ANNO DOMINI MCCXX MICHAEL ACOMINATUS CHONIATA ATHENIENSIS ARCHIEPISCOPUS
NOTICE. LIFE, DEEDS, AND WRITINGS OF MICHAEL CHONIATES.
The history of Greece throughout the Middle Ages remained long buried in darkness, until the illustrious Ducange, in the seventeenth century—and he almost alone—shed some light upon it. In more recent times, however, it has received useful service from Villemain, Fallmerayer, Tafel, Zinkeisen, Paparrigopoulos, and especially Buchon, who was snatched away by a premature death from studies of this kind. So thus, day has followed night, and it will be worth the effort to make mention of men famous for their genius or virtue, as far as the testimony of contemporaries or other sources may permit. For we shall judge better of the character and genius of any people when we have the customs and manner of action of an individual before our eyes. Therefore, I judge that I shall be doing something worthwhile if I speak of one of the most noble Greeks of the Middle Ages, well aware that this little work of mine is hardly worthy of the authority of such great men as I have named. In this, however, I take it upon myself to say that the book which I offer to the cultivators of letters would have achieved something greater if it had fallen to my lot to examine with my own eyes the manuscript codices of Michael Choniates in the Florentine and Parisian libraries. But at that time (for why should I blush to say what I had in common with more learned men?) I did not even know the name of this author. In our own time, indeed, Tafel, professor at the University of Tübingen, has served the republic of letters excellently with a work entitled *Dissertatio de Thessalonica ejusque agro*, which we have converted for our own use, as well as many other works that pertain to this subject.
§ I. The various fortunes of Athens during the Middle Ages up to the end of the XII century.
Athens, the Cecropian city, which Theseus had established as the metropolis of Attica, Solon as the lawgiver of the ancient world, and Themistocles as the mistress of the Greek seas; which, from the ruins it had suffered from the Persian War, had risen again more splendidly through the labor of Pericles and his associates; whose favor, after the times of Lysander and the victorious Philip, the great son of the latter did not blush to court; whom later masters from Macedonia, whom Ptolemy, by voluntarily offered freedom and splendid buildings, honored; whose stubborn citizens the Roman conqueror, having regard for their ancestral glory, spared; to whom the emperors Hadrian and Julian, both educated at Athens, had restored a great part of its former glory; which, furthermore, in the reign of Gallienus, with Dexippus as leader, had repelled the invasion of the Goths, and which in the time of Alaric had afforded a convenient refuge to the Byzantine fleets; which had shone among the cities of the Orient as a glory of sounder learning and purer morals, until Justinian ordered the schools of the philosophers to be closed in the city of Pallas—which, steeped and nourished in paganism, resisted the introducers of Christianity longer than the other cities of Greece: that ancient Athens, which for twenty centuries had preserved through varying fortune, if not power and freedom, at least its particular character and the strength of the nation, had succumbed in the time of the illustrious Justinian to the invasions of the Slavs, who were raging everywhere with iron and fire. And indeed, as in the time of the Persians, a thousand years before, the Athenians sought refuge against the fury of the enemy on the neighboring island of Salamis, but with varying outcome. For then, upon the sea
A they saw the primary cause of their victory, liberty, and civilization; later, however, this same small island provided a place of exile for four hundred years, during which the Byzantine custodians of the Acropolis did not prevent the Slavs from turning Attica into a desert, and Athens into an abomination of desolation. While the Athenians were dwelling in the city of Ampelacia in Salamis, they suffered most grievous things: the wrath of the emperor, and then anathema, because together with the islands of the Aegean Sea, they had dared to resist the Iconoclast emperors of the Isaurian house. Added to this is the fact that they were vexed in a wondrous way by diseases, famine, pirates, and subterranean fires, which foully ravaged the fields in the land of Attica. Afterward, when the remnants of the exiled Athenians, along with other colonists of the empire, returned to seek their deserted homeland in order to build new houses from the ruins, their fewness could not restore the city to the extent and splendor that it had possessed around the Acropolis. The Athenians returning to their own (in the 10th and early 11th centuries) suffered harsh things from the rapacious Bulgars, who were ravaging all of Attica and indeed all of Greece with iron and fire. In those times, the year 1019 shines forth for a while in the Attic Annals, when the Emperor Basil II, surnamed Bulgaroctonos (Bulgar-Slayer), having defeated his enemies at Achrida, offered most splendid gifts to the church of the Mother of God in Athens.
The northern race of the Uzes, which in the year 1065, under Constantine X Ducas, invaded Macedonia and northern Greece—whether it also ravaged Attica, there is deep silence in Joannes Scylitzes Curopalates. Be that as it may, the Byzantine municipality of Athens seems to have presented a sad face in the 11th and 12th centuries, and with greater justice than in the time of Arcadius, it seems to have represented a "dead carcass that was once alive." See Synesius, Ep. 135. Cf. Zygomalas and M. Crusius, *Turco-Graecia*.
When the golden fleece (for thus I would call Athens) seemed, at the time of the Crusaders, a new race of Argonauts, likely to succumb—not to be restored by the Byzantine dynasts, but rather to be subjugated by the iron of the Asian barbarians—in the very city of Athens we find a man who, although an outsider, deserved so well of Athens that, among the noteworthy Athenians of the Middle Ages, together with the Empress Irene, who was herself also from the foreign family of the Arcanidas, he is worthy to occupy a preeminent place; we speak of Michael Choniates, the archbishop.
II. The childhood of Michael and his brother in Chonae, and their deeds in Constantinople.
Just as the brothers Michael and Nicetas Acominatus, while they lived, were joined by a mutual piety, such as ought to exist between master and disciple, and by intellectual communion, so too, by bringing each other’s lives and studies to light, they seem to be united by this new bond, so that in this our treatise on Michael we cannot pass over the life of Nicetas in silence, inasmuch as he mentions his brother with well-deserved praise in his work on the events that occurred after Constantinople was captured by the Latins, and who, himself surviving, honored his deceased brother with due eulogies in a biography and panegyric.
Michael Acominatus was born around the fortieth year of the 12th century at the beginning of the reign of Manuel Comnenus in the city of Chonis or Colossae in Phrygia, which his brother Nicetas (Hist. ed. Par. p. 115) calls rich in wealth and populous. We do not doubt that he used a wealthy father. For who else would have sent his sons to Byzantium to be educated in the liberal arts? By what means, then, could they have been elevated to the dignities of the empire unless money was paid to the corruptible court? They were not lacking in a certain splendor of kinship, since Nicetas calls a certain cleric Choniates, whose useful service in the war against the Turks the Emperor Manuel had experienced, his cousin, and he used the metropolitan of the city as his spiritual father.
