“Ερωτήματα και αποκρίσεις ξένου και Αληθείας” by Leonardo Dellaporta as a Phenomenon of Cretan Venetian Culture

The aim of the paper is to show and illustrate form of humanistic culture on the island of Crete under Venetian rule as a result of the IV Сrusade. The author dwells on an insufficiently explored subject of Cretan Venetian culture on the material of outstanding philosophic writing by Cretan author Leonardo Dellaporta “Talk of Wanderer with Truth”, a demotic late Byzantine poem. Detailed analysis of the work enables the author to introduce the notion of “Cretan Renaissance” embracing the period from XIV century till Baroque epoch during which part of the Greek world directly interacted with the Italian Renaissance. Close study of the personality of Dellaporta — ​his Greek-Italian origin, upbringing, his religious beliefs, education on the borderland between the two traditions, his diplomatic missions and necessity to support Venetian colonists' interests against Turks — ​revealed both: controversies and blending of Byzantine and Western features in his outlook. Dellaporta's self-consciousness, formed between the two cultures, is vividly manifested in his poem “Talk of Wanderer with Truth”. Numerous borrowings, citations, reminiscences, and allusions — ​all these humanistic devices imitating Greek samples — ​frame and ornament the text, imbued with the idea of Venetian Crete. Dellaporta's personality and his poem symbolize not only blending of the two cultures in Crete in the XV century, but also testify to a new unique Cretan Venetian culture.