Among Greek histories of the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the work of Laonikos (ca. 1430–ca. 1465) has by far the broadest scope. Born to a leading family of Athens under Florentine rule, he was educated in the classics at Mistra by the Neoplatonist philosopher Plethon.

In the 1450s, Laonikos set out to imitate Herodotos in writing the history of his times, a version in which the armies of Asia would prevail over the Greeks in Europe. The backbone of The Histories, a text written in difficult Thucydidean Greek, is the expansion of the Ottoman Empire from the early 1300s to 1464, but Laonikos’s digressions give sweeping accounts of world geography and ethnography from Britain to Mongolia, with an emphasis on Spain, Italy, and Arabia. Following the methodology of Herodotos and rejecting theological polemic, Laonikos is the first Greek writer to treat Islam as a legitimate cultural and religious system. He followed Plethon in viewing the Byzantines as Greeks rather than Romans, and so stands at the origins of Neo-Hellenic identity.

This translation makes the entire text of The Histories available in English for the first time.

Among Greek histories of the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the work of Laonikos (ca. 1430–ca. 1465) has by far the broadest scope. Born to a leading family of Athens under Florentine rule, he was educated in the classics at Mistra by the Neoplatonist philosopher Plethon.

In the 1450s, Laonikos set out to imitate Herodotos in writing the history of his times, a version in which the armies of Asia would prevail over the Greeks in Europe. The backbone of The Histories, a text written in difficult Thucydidean Greek, is the expansion of the Ottoman Empire from the early 1300s to 1464, but Laonikos’s digressions give sweeping accounts of world geography and ethnography from Britain to Mongolia, with an emphasis on Spain, Italy, and Arabia. Following the methodology of Herodotos and rejecting theological polemic, Laonikos is the first Greek writer to treat Islam as a legitimate cultural and religious system. He followed Plethon in viewing the Byzantines as Greeks rather than Romans, and so stands at the origins of Neo-Hellenic identity.

This translation makes the entire text of The Histories available in English for the first time.

In 1039 Byzantium was the most powerful empire in Europe and the Near East, controlling the Balkans south of the Danube and all of Asia Minor into Armenia and Syria. By 1079 it had become a politically unstable state half the size, menaced by powerful enemies on all sides. The History of Michael Attaleiates is our main source for this astonishing reversal, and offers a gripping narrative of the foreign and civil wars of those years. Attaleiates was a highly placed legal and military official of the empire with first-hand knowledge of the events he describes. He knew many of the emperors and includes an eyewitness account of the battle of Mantzikert (1071), where the Seljuk Turks crushed the Byzantine armies and opened the door for the permanent Turkish conquest of Asia Minor. He also provides vivid narratives of civil unrest and decries the corruption and economic exploitation of his society, looking to the heroes of the Roman Republic for models of nobility.

Michael Attaleiates’ History has never before been translated into English. The present translation, based on the most recent critical edition, makes the text accessible through its notes, maps, and glossary of Byzantine terms.

Leo’s firsthand experience of the campaigns and courts of two Byzantine emperors provides vivid descriptions of sieges, pitched battles, and ambushes. His account of the conspiracy against Nikephoros II Phokas, murdered as he slept on the floor in front of his icons, is one of the most dramatic in Byzantine narrative histories. Alice-Mary Talbot and Denis F. Sullivan, with the assistance of George T. Dennis and Stamatina McGrath, include an extensive introduction and detailed notes to guide the reader through the complex chronology, geography, and text of the History. Also included are five maps, two genealogical tables, and four indexes.

“This is the revised English translation from the original work in Russian of the history of the Great Byzantine Empire.  It is the most complete and thorough work on this subject.  From it we get a wonderful panorama of the events and developments of the struggles of early Christianity, both western and eastern, with all of its remains of the wonderful productions of art, architecture, and learning.”—Southwestern Journal of Theology

“This is the revised English translation from the original work in Russian of the history of the Great Byzantine Empire.  It is the most complete and thorough work on this subject.  From it we get a wonderful panorama of the events and developments of the struggles of early Christianity, both western and eastern, with all of its remains of the wonderful productions of art, architecture, and learning.”—Southwestern Journal of Theology

Founded by Constantine the Great, rebuilt by Justinian, and redecorated in the ninth, tenth, and twelfth centuries, the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople was the mausoleum of emperors, patriarchs, and saints. It was also a key station in the ceremonies of the city, the site of an important school, a major inspiration for apostolic literature, and briefly the home of the patriarch. Despite its significance, the church no longer exists, replaced by the mosque of Mehmet II after the fall of the city to the Ottomans. Today the church is remembered primarily from two important middle Byzantine ekphraseis, which celebrate its beauty and prominence, as well as from architectural copies and manuscript illustrations.

Scholars have long puzzled over the appearance of the church, as well as its importance to the Byzantines. Anxious to reconstruct the building and its place in the empire, an early collaborative project of Dumbarton Oaks brought together a philologist, an art historian, and an architectural historian in the 1940s and 1950s to reconstruct their own version of the Holy Apostles. Never fully realized, their efforts remained unpublished. The essays in this volume reconsider their project from a variety of vantage points, while illuminating differences of approach seventy years later, to arrive at a twenty-first-century synthesis.

Often simply called the Holy Mountain, Mount Athos was the most famous center of Byzantine monasticism and remains the spiritual heart of the Orthodox Church today. This volume presents the Lives of Euthymios the Younger, Athanasios of Athos, Maximos the Hutburner, Niphon of Athos, and Philotheos. These five holy men lived on Mount Athos at different times from its early years as a monastic locale in the ninth century to the last decades of the Byzantine period in the early fifteenth century. All five were celebrated for asceticism, clairvoyance, and, in most cases, the ability to perform miracles; Euthymios and Athanasios were also famed as founders of monasteries.

Holy Men of Mount Athos illuminates both the history and the varieties of monastic practice on Athos, individually by hermits as well as communally in large monasteries. The Lives also demonstrate the diversity of hagiographic composition and provide important glimpses of Byzantine social and political history.

All the Lives in this volume are presented for the first time in English translation, together with authoritative editions of their Greek texts.