We have only a few facts discovered about the early youth of Michael, and these are set forth in the lamentation recorded in memory of the deceased brother in these words: "My father, who loved letters no less than his own children, when I was an adolescent who had progressed sufficiently in grammar and poetics, brought me from Asia to Byzantium and handed me over to be trained by masters of the liberal arts and philosophy." Among these masters were Joannes and Isaac Tzetzes, whose lives fall between 1130 and 1160. Michael says that his brother Nicetas, a full brother by both parents, was handed over to him by his father when he was nine years old, under the condition that he should be in the place of a foster-father, teacher, and indeed father to him. Michael himself affirms that he fulfilled that threefold duty with a piety greater than befits a brother. A contest of piety and grateful spirit existed between the brothers, though in such a way that Michael, having become Archbishop of Athens, asserts out of his own modesty that he had become a debtor for the many benefits conferred upon him by his brother, who had been raised to the highest dignities. There is also a place where Michael confesses himself inferior to his brother in terms of mental gifts, where he makes mention of their common studies. For while he himself directed his mind to the *mathemata*, Nicetas, even as a boy, had been devoted to the practice and study of greater things, and had arrived at such a point that he had flown away with an bolder flight into the regions of the *theorematon*, that is, he had meditated by his own power.
[index: entries preserved]
A At the time when Nicetas, under the title of imperial secretary, under Manuel Comnenus before the year 1180, or during the reign of Alexius II up to the year 1183, entered into the administration of affairs—where he was later promoted to the highest honors—it fell to Michael, who experienced less prosperous fortune, to become merely the Archbishop of Athens. But, passing over the glory of the Attic name, the Archbishop of Athens was, from the 11th century, among the most prominent of the metropolitans of the diocese of Illyricum; and indeed ten bishops—of Aulon in Phocis, Daulia and Coronea in Boeotia, Oreus, Euripus, Porthmus, Carystus in Euboea, and the islands of Scyrus, Andrus, and Syra—were subject to him as suffragans. (Cf. Le Quien, *Oriens Christianus* II, p. 167 sqq.).
§ III. Michael, Archbishop of Athens.—Byzantium changes its state of affairs; the abolition of laws throughout Greece. Michael, if he asserts that he performed priestly duties for thirty years, seems to have begun his ministry toward the end of the 12th century (1175) under Patriarch Chariton. Casimir Oudin (*Comment. de scriptor. eccles.*, p. 1536 and 1712) mentions two Athenian metropolitans in the 10th century designated by the name of Michael, of whom he assigns the first to the year 1170 and makes him a contemporary of Constantine Manasses and Simeon Metaphrastes; Harles is also bound by this error (*Fabricii Bibl. Gr. ed. nov.* XI, p. 188, note), although he properly ascribes the works attributed by Oudin to the elder Michael to our Michael Acominatus. Among these works you have the oration delivered at Athens on the day of his installation, the introductory words of which alone we read in Bandini (*Epist. de Michaele Acominato*), "Τὸν μὲν δὴ προσεύχοντα," and the final ones: "Ἵνα καὶ αὐτοὶ ναὸς Θεοῦ εἶμεν ἐν αὐτῷ Χριστῷ," etc. Michael, although educated in the ancient manner, in this divine phrase, as in all other things which he left in writing, does not lose sight of orthodoxy, which constitutes the supreme praise of any Greek in place of ancient *kalokagathia*. For if the Periclean monuments inspired our Michael, nourished by Attic arts and letters in Athens, which abounded in temples and statues, he, as a Christian and a priest, also experienced the flames of a divine ether, as it were. Before him, St. Paul had announced to the Athenians on the Areopagus peace and God in Christ manifested in the temple of the Unknown God; and there, too, Dionysius the Areopagite is remembered as the first bishop, being also a Greek martyr, whom Gaul also venerated as its apostle and patron at the time when she herself sent the apostles of the new Gospel throughout the whole world, especially into that region from which, besides Christianity, a very ancient tradition of civil liberty had come to her—I mean into Greece (1).
Michael celebrates Athens in a sacred oration delivered for the martyr Leonides and his companions; he mentions the heroic age of that same city in an address to the praetor Demetrius Drimetes, who was returning to Athens: *Τὸν Θησέα φασὶν ἐκεῖνον*. The death of Eustathius, later Archbishop of Thessalonica, the famous interpreter of the poems of Homer, whom he used very familiarly, provided an occasion for both profane and Christian meditations; he honored his memory with a funeral oration, of which the beginning is: *"Ω στυγνὸς αἰών, ὦ τλήμων ἡμεῖς γενεά,"* and the end *καὶ λατρεύοντες*. These few words do not allow us to determine the value of the monody; but it will be permissible to accuse this century and our own generation of negligence, for which Tafelius alone provided a remedy, who in his dissertation *De Thessalonica ejusque agro* also brought the monody on Eustathius into the public domain.
The death of Eustathius of Thessalonica (a. 1198) preceded by six years the catastrophe which gave Michael the occasion to show himself to be not only a good shepherd of the sheep in time of peace, but one who, when necessity pressed, might bravely repel the Argolic wolf from the flock, even though he was soon forced to yield to the wild beasts of the West. And indeed, in this place, it must be said that the style of the Acominati was more metaphorical than is just (2). To give greater credence to this matter, let us repeat the words of Nicetas which he uses in the Life of his brother Michael, noting beforehand the usurpation of the Byzantine Empire by Alexius III Angelus (a. 1195), which eight years later led to the expedition of the Latins and Gauls toward Constantinople and, after the re-establishment of the blinded Isaac with his son Alexius IV and the impotent rule of Alexius V Ducas Murzuphlus, the second capture of Constantinople by the Franks (12 Apr. 1204) and the foundation of the Latin Empire followed. The last five books of the *History* of Nicetas Acominatus (XVII-XXI) and the *Annals* of J. Villehardouin, written in French, hold great authority concerning these events. Nicetas indeed progresses as far as the year 1206, although at the end of book XIX he says: *Οὐκ ἂν ἀσαίμην τὰ βαρβάρων αὐτὸς, οὐδ᾽ ἐσοίμην παραπέμπων τοῖς ἔπειτα πράξεις πολεμικὰς, ἐν αἷς μὴ νικῶσιν Ἕλληνες. Οἱ γὰρ βάρβαροι κατὰ τὸν ἐμπρήσαντα τὸν ἐν Ἐφέσῳ ναὸν τῆς Ἀρτέμιδος οἰχέσθωσαν ἄιστοί τε καὶ ἄπυστοι, μηδὲ προσρήματος γοῦν τινος, ὑφ᾽ ἡμῶν ἀξιούμενοι, ἕως οὗ παρέλθοι ἡ ἀνομία κἀπὶ τοῖς δούλοις αὐτοῦ*. B C D
αὐτοῦ*.» Far be it from me to chant the exploits of the Barbarians, or to hand down to the memory of posterity those wars in which the Greeks are not the victors. Rather, let them, like the man who burned the temple of Diana at Ephesus, perish unknown and obscure; nor let any of us deign to mention them with a single word, until iniquity has passed away and God has mercifully looked upon His servants. Nicetas relates more fully the things which he himself suffered after Constantinople was captured, and he recounts that he rescued a certain maiden from the hands of some barbarian by asserting that she was his wife; Michael A repeats the same story, not without praises greater than is just, since he prefers his brother to Hercules and Theseus, to Abraham, Isaac, and Levi, to Simeon, David, and Daniel; nay, he even compares him to Christ, who died for the Church, His bride.
