PLANUDES, MAXIMOS. - Byzantine theologian and humanist of the 13th–14th centuries, whose life is known almost exclusively through his own correspondence. Born in Nicomedia c. 1260, died in Constantinople in 1310.
He was compelled by Andronicus II to abandon the Catholic faith which he had earlier embraced at the time of the union under Michael Palaeologus and had even defended in a treatise on the procession of the Holy Spirit. A new element introduced by him into Byzantine life—an inheritance from Latin influence—was the higher school which he founded and directed as a monk in the Imperial Palace, where, alongside the usual humanistic disciplines, he also taught the Latin language, which he had mastered to perfection. His works include polemical-theological treatises, hagiography, poetry, and numerous Greek translations of authentic treatises by St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas. His correspondence comprises no fewer than 121 letters of great historical value.
Editions: in P. Arcadius, *Opuscula aurea*, Rome 1630; L. Allatius, *Graecia orthodoxa*, II, Rome 1652; *Patrologia Graeca* 147 and among the works of Metochites (vol. 141) and Bessarion (vol. 161) who refuted him. The correspondence is edited by M. Treu, Bratislava 1890. — Studies: Krumbacher, pp. 543–46; U. Chevalier, *Répertoire des sources… Bio-bibliogr.*, Paris 1907, col. 3773; V. Laurent, s.V. in *Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique*, XII, 11, cols. 2247–52. Emmanuele Candal