Ioannis Cantacuzeni Eximperatoris historiarum Libri IV
Graece et Latine

This three-volume work of Byzantine history by the ex-Emperor John VI Cantacuzene was published between 1828 and 1832.

Ioannes Cantacuzenus (Author), Ludwig Schopen (Edited and translated by)

9781108043700, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 16 February 2012

602 pages
21.6 x 14 x 3.4 cm, 0.76 kg

This three-volume work of Byzantine history by the ex-Emperor John VI Cantacuzene was edited, together with a Latin translation by the Jesuit scholar, Pontanus (1542–1626), by Ludwig Schopen (1799–1867), and published between 1828 and 1832. It covers part of the same period as the works by George Pachymeres and Nicephorus Gregoras (also reissued in this series) and the three accounts can usefully be compared. John Cantacuzene (c. 1292–1383) was unusual among Byzantine emperors in that he appears to have been reluctant to take the throne, and also in that, having been deposed in 1354, he was allowed to retire to a monastery, where he wrote this account of his times. The historian Edward Gibbon, among others, noted the self-justificatory tone of his memoir. Volume 1 includes the life of John by Pontanus, and covers the period from 1321 to the death of Andronikos III in 1341.

Iacobi Pontani praefatio
Iacobi Pontani vita Cantacuzeni
Iacobi Pontani explanatio dignitatum
Periocha libri i
Cantacuzeni praefatio
Cantacuzeni historarium libri i-ii.

Subject Areas: European history [HBJD]