Donald M. Nicol – författare

The Byzantines lived in a theocratic society. They were less ready than their western contemporaries to draw the line between things spiritual and things temporal, between Church and state. This book explores some of the characteristics of that society in the age of its decline and fall between the thirteenth and the fifteenth centuries. Though irremediably shattered by the effects of the Fourth Crusade in 1204, the Byzantine Empire found the will to reassert itself and to endure for another 250 years. Material recovery was hardly possible, but there was a remarkable reawakening of scholarship and of the spiritual life. The world's debt to some of the late Byzantine scholars is known to classicists and to students of the Italian Renaissance. The contribution of the latter-day saints of Byzantium, the hesychasts and scholars of the spirit, has been less publicized.

Theodore Spandounes belonged to a Byzantine refugee family who had settled in Venice after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453. He wrote an account of the origins of the Turkish rulers and of their phenomenal rise to power. It was partly a plea to the Popes and princes of western Christendom to unite against the infidel and one of the earliest works of its kind. The first version of the book, written in