Manual of Christian Iconography

of the supposed year 518 after Christ 1. So that a clash of opposing opinions might also occur among those writing about Panselinos in the future, he inserted into the Symais a second painter Panselinos of the years 1032–1085 2, intending especially to present the author of the Symais as both a supporter and corrector of the tradition regarding a Panselinos of the 12th century that Didron had appropriated on Athos. After four years (1853), he published under a pseudonym the text of the Hermeneia as he had it, in which, to deceive the public, he reprinted in the form of a preface what the great Oikonomos had previously published about it 3. Five years later (1858), he published a large book, full of fabrications and falsehoods, in which, besides the two previously disseminated Panselinos figures, he made known—from his own invention once again—three other Panselinos figures of different eras, thus raising them to five homonymous painters 4.

From all these Simonidean editions, appearing in succession, there gradually formed, even on Athos among monks of little education, and perhaps even among instruments and accomplices of Simonides himself, a varied dissemination regarding the era of Panselinos or the Panselinos figures; its victims, until very recently, were not a few of the visitors to Athos. Thus, Victor Langlois (1861) wrote that, as it is said, Panselinos flourished between the 11th and 13th centuries 5; the abbé Neyrat (1880) wrote that he lived in the 11th 6. Sharply, however, Charles Bayet discerned (1876) that the Athonites believed

1) K. Simonides’ Symais, or history of the Apollonias school in Symi, and especially of the hagiographic chair etc. Athens 1849, p. 177.
2) Ibid., pp. 123–124.
3) Simonides’ edition is inscribed as follows: "Hermeneia of the painters as to the ecclesiastical painting, by Dionysius the hieromonk and painter, of Fourna of Agrafa (written on Athos in 1458). Now for the first time published in print at the expense of our printing house and Athanasios G. Zosimas. Athens, at the press of Ph. Karampinis and K. Vafas, 1853." It was reprinted a second time in Athens in 1885 by the publisher Anestis Konstantinidis, who removed from the text only the chapter on heliotype by pseudo-Hierotheos.
4) Nicholas of Methone’s discourse to the Latins, ed. by K. Simonides. London 1858, pp. 113–114, 135, 136, 138. Cf. also p. 174.
5) V. Langlois, Le mont Athos. Paris 1861, p. 14.
6) Neyrat, L'Athos; notes d'une excursion à la presqu'ile et à la montagne des moines. Paris 1880, p. 100.