An Annotated Translation of John Kantakouzenos' Histories, Book III
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An Annotated Translation of John Kantakouzenos’ Histories, Book III, Chapters 1-30 Brian Steven McLaughlin Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Royal Holloway, University of London 2017 Declaration of Authorship I, Brian Steven McLaughlin, hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated. Signed: Date: 2 Abstract The present thesis aims to elucidate the relatively neglected Book III of Iōannēs Kantakouzēnos’ Histories by offering an English translation of, and commentary on, the first 30 of its 100 chapters. The translation of such an important text is intended to provide a convenient resource for other scholars studying fourteenth-century Byzantium and to highlight the significance of this section of the Histories. The thesis is divided into two Parts (I-II). Part I comprises the Introduction in five Sections (1-5). Section 1 briefly describes the manuscript tradition and previous translations, and then explains the aims, scope and approach of the thesis and the principles adopted regarding translation and transliteration. Section 2 provides a brief overview of the author’s life and times before summarising and reviewing the previous scholarly literature concerning the Histories. Section 3 outlines the content and structure of the complete text. Section 4 discusses Kantakouzēnos’ historiographical method, concentrating on the sources of the Histories, his handling of chronology and his literary approach. Section 5 analyses Kantakouzēnos’ portrayal of the major protagonists, including himself, in the translated chapters, examining how he wished the outbreak of the 1341-1347 civil war to be understood and how he assigned responsibility for the conflict. Part II of the thesis comprises an English translation of Kantakouzēnos’ Histories, Book III, Chapters 1-30, with an accompanying Commentary, which is presented in the form of endnotes. The Commentary elucidates the text and the translation, placing the passages under consideration in the wider context of the Histories. 3 Table of Contents Acknowledgements ...................................................................................... 5 Part I: Introduction 6 1.1. Manuscript tradition, editions and previous translations ........... 6 1.2. Aims, scope and approach of the thesis .......................................... 9 1.3. Transliteration and referencing ...................................................... 12 2.1. Iōannēs Kantakouzēnos and his Histories ..................................... 14 3.1. Content and structure ...................................................................... 21 4.1. Sources ............................................................................................... 25 4.1.1. Autopsy ...................................................................................... 25 4.1.2. Grēgoras ..................................................................................... 28 4.1.3. Informants .................................................................................. 31 4.1.4. Documents ................................................................................. 33 4.2. Chronology ....................................................................................... 37 4.3. Literary aspects ................................................................................. 41 4.3.1. Authorial persona ..................................................................... 41 4.3.2. Genre ........................................................................................... 44 4.3.3. Classicism ................................................................................... 47 5.1. Portrayal and interpretation of main protagonists ..................... 52 5.1.1. Iōannēs Kantakouzēnos ........................................................... 54 5.1.2. Alexios Apokaukos ................................................................... 65 5.1.3. The Patriarch Kalekas ............................................................... 77 5.1.4. The Empress Anna .................................................................... 86 Part II: Translation and Commentary 95 Appendix I: Conclusion of the Histories 448 Appendix II: Transliteration Scheme 450 Bibliography 451 Common abbreviations ........................................................................ 451 Collections of Sources ........................................................................... 452 Individual Sources ................................................................................ 454 Secondary Studies ................................................................................. 