Leontios Machairas

Leontios Machairas ( Greek Λεόντιος Μαχαιράς , * around 1380 ; † after 1432 ) was a medieval Cypriot historian .

Life

The main source on his person is the chronicle he wrote in the Cypriot dialect of the Middle Ages . It describes the events from the alleged visit of the Empress Helena to Cyprus to the time of the Kingdom of Cyprus .

Machairas was an Orthodox Christian but wrote with respect for the Pope and the Catholic elite of Cyprus in whose service he was. He is the only source for the Alexis uprising of the Cypriot serfs against King Janus , which he rejected. According to Byzantine custom, he only used the word basileus for the Byzantine emperor and referred to the king of Cyprus as regas (from Latin rex = king). He took part in the battle of Chirokitia against the Mameluks in 1426 .

The Chronicle

The chronicle is only preserved in a shortened form. The period from 1359 onwards is dealt with in more detail. Originally, it lasted until the death of King Janus in 1432, the concise final part about the time of King John II is probably a later addition.

Manuscripts of the Chronicle are preserved in the Bodleian Library in Oxford , the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice and in Ravenna . According to Colophon, the Oxford manuscript was written in Paphos in June 1555 .

The chronicle was first published in 1873 by Konstantinos Sathas in his Μεσαιωνική βιβλιοθήκη , then in 1932 by Richard M. Dawkins .

Text output

• Λεοντίου Μαχαιρά Χρονικόν Κύπρου - Chronique de Chypre . Texts grec by E. Miller and C. Sathas . Ernest Leroux, Éditeur, Paris 1882 (Publications de l ' École Nationale des Langues Orientales Vivantes , IIe série, Volume 2) (online) .
• Leontios Makhairas: Recital concerning the Sweet Land of Cyprus entitled 'Chronicle'. Edited with a translation and notes by RM Dawkins . Clarendon Press, Oxford 1932.

literature

• Johannes Karayannopulos , Günter Weiß : Source studies on the history of Byzantium (324–1453) . Wiesbaden 1982, ISBN 3-447-02244-2 , p. 525 No. 552: Leontios Machaeras .
• Svetlana Bliznjuk: Machairas, Leontios . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 6, Artemis & Winkler, Munich / Zurich 1993, ISBN 3-7608-8906-9 , column 58.
• Svetlana Bliznjuk: Леонтий Махера и его хроника "Повесть о сладкой земле Кипр" . Изд-во МГУ, Moscow 1999.

Web links

• University of Athens : Χρονικόν του Μαχαιρά (online text)
• Publications about Leontios Machairas in the Opac of the Regesta Imperii