or EMA'NUEL (Μανουὴλ s. Ἐμανουὴλ Μοσχόπουλος), a Greek grammarian of the later period of the Byzantine empire. There are few writers whose works have had so extensive a circulation whose time and history are so uncertain. According to the account generally current among the historians of literature, there were two Moschopuli, both bearing the name of Manuel, uncle and nephew; the uncle, a native of Crete, who lived in the time of the emperor Andronicus Palaeologus the Elder, about A. D. 1392; the nephew, a native of Constantinople, who, on the capture of that city by the Turks, A. D. 1453, fled into Italy. Of his fortunes, connections, or place of residence in that country, nothing appears to have been known, nor do we find any record or notice of his death. (Comp. Walder. Praef. ad Mosclopinli Grammat. Artis Method., A. D. 1540; Burton, Ling. Graec. Historia, p. 57, 12mo. Lond. 1657; Scherpezeelius, Praef. ad Moschopuli Scholia ad Hiad. Hardwick, A. D. 1702; Fabric. Bibl.
Of the above scanty account some of the particulars are evidently incorrect, others rest on no sure foundation. An ancient Greek MS. of the Sylloge Dictionum Atticarum, quoted by Ducange (Glossar. Med. et Inf. Graecitatis Notae, col. 29) states it to be a work of Moschopulus "a Byzantine (or native of Constantinople), nephew of the Cretan;" and may be considered as establishing the facts that there were two Moschopuli, an uncle and a nephew; that the uncle was a Cretan, and a man of such reputation that relationship to him was a thing to be recorded; and that the nephew was a native of Constantinople, and a writer on grammatical subjects. The date at which the elder is said, in the account given above, to have lived, appears to have been derived from a passage in the Turco-Graecia of Crusius, who states (in Histor. Politicam. CPoleos Annotat. p. 44) that he had a MS. of the Erotemata s. Quaestiones of Moschopulus, to which the owner had appended a note that it was given him by the priest Clubes, A. D. 1392; and then Crusius states his opinion that Moschopulus flourished in the reign of the Byzantine emperor Andronicus the Elder, about A. D. 1300. A careless reader, confounding the date of the gift with that of the writer, brought down the reign of Andronicus to the latter part of the 14th century; and this gross anachronism appears to have passed unnoticed. If the author of the Quaestiones, whether he was the uncle or the nephew, lived in the time of the elder Andronicus, who reigned from A. D. 1282 to 1328, neither of the Moschopuli could have lived so late as the capture of Constantinople by the Turks (A. D. 1453), so that the story of the nephew's flight into Italy, consequent on that event, must be rejected. Hody's identification of the tutor of Joannes Picus with the younger Moschopulus must, of course, be rejected also: it appears indeed never to have had any other foundation than the common name of Manuel and the fact of the preceptor being a Cretan; which latter circumstance furnishes an argument, as Hody evidently felt, not for but against the identity; the nephew, who is said to have fled into Italy, having been a Constantinopolitan; to say nothing of the diversity of the surnames Adramyttenus and Moschopulus.
The date assigned by Crusius, A. D. 1300, to the elder Moschopulus is perhaps a little too late: he can hardly have long survived the accession of Andronicus, A. D. 1282, if indeed he lived till then. Crusius founded his calculation on an historical notice given in illustration of the use of the preposition κατὰ in his MS. of the Erotemata; but this notice does not appear in the printed editions of that work, and was perhaps added by the transcriber of the MS., and if so, it furnishes no clue to the age of the author. Even if genuine, we are disposed to understand it as referring to the rupture of the union of the churches, A. D. 1282, so that it does not support the date given by Crusius. Another historical notice given in the Nova Grammatices Epitome (p. 49, ed. Titze), as illustrating the ten categories, seems to fix the composition of that work to the time (A. D. 1273 to 1282) when Andronicus reigned in conjunction with his father; but this notice has so little connection with the context, that it is, like the preceding, liable to the suspicion of being interpolated. It is conjectured that Moschopulus the Cretan, who wrote a commentary upon Hesiod, is one of the commentators referred to by Georgius Pachymeres (De Andronic. Palaeol. 4.15, where see Possin's note): this conjecture, which, however, separately regarded, rests on very slight ground, would render it probable that Pachymeres, who was born in or about A. D. 1240, studied in his boyhood under Moschopulus. In a MS. ascribed by Montfaucon (Biblioth. Coislin. p. 455) to the fourteenth century, are some Ἐπιστολαί, Epistolae, of Manuel Moschopulus, addressed " to Acropolita the great Logotheta," " to the Logotheta Metochita," "to his uncle the Cretan" τῷ Δείᾳ αὐτοῦ τῷ Κρήτης, perhaps an error for τῷ Κρητί), from which it appears that the nephew was contemporary with Georgius Acropolita (who died about A. D. 1282) or his son Constantinus Acropolita, and with Theodorus Metochita, who was Logotheta in A. D. 1294, and perhaps earlier. (Niceph. Gregoras, Hist. Byzant. 6.8.) A work of Georgius Metochita, published in the Graecia Orthodoxa of Allatius, vol. ii. p. 959. is entitled Ἀντίρρησισς τῶν ῷν συνεγράψατο Μανουὴλ ὁ τοῦ Κρήτης ἀνεψιὸς, i. e. " A reply to certain writings of Manuel, the nephew of the Cretan." These notices, together with the existence in manuscript, in the library of St. Mark at Venice (Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. vi. p. 323, note pp), of a work of Moschopulus, Contra Latinos, combine to show that the younger Moschopulus was contemporary with and was engaged in the religious dissensions occasioned by the attempt begun by the emperor Michael Palaeologus (A. D. 1260), and abandoned by his son the elder Andronicus, a short time after his accession (A. D. 1282), to unite the Greek and Latin churches ; and that he survived the appointment to the office of Logotheta of Theodorus Metochita, who held that office in perhaps A. D. 1294. These dates are consistent with the supposition that his uncle the Cretan was one of the teachers of Pachymeres, and afford some probability to the conjecture that Pachymer refers to him. These scanty notices have been industriously gleaned by Titze in his Diatribe Literaria de Moschopulis, which we have chiefly followed.
[J.C.M]