459 4 Acknowledgements My thanks are due first and foremost to my partner, Steph Swainston, and my supervisor, Charalambos Dendrinos, for a thousand kindnesses as well as their patience. I also owe particular gratitude to Ruth Macrides, who went far above and beyond her role as advisor, and to Polymnia Tsagouria, for helping me through my bewilderment when first confronted by Medieval Greek. For their assistance, great or small, and, in many cases, friendship: Mike Carr, Siren Çelik, Francesco Dell’Aglio, Adrian Gheorghe, David Gwynn, Jonathan Harris, Anthony Hirst, Christopher Hobbs, Chris Horton, Paul and Louisa Killworth, Savvas Kyriakidis, Christos Malatras, Marie- Christine Ockenden, Jake Ransohoff, Sonja Schönauer, and Anne Sheppard. Last but not least, I thank my parents for their quiet, if bemused, faith in this project. Any translator of Kantakouzēnos will at some point find that they are in the dark, but the German translation of Fatouros and Krischer has on numerous occasions provided illumination for deciphering the intent behind the most obscure phrases. Furthermore, I gladly acknowledge the family of the late Donald M. Nicol for preserving his papers and allowing his former student, Ruth Macrides, access to his summarised translation of the Histories. This text, despite often compressing entire chapters into a few words, was of great help in initially navigating Kantakouzēnos’ vast oeuvre. I am deeply grateful to the Friends and Trustees of the Hellenic Institute, Royal Holloway, University of London, for their assistance with my tuition fees, and similarly thankful to Royal Holloway for the Ethel Beatrice Abrahams Travel Award in 2013 which allowed me to visit north-east Greece and understand some of Kantakouzēnos’ world first-hand. 5 Part I: Introduction 1.1. Manuscript tradition, editions and previous translations The complete text of the Histories is preserved in seven manuscripts.1 Among them Seragliensis gr. 28 (S), Laurentianus IX, 9 (L), Bononiensis 2212 (B), and Parisinus Coislinianus 144 (P) belong to the 14th century, while Mutinensis 224-225, Monacensis 106 and Matritensis gr. 4712 are dateable to the 16th century. The first group of manuscripts was produced during Kantakouzēnos’ lifetime and possibly under his supervision. It is probable that all four originated from the same scriptorium.2 The completion of Laurentianus IX is dated by a colophon to 7 December 1369. The 16th-century manuscripts derive from the earlier four. A small fragment of the text is preserved in another 16th-century manuscript, Ottobonianus gr. 75.3 A Latin translation of Monacensis 106, by Jacob Pontanus, was published in 1603.4 The first edition of the text was prepared from Parisinus Coislinianus 144 by an unnamed editor for the Byzantinae historiae scriptores varii, or Paris Corpus, and published in 1645, with Latin notes by Jacob Gretser and Pontanus’ translation. This edition was subsequently used as the basis for Louis Cousin’s literary and somewhat abridged French translation which was published in 1685.5 Edward Gibbon went out of his way to denounce ‘palpable and essential errors’ in Cousin’s rather hurried 1 So far the fullest description of the MSS is Miller, Cantacuzenus, 7-31. 2 This is convincingly argued on the basis of palaeographical evidence by Miller, Cantacuzenus, 27-30, and accepted by Schönauer, ‘Italian Journey’, 1. 3 MSS Matritensis gr. 4712 and Ottobonianus gr. 75 were unknown to Miller. See Schönauer, ‘Italian Journey’, for the relationship between the earlier and later MSS. 4 On the early editions and translations, see Miller, Cantacuzenus, 32-5. 5 This work, not mentioned by Miller, is most easily viewed on the website of the late Philippe Remacle, <http://remacle.org/bloodwolf/historiens/cantacuzene/histoire.htm>, last accessed 26 March 2012. 6 translation, concluding ‘Put not your trust in translations!’6 In 1729 the Paris text was reprinted in Venice, with changes to the punctuation and a small number of corrections, once again accompanied by Pontanus’ translation and Gretser’s notes. In 1828-32, Ludwig Schopen re-edited the text for the Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae (CSHB), or Bonn Corpus. Although the first volume, encompassing Histories, Books I-II, was simply a corrected edition of the Paris Corpus, the subsequent two volumes, encompassing Books III and IV, respectively, include some corrections and variant readings from Monacensis 106. Once more, Pontanus’ Latin translation was published with the edition. The superior Bonn edition was ignored by Migne in his later Patrologiae Graeca edition, which relied upon the Venice edition. The Histories, with Potanus’ translation, comprises volumes 153 and 154 of this corpus, published in Paris in 1866. During the 20th century, the first third of both