This text is a verse chronicle detailing events in Epirus from 1375 to 1422. It is an important witness to the politics and culture of the region. The beginning and ending are lost, and the name “Chronicle of Tocco” has been given to the text because it focuses on the reign of Charles I Tocco, who is presented as a great hero. Charles I Tocco was a member of an Italian family settled in northern Greece since the middle of the fourteenth century. He ruled as Despot of Epiros from 1411 to 1429. The chronicle presents events in western Greece, particularly Ioannina and the islands of Zakynthos, Kephalonia, and Ithaka.The chronicle is written in fifteen- syllable “political” verse, of which 3,923 verses survive. The verse is in vernacular Greek and provides some insight into the fifteenth- century language. It sometimes uses Italian words and phrases.

Nothing is known of the author. He would seem to be contemporary with the events described. The text displays a local worldview in which events in Constantinople are distant. Kazhdan has suggested that the chronicle may have originally been written in Italian, given that the author views the Tocco family so favorably. Yet it is also possible that the Charles Tocco had succeeded in winning the favor of some Greeks.

Manuscripts, Editions, and Translations

Manuscripts

The main manuscript, Vaticanus Graecus 1881, is from the middle of the fifteenth century. This has corrections in the same hand as the main text, which led Schir o to argue it was the author's autograph. Given the poor shape of the text, Kazhdan finds this doubtful. Vaticanus Graecus 2241 is the work of Nicholas Sofianos in the 16th century, and is a copy of Vaticanus Graecus 1881.

Edition

Schiro, Giuseppe, ed. Cronaca dei Tocco di Cefalonia. Translated by Giuseppe Schiro. Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae 10. Rome : Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, 1975. This is the first edition of this text.

Sylvester Syropoulos was a patriarchal official and member of the Byzantine delegation to the Council of Florence in 1438– 1439 which enacted Union between the Catholic and Orthodox churches. Syropoulos wrote Memoires of his experiences at the council between 1443 and 1445. Laurent argues that a later version was written around 1461.

Syropoulos was born in Constantinople around 1400 into a well- off family and received an excellent education. He had a career as a patriarchal official and had the titles of Megas ekklesiareches and dikaiophylax. He died sometime after 1453. At the Council of Florence he signed the Decree of Union between the churches under intense pressure. Once he returned home, he repudiated the Union and supported the anti- Unionist cause.

The Memoirs serve a clear purpose in exonerating Syropoulos for his support of the Union after he had repudiated that position. The narrative explains why the delegates were made to accept the Union, even though it contradicted their principles, and implicitly makes a case for the rejection of the Council's Decree of Union. The Memoirs do not engage in theological or philosophical debates on the issues at hand in ecclesiastical Union. Rather they focus on personalities and politics. Syropoulos's eschewal of theology may be a strategy for distancing himself from the decisions of the council. Gill argues that the Memoirs are not historically reliable in comparison with the Acts of the Council, a position rejected by Geanakoplos. The level of detail in the narrative suggests that Syropoulos may have used a diary or other records of his experiences in writing his memoirs.

The text does not conform to the stylistic conventions of Greek historical writing. The opening of the text is lost, so it is impossible to know if it had an introduction that placed it in the tradition of classicizing historiography. The memoirs are written in a colloquial and vernacular style. It is organized into twelve sections (the first is lost), each entitled an apomnemoneumaton, a memoir. This term was used to title the sections of Xenophon's dialogues in defense of Socrates and of Diogenes Laertius's Lives of Philosophers. Syropoulos's choice to use this term for his writing may have been intended to align it more with biographical and apologetic texts than with historical writing.

John Xiphilinos was a monk and scholar in Constantinople active in the second half of the eleventh century. During the reign of Michael VII Doukas (1071– 1078), Xiphilinos made a summary of Books 36– 80 of Cassius Dio's history of Rome, covering the years 68 BCE to 229 CE.

In the midst of his summary of Dio, he pauses to identify himself as the nephew of the Patriarch John, writing during the reign of Michael Doukas. This refers to John Xiphilinos who was patriarch from 1064– 1075. John Xiphilinos the historian also wrote fifty- three homilies and a menologion dedicated to Alexios Komnenos (1081– 1118) that survives only in a Georgian translation. Although we do not have birth or death dates for the historian, we can tell that he was writing in the 1070s and 1080s.

