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Life
Niketas Acominatus was born sometime around or after 1150 in the city of Chonae in the byzantine province of Phrygia in Asia Minor to wealthy parents. He was named by Niketas the Bishop of Chonae who baptized him upon his birth. He was nicknamed "Choniates" by his birthplace, which hence later became far more popular than his given second name. When he was nine, his father dispatched him with his brother Michael to Constantinople for education. Niketas' older brother greatly influenced him during the early stages of his life.
He initially took up politics as a career and held several appointments under the Angelus emperors (amongst them that of Grand Logothete or chancellor) and was governor of the theme of Philippopolis at a critical period. After the capture of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade in 1204, he fled to Nicaea, where he settled at the court of the Nicaean emperor Theodoras Lascaris, and devoted himself to literature. He died c. 1215-16. His chief work is his History, in twenty-one books, of the period from 1118 to 1207.
In spite of its florid and rhetorical style, it is of considerable value as a record (on the whole impartial) of events of which he was either an eyewitness or had heard of first hand (though he should be balanced with the other Greek historian for this time, John Kinnamos). Its most interesting portion is the description of the capture of Constantinople, which should be read with Geoffroi de Villehardouin's and Paolo Rannusio's works on the same subject. The little treatise On the Statues destroyed by the Latins (perhaps, as we have it, altered by a later writer) is of special interest to the archaeologist. His dogmatic work (Thesaurus Orthodoxae Fidei), although it is extant in a complete form in manuscripts, has only been published in part. It is one of the chief authorities for the heresies and heretical writers of the 12th century.
Nicetas in fiction
Umberto Eco's novel Baudolino (Milan: Bompiani, 2000. English translation by William Weaver, New York: Harcourt 2002, ISBN 0-15-100690-3) is set partly at Constantinople during the Crusader conquest. The imaginary hero, Baudolino, is a friend and confidant of Nicetas. In the course of his novel, which is historical fiction, Niketas is not presented in the most flattering terms.
References
- Βασιλικοπούλου, Ἁγνή. «Ἀνδρόνικος ὁ Κομνηνὸς καὶ Ὀδυσσεύς», Ἐπετηρὶς Ἑταιρείας Βυζαντινῶν Σπουδῶν 37 (1969): 251-259. A seminal work on Choniates' use of Homer.
- Brand, Charles M. Byzantium Confronts the West, 1968 (ISBN 0-7512-0053-0).
- Choniates, Nicetas. The Sack of Constantinople
- Choniates, Nicetas. Excerpt from the Historia
- Harris, Jonathan. 'Distortion, divine providence and genre in Nicetas Choniates' account of the collapse of Byzantium 1180-1204', Journal of Medieval History, vol. 16 (2000) 19-31
- Magoulias, Harry J. (transl.). O City of Byzantium, Annals of Niketas Choniates, 1984 (ISBN 0-8143-1764-2).
- Nicetae Choniatae Historia, ed. Jan Louis van Dieten, Berlin, 1975.
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
- History of Niketas Choniates, Hierolimus Wolf, 1557
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