After Nicetas has reported the abominable things of which he was a witness during the capture of Constantinople, he speaks of the provinces conquered by the Latins and distributed among the leaders of the army. He then proceeds to the Kingdom of Thessalonica, handed over to Boniface of Montferrat (the Marquis Boniface of Montferrat) under feudal conditions, and to the things which he himself attempted to do against Greece. For there, with matters already long in turmoil, helped by the end of the reign of Alexius III, Greek usurpers had risen in many cities who defended their liberty against the Franks no less obstinately than against the Greek emperor. Among these, in Aetolia and southern Epirus around Nicopolis and Epidamnus, a certain bastard born of the Ducas family was reigning; a certain Greek duke [was reigning] in the mountains of Dolopia; in Messenia, Theodore Melissenus of the Comnenian line; in Laconia, Leo Chamaretus [was ruling] no less tyrannically than Nabis himself was raging in Argolis, and Leo Sgurus in Corinth. We introduce, from his history (Hist., ed. Paris, p. 390 sqq.), the account where Nicetas narrates more fully his battles with the Athenians under Michael Acominatus and with the Franks under the Marquis of Montferrat.
§ 4. Michael enters into conflict with Leo Sgurus, as related by his brother Nicetas.
« Leo Sgurus, born in Nauplia, held the leadership of the populace for some time by force rather than by their will, B a position received from his father, in whose imitation he ruled not without bloodshed. But, emboldened by the confusion of affairs and in turbulent times, he swelled up like a torrent after heavy rains and storms, and from small he grew great. He took Argos by deceit, Corinth by robbery: and advancing step by step, he attacked Athens itself, having brought his warships and army across the Isthmus, in the hope that he would easily take the citadel, or that by bringing up siege engines he would easily terrify the defenseless garrison. However, he was agitating in his mind and attempting in vain those things which could not be brought to a conclusion. For the chief pastor of Athens, Michael Choniates, my brother (my brother, I say: for I count his kinship an honor to me, and I rejoice that I am related to him by blood, although I am very far removed from his virtue and eloquence), when he understood that it was his duty to aid the state with counsel and prayers, after seeing Sgurus’ camp, decided to deal piously with him, in order to see if he could turn away a man—especially one not unknown, but with whom he had often spoken. And so, as if from a higher vantage point in the city, he discharges arrows of admonition, and with a pastoral sling he casts divine words. C Sometimes he even tries to strike down his spirit with spiritual threats, as if with battering rams. For it did not befit him who is a Christian and professes his name among the Romans to attack the Romans in war, unless perhaps he acts as a Christian only with his lips, so that he is a Roman only by dress and language, while in his heart he is most remote from Christians. But what cause does he have for attacking Athens? For perhaps he could find some fault with the Argives due to their proximity, by which their conquest might be excused, just as he had recently objected to the Corinthians regarding the frequent ambushes of their archbishop, whence he had never refused to have the Roman army hasten to Nauplia and drive away hostile ships, and [the Roman army] is more affected by the sweetness of his speech than by the sweetness of honey and desires to enjoy it always, yet here he had numbered the archbishop himself among the number of his spiritual children. And using arms of this kind, Michael prayed that he would depart from there. But Sgurus, pretending not without reason that he was able to use force, and bidding him observe the times which counseled everyone to act according to his strength, since the prince of all cities was in greatest affliction, finally demanded that a certain youth be handed over to him for slaughter. Even though another might have handed him over most willingly, even if he had not asked, as if he were a unique seed and the author of ruin to many—a man accustomed to plotting the worst possible things against his country by both hand and counsel—he [Michael] held this manifest persecutor of the fatherland and violator and plotter against the spiritual nursing Church (the violent efforts of whom he had himself often experienced) in the number of those whom he should love evangelically, and neglecting Sgurus, he protected the suppliant. But when he could not appease that lion D with these wise admonitions, and [seeing him], like an adder, willfully stopping his ears and hurling all kinds of weapons into the citadel, having prayed to God that He might turn all calamity upon the wicked man and author of burgeoning evils, he himself also stations engines upon the walls, and places archers and slingers there. For what would he not have accomplished to repel the enemy, a man polished in every doctrine of sacred and profane literature and endowed with the greatest eloquence? Who, had he wished, could have rained fire upon the reckless, or sent wasps into the army, or done something else to them...
A that was pernicious by divine intervention? For God would not have hesitated, if only he had lifted his hands or opened his lips to call upon the divine. But he was led away from such thoughts, much less from such deeds, by the one who restrained the sons of thunder, lest they bring down fire from heaven, when he said: “Do you not know of what spirit you are?”
B Sgurus, however, having despaired of victory—for his adversary was so skilled at drawing up battle lines, so eloquent, and endowed with such incomparable virtue—and having understood that the assault on the cliffs of the citadel was in vain, stirred up his wrath against that city whose citadel he could not storm; he burns the villas and seizes the flocks and herds. And after some days, having ended the siege, he attacks Thebes; and having captured it in the first assault, he presses on further, and having overcome the pass of Thermopylae, he descends through Mount Oeta and joins himself to the Emperor Alexios. For the latter, having been uprooted from the northern regions and driven out of the imperial city, had arrived at the Thessalian Tempe. And he takes as his wife Eudocia, the daughter of the former, who had previously been married to Stephen, the leader of the Triballi, by whom she was repudiated, and having returned to Byzantium, she had after the capture and dereliction of the city married Alexios Ducas, by the surname Murzuphlos, who was the last to invade the Roman Empire. But not even he kept her until old age. For Eudocia’s father, Alexios, I know not by what impulse, had him seized by guile and blinded, a man most hostile to a wandering vagabond, and most hateful to one who had been deposed from power and suffered a like calamity. And not long after his blinding, Ducas was seized by the Latins and brought back to Byzantium, and having been brought to judgment because his master and emperor had been seized and hanged by a noose, he argued in his defense that the other had been a traitor to his country and had paid the penalties worthy of his crime. And that he had not done this alone, but that the rest of his kinsmen had as well. But they, having spurned his speech, and clearly rejecting what he wished to add, condemned the man to death by a new and most violent form of punishment. For they led him to an extremely high column that stands in the Taurus and threw him off. He, indeed, fell for some time on his feet, then turned headlong and crashed to the ground, and perished miserably.
