Two Praises of the Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos: Problems of Authorship

An anonymous oration, praising the emperor Manuel II Palaiologos, has been recently published by Ch. Dendrinos, who treats it as a funeral oration. However, it is evident that the emperor was still alive at the time of the composition of that text, so we can safely assume that it was intended as a an encomium of the ruling emperor, and it was written some time after the death of the emperor's nephew John VII Palaiologos (1408). On the basis of some textual parallels between that anonymous text and the works of Makarios we put forward the hypothesis that the text published by Dendrinos was written by Makres himself. Finally an anonymous text praising Manuel II Palaiologos, attributed to Isidore of Kiev by G. Mercati, is published for the first time. That piece of oratory was composed shortly after Manuel's return from the West (1403).