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Education, learning, literature, and art
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Page 8
His chief literary achievement is the great historical work in twenty books comprising the events from the time of John Comnenus accession to the throne to the first years of the Latin Empire (1118-1206). Nicetas work is a priceless source for the time of Manuel, the interesting rule of Andronicus, the epoch of the Angeli, the Fourth Crusade, and the taking of Constantinople by the crusaders in 1204. The beginning of his history, which treats of the time of John Comnenus, is very brief. The work breaks off with a minor event and accordingly fails to represent a complete whole; perhaps, as Th. Uspensky supposed, it has not yet been published in its complete form. For his history Nicetas acknowledged only two sources: narratives of eyewitnesses and personal observation. The opinions of scholars vary as to whether Nicetas used John Cinnamus as his source. The history of Nicetas is written in an inflated, eloquent, and picturesque style; revealing profound knowledge both of ancient literature and of theology. However, the author himself held quite a different opinion of his style; in the introduction he wrote: I did not care for a bombastic narrative, stuffed with ununderstandable words and elevated expressions, although many esteem it highly. As I have already said, artificial and ununderstandable style is most repugnant to history, which, on the contrary, greatly prefers a simple, natural, and plain narrative.
In spite of some partiality in the exposition of the events of one reign or the other, Nicetas, who was firmly convinced of the full cultural superiority of the Roman over the western barbarian, deserves as a historian great trust and deep attention. In his special monograph on Nicetas Choniates, Th. Uspensky wrote: Nicetas is worthy of study if only for the reason that, in his history, he treats of the most important epoch of the Middle Ages, when the hostile relations between west and east reached their highest point of strain and burst out in the Crusades and in the founding of the Latin Empire in Tsargrad (Constantinople). His opinions of the western crusaders and the mutual relations between west and east are distinguished by a deep truth and ingenuous historical sense that we do not find in the best works of western medieval literature.
Besides the History, to Nicetas Choniates belong perhaps a small treatise upon the statutes destroyed by the Latins in Constantinople in 1204; some rhetorical writings, formal eulogies in honor of various emperors; and a theological treatise which has not yet been published in full, The Treasure of Orthodoxy (Θησαυρὸς Ὀρθοδοξίας); this work, a continuation of the Panoply of Euthymius Zigabenus, was written after study of numerous writers and has as its object the refutation of a great number of heretical errors.
A History of the Byzantine Empire - Table of Contents
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Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/vasilief/literature-education-learning-art-6.asp?pg=8
