The full title of Michael Panaretos's work is About the E mperors of Trabezond, the Grand Komnenoi, H ow and W hen and H ow L ong E ach R uled. It is a brief history of the empire of Trebizond from 1204– 1390. The text is twenty pages long in the modern edition. It is far more detailed for 1340– 1390, when Michael was an eyewitness. It is written in Pontic dialect of the fifteenth century.

Michael Panaretos is known only from self- references in his history. Michael served emperor Alexios III Komnenos (1349– 1390), the emperor of Trebizond. By 1363 he had the titles of protosebastos and protonotarios, but most likely had other offices before then, and he served Alexios in military as well as notarial capacities starting in the 1350s. He seems to have died after Alexios III.

Manuscripts, Editions, and Translations

Manuscripts

There is one manuscript Marcianus Graecus 608, of the fifteenth century.2

Edition

Lampsidēs, Odysseus. Michaēl tou Panaretou Peri tōn megalōn Komnēnōn; eisagōgē, ekdosis, scholia. Pontikai ereunai 2. Athens, 1958.

The text was published by Tafel in 1832 and by the infamous Jakob Fallmerayer (see the Chronicle of Monemvasia) in 1843. Spyrid ō n Lampros published it again in 1907.

Translation

Asp-Talwar, Annika. “ The Chronicle of Michael Panaretos.” In Byzantium's Other Empire: Trebizond, edited by Antony Eastmond, 173 – 212. Istanbul : Koç Üniversitesi, Anadolu Medeniyetleri Ara? tirma Merkezi, 2016.

An English translation by Scott Kennedy is forthcoming from the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library.

Greek

Lampsidēs, Odysseus. Michaēl tou Panaretou Peri tōn megalōn Komnēnōn; eisagōgē, ekdosis, scholia. Pontikai ereunai 2. Athens, 1958.

FURTHER READING

Asp- Talwar, Annika. “ The Chronicle of Michael Panaretos.” In Byzantium's Other Empire: Trebizond, edited by Antony Eastmond, 173 – 212. Istanbul : Koç Ü niversitesi, Anadolu Medeniyetleri Ara? tirma Merkezi, 2016.

Eastmond, Antony, ed. Byzantium's Other Empire: Trebizond. Istanbul : Koç Üniversitesi, Anadolu Medeniyetleri Ara? tirma Merkezi, 2016.

Hunger, Herbert. Die hochsprachliche profane Literatur der Byzantiner: Philosophie, Rhetorik, Epistolographie, Geschichtsschreibung, Geographie. Vol. 1. Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft, 12.5. Munich : Beck, 1978, 480.

This text is found in the tenth- century Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1941. The early leaves of the manuscript, where one would normally find the author's name and title, have been lost. The modern title, “Paschal Chronicle” (from the Latin, “Chronicon Paschale”), derives from the author's interest in the correct dating of Easter. We know nothing about the author. Some scholars have speculated that the author was a member of the clergy, while others suggest that he was a layman working in imperial administration.

The Paschal Chronicle is both a universal history from the Creation until 628, as well as an extended argument about the proper calculation of the dates of liturgical feasts. The author is concerned with demonstrating that the liturgical cycle used in Constantinople employs the correct dates for both the moveable feasts, such as Easter, and the fixed feasts, such as Annunciation on March 15 or the Presentation in the Temple on February 2. The determination of the passage of time, as reckoned by both history and the movements of the stars, served to establish definitively the proper dates of liturgical celebrations. The enumeration of years plays a role in the author's efforts to establish a definitive chronology of human history. Each year is listed separately. Some key events of secular history are briefly described under the headings of the years so that the text also serves as a universal chronicle.

The Paschal Chronicle opens with a discussion of the proper method for correctly reckoning the date of Easter in accordance with solar and lunar cycles. Thereafter, the chronicle is a record of the passage of time, listing every year even if the author noted no significant events. Each year of Abraham's life is numbered and listed separately, including the first seventy five when he was in Chaldea and not yet playing a role in sacred history.

This is an early ninth- century text swiftly covering history from Creation to 284 CE. The chronicle is called Ekloge Chronographias (Extract of Chronography) in one of the main manuscripts. The title of this text attributes it to “George, monk and s ynkellos when Tarasios was Patriarch.” While the introduction states that the author intended to cover the period from Creation to the year 6300 (808 CE), the text ends in 284 CE. In another passage, the year 6302 (810 CE) is noted as the “current year.” The preface to the Chronicle of Theophanes explains that it is a continuation of George's work. How much of Theophanes's chronicle was based on material prepared by George is a matter of debate.

