Search

Dēmētrios Kydōnēs; Dēmētrios Kydōnios Date of Birth: About 1324 Place of Birth: Thessaloniki Date of Death: End of 1397 Place of Death: Candia, Crete Biography Demetrius came from a distinguished family that for generations had served at the imperial court in Constantinople. His father was a good friend of John Cantacuzenus, a rich member of the military aristocracy and a confidant of Emperor Andronicus III Palaeologus. When Andronicus died in 1341, Cantacuzenus claimed imperial power in place of the heir, John V, who w…

- Demetrius Cydones Date: Approximately 450 letters written between about 1341 and 1394 Original Language: Greek Description The letters in Cydones’s correspondence that refer expressly to Islam as a religion are noted here. They are given in chronological order, first according to the numbering in Loenertz, Correspondance, and then, in brackets, according to the numbering in Tinnefeld, Demetrios Kydones, Briefe. 1. Letter 93 (59) to Simon Atoumanus, summer 1364; Demetrios Kydones, Briefe, i/2, p. 355. Cydones quotes from a letter sent by John V to Pope Urban V, in…

'Against the religion of the Saracens' Demetrius Cydones Date: Between 1360 and 1369 Original Language: Greek Description The Greek title of this work is given in different forms: 1. Rikardou anaskeuē tēs para tou kataratou Mouchamet tois Sarakinois tetheisēs nomothesias, metenechtheisēs de ek tēs Italikēs dialektou eis tēn Hellada dia tinos Dēmētriou. ‘Refutation, written by Ricardus, against the law, imposed on the Saracens by the damned Muḥammad, translated from the Italian to the Greek dialect by a certain Demetrius’. This, perhaps the earli…

Oratio pro subsidio Latinorum'Advisory address by Cydones to the Byzantines' Demetrius Cydones Date: August 1366 Original Language: Greek Description While the Emperor John V was still on his way back from Buda, where he had tried in vain to get military help from the ‘barbarians’ (sc. the Hungarians under Louis the Great) against the Turks ( PG 154, cols 1000D-1001B), his cousin, Count Amedeus VI of Savoy (col. 993AB), had arrived in Byzantine waters in August 1366 with a small fleet and recaptured Kallipolis (Barker, Manuel II Palaiologos, pp. 7-8), a Byzantine stronghold on the…

Oratio de non reddenda Callipoli 'Advisory speech on Kallipolis, pursued by Murad' Demetrius Cydones Date: 1376/77 or 1371 Original Language: Greek Description The town and stronghold of Kallipolis (Gallipoli) on the European shore of the Hellespont was much sought after by the Ottomans as a stronghold, and a few years after its recapture by Amedeus VI of Savoy it was again lost to them. It is uncertain whether this happened in the summer of 1371 or as late as 1376/77; Barker ( Manuel II Palaiologos, pp. 30, 458-61) argues for the later date against an earlier consensus. It was…