C Sgurus, however, with Eudocia taken, since the marquis was about to cross into Greece, as I said a little before, was carefully guarding the narrows of Thermopylae and the high mountain looming over them, and the other places that block the entrance to Greece. But nonetheless, he took possession of those places with the greatest ease because of the sloth of our men and their degenerate and abject spirits, who were always willing to honor the more powerful; and this, although he brought no great army, nor one that was in agreement, but one that was for the most part discordant, inasmuch as it had been collected from many cities. And when he invaded Boeotia itself, he was received as eagerly as someone who returns home after a long and protracted pilgrimage. Advancing, he even seizes Attica and places a garrison in the citadel. Although the same archbishop could have repelled the marquis just as he had earlier repelled Sgurus, he nevertheless thought the time unsuitable for resistance, seeing that the imperial city had been stormed and that the Latin spear was casting its shadow over both the Eastern and Western provinces, so he yielded the fortress without a fight. Finally, Euboea also, its defense having been abandoned, stretches out suppliant hands to the marquis, and he lays a bridge for the army to Euboea, which was more agitated; and he sees a fort built on the very strait, and in it an army stationed, by which the fickle minds of the islanders and their crafty councils might be restrained from defection. But why do the barbarians outstrip my discourse and occupy the course of history, and are not delayed by any adversary? For while it still relates how they crossed into Euboea after Thebes had been plundered and Athens occupied: they, however, not like foot soldiers, but like birds of the air, carried on wings above history, head toward the Isthmus, rout the Roman army opposed to them there, and enter the city situated on the Isthmus, the once-wealthy Corinth. From there they pass through Argos; having roamed through Laconia, they make an attack on Achaia. Thence they seek Methone; they contend for Pylos, the homeland of Nestor. I think they will even reach the Alpheus, and having drunk and bathed in it, they will hear the old pleasant tale, that he is the river of the Sicilian fountain of Arethusa, which the sons of the Italians drink, and fearing that the river, melting with love, might be compelled to carry the success of the Latins and the things they accomplished against the Greeks to their peoples in an inscription. But, O Greek river Alpheus, you whose latex flowing through the salt of the sea is potable, a thing wonderful to hear, flame of love, beware lest you explain the calamities of the Greeks to the Sicilian barbarians, or recount how many deeds their peoples accomplished against the Greeks, lest dances be led, lest paeans be sung, lest more enemies be called. Wait briefly. The turns of war are many; the fortunes of mortals are rolled like dice. Now victory favors these, now those; it is said that not even to Alexander did everything turn out according to his wishes, nor was Caesar’s fortune devoid of setbacks. By Arethusa herself, I implore you.
Thus far Nicetas, from whose narrative the tradition concerning the Greek regions conquered by the Latins passed into a metrical chronicle edited by Angelo Mai in the year 1828, in 41 iambic trimeters; but that chronicle was composed by Ephraim, the Byzantine monk, who turned Thermopylae into a settlement of Attica, and concludes the contest between the Naupliot leader and the Archbishop of Athens in this quatrain:
On the conquest of Attica and the neighboring regions:
Τέλος προσαῤῥάσσει δὲ καὶ ταῖς ᾿Αθήναις· ᾿Αλλ' ἀποκρουσθεὶς ἀρχιποιμένος λόγοις Τοῦ Χωνειάτου Μιχαὴλ τοῦ πανσόφου, Θήβαις ἐφορμᾷ ταχέως ἑπταπύλοις.
Finally he attacks Athens itself. But repulsed by the eloquence of the most wise prelate Michael Choniates, He quickly invades seven-gated Thebes.
V. What happened in Athens after the times of Michael.
According to the historian Nicetas, Sgurus, after the defeat sustained at Thermopylae, retreated to Acrocorinth, where he hid himself like a beast in a den and defended his person against the Latins. Subsequently, Athens (from which Michael had departed, and whose citadel was guarded by many Frankish troops) and Boeotia were handed over by Boniface, King of Thessalonica, to be governed by the most eminent of his councilors, Otto de la Roche; furthermore, the lordship of both provinces, as also of Euboea and Bodonitsa, was ceded to William of Champlitte, because he had set out from Achaia and Elis and had begun to subjugate the Peloponnese.
For that man, as noble and kingly as he was, Gave him and bestowed upon him the homage of Athens. They called him "Great Lord," thus they named Him who ruled Athens at that time; For from the Greeks they had taken that name. Likewise, he gave him three homages of the Euripus, Of Pondenitza, that is to say, which the Marquis held, That they should hold them from him and have him as lord. The lord of Athens was from Burgundy, etc.
But as he was a generous man and a king, He gave him Athens in homage; He received the name of Great Lord of the sultans, Who at that time ruled Athens with authority; The name, however, they borrowed from the Greeks. Item, three homages over the Euripus And over Bodonitsa, the Marquis granted, establishing by law that the inhabitants Should recognize him as their lord. The governor of Athens was, however, born of Burgundy, etc.
Beginning with Otto de la Roche (Otto de la Roche), a Burgundian, as administrator of Athens, to whose nephew and successor Louis IX, King of France, granted the dignity of Prince of Achaia—that is, in the year 1205—there begins a series of Frankish princes who ruled Athens for two hundred and fifty years, until 1453, a city in which no king had sat since Codrus and the Pisistratidae, and where, five centuries after that Burgundian, it was reserved for another Otto, of German blood, to subjugate a great part of Greece under a gentle scepter with dignity and honor.
Together with the secular lord and usurper of Athens, a Roman occupied the see of the expelled Archbishop Michael, by the name of Berard, whom we know only from the letters that Pope Innocent III wrote to him. In the notes which the editor Fr. Bosquet added (Toulouse ed., note p. 9), he makes mention of Michael Choniates, writing rather harshly: "While the Greeks were masters of affairs, Michael Choniates presided over the Athenian Church, who, upon the capture of Athens by the Marquis of Montferrat, withdrew from the city, as his brother Nicetas narrates, who praises him to us as holy, by Greek faith and brotherly affection." Nevertheless, the same author, in another place, seems to confuse this Michael with the Roman archbishop to whom Innocent wrote letters. From one of these letters it is evident, as Schlosser also declares (Hist. exped. Crucig. II, p. 63), that the Greeks had been expelled from many dioceses, cities, etc., by the Latins with the same cruelty with which they were later treated by the Turks. See also from two other letters of the Pope to the Archbishop of Thebes (bk. 1, ep. 110) and the Archbishop of Amyclae (bk. IV, ep. 98) that Otto incurred anathema in secular and ecclesiastical disputes, weary of which, he abdicated his dignity in the year 1221, willed that his nephew Guy succeed him, and returned to France.