The text works to reconcile various systems of dating history and synchronize events from biblical history with ancient Mediterranean histories. It begins with an analysis and critique of previous chronographers, especially Julius Africanus and Eusebius. Whereas Africanus preferred a symbolic chronology (big round numbers in accordance with a prophetic view of history) without caring about non- Christian (Babylonian, Egyptian, etc.) traditions of history, and Eusebius worked to harmonize those traditions with biblical history – even when this meant admitting difficulties with biblical chronology – George's text tried to create a harmonized universal history that proved the veracity of the biblical account at all times. Torgerson characterizes it as an investigation into the “relationship between a timeless God and a time- bound Creation.”

The first quarter of the chronicle deals with the great complexities of reckoning time before Abraham. The text is concerned with working out discrepancies between the Septuagint and various Hebrew versions of scripture. It lists biblical events under the “universal years” since Creation, but the names of kings and events from Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek and Latin history are interspersed, listed under their own headings. Things that do not fit neatly into any of the relevant headings are reported in a “miscellany” at the end of the section, after which it moves on to the next set of “universal years.” It also frequently includes quotations from other historians and chroniclers that are pertinent to the period under discussion.

Theophanes's Chronicle covers the period from 284, where the Chronicle of George Synkellos ends, until 813. Theophanes's chronicle presents itself as a continuation of the history of George Synkellos. Theophanes explains that George had asked him to complete the task of compiling the history and had given Theophanes the materials he had gathered. How far Theophanes should be credited with the authorship of his chronicle has been a matter of scholarly debate.

It is one of few Byzantine texts that is a true chronicle, in that it enumerates every year, and lists events for each year. The entry for each year begins with a listing of the year of the world, the year since the Incarnation, the regnal year of the Roman Emperor, the Persian Emperor, and the bishops of Rome, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch. After the conquest of the Persian Empire, it uses years of the rulers of the Arabs in place of the Persian Emperors. Despite the impression of chronological accuracy, many of these dates are mistaken. Scholars also debate whether these dates were integral to Theophanes's original Chronicle or were added by a later copyist.

The coverage of events is uneven and sometimes thin. For periods in which he has good source material Theophanes may write several pages per year but for eras in which he is less well- informed, his entries are very short. For instance, his Chronicle contains only the listing of regnal dates for each year for 305– 308. He includes significant information about developments about the seventh century Arab conquests and the development of the Arab polity.

In the portions of his Chronicle from 284 until the advent iconoclasm in the middle of the eighth century, Theophanes does not insert his own authorial voice into his text significantly. He seems to be fairly impartially marshaling evidence, occasionally labeling an emperor as pious or impious but otherwise not inserting his value judgments into the history. Beginning with the iconoclast controversy in the reign of Leo III (717– 741) however, he becomes deeply emotionally invested in telling a markedly moralizing story, in which his hatred of the iconoclast emperors is manifest. These sections sometimes read like an anti- iconoclast pamphlet and show more engagement in creating a rhetorically effective history.

A large number of manuscripts contain versions and portions of a chronicle from Creation to 948, and to 963 in some cases. Some manuscripts name Symeon magistros and logothete as the author, and that name has become associated with the entire corpus. Medieval users of the text seem to have made less of the distinction between author and copyist than has often been assumed by scholars in the past several centuries. The freedom with which medieval writers modified and adapted the chronicle as they copied it has led to a situation where one “might be tempted to dispense with a critical edition in favor of editing each manuscript separately.” Yet there are enough commonalities among versions to recongnize two main versions: Redaction A and Redaction B.

Contents

Redaction A begins with Creation and ends in 948. It is favorable to Romanos I Lakapenos. The early sections draw on large amounts of information from George the Monk and Theophanes. It is often understood to have three parts: a summary of history from Creation to Justinian II, a continuation of this chronicle up to 843, and a section from 843– 948 that most likely represents the work newly written (rather than edited) by the author. The questions of who put this version of history up to 843 together, from what sources, and when, remain unanswered.

Kazhdan has argued that the 843– 948 section should be divided into a further three sections: 842– 886 (Michael III and Basil I), 886– 913 (Leo VI and Alexander), and 913– 948. The section covering 886– 913, he suggests, was based on a text providing information about events in Constantinople, the “annals of Constantinople,” while the section covering 913– 948 was based on the author's personal memory and research. Wahlgren considers this interpretation to be highly speculative.

The narrative is organized around the reigns of rulers, beginning with Adam, who Wahlgren considers to have been “treated as a kind of proto- Byzantine emperor.” Each ruler's reign is discussed in a separate chapter, from Adam to Romanos Lakapenos. After biblical patriarchs, Assyrian, Persian, and Ptolemaic rulers carry the chain forward to the foundation of the Roman Empire.

