. [S.l.]: Univ of Wisconsin Press. p. 88. ISBN 0299118843. There in Calabria, historically so long tied to the Byzantine East, Theodore Gaza died obscurely, doubtless in 1475, and was buried in the Basilian monastery of San Giovanni de Piro..

[13] Beullens, Pieter ; Gotthelf, Allan. «Theodore Gaza's Translation of Aristotle's De Animalibus.» (PDF). www.duke.edu. Consultado em 23 de novembro de 2009. Arquivado do original (PDF) em 14 de junho de 2010. However, it adds a dedicatory letter to Matthäus Lang, a councillor of Emperor Maximilian, and a long quotation from the preface by Ermolao Barbaro to his translation of Themistius’ paraphrasis of Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, written in 1480 and dedicated to none other than Sixtus IV, in which he includes an elaborate appraisal of Gaza’s translating abilities: Not long ago, Your Holiness, we suffered a great and incomparable loss in the person of Theodore Gaza. That Greek man outdid all Latins in the task of writing and translating. If he had lived longer, he would have enriched the Latin language in this field as well. He did that indeed in those most perfect books of Aristotle’s On Animals and Theophrastus’ On Plants. In my view, he is the only one to challenge antiquity itself. I have set myself to honour and imitate this man. I admit and I confess that I was helped by his writings. I read him with no less curiosity than I read M. Tullius, Pliny, Columella, Varro, Seneca, Apuleius, and the others that one needs to examine in this kind of study.

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