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ca 1295 – ca 1360. Byzantium. A famous Byzantine erudite, born at Heraclea Pontice (now Karadeniz Ereğli in Turkey). Orphaned as child Nikephoros Gregoras was educated by his uncle Ioannes, who became metropolitan of his home town and sent him about 1314 to Constantinople. On his uncle's recommendation he was instructed in rhetoric, astronomy and philosophy by the patriarch Ioannes Glykys and the later "prime minister" Theodorus Metochites. The young Gregoras enjoyed a successful political career, and was sent by the Emperor in a diplom…

ca 1400 - after 1462. Byzantium. A member of the influential Doukas family, and grandson of Michael Doukas, who was important in the Civil War of the 1340s. Neither his first name nor precise dates are known.Doukas composed a kind of universal chronicle with the title Ἀριθμοὶ ἐτῶν ἀπὸ τοῦ πρώτου ἀνθρώπου ἕως τῆς ἡμετέρας γενεᾶς (The total of all years beginning from the first man up to our generation), which is commonly and rightly seen by modern scholars as a history of the relations between Ottomans and Byzantines between the ye…

[Βραχέα Χρονικά (Short chronicles)] 10th-18th centuries. Byzantium and Post-Byzantium. Short lists of chronographical notes can often be found in Greek manuscripts of other texts, inserted by the scribes or by the owners of the manuscripts on free pages, on the end papers or in the margins. Taken together their contents span the years 313-1771. The term Short Chronicle (Βραχέα Χρονικά or Σημείωμα Χρονικό) was first coined about 1910 by the Greek Byzantonologist Sp. Lampros, who became aware of them and began to collect the texts systematically. This work was continued by R.-J. Loenertz…

ca 500 – ca 565. Palestine. Procopius, who takes his cognomen from his native city of Caesaraea Maritima, was a historian par excellence, of enormous importance for the Byzantine traditions of historiography and chronography. Procopius was born about the end of the fifth century as member of the upper-class. Around 530, after completing studies in rhetoric and law, he assumed a position as lawyer (assessor) to General Belisarius, the magister militum in the east of the Roman Empire. When Belisarius was recalled by the Emperor Justinian I (527-65) in 542, Procopius disappeared fr…

fl. early 14th century. Byzantium. All that is known of his person is that he was a monk. He was author of a scarce universal chronicle which modern historians seldom consult because it contains little information not available from other historical sources.In manuscript tradition the text is entitled Χρονογραφία ἐν συνόψει (Summarised chronicle). In form it is a long list of human generations from Creation to the kingdom of Israel and to Jesus Christ as well as of the Roman Emperors up to the year 1204, with no distinction made betwee…

[Pseudo-Kodinos] 10th century. Byzantium. A group of works on the history and topography of Constantinople. Two of these texts in particular are designated as Patria Constantinoupoleos. The first, with the title Πάτρια Κωνσταντινουπόλεως κατὰ Ἡσύχιον Ἰλλούστριον (The origin and the history of Constantinople according to the illustrious Hesychius) was taken from the lost world chronicle of the 6th-century pagan Hesychius of Miletus and describes the history of the city of Byzantium from its foundation up to the time when it was renamed as Constantinople (3…

[Malchos] 5th century. Byzantium. All we can definitely say of the life of Malchus is that he originated from Syria (perhaps the Philadelphia located near to modern Amman in Jordan) andlater lived in Constantinople. He is known as author of a History in seven books, bearing the title Βυζαντιακά (Byzantiaka) which began at the end of the reign of Emperor Leo I (457-74) in the year 473 and ran to the death of the Western Emperor Iulius Nepos in 480. The text should be regarded as a History of Emperors, continuing the work of Priscus of Panium.Today the Byzantiaka are lost except for twenty-eig…

[Χρονικὸν τῶν Τόκκων τῆς Κεφαλληνίας] pre-1429. Northern Greece (Ionian Islands of the Epirus region). A verse chronicle in vernacular Greek covering the years 1375/76 and 1422, and providing the main source for the events in Northern Greece and Southern Albania during this period.In the centre of the text, which has come down to us in about 3920 lines of verse, we find the history and the reign of Charles I Tocco. From ca 1376 his political influence in Northern Greece increased rapidly, so that in 1415 he was appointed by the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus (1391-1425) to be D…

[Melissenus] d. 1585. Greece. Archbishop of Monembasia and author of a counterfeited Chronicon maius in vernacular Greek prose, which was long ascribed to the 15th-century chronicler Georgios Sphrantzes.The view that Sphrantzes composed this chronicle originates with Melisourogos himself, and is rooted in the manuscripts, which give the work the title Χρονικὸν τοῦ Γεωργίου Φραντῆ τοῦ χρηματίσαντος πρωτοβεστιαρίτου καὶ μετέπειτα Μεγάλου Λογοθέτου, διὰ δὲ τοῦ θείου καὶ ἀγγελικοῦ σχήματος μετονομασθέντος Γρηγορίου μοναχοῦ (C…

1062-1137. Byzanitum. Nikephoros Bryennios was born close to Adrianople (Edirne, modern Turkey) and lived and died at Constantinople. He was a member of a noble and powerful family of the Byzantine capital whose personal merits in military affairs allowed him to approach rapidly the inner circle of the emperor Alexios I Komnenos, who married him to his daughter Anna Komnene. After Alexios' death in 1081, Anna incited her husband to play an active role in an insurrection against her brother John, who was the legitimate successor of her father, but Nikeph…

