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John Kaminiates
Byzantine priest and historian
Byzantine priest and historian
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| name | John Kaminiates |
| native_name | Ἰωάννης Καμινιάτης |
| native_name_lang | el |
| birth_date | 9th century |
| death_date | 10th century |
| citizenship | Eastern Roman Empire |
| occupation | |
| notable_works | On the capture of Thessalonica *(Εἰς τὴν ἅλωσιν τῆς Θεσσαλονίκης)* |
| title | Kouboukleisios |
John Kaminiates (, fl. tenth century) was a Greek resident of Thessalonica when the city, then one of the largest in the Byzantine Empire, was besieged and sacked by a Saracen force led by Leo of Tripoli in 904. His account of the city's plunder, On the capture of Thessalonica (Εἰς τὴν ἅλωσιν τῆς Θεσσαλονίκης, Eis tēn alōsin tēs Thessalonikēs), survives in four manuscripts; though of these, none were written before the fourteenth century, causing some concern over the text's authenticity.
Name
John Kaminiates has alternatively been transliterated John Kaminatos, Ioannis Kaminiatis, and sometimes appears in the Latinized forms Ioannis Caminiatae, Joannes Cameniata and John Cameniates.
Life
''On the capture of Thessalonica''
On the capture of Thessalonica () takes the form of a long letter written by Kaminiates to his friend, Gregory of Cappadocia; and describes the sack of Thessalonica and the treatment of the captives. He gives a very detailed description of the attack and his experience on the pirate ship, which was initially heading to Crete and then to Paphos, Tripoli and Tarsus in Cilicia. His work is an invaluable source about the sack of Thessalonica in 904, as well as the slave trade in the eastern Mediterranean during the medieval times.
However, its validity is questioned by some modern historians mainly due to some anachronisms that appear in Kaminiates' work. Alexander Kazhdan argued that the text was a 15th century composition masquerading as a 10th century text, written in response to the siege of Thessalonica in 1430 by the Ottoman Empire. Other scholars like Ioannis Tsaras, David Frendo and Paolo Odorico support that the extant text is a reworked or modified version of a 10th century original.
References
Sources
English
- Kaminiates, John The capture of Thessaloniki (D. Frendo, A. Fotiou, and G.Böhlig, trans.) Byzantina Australiensia, 12. Perth: Australian Association for Byzantine Studies, 2000. .
- Kazhdan, Alexander Some Questions Addressed to the Scholars, who Believe in the Authenticity of Kaminiates’ Capture of Thessalonika Byzantinische Zeitschrift 71. 1978. p. 301–314. ISSN 0007-7704.
Foreign
- Kaminiates, John Eis ten alosin tes Thessalonikes / De Expugnatione Thessalonicae (Böhlig, Gertrude, ed.) Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1973.
References
- Kazhdan 1978
- (2018). "John Kaminiates". Cambridge University Press.
- "Καμινιάτης, Εις την άλωσιν της Θεσσαλονίκης (Ταυτότητα) - [ΑΠΑΝ Αρχείο]".
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