Anna Komnene's Alexiad is one of the masterpieces of Byzantine historiography. It is a long and detailed history of the reign of emperor Alexios Komnenos (1081– 1118), written by his daughter in the middle of the twelfth century. The Alexiad is written in artful classicizing Attic Greek. Anna's history creates a glowing portrait of Alexios as a great hero, ultimately arguing that he should be considered the greatest Roman emperor ever.

The Alexiad is organized into fifteen substantial books. Anna's coverage of events is uneven, with more detail given to the earlier parts of Alexios's long reign. The two Norman invasions of the empire at Dyrrachium, first by Robert Guiscard in 1081 and then his son Bohemond in 1108, are treated in great detail and create a strong narrative structure for the whole work. The final ten years of Alexios's career, after his defeat of Bohemond, are treated with comparative brevity. Anna also describes Alexios's wars against Cumans, Pechenegs, and Turks, but gives greater emphasis to his conflicts with western Europeans. Anna occasionally places her discussions of events where they suit the arc of her narrative rather than in strict chronological order. For instance, the trial of Basil for the Bogomil heresy is thought to have taken place before 1104, but in her text it is placed immediately prior to Alexios's death in 1118. This change to the chronology of the heresy trial highlights Alexios's concern for proper orthodoxy as the history is coming to a close.

Anna appears to have played with the conventions of classicizing history writing to make her Alexiad more like a heroic epic. The title, Alexiad, recalls Homer's Iliad. Anna frequently uses similes and Homeric vocabulary in her writing. Her characterization of Alexios as a wily helmsman, skillfully steering the ship of state through a sea of constant storms, endlessly buffeted by crashing waves of disaster, draws on imagery from Homer's Odyssey.

Constantine Manasses's Synopsis Chronike, commissioned by the sebastokratorissa Eirene, the sister- in- law of Manuel I (1140– 1183), is an elementary introduction to history from Creation to 1081. The text is written in fairly simple fifteen- syllable verse. Manasses focused on those aspects of history that would be entertaining and literarily interesting. Manasses gathered material for his story from Kedrenos and Zonaras, as well as Dionysius of Halicarnassus, George the Monk, John of Antioch, and Theophanes.

Manasses's history was extremely popular, judging from the large number of medieval manuscripts that survive. It was also paraphrased into vernacular Greek in the fourteenth century, translated into Bulgarian, and lavishly illustrated.

Manasses begins with Creation and includes a luxurious ekphrasis (rhetorical description) of the Garden of Eden. He then provides a harmonizing mix of biblical, Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian history. The discussion of David links to the Trojan War, which Manasses explained was contemporary with David's kingdom. The Trojan War is treated in detail (taking 467 lines), and leads directly into Roman history through the stories of Aeneas's settlement in Italy. The succession of Roman rulers then structures Manasses's chronicle from Romulus through the foundation of the Komnenian dynasty in the late eleventh century. The continuous narrative of Trojan and Roman history takes up 5,510 of the 6,620 lines of his chronicle.

Although he revels in the description of the Garden of Eden, Manasses's account of early history owes more to stories from Herodotus than the Septuagint. His history was richly entertaining, focusing on erotic adventure whenever possible. Manasses's history was enjoyed for its writing, and some readers compiled from it lists of gnomic expressions and elegant description that could be used as a sort of thesaurus.

Constantine Manasses was a Constantinopolitan writer working in the third quarter of the twelfth century. He is known for a number of compositions in prose and verse. Manasses does not seem to have held any governmental or ecclesiastical office. He was patronized especially by Sebastokratorissa Eirene, who was the wife of Manuel Komnenos's brother Andronikos, and by the sebastos John Kontostephanos.

A chronicle surviving in four manuscripts is attributed to Joel. In three of the manuscripts the Chronographia en synopsei (Summary Chronicle) of Joel covers from Adam to the capture of Constantinople in 1204. In a fourth manuscript, the narrative extends to 1258. This is a brief chronicle (1614 lines in Iadevaia's edition of the short version) that lists rulers in order, with information on the length of their reigns. It integrates the reigns of select Babylonian, Persian, Macedonain, and Seleucid rulers with those of biblical patriarchs and rulers. From Julius Caesar onward, the chronicle follows the line of Roman emperors.