[John of Lydia] 6th century. Byzantium. Administrator and author of works on divination and on history. Ioannes was born ca 490 at Philadelphia in Lydia (today Alasehir in Turkey). Apparently he came to Constantinople around 510, and there he began his official career as a high functionary of the Early Byzantine State during the reign of Emperors Anastasius (490-518) and Justinian I (527-65). He retired in 552 and, like many Roman nobleman, he became a writer and took particular pride in teaching Latin. We do not know when he died.Two of his works deal with history. The first, on th…

13th-14th century. Byzantium. The son of the historian Georgius Akropolites. Little is known of his biography. He followed his father, who was tutor to the Emperor Theodoros II Doukas Laskaris (1254-58), in a series of high positions in the civil administration of the Byzantine Empire. From 1282 to 1294 he was finance minister ( logothetes tou genikou) and from 1305 to 1321 "prime minister" ( megas logothetes). Apparently he must have been died after 1324/25.Besides his rhetorical and hagiographical writings Konstantinos began to compile a Roman and Byzantine history …

[Byzantine Emperor John VI] ca 1292-1383 (reigned 1347-54). Byzantium. The reign of Ioannes VI marks the beginning of the gradual mortal agony which started in the Byzantine Empire about 1350 and would last about 100 years. The first half of the 14th century had been characterised by long civil wars, and the hatred between noble families and different social groups. Ioannes Kantakouzenos was born in Constantinople and his family was closely related to the ruling dynasty of the Palaeologues. During the war between the Emperors Andronicus II (1272-1328) and Andronicus III (1322/28-134…

mid-7th century. Egypt. John was a Coptic bishop of Nikiû, a former city in the south-western part of the Nile delta, and author of a chronicle that extends from Creation to the 640s. In 689 he took part in the election of the Coptic pope Isaac (689-92) at Alexandria, and in the same year he was sent in an official mission of his church to the Arab governor at Cairo. Under pope Simeon I (692-700) he was general supervisor of Coptic monasteries. But after indirectly causing the death of a monk in the 690s, John was deposed from his bishopric and from his office as supervisor. He may have died around 700.J…

9th century. Byzantium. The text with the title Συγγραφὴ χρονογραφίου τὰ κατὰ Λέοντα υἱὸν Βάρδα τοῦ Ἀρμενίου περιέχουσα (Compiled chronicle containing what happened to Leo, the son of Bardas the Armenian) is a record on the reigns of the Byzantine Emperors Michael I (811-13) and Leo V (813-20). Leo himself was a son of the Byzantine patricius Bardas, whose family originated from Armenia. Modern scholars are not sure if the text was composed as an independent chronicle or if it was intended to continue Ioannes Malalas or Theophanes Confessor. The author fiercely criticises Leo V for…

second half of the 5th century. Byzantium. On record as a notary or clerk in the service of certain noble families of his native Isauria, Candidus was the author of a History (Λόγοι ἱστορίας, Logoi historias), which according to the information supplied by the patriarch Photios I (9th century), originally consisted of three volumes ( l ogoi). From the whole text only a short summary in the so-called Bibliotheke of Photios has come down to us. Photios reports some autobiographical comments from Candidus's work, recording that he was born at Tracheia in Cilicia (A…

early 14th century. Byzantium. Author of a verse chronicle of Roman and Byzantine Emperors, written in iambic trimeters and in highest level of Greek language. Unfortunately we have little exact information about Ephraem, though he was probably born at Ainus (now Ezes in European Turkey). This assumption is based on the old library catalogue of the Vatican, which has listed the work since the 16th century as Ἐφραὶμ Αἰνίου χρονικὴ ἱστορία (Chronicle of Ephraem from Ainos); presumably this must have been taken from earlier catalogues or from the manuscript it…

[Agathias Scholastikos] 6th century. Byzantium (Asia Minor). Author of a History (Ἱστορία) of Byzantine affairs 552-59. Agathias, whose biography we know quite well from the preface of his History and from his poetry in the famous Palatine Anthology, was from Myrina (now Sandarlik) in Mysia, Asia Minor (approx. 40 km from Pergamon). There he was born about the year 532. Like many of his contemporaries he completed a rhetorical education which allowed him to take over a higher function in the administration of Smyrna (İzmir). Later on he moved to Constantinople where he worked as lawy…

ca 1028 - after 1085. Byzantium. Michael Attaleiates is one of those figures in the Byzantine society of the 11th century who were beneficiaries of the dynastic change from the Macedonian Emperors to the family Commenus, he was able to gain not only high official rank, but also extensive lands for his own use. Attaleitates was born in Constantinople. As his family name reveals, his forefathers migrated to the Byzantine capital from Attaleia (now Antalya, Asia Minor). After his training in rhetoric and law he made his fortune rapidly. About 1059 we can find him in the …

[Χρονογραφικὸν σύντομον (Concise chronicle)] end of the 10th century or later. Byzantium. A short universal chronicle from the Creation to the death of the EmperorKonstantinos VII Porphyrogennitos in 959. Late 19th-century scholarship judged it to be a falsification by the 16th-century writer and librarian Andreas Darmarius, but this view has been refuted with good reason by the modern editor.The manuscript tradition ascribes the Chronographicon syntomon implausibly to the patriarch Cyril of Alexandria (375/80-444), but the long title of the work states that it w…