Although Xiphilinos worked mostly by cutting Dio's text, his changes to the material were thoughtful and work to focus his history far more on the moral character of the actors in history, particularly emperors. His interest in a summary history of the early Roman emperors can be seen as part of an intellectual trend in the late eleventh century. Xiphilinos shortens Dio's text considerably, omitting many, but not all, speeches. He seems to have kept speeches and exposition that reflect on the proper behavior of emperors. Dio's authorial interjections about himself are retained in the summary, but Xiphilinos also added his own, clarifying which historian was speaking. Mallan argues that this reflects the trend in eleventh- century history writing for historians to comment on the action in their own voice. Xiphilinos kept nearly all of Dio's quotations from Homer and ancient drama, and his own additions often work to display his classical erudition. His version of Dio is less interested in constitutional issues than in presenting models of good and bad behavior. Xiphilinos adjusts the organizational structure of Dio's history to be a series of portraits of individual emperors, rather than Dio's somewhat more annalistic style. This is in keeping with the trend in Byzantine history writing to treat the past as a series of biographies of emperors.

This text, entitled Basileiai, “Emperors,” is found in one eleventh- century manuscript, Codex Lipsiens Graecus 16. It is a history covering 813– 886 in roughly 100 pages. The history has one book on each emperor: Leo V (813– 820), Michael II (820– 829), Theophilos (829– 842), and Michael III (843– 867). The book on Michael III is considerably longer than the others, and includes a cursory account of the reign of Basil I (867– 886).

The preface to the Genesios text says that it was written at the behest of Constantine VII, who requested an account of events not yet chronicled, beginning with the reign of Leo V (i.e., since the end of the Chronicle of Theophanes). Constantine VII also commissioned the first two texts of the collection known as Theophanes Continuatus (Books I– IV/ Text I and Book V/ Text II/ Vita Basilii). Constantine VII presumably commissioned histories of this period to help justify the actions of his grandfather Basil I in his ascension to the throne through the murder of Michael III.

The Genesios text contains much of the same information as the first part of Theophanes Continuatus (Books I– IV/ Text I). Careful comparison of the two texts has shown that one did not copy the other, but rather that they both used a common source – which seems to have been a dossier of documents rather than a set text. Most scholars now think that Constantine VII first gave the dossier of sources to the author of Genesios, but was dissatisfied with the resulting history. Constantine then gave the same dossier to the author of Books I– IV of “Theophanes Continuatus,” who created a history that was more favorable to Constantine's family. In addition to being less favorable to Constantine VII's family, Genesios is simply not as well- written as Books I– IV, which leads to the theory that Constantine wanted his project to be re-done.

The Demonstrations of Histories narrates the rise of the Ottoman Empire in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, until roughly the mid- 1460s, and the concurrent decline of the Byzantine Empire. Taking Herodotos as his structural model, Chalkokondyles presents detailed portraits of the (pre) histories and cultures of the various ethnic groups of the medieval world, particularly the Greeks and the Ottomans but also peoples in regions as geographically distant as England and India. Chalkokondyles's central narrative is the expansion of the Ottomans and the deeds of their rulers, of whom Mehmed II receives the most comprehensive treatment.

The Demonstrations is organized into ten Books, although the fact that Book 10 ends in mid- sentence, and occasional lacunae and grammatical errors throughout the work, have led historians to believe the history was left unfinished and unrevised. It contains three or four interpolations by another author, possibly Georgios Amiroutzes.

The Demonstrations is not openly hostile to Islam or the Ottomans, unlike some previous histories, such as that by Doukas. Instead, Chalkokondyles takes the part of a neutral observer toward the Christian and Muslim worlds. Jonathan Harris has argued that rather than explaining the fall of

Constantinople as divine punishment for Byzantine sins or a product of the mysterious workings of fate like other historians of his day, Chalkokondyles suggested that Turkish virtue played an important role in the conquests he describes. The Demonstrations is also notable in that it casts the Byzantines as “Greeks” rather than Romans. Further, Chalkokondyles does not display any particular interest in Christianity or ecclesiastical affairs. Some scholars have attributed this choice of topics to his Neoplatonist training. Chalkokondyles's rather obscure writing style imitates that of Thucydides.

Scholars now believe that Chalkokondyles began researching and writing the Demonstrations sometime in the 1450s and stopped in the mid- 1460s. Chalkokondyles seems to have relied primarily on Greek and Turkish sources, though he may also have used western sources as well. Most of his information was likely passed along orally, although he claims in one place that he had access to Ottoman budget records. Chalkokondyles almost never explicitly names his sources, however, so they remain largely obscure.