In the final lines of the short version, the author lists Andronikos Komnenos's murder of Alexios II, Isaac Angelos's murder of Andronikos, Alexios III Angelos's blinding of Isaac, Aleixos IV's exile of Alexios III, and Alexios V's murder of Alexios IV. He then concludes: “Alas for these things that Christians have done to Christians! How could justice remain silent and not hand us over to captivity and destruction? Which, indeed happened, and for such wickedness the illustrious city of Constantine was given to the Italians.”

Given the way this text ends, with the sack of Constantinople in 1204, it was most likely written in the thirteenth century – before the re- conquest in 1261. The style in which emperors are noted changes after Nikephoros Botaneiates (1078– 1081), leading Tsolak ē s to argue that a first version of the text was composed in the reign of Alexios Komnenos (1081– 1118) and then extended to 1204. The version in the Iviron manuscript that extends to 1258 apparently was made before the reconquest of Constantinople in 1261.

The author appears to have used the work of George the Monk, Skylitzes, Scylitzes Continuatus, and George Kedrenos. Dean Sakel suggests that the Chronicle of Joel may have been used as a source for the Chronicle of 1570.

This text is one of the most popular Byzantine historical works, covering Creation to the ninth century. It treats the whole story of history with lots of entertaining stories and digressions on theology. It is entitled Brief chronicle (chronikon syntomon) C ollected, Combined and I nterpreted from various chroniclers by George the Monk and Sinner. Nothing else is known of George, who is commonly called either George the Monk or George Hamartolos (from the Greek word for sinner).

There are two variants of the text. The earlier version is known from the tenth or early eleventh- century manuscript Coislinianus 305 and a onepage fragment in the tenth- century manuscript Vindobonensis Theologicus Graecus 121. This version appears to have been written in 846/ 847. A Slavonic translation of the first version was made in the fourteenth century, apparently based on a better Greek manuscript than our surviving Coislinianus 305. The Slavonic translation is known as the “Letovnik.” The later version of the Greek text, sometimes called the “Vulgate,” is a revision compiled in the last quarter of the ninth century. It is known from twenty- nine manuscripts and contains interpolations of material added after 871.

The text covers the period from Creation to 842. The work is notable for including numerous amusing and moralizing stories, many of which do not have much to do with specific historical events. In some cases, we can tell that the author highlighted moral lessons to be drawn from an episode, but disregarded the chronological placement of the episode within his source material. George has been characterized as a “short- story” writer. By one count, the text includes forty- four discrete stories about bishops, monks, the destiny of the soul, heroic chastity and martyrdom, and pagans, Jews, and iconoclasts. The sources of the narratives seem to have been hagiographies and collections of monks’ proverbs, along with a number of spiritually beneficial stories. Some of the stories from this text appear to have circulated separately from the rest of the history. The text also includes long polemics against Jews, various heretics, and iconoclast emperors. These theological digressions sometimes take the form of long strings of quotations.

This is a detailed classizing history covering the years 1451– 1467 in five books. The subject of Michael Kritovoulos's work was the final destruction of the Byzantine Empire and the transfer of power to the Ottoman Empire. He paid particular attention to the life and deeds of Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror, to whom he dedicated his history. It opens with a preface in which, along with traditional claims about truthfulness and the importance of preserving the memory of great deeds, he apologizes to his Greek readers for not making Greek suffering the primary subject of his account. He likens himself to ancient historian Flavius Josephus, who sometimes praised the Romans and was not uncritical of his Jewish countrymen.

The first book is one of the most detailed surviving accounts of the fall of Constantinople. The following four books concern Mehmed's military campaigns, his conquest of the remaining portions of the Byzantine Empire, and his efforts to rebuild Constantinople, which had been largely depopulated, into a worthy capital for his empire. Kritovoulos, for instance, described how the Sultan forcibly resettled thousands of Christians, Jews, and Muslims to the city, launched ambitious building projects, appointed a Greek Patriarch in 1454, and attempted to revive the city's economic life. Throughout the History, Kritovoulos intersperses autobiographical details regarding his own role in the transition to Ottoman rule.

Kritovoulos rarely names his sources, but his work appears to have been based on spoken conversations in Turkish and Greek, as well as his own personal experience. Some scholars have criticized him as little more than a propagandist for the Sultan, whom he frequently praised. Deither Reinsch has argued that Kritovoulos did have sympathies for the Ottomans but was still a Byzantine patriot, a view that has been seconded by Hunter Koski. In general, Kritovoulos's accounts accord well with other sources from the time and remain among the most comprehensive for a period from which few historical narratives survive.

Kritovoulos of Imbros was the classicizing pen name of Michael Kritopoulos, a Byzantine scholar from the Aegean island of Imbros. Probably born between 1400 and 1410, Kritovoulos lived in Imbros and Constantinople during his childhood.