Niketas Choniates


Niketas or Nicetas Choniates, whose actual surname was Akominatos, was a Byzantine Greek historian and politician. He accompanied his brother Michael Akominatos to Constantinople from their birthplace Chonae. Nicetas wrote a history of the Eastern Roman Empire from 1118 to 1207.

Life

Nicetas Akominatos was born to wealthy parents around 1150 in Phrygia in the city of Chonae. Bishop Nicetas of Chonae baptized and named the infant; later he was called "Choniates" after his birthplace. When he was nine, his father dispatched him with his brother Michael to Constantinople to receive an education. Niketas' older brother greatly influenced him during the early stages of his life.
He initially secured a post in the civil service, and held important appointments under the Angelos emperors and was governor of the theme of Philippopolis at a critical period. After the sack of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade in 1204, he fled to Nicaea, where he settled at the court of the Nicaean emperor Theodore I Lascaris, and devoted himself to literature. He died in 1217.
His theological work, Thesaurus Orthodoxae Fidei, although extant in a complete form in manuscripts, has been published only in part. It is one of the chief authorities for the heresies and heretical writers of the 12th century.

Choniates in fiction

's novel Baudolino is set partly at Constantinople during the Crusader conquest. The imaginary hero, Baudolino, saves Niketas during the sacking of Constantinople, and then proceeds to confide his life story to him.
Niketas is a major character in Alan Gordon's murder mystery A Death in the Venetian Quarter.

Editions and translations

  • Imperii Graeci Historia, ed. Hieronymus Wolf, 1557, in Greek with parallel Latin translation.
  • Nicetæ Choniatæ Historia, ed. J.P. Migne reproduces Wolf's text and translation.
  • Nicetae Choniatae Historia, ed. Immanuel Bekker, Bonn, 1835, with Wolf's translation at the bottom of the page.
  • Nicetae Choniatae Historia, ed. Jan Louis van Dieten, Berlin, 1975.
  • O City of Byzantium: Annals of Niketas Choniates, trans. Harry J. Magoulias, 1984.