The Capture of Thessaloniki is a text describing the sack of Thessaloniki by Leo of Tripoli in 904, surviving in one manuscript of the fifteenth century and several later ones. The text takes the form of a long letter ostensibly written by John Kaminiates to his friend, Gregory of Cappadocia, who asked for an account of the conquest of Thessaloniki and the subsequent treatment of the captives. John Kaminiates identifies himself as a priest of the imperial palace at Thessaloniki, holding the ecclesiastical dignity of kouboukleisios. He describes his father as an exarch of Greece.

The text does not conform to many of the conventions of Byzantine historical writing. It is framed, in its opening and closing, as a letter responding to a friend's request for information. Within the letter's frame, the text includes an encomium to Thessaloniki, a lament on the sins of citizens that provoked misfortune, and first- person descriptions of the attack on the city, the enslavement of much of the population, the travails of the prisoners on the voyage to Crete, and their subsequent dispersal. In narrating personal experiences of deep horror, the text does not conform to the dispassionate narration normal for classicizing history.

Alexander Kazhdan argued, largely on the basis of perceived anachronisms, that the text was a fifteenth- century composition masquerading as a tenthcentury text, written in response to the Ottoman siege of Thessaloniki in 1430, and questioned the historicity of Leo of Tripoli's attack. Other scholars think that the extant text is a reworked or modified version of a tenth- century original. Ioannis Tsaras argued for a tenth- century time of composition. David Frendo set the text in a tenth- century religious and literary milieu and undercut a number of Kazhdan's arguments from anachronism. Paolo Odorico offers additional arguments for accepting a tenth century date, pointing out the lack of sufficient motivation for a forgery, and explaining how Kaminates's text fits within tenth- century culture and politics.

Two similar chronicles have been associated with the name of Theodore Skoutariotes: the Chronika Parekbolaia and the Synopsis Chronike. The Synopsis Lambros is a third text that has much in common with the Synopsis Chronike. Skoutariotes had a prominent ecclesiastical career under Michael VIII Palaiologos (1259– 1282) and was bishop of Kyzikos from 1277 to 1283. He was deposed by Andronikos II (1282– 1328) because he supported Michael VIII's efforts at union between the Catholic and Orthodox churches. Skoutariotes owned a rich library and is known from the notes in his collection of manuscripts.

Chronika Parekbolaia

This text runs from Adam to the death of Alexios Komnenos in 1118. It is found in Vaticanus Graecus 1889 and is known as the Chronika Parekbolaia from its title and first word of its subtitle: Chronika – Parekbolaia syntetm ē mena apo tou Adam achri kai tēs basileias tou Alexiou tou Komnenou diexionta osoi te basileis kai osoi patriarchai gegonasin (Chronology: Excerpts hewn together recounting how many emperors and patriarchs there were from Adam until Alexios Komnenos). A comparison of the handwriting of the chronicle with other annotations known to have been made by Skoutariotes in Parisinus Graecus 1741, indicates that the text in Vaticanus Graecus 1889 was written by Skoutariotes himself. Raimondo Tocci considers Skoutariotes to have been the author/ compiler of the chronicle and believes that the Chronika Parekbolaia was an initial draft of the Synopsis Chronike. Tocci dates the composition of Chronika Parekbolaia to between 1270 and 1280. The sources seem to have been similar, but perhaps not identical, to those used by Zonaras, Manasses, and Glykas. Zafeiris offers a detailed analysis of potential sources.

Synopsis Chronike

The text known as the Synopsis Chronike, “Summary Chronicle,” is found in Marcianus Graecus 407, a manuscript dated to the 1340s. It was first published by Constantine Sathas, and is sometimes called the “Synopsis Sathas.” This chronicle runs from Adam through 1261. It briefly discusses reigns from Adam through Nikephoros Botaneiates (1078– 1081). Then from Alexios I (1081– 1118) to Michael VIII Palaiologos's reconquest of Constantinople in 1261, it provides a detailed exposition of politics.

The text known as the Scriptor Incertus de Leone Armenio is a brief, anonymous fragment of a history about the reigns of Michael I (811– 813) and Leo V (813– 820). The author is hostile to Leo V and his iconoclastic policies, but favorable to Patriarch Nikephoros.

