Manual of Christian Iconography

basis of a certain written finding in Lesbos, indicated (1884) that the author of the Hermeneia, Dionysius, flourished in the first half of the 18th century, that the year of flourishing assigned to him (1458) was a fabrication of Simonides, and that Manuel Panselinos himself lived in the 16th century 1, then Gedeon—having characterized his previous opinions on this matter as the result of "the ramblings of a certain Simonides"—nevertheless insisted on believing Simonides again regarding the year 1458, and on accepting his various Panselinos figures, one of whom, named Manuel, lived, according to him, before the fall of the City to the Turks! Unable to shake the credibility of my finding, he thought it successful to cover the disaster of his own lack of judgment with insulting words devoid of any value 2. However, that finding was then interpreted by a scholarly judge, Charles Bayet, at length as was appropriate 3.

The correctness of the opinion derived from the Lesbian note concerning the flourishing of Panselinos in the 16th century was later confirmed through a long, previously unpublished Russian correspondence by Porphyrius Uspensky, unknown before to me and to Europeans. Through it, he had proven in a Russian newspaper since 1867 that the Hermeneia of Dionysius was composed between the years 1701–1733 4, and the much-celebrated

1) A. P.-Kerameus, Mavrogordateios Bibliotheke. Constantinople 1884–1888, vol. 1, pp. 16–17, 152–153.
2) M. Gedeon, O Athos Athos. Constantinople 1885, pp. 235–236 and 329.
3) Bayet, Notes sur le peintre byzantin Manuel Pansélinos et sur le guide de la peinture du moine Dionysios, Revue archéologique, 3rd series, 1884, vol. 3, pp. 325–334. Separate edition (Paris 1884), pp. 1–10.
4) Porphyry Uspensky, Pisma o preslovutom zhivopistse Panseline k nastoiateliu posolskoi tserkvi nashei v Konstantinople, arkhimandritu Antoninu Letters on the notorious painter Panselinos to the abbot of our embassy church in Constantinople, Archimandrite Antoninus. Kiev 1867, 8vo, 69 pages. Cf. Trudy Kiev. Dukh. Akademii Works of the Kiev Theological Academy 1867, vol. 4, pp. 120–164 and 266–292. Cf. Porphyry Uspensky, Puteshestvie v meteorskie i olimpiyskie monastyri v Thessalii Travels to the Meteoron and Olympian monasteries in Thessaly. Constantinople 1896, pp. 78, 79, 257. Porphyry Uspensky, Kniga bytiia moego; dnevniki i avtobiograficheskie zapisi The Book of My Being; diaries and autobiographical notes. Constantinople 1894–1892, vol. 8, p. 11 ff. Note here that Dionysius in 1745 published an asmatic service to the hieromartyr Seraphim (see my Mavrogordateios Bibliotheke, vol. 1, p. 17).