VI. The old age and death of Michael.
Michael, in exile, no less tragically than Nicetas the courtier, laments the most miserable state of the entire Roman Empire, the snatching away of the care of his flock, and his exile: "Ample material for lamentation is present to me, both on account of the common calamity and because of my own; because the illustrious and opulent temple, O immortal God! which our ancestors had consecrated to the Mother of God, whose altar had been entrusted to my keeping, has been despoiled and devastated before my eyes by sacrilegious men. I myself, however, after thirty years which I had spent there, like a dry and useless trunk, torn from the sanctuary of the Lord by the force of the winds, cast against banks and rocks into the depths of the sea, I am now scarcely alive. Behold, condemned to exile, without priesthood, without the solemnity of feast days, without a city, without citizens, I lament bitterly like an owl over the calamity of all and mine own misfortune in it." Furthermore, from the list of ninety letters preserved in the codex of the Laurentian Library, we see that he had taken the island of Ceos as a refuge: "Letters of the same which he wrote from the island of Ceos." That this is confirmed by the tenor of the letters, P. Morellus designates the monastery of St. Prodromus on that island as his asylum.
In this place, the news of his brother’s death affected the aged exile in a wonderful way, he whom he had hoped would survive him.
A Nicetas Acominatus, after the capture of Constantinople, like all those who excelled in talent, virtues, and love for their country, retired with his wife and children to Nicaea in Bithynia, where he held as much authority with the Emperor Theodore Lascaris as he had with the Comneni, always acting to provide aid and protection to the exiles from Byzantium, and to be a comfort to his aging brother in his exile. Michael indeed says the following in his *Monody*: “Although he lived far from me, whenever news reached me that he was alive and well, I felt as if I were inspired by a new spirit. And just as David says that no comfort could be found for his soul, yet that it was gladdened as soon as the memory of God entered his mind, so I too, whenever I was troubled by the weight of present hardships, felt a wondrous solace when I heard that my brother was well. Thus, as often as a letter signed by my brother’s hand was brought to me, I was mindful of his face and voice to the very core, that I seemed to touch and kiss his head and hands; and at once the black care vanished from my soul and gave place to a new joy.” When you read these testimonies of love—almost more than brotherly—you will no longer wonder if he says that he is bound by the shadow of death because the yoke of government was torn from his brother Nicetas by death, who succeeded to the Roman Empire in death as did his cousins Michael and John, equally lamentable. B “If the death of so great a man,” Michael adds, “afflicted Europe and Asia with equal grief and yearning, so that they cannot endure your death, O most beloved soul, what then shall be the measure of our tears and groans?” He proceeds to the common mourning of the Acominatus clan, dispersed throughout Europe and Asia, whose members were illuminated by the splendor of the deceased, and who had experienced his help in many ways. Next, he speaks of the grief of his widow, a niece of the great Belisarius, whom Nicetas was about to take as his wife, having sought his brother’s counsel in all matters of greater gravity; of the grieving of the children of tender age, of whom one wandered as a stray; of his own grief and the irreparable wound which the bitter death of his brother inflicted. Now he complains that he lacks tears from the magnitude of his grief, so that future calamities of life must be borne with dry eyes, until he himself, cast into a remote corner of the earth or into the midst of the sea, succeeds his younger brother as an old man. Being a pious man, he addresses the day to God Himself, so much had grief blinded his mind: “Grief so stirs me that I utter words which perhaps will be given over to impiety and rashness. For why am I, a gray-headed man, heavy with years, an useless burden at last to the earth and a sore, kept any longer in this prison?”
It is not easy to say in what year Michael was freed from the shackles of the body; for a life of leisure in a monastery, which had to be spent in grave infirmity, must have been coming to an end. However, a letter which he wrote to the Patriarch Manuel seems to prove that he was still among the living in the year 1215: for it could not have been written to anyone other than Manuel Charitopulus, who was raised to the patriarchate in that very year (cf. Le Quien, *Oriens Christ.*, vol. I, p. 278). This same letter and many others which he composed on the island of Ceos can prove that Michael, although solitary, as indeed he says, was nevertheless linked toward the end of his life, at least through letters, to the most distinguished men of the empire, and that the Emperor Lascaris himself was numbered among his friends. C But why did he not inhabit the house of this orthodox and friendly prince? Why did he prefer to live in Nicaea near Phrygia, where his most beloved brother lived with his own and died in the midst of his people, rather than on the rocky island of Ceos in the Aegean Sea, and as a neighbor to the western heretics, against whom he complains in a letter written to Euthymius? That man will almost answer this question who has seen in the fatherland of Bacchylides and Simonides the heights of Hymettus and Brilessus shining at dawn; who remembers that Michael in the city of Theseus had fostered the descendants of Dionysius the Areopagite for a generation, and finally that he had drawn the sword of Dexippus not without glory.
§ VII. The catalog of Michael’s writings, in the Florentine library according to Bandinius. Preface.
Works written by Michael, no less than his bones on the shores of Ceos, seemed to have been consigned to oblivion in the libraries of the West. Hitherto, nothing remains of Michael Choniates except summaries of quite a few orations, treatises, letters, and poems—a few of which are in Greek, and two of the greatest importance in Latin only. In the year 1767, A. M. Bandinius, the custodian of the Laurentian Library in Florence, sent a booklet to the Academy of Paris under the title *Epistle concerning Michael Acominatus and his writings*, which he reproduced the following year in the catalog of Greek codices of the Laurentian Library. We provide the catalog of the entirety of Michael’s collection of writings, taken from the Bandinian catalog—the list of which Montfaucon has already provided in *Bibliotheca bibliothecarum manuscriptorum*, I, p. 355 sqq.—without regard for the Latin titles, and following the example of Bandinius, we bring forward the titles in the same order in which they are read in the codex, with the preface of an Anonymous author to Michael’s minor works, which the most learned Tafel first edited in his dissertation *De Thessalonica ejusque agro*, prefixed to it.
I, p. 1. *Introduction to this book...*
(Nothing more; the author’s name perished in a lacuna. (Cf. Tafel, ibid., p. 376 et seqq.))
