George Pachymeres (; 1242 – 1310) was a
Byzantine Greek
Medieval Greek (also known as Middle Greek, Byzantine Greek, or Romaic; Greek: ) is the stage of the Greek language between the end of classical antiquity in the 5th–6th centuries and the end of the Middle Ages, conventionally dated to the F ...
historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human species; as well as the ...
,
philosopher
Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...
,
music theorist and miscellaneous writer.
Biography
Pachymeres was born at
Nicaea
Nicaea (also spelled Nicæa or Nicea, ; ), also known as Nikaia (, Attic: , Koine: ), was an ancient Greek city in the north-western Anatolian region of Bithynia. It was the site of the First and Second Councils of Nicaea (the first and seve ...
, in
Bithynia
Bithynia (; ) was an ancient region, kingdom and Roman province in the northwest of Asia Minor (present-day Turkey), adjoining the Sea of Marmara, the Bosporus, and the Black Sea. It bordered Mysia to the southwest, Paphlagonia to the northeast a ...
, where his father had taken refuge after the capture of
Constantinople
Constantinople (#Names of Constantinople, see other names) was a historical city located on the Bosporus that served as the capital of the Roman Empire, Roman, Byzantine Empire, Byzantine, Latin Empire, Latin, and Ottoman Empire, Ottoman empire ...
by the Latins in 1204. Upon the recovery of Constantinople from the
Latin Empire
The Latin Empire, also referred to as the Latin Empire of Constantinople, was a feudal Crusader state founded by the leaders of the Fourth Crusade on lands captured from the Byzantine Empire. The Latin Empire was intended to replace the Byzantin ...
by
Michael VIII Palaeologus, Pachymeres settled there, studied law, entered the church, and subsequently became chief advocate of the church and chief justice of the imperial court.
His literary activity was considerable, his most important work being a Byzantine history in thirteen books, in continuation of that of
George Acropolites from 1261 to 1308, containing the history of the reigns of
Michael
Michael may refer to:
People
* Michael (given name), a given name
* he He ..., a given name
* Michael (surname), including a list of people with the surname Michael
Given name
* Michael (bishop elect)">Michael (surname)">he He ..., a given nam ...
and
Andronicus II Palaeologus. Pachymeres was also the author of
rhetoric
Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. It is one of the three ancient arts of discourse ( trivium) along with grammar and logic/ dialectic. As an academic discipline within the humanities, rhetoric aims to study the techniques that speakers or w ...
al exercises on philosophical themes; of a ''
Quadrivium'' (arithmetic, music, geometry, astronomy), valuable for the history of music and astronomy in the
Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...
; a general sketch of
Aristotelian philosophy; a paraphrase of the speeches and letters of
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (or Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite) was a Greek author, Christian theologian and Neoplatonic philosopher of the late 5th to early 6th century, who wrote a set of works known as the ''Corpus Areopagiticum'' ...
; poems, including an autobiography; and a description of the square of the ''
Augustaeum
The ''Augustaion'' () or, in Latin language, Latin, ''Augustaeum'', was an important ceremonial square in ancient and medieval Constantinople (modern Istanbul, Turkey), roughly corresponding to the modern ''Aya Sofya Meydanı'' (Turkish language, ...
'', and the
column
A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. In other words, a column is a compression member ...
erected by
Justinian
Justinian I (, ; 48214 November 565), also known as Justinian the Great, was Roman emperor from 527 to 565.
His reign was marked by the ambitious but only partly realized ''renovatio imperii'', or "restoration of the Empire". This ambition was ...
in the church of
Hagia Sophia
Hagia Sophia (; ; ; ; ), officially the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque (; ), is a mosque and former Church (building), church serving as a major cultural and historical site in Istanbul, Turkey. The last of three church buildings to be successively ...
to commemorate his victories over the
Persians
Persians ( ), or the Persian people (), are an Iranian ethnic group from West Asia that came from an earlier group called the Proto-Iranians, which likely split from the Indo-Iranians in 1800 BCE from either Afghanistan or Central Asia. They ...
.
The ''History'' was first published in print by
I. Bekker (1835) in the ''
Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae
The (CSHB; ), also referred to as the Bonn Corpus, is a monumental fifty-volume series of primary sources for the study of Byzantine history (–1453), published in the German city of Bonn between 1828 and 1897. Each volume contains a critica ...
''; also by
J. P. Migne, in ''
Patrologia Graeca'' (vol. cxliii, cxliv); for editions of the minor works see
Karl Krumbacher, ''Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur'' (1897). A more recent edition with French translation of the ''History'' by
Albert Failler
Albert may refer to:
Companies
* Albert Computers, Inc., a computer manufacturer in the 1980s
* Albert Czech Republic, a supermarket chain in the Czech Republic
* Albert Heijn, a supermarket chain in the Netherlands
* Albert Market, a street ...
(editor) and
Vitalien Laurent
Vitalien Laurent (born Louis Philippe Olivier Laurent; Séné, 26 May 1896 – Paris, 21 November 1973) was a French priest and Byzantinist. He was editor of the journal '' Échos d'Orient'' (predecessor of the '' Revue des études byzantines''). ...
(translator) was published in 1984. An English translation of Books I and II (up to the recovery of Constantinople in 1261), with commentary, exists in the form of a Ph.D. thesis by Nathan John Cassidy held in the Reid Library of the University of Western Australia.
Notes
References
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Further reading
*
*
*
*
External links
Opera Omnia by Migne Patristica Graeca with analytical indexesG. Pachymeres, Hierocles and Philagrios, Declamationes XIII, Philogelos. G. Pachymeris, De Michaele et Andronico Paleologis, Bonn, 1835.
Greek and Latin text.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pachymeres
13th-century Byzantine historians
13th-century Greek philosophers
Byzantine theologians
14th-century Byzantine writers
13th-century Byzantine writers
1242 births
1310 deaths
People from Nicaea
Music theorists
14th-century Eastern Orthodox theologians
13th-century Eastern Orthodox theologians
14th-century Byzantine historians
Greek-language commentators on Plato