178 Coureas
those translations that he completed are those of Alexander of Aphrodisias
and Aristotle’s De Partibus Animalium, accomplished while he was in Nicaea
and Thebes respectively. On leaving Greece for Italy in 1274 he transported
numerous Greek manuscripts with him. Assisting at the Second Council of
Lyon in 1274, he was bishop of Corinth from 1277 until his death in 1286. Also
noteworthy in this context was a Latin cleric never resident in Greece, Robert
Grosseteste, who became bishop of Lincoln in 1235. He gathered a circle of
scholars around him to assist in the translation into Latin of Greek theological
works, and among the Greeks in this circle were Robert Grecus and Nicholas
Grecus, the latter being a clerk connected to the abbey of St Albans, which
presented him to the church of Datchet in Buckinghamshire in 1239. Nicholas
became a canon in Lincoln in 1246. It was Grosseteste who inspired Roger
Bacon to produce a Greek grammar in the 1270s and to stress the importance
of Greek patristic writings in theological studies.66
A noted patron of literary activity in Latin Greece as well as a literary figure
in his own right was the Catalan Juan Fernández de Heredia, the Hospitaller
Grand Master of Rhodes from 1377 to 1396, when he died having surpassed
the age of 90. He took advantage of the existence of classical manuscripts,
together with the availability of scribes knowing both classical Greek and the
Romance languages on the island of Rhodes to have a series of translations
of classical Greek works done into the Romance languages. Under his direc-
tion and encouragement the Greek Demetrios Kalodikes, who originated from
Thessalonica, first translated Plutarch’s Lives from classical into Modern Greek.
It was then translated from Modern Greek into Aragonese by the Dominican
Bishop Nicholas of Drenopolis, a titular see. This bishop was probably Catalan
or Aragonese, but he may have been Italian, in which case the possibility
exists that Heredia’s scribes translated his text into Aragonese. Other works
translated from classical Greek into Aragonese included sections from the
works of Thucydides and Zonaras. In addition, Justinus’s abridgement of the
Macedonian histories of Trogus Pompeius, the Historiae Philippicae, was trans-
lated into Latin. For the history of medieval Greece, however, Heredia’s most
valuable contribution was his own Libro de los fechos et conquistas del princi-
pado de la Morea, completed in October 1393 and covering the period from
1197 to 1377. Although based on a version of the Chronicle of the Morea already
existing in French, Greek and Italian, it made notable alterations to it through
the use of western sources, such as the chroniclers Villani, Ernoul and Baudoin
66 Lock, Franks, pp. 299–301; Tsougarakis, Latin Religious Orders, pp. 177 and 209.