Φιλόλογος ὁ τοῦ βιβλίου τοῦδε πατήρ, καὶ σοφίας ἐραστὴς ἑκατέρας, τῆς ἡμετέρας φημὶ καὶ τῆς θύραθεν, ὡς ἔστιν ἀπ' αὐτῶν τῶν συγγραμμάτων γνῶναι. — The author of this book is a true friend of letters and of all wisdom, both our own, I say, and that from outside, as a benevolent reader will easily judge from the writing itself. But longer than this
discourse A need not be, I think. Yet this must be determined beforehand, namely that some of the discourses were written before his ordination (the first being clearly that to those who took offense at his unostentatiousness, and the next, the encomium for the blessed Archbishop of Chonae, and the one after that, the patriarchal address), while all the rest were published after his ordination. And one who meets these discourses with understanding, and who will be indulgent toward the man, must not be ignorant of this, so that if now he behaves somewhat more boldly in a youthful manner and embellishes himself with poetic terms, playing, as one might say, and being carried away by heat, and then again appears somewhat subdued for the most part, and puts aside his lack of sweetness, the cause for this is not so much the subject matter as the difference in the years during which he composed them. Nevertheless, even so, the resemblance of all of them shows clearly that they were born of the same father. B It is also necessary to note this beforehand, that when he enjoyed leisure and was concerned only with his discourses, he did not seek out a field for display or for a more common audience; but whatever work he accomplished, he composed it, as they say, singing for himself alone. Those who know are aware of how much this shrinks both precision and ambition in discourse. But when he entered upon the priesthood and, according to the profession, received the license for speaking and writing, he did not have even then any more ambitious motives for display; for the priesthood does not lay claim to displays in discourse, just as it does not to any other worldly achievement, but rather considers them stains and childish playthings, or concerns. Furthermore, the listeners in Athens, no longer being lovers of learning, nor fueling the heat of the discourse, but rather causing one to nod off, to whom they exhibit a deaf hearing—lest I say that, as the proverb goes, like an ass before a lyre, they turn away from one who speaks of anything extra—all this acts as a deterrent. C Indeed, the lack of leisure and being pulled away by duties, which do not allow one to perfect the things of discourse, but rather force one to consider them side-issues, is third in the enumeration, but first in power. Reading these, one ought not to sit as a harsh judge, but rather show love, if they have not fallen too far from the standard of precision, for there is indeed an instance where he holds fast to the art and mingles the styles of political discourse, and he possesses neither the purity of those who are downtrodden and fallen into vulgarity, nor the enveloped and labyrinthine style that is strongly convoluted; but the delivery is clarified, and the clear is enveloped, and both are moderate. It is adorned also from the remaining styles, insofar as it was possible; but most of all it rises to a grand style, and even more than what the canon of political discourse prescribes. And this is by no means a vice of the discourse, that it was not possible for him, even if he strongly desired it, to be divided as far as concerns the solemn thoughts with which every Christian homily is adorned; not only in logographies, but now also in the simple communion of discourse. For whatever, says the orator of the Church, is holy, if there is any virtue and if there is any praise, think on these things (Philipp. IV, 8). D But if even after his ordination
A Demosthenica illa: "By the earth! by the fountains! by the rivers! by the streams!" and other such things are more than dithyrambic. But those who love to read the writings of our ancestors as ancient models, I would wish them to remember that the ancient writers were by no means sparing in elegances and wit, as are the Socratics, Plato and Xenophon. But also Polemo sternly said that prosaic writings should be carried on the shoulders, while poetic ones should be removed to the theaters, which brings a new proof to our subject. For those who used poetic terms flower their discourses, since it was not otherwise possible to partake of what is delicate, but this does not deserve excuse before those who know how the orators of the present day breathe a Bacchic frenzy, as if possessed by the breathless strain of Calliope; I do not speak B of those things of Demosthenes—by earth, by fountains, by rivers, by streams!—but of matters far more studied than even the dithyrambs. But for those looking into the writings of the ancients, or whatever one might call plates of an ancient hand, it is enough and only necessary to remind them that the ancients did not at all reject the other things of poetry, and especially the flower of style, and even more those wiser than them—I mean the Socratics, among whom we know especially Plato and Xenophon. And as for Polemo, not only his "whirring" but that too. Things spoken in prose must be carried on the shoulders, while those of the poets on wagons; he rejects all such resentment.
II, p. 3, b. To those vexed by the lack of demonstration. To Homer the most resonant-voiced. "And it flew into the hollow of the concave rock." You have it. C
III. Eulogy to the blessed archbishop of Chonae, lord Nicetas. Incipit: "Man is but a creature." Explicit: "Having received this gift."
I cannot believe that Bandini, Cave, Oudin, and Harles have confused this archbishop with Michael’s brother, the historian Nicetas, who, as everyone knows, performed secular service, and of whose wife and children much is said.
IV, p. 19. A speech issued to one of the orators to the most holy patriarch, lord Michael. Incipit: "There is somewhere a Sicilian meadow." Explicit: "Like the trunk of a palm tree for a long time."
V, p. 24. By the same, a speech upon his first arrival in Athens.
VI, p. 27, b. By the same, a homily spoken on the third Sunday of the fasts, in which also the precious and life-giving cross is set forth and venerated. Incipit: "And a traveler driving along the straight path." Explicit: "And at our indestructible feast. Amen."
VII, p. 28. On the feast of the Palms. Incipit: "The most prophetic [one]." Explicit: "And to speak according to God. To Him be the glory, etc."
The complete Latin version of this oration exists by the author Franc. Combefis in *Bibl. Patrum concionatoria*, Venetian edition, vol. IV, p. 419 sqq. This homily, which Combefis calls an elegant oration, is nothing but a shadow of the eloquence of Michael, whom certainly no sane person would compare to the facility of Pericles D and Demosthenes. You will certainly not deny that a certain warmth, power, and sweetness of speech exists in this Palm Sunday homily, and that Voltaire did not speak truly when he asserted that the Greeks of that time inherited nothing from their ancestors but chatter. The admonition indeed which is read at the end recalls to memory a certain man, as it were a springing adolescent, of whom Nicetas speaks in his *History* concerning Athens besieged by Sgurus, as a malicious despiser of the Church and an adversary of the archbishop who was protecting him with evangelical love; but whether he was the same as our own is not for this place to investigate.
There follows concerning the writings of Michael. A fragment of a panegyric on the emperor Isaac Angelos; letters to the archbishop of Thessalonica, Eustathius.
VIII, p. 30, b. Address to the praetor, lord Nicephorus, who oversaw Athens. Incipit: "Who shall speak of the mighty acts of the Lord." Explicit: "And God of all consolation, to whom be the glory, etc." XV epistles.
IX, p. 38. To the holy hieromartyr Leonidas and his company. Incipit: "Then formerly in Athens." Explicit: "And may we also happen upon this in Christ Himself, etc."
