Michael Panaretos

Michael Panaretos (Greek: Μιχαήλ Πανάρετος) (1320 – c. 1390) is a Greek historian. His primary work is a chronicle of the Trapezuntine empire of Alexios I Komnenos and his successors from 1204 to 1426. This chronicle, the only direct source on the history of this medieval empire, also contains much valuable material on the early history of the Ottoman Turks from a Byzantine perspective, but was almost unknown until its discovery by Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer among the papers of Cardinal Bessarion in the nineteenth century.

Very little is known about Panaretos himself, save the few glimmers which appear in his chronicle. He was a protosebastos and protonotarios in the service of Alexios III Komnenos. Panaretos makes his first appearance in an entry for 1351 when he records that he went with the mother of the emperor Alexios III, Irene of Trebizond, against Limnia to break the power the rebel Constantine Doranites held there. What Panaretos' exact possession was at this time is not certain, but his next appearance does not come until the Trapezuntine civil war was over when he records he went with the emperor Alexios III in a disastrous attack on Cheriana, which he himself barely escaped from with his life. Thereafter, his occurrence becomes quite frequent in the annals. In 1363, he was sent with the megas logothetes, George Scholaris, to Constantinople and met with the emperor John V Palaiologos, the emperor-monk John VI Kantakuzenos, and also notably the Venetian podestà and the capetan of Genoese Galata in order to arrange a marriage alliance between the daughter of his master and one of the sons of the emperor John V.

We also know that he had at least two sons both of whom died in 1368, one son Constantine who was fifteen, and who drowned, while the other, Romanos, who was seventeen died from disease, both of them within a relatively short period of time while Panaretos was off at Constantinople again. Panaretos was obviously heartbroken by this event because it is the only personal event that he makes mention of. His chronicle, which has been called laconic, is indeed very short and is no more than twenty pages in the printed form, though about half of the chronicle is devoted to the years between 1349 and 1390. For these years his chronicle is very informative although it is not as full as some might wish. Throughout the chronicle, his countrymen are never Greeks, as was the custom in Byzantium, but always Romans, or more often than not Christians.

Partial English translation by Scott Kennedy at http://www.ancientworlds.net/aw/Post/972250&alert=0