Markopoulos suggests a date of composition between 820 and 829, but Ševčenko prefers a narrower window of 820– 821. Sénina argues that it was written between 844 and 847 by someone close to the Rhangabe family. While scholars once thought that the same author wrote both the Scriptor Incertus and the Chronicle of 811, that view is no longer generally accepted.

Manuscripts, Editions, and Translations

Manuscript

The only extant manuscript is Codex Parisinus Graecus 1711, dated 1013. This codex is also one of major exemplars of George Synkellos.

Editions

Iadevaia, Francesca, ed. Scriptor incertus: testo critico, traduzione e note. Messina : Sfameni, 1997.

Forthcoming: Markopoulos, Athanasios, ed. Scriptor I ncertus de Leone Armenio. Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae : Series Berolinensis.

Publication History

The text was first published by Fran ç ois Combefis with a translation by Jacques Goar for the Paris Corpus in 1655. The Scriptor Incertus was published in the Bonn Corpus in 1842, with Goar's translation. In 1863 the Patrologia Graeca reprinted the work of Combefis and Goar.

Translation

Italian

Iadevaia, Francesca, ed. Scriptor I ncertus: testo critico, traduzione e note. Messina : Sfameni, 1997.

Starting Points

Stephenson, Paul. “ About the Emperor Nikephoros and How He Leaves His Bones in Bulgaria: A Context for the Controversial Chronicle of 811.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 60 (2006): 87 – 109.

Kazhdan, Alexander, Lee F. Sherry, and Christine Angelidi. A History of Byzantine Literature, 650– 850. Athens : National Hellenic Research Foundation Institute for Byzantine Research, 1999 ; 208 – 211.

FURTHER READING

Most scholarship has focused on whether this was originally part of the same text as the Chronicle of 811.

Different Texts

Kazhdan, Alexander, and Lee Francis Sherry. “ Some Notes on the Scriptor Incertus de Leone Armenio.” Byzantinoslavica 58 (1997): 110 – 12.

The history of Nikephoros Bryennios focuses on military events of the 1070s and the careers of Romanos Diogenes, Caesar John Doukas, Nikephoros Bryennios the Elder, and especially the young Alexios Komnenos. The manuscript is no longer extant, and the text is known from a seventeenth- century transcription and a fragment.

Nikephoros Bryennios was a significant political and literary figure of the early twelfth century. He was married to Anna Komnene, the daughter of the emperor Alexios I Komnenos (1081– 1118). The Bryennios family, based in Adrianople, had made a bid for imperial power immediately prior to Alexios's accession. Nikephoros's grandfather, Nikephoros Bryennios the elder, served as dux of Bulgaria and governor of Dyrrachium in the 1070s. In 1077, he rebelled against Michael VII (1071– 1078), the same year that Nikephoros Botaneiates rebelled in the eastern provinces. Botaneiates succeeded in gaining control of Constantinople and sent his general, Alexios Komnenos, to defeat Bryennios. Alexios was successful in capturing Bryennios, who was then blinded. Botaneiates, however, allowed Bryennios to keep all of his property and gave him new titles so that the Bryennios family remained a significant power in Thrace. The marriage of the younger Nikephoros to Anna around the year 1097 can be seen as an effort to reconcile the grand families of the twelfth- century aristocracy to Alexios's rule.

At the time of Alexios's death, there may have been an unsuccessful movement to have Nikephoros become emperor instead of John II (1118– 1140), although it is difficult to tell how serious these efforts were. Niketas Choniates attributes the failure of this movement to Nikephoros's passivity. The strength of Choniates's writing is such that Nikephoros has gone down in history as a weakling because he chose not to murder his brother- in- law. Regardless of what happened, Nikephoros retained an honored position in John's court and campaigned with John. Nikephoros died after returning from John's campaign to Antioch in 1137.

Nikephoros's history describes the rise of Alexios Komnenos to imperial power. In the preface Nikephoros says that he writes in response to the request of his mother- in- law, Eirene Doukaina, who wanted someone to write the history of Alexios.

Nikephoros was an early ninth- century scholar credited with writing two historical texts: the Istoria Syntomos (also known as the Breviarium, or Short H istory) and the Chronographikon Syntomon. He was Patriarch from 806– 815. Nikephoros also wrote letters and several treatises in defense of icon veneration.