X, p. 39, b. Address to the praetor, lord Demetrius Drimes, who oversaw Athens. Incipit: "They say of that Theseus." Explicit: "And extending old age to the very limit." XIX epistles.
XI, p. 52, b. Homily upon his arrival at the Euripus in Euboea. Incipit: "The many of men." Explicit: "And of those whom [one is] called, now and unto the ages. Amen."
XII, p. 54. Lamentation over the late lord Theophylact Belisariotes. Incipit: "To weave countless laments." Explicit: "And of the shepherd and..."
XIII, p. 57. Eulogistic speech to the emperor, lord Isaac Angelos. Incipit: "Then the queen of the south." Explicit: "And of [him] extending the boundaries of life."
Tafel had promised in his edition (*Opp. min. Eustathii Thessal.*, p. 8) that he would make public this panegyric on the emperor who put an end to the tyranny of Andronicus Comnenus, but seven years later he published only the following small fragment to demonstrate in what a miserable state Attica was languishing, because, due to poverty, it could not pay the tribute customarily paid to the emperor upon his accession to the kingdom.
Athens could not impose a golden crown on the head of the victor; for the city lacks money, just as it is little wealthy, nay, almost destitute of inhabitants, to the point that it is perishing utterly, unless, by some benevolent A (city of Athens) to bring it, and to crown the victorious head; for the city is without money and poor, and by the plan of the circle and of the cities...
recovering its spirit by a helping hand, for it seems that it cannot be reborn except with the reborn kingdom. Eleven epistles follow this panegyric.
XIV, p. 73. A Epitaph for the late archimandrite of the monasteries in Athens, Lord Neophytus. Inc. "Even if Solomon said somewhere in his wisdom..." Fin. "The one previously receiving mercy."
Post these, the codex exhibits a funeral oration on the Archbishop of Thessalonica, Lord Eustathius. But so that we do not disturb the order of time, we insert in this place the six epistles sent to that most illustrious prelate of the Church, with the Greek text taken from Tafel B.
XV, p. 78, b. Monody on the most holy Lord Eustathius of Thessalonica. XVI, p. 86. Memorial to the Emperor, Lord Alexius Comnenus.
The reader must be reminded to refer this writing solely to Alexius III Angelus, who, according to Nicetas (Hist. p. 293 B), after he had despoiled his brother of the kingdom, whether out of hatred for him or because, tracing his lineage more nobly from his mother—from whom, for over a hundred years, the possessors of the purple had descended—he had adopted the name Comnenus. To tell the truth, it is not possible to think in this place of the Emperor Alexius II, who was killed in his sixteenth year, because the chronological order, which Michael never failed to keep religiously, would be disturbed by such a monogram. Moreover, there can be no debate about an Alexius V or VI, because they never assumed the name Comnenus, being content with the name of their house, Angelus and Ducas; indeed, it is likely that the Athenians cared little for their brief and tumultuous reign. Our pious archbishop, whom we saw bearing whatever help he could with all his might for the Athenians when they were besieged by the fierce Sgurus, demonstrates by this very fact that he was not so absorbed in his sacred meditations that he had lost sight of the salvation and prosperity of his citizens.
Regarding the style of our author, and the fact that one might say he was somewhat more deferential than is just, one must remember that in all things written as supplications to emperors, the highest humility was always required. But this must not be passed over in silence: that Michael warned the emperor with very free speech regarding the extortions and evil arts of the praetors and magistrates—a thing which, in our own more iniquitous times, would certainly be received by ears less patient. The present little work contributes more to the illustration of the political history of Athens than to the clearing up of Eustathian literary matters, for it shows us that there were certain immunities in Athens, not to be despised, which were being nefariously injured by the usurping force of the praetors. Furthermore, the barbarism and obscurity of Michael's diction present great obstacles to those translating into another language. Eighteen epistles follow this little work in the Laurentian codex.
XVII, p. 93. Address to the Emperor's brother-in-law, Basil Comnenus. Inc. "The grand-working Hercules..." Fin. "Of the high lamp of the palaces." XVIII, p. 98, b. Address to the Grand Duke Stryphnus. Inc. "Athens ought indeed to have remained..." Fin. "...to the peaceful harbors there, moving his station." C The final part of this allocution was supplied by a more recent hand due to the defect of one leaf before page 104, whose first words we therefore do not know where they pertain; yet it is clear from the conclusion that the last words are of some homily, which runs thus: "In the participation of which may we also be found through Jesus Christ, etc." BANDIN, p. 15. Fourteen epistles of no small importance, for they provide evidence of the greatest events of which Michael was a witness, such as the capture of Constantinople, the war waged against Sgurus and the Latins, and the author's exile up to his brother's death.
XIX, p. 116, b. Monody on his brother, Lord Nicetas Choniates. Inc. "O wicked message, O bitter report, which falling upon me unexpectedly, my ears were suddenly stunned and both rang!"
This funeral oration remains, translated into Latin speech by Peter Morellius, and it is read in the *Historia rerum in Oriente gestarum*, Francof. 1568, and in the *Bibliothecae Patrum*. After the Monody follow 78 epistles: XX, p. 164. Introduction to the discourses on the soul and body. Inc. "On the difference of the rational part of the soul." Fin. "These things needed to be foreseen, and indeed they have been foreseen." Ex orat. Animae: "If indeed among others who do not know precisely, the affront of the then-husband's body against me..." Ex orat. Corporis: "How much insult and reproach and what great mockery my noble soul having heaped up poured out... The vote and the things to be done, and not defining..." P. 176. The arbitration of the judges. "Since we have heard the arguments of both in turn... To be carried off into the land of the impious in Christ Jesus, etc." D XXI, Of the same, a draft. Inc. "Even if not for long; it was in the land of barbarians." Thus he revelled in the Queen of cities, and that not yet... [alt-version omitted]
Then follow some iambic verses, the first of which is: "O Thou who dwellest in the great vault of heaven, etc." A
XXII, p. 180. A hexameter poem with this inscription: (of the Archbishop of Athens). Preceding the titles, seven lines are written in vermilion, with no meter at all, and without doubt handled badly through the ignorance or negligence of the scribe. We append them according to Bandini, without any emendation applied: "The plays of my leisure which you see, are trifles, are flaws; Such as a dreamer, not quite sane, stirs up; Yet they are not entirely devoid of the breath of the Muses, Rather, jests are shown mixed with serious things, Such as do not ill-become a venerable old man. Theano is a name sacred to any who hears it; But you yourself will have this known when you wish." The first verse of the poem reads: "I sing of the fig-tree shadowing my threshold," The last: "Breaking the galling bonds of servitude."
XXIII, p. 185, b. Seven poems, of which the first four are in hexameter meter; the three following are composed in iambic meter: On the Dormition of the most holy Theotokos, On the Second Coming, On the Theotokion, and On the One-handed (man), On the Crucifixion, On the Triform, and On the Angels.
XXIV, p. 187. The beginnings of certain various letters, 23 in number, written for the sake of practicing style, as Bandini opines.
From here on, Bandini (pp. 19-36) enumerates all the letters of Michael in the chronological order observed in the codex, adding: "An index of the 180 letters of Michael Acominatus, metropolitan of Athens, arranged by alphabetical letters."
We provide the series of Michael's letters, arranged alphabetically according to the names of those to whom they were sent, with some notes added, taken from Le Quien’s *Oriens Christianus* or Du Cange’s *Glossarium ad Scriptores mediæ et infimæ Græcitatis*.
B To the elder of the monastery of Comnenus, lord Athanasius. — To the patriarch, lord Basil. — To the logothete, lord Basil Camaterus. — To the kinsman by marriage of the emperor, the sebastos Lascaris, lord Basil Camaterus. — To the Pikridios, lord Basil, the accountant of the praetorium. — To the great logothete, Belissariotes. — To the Belissariotes. — To the Beriboesse. — To the "forty-cubit" lord George. — To the great skeüophylax (afterwards the patriarch), lord George Xiphilinus. — To the Padyates, lord George. — To the anagrapheus, lord George Columbas. — To the same and his companion, the lord Nomicopoulos. — To the Camacon, lord George. — To his cousin, lord George the sebastos. — To the architros, lord George Callistus. — To his son, lord George. — To the Bardynes, lord George. — To the pistophilos, lord George. — To the grammarian of Thebes. — To the sigellarios, the protasekretis, lord Demetrius Drimes. C To the venerable and officer of the inkstand (kanikleios), lord Demetrius Tornikes. — To the logothete (of the drome), lord Demetrius Tornikes. "Always the Greeks are children." — To the mesazon, lord Tornikes, Demetrius. — To the bishop of Carystus, lord Demetrius. — To the Macrembolites, lord Demetrius. — "Woe, woe, that of the transmarine." — To the bishop of Gardikion and Peristera, lord Epiphanius. — To the lady Eugenia. — To the hypertimos of Nea Patrae, lord Euthymius. — To the same [Archbishop] of Athens, the hypertimos of Nea Patrae, lord Euthymius. — To Tornikes, lord Euthymius. — To the same and to the Hagiosophites under him. — To lord Euthymius. — To the bishop of Thessalonica, lord Eustathius. — To the most holy lord Isaiah of Antioch. — To Fournites, lord Theognostus. — To the patriarch, lord Theodosius. — To Matzoukis, lord Theodosius. — To the venerable lord Theodore, officer of the inkstand. D
To the Eirenicos. — To the lord of Euripus, Theodore. — To the most powerful lord Theodore Ducas. — To the lord Ioannes Belissariotes. — To the lord Ioannes of Thebes. — To the lord Ioannes of Thessalonica. — To the lord Ioannes, the parakoimomenos. — To the lord Ioannes, the "Kalos Kairos." — To the lord Ioannes of Naupactus. — To the abbot of Saint Meletios, Ioannikios. — To the abbot of the monastery of the Philosophers. — To the abbot of the Holy Confessors. — To the abbot of the venerable monastery of Kaisariane. — To the all-honored lord Kastamonites, uncle of the emperor. — To the lord Konstantinos Peganites. — To the most God-beloved lord, the spatharios Konstantinos. — To the lord Konstantinos Mesopotamites, who is over the sacred sakelle. — To the logothete of the dromos, lord Konstantinos Tornikes. — To the metropolitan of Crete. — To the emperor of the East, Lascaris. — To the ecumenical patriarch, Leontios. — To the most holy monk, lord Loukas. — To the archimandrite, lord Loukianos. — To the abbot of the monastery of Stoudios, lord Loukianos. — To the lord Manuel of Thebes. — To the sebastos, lord Manuel Hyklas. — To the lord Manuel Beriboes. — To the patriarch, lord Manuel. — To the most holy abbot of the venerable monastery of the Prodromos, lord Martinianos. — To the lord Michael Autoreianos. — To his nephew, lord Michael. — To his brother, lord Niketas Choniates. — To his nephew, lord Niketas. — To his nephews, the lord Niketas and the lord Michael. — To the lord Nikephoros Beriboes. — To the most grand protonotary and praetor, lord Nikolaos Tripsychos. — To the physician, lord Nikolaos Kalodoukes. — To the lord Nikolaos Pistophilos. — To the lord Mesopotamites of Neai Patrai, also called Kostomeres. — To the sakellarios Pleures. — To the bishop. — To the grand duke Stryphnos. — To the sakellarios of Athens, Phokas.
§ X. Other writings of Michael preserved in the libraries of Oxford and Paris. Poem on Athens. Conclusion.
After the catalogue of the Epistles of Michael, Bandini (p. 8 sqq.) brings forward more material concerning the three epistles of Gregory Nazianzen, and also concerning the writings of Theophylact, Archbishop of the Bulgarians, preserved in the Florentine Library, which are not of this place. However, certain of Michael's writings, which are missing in the Medicean Library but are found in the Oxford Library according to the Catalogue of English and Hibernian manuscripts (Oxford, 1697), seem worthy of mention. These bear the titles: "First Catechesis"; "Homily on the creation of man," and "Lamentation for the deceased Adyephus." Then, in the Paris Library, there is a "Treatise on the Cross," which Fabricius wrongly converted into an oration, and which perhaps may be more correctly seen as an iambic poem on the pristine dignity of the city of Athens, which Boissonade brought into the public domain in volume V of his *Anecdota*.
From the last verses of this poem, one might not without reason suspect the beginning of a longer work. Be that as it may, you certainly have a lamentation, albeit mutilated, written concerning the fatal lot of Athens by the last prelate of that city, who in a swan-song, so to speak, revealed the fatal destiny of his city to memory. It remains for us to share with our readers, in a kindly spirit, the poem of Morell, with which we intend to bring our dissertation to a close:
A guardian of Cecrops, Michael, while lamenting the sad funeral of his brother Niketas Choniates, witnesses by thy swan-like voice, O Greece, what thou wert when thou didst die with exhausted strength. That Attic charm, by which Xenophon was once noble and famous from his tenderest nails—
He fell, alas! and with thee he entered the same tomb, and the foul barbarian horde succeeded without delay. Whoever, therefore, wishes to know thy strengths, O Greece, let him read, together with Xenophon, the funeral of Choniates: the former adorns thy cradles with the flowers of thy birth; the latter laments thy fates at the funeral of his brother.