Nikephoros was born in Constantinople in 757 or 758. His father Theodore was an asekretis, or imperial secretary, who was exiled in the 760s for his refusal to support iconoclasm. Theodore was recalled to the palace, but later exiled a second time. Nikephoros began his career as an imperial secretary, serving under the secretary Tarasios, who later became patriarch (784– 806). After the death of Tarasios, Nikephoros was elected patriarch and moved through the ecclesiastical ranks within a week. In 814, Nikephoros objected to Emperor Leo V's (813– 820) efforts to remove icons from public places. As a result, Nikephoros was deposed and retired to a monastery before dying in 828. He is regarded as a saint of the Orthodox Church.

Istoria Syntomos

The Istoria Syntomos is a brief account of Roman history from the accession of Phokas in 602 until the marriage of Leo VI to Irene in 769. This history appears to have been conceived as a continuation of that of Theophylact Simocatta. It is compiled in two parts: the first part spans the years 602 to 641, while the second resumes not immediately after, but rather in 668. The account then continues through 769.

Nikephoros provides a brief overview of military affairs (largely wars against the Persians and Arabs) as well as the imperial politics and religious policies of Constantinople. The policies of the iconoclast emperors are described unfavorably, although Nikephoros is less polemical in his treatment of them than is Theophanes. Nikephoros's coverage of the emperors is quite uneven. Emperor Phokas (602– 610) receives only one paragraph that mostly recounts the narrative of Heraclius's (610– 641) rebellion.

The tenth- century manuscript of the Paschal Chronicle, Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1941, contains excerpts of another text that are labeled as being from the Great Chronographer, the Megas Chronographos. The extracts concern natural and political disasters from the fifth to eighth centuries.

Some scholars have speculated that the work of the Great Chronographer was the common source for the information in the Chronicle of Theophanes and the Short History of Patriarch Nikephoros. It was supposed that this historian worked in the eighth century during the reigns of Constantine V or Leo IV. Further research, however, has shown fairly conclusively that the Great Chronographer drew some of his material from Theophanes and Nikephoros, rather than the other way around. The work of the Megas Chronographos is now generally thought to be a compilation of the midninth century.

Manuscripts, Editions, and Translations

Manuscript

Megas Chronographos is in the tenth- century manuscript Vaticanus Graecus 1941.

Editions

Schreiner, Peter. Die Byzantinischen Kleinchroniken. Vienna : Ö sterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1975.

Cramer, John Anthony Anecdota Graeca e Codd. Manuscriptis Bibliothecae Regiae Parisiensis. Oxford : E Typographeo Academico, 1839.

Translation

Whitby, Michael and Mary Whitby, trans. Chronicon Paschale 284– 628 AD. Liverpool : Liverpool University Press, 1989. Appendix II provides a discussion and translation of the excerpts from the Megas Chronographos.

This text is entitled “Summary Exposition of History from Adam Until Now, by the Orthodox and Christian Peter of Alexandria.” We do not know anything else about Peter. The text is seventeen pages long in the modern edition and goes from Creation to Leo VI (886).

This text contains a brief listing of the times between the births of biblical patriarchs, lists of peoples found in various regions of the world, the peoples descended from the sons of Noah, events that took place in northern and eastern parts of the world, reckonings of the number of years between major biblical events, years of biblical judges, kings and prophets, lists of kings of Egypt, lists of emperors of Rome, and emperors of New Rome up to Leo VI.

Manuscripts, Editions, and Translations

Manuscripts

The text survives in a manuscript stylistically dated to the tenth century: Coislinianus 229, which was brought from France to Moscow Imperial University in the early nineteenth century. A second manuscript of the text was destroyed in Dresden during the Second World War. The edition is based on the Moscow manuscript.

Edition

Samodurova, Zinaida., ed. “ Khronika Petra Aleksandrii skogo.” Vizantiiskii vremennik 18 (1961): 180– 97.

Starting Points

Hunger, Herbert. Die hochsprachliche profane Literatur der Byzantiner: Philosophie, Rhetorik, Epistolographie, Geschichtsschreibung, Geographie. vol. 1. Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft, 12.5. Munich : Beck, 1978, 360.

Külzer, Andreas. “ Die Anfänge der Geschichte: zur Darstellung des ‘Biblischen Zeitalters’ in der byzantinischen Chronistik.” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 93, no. 1 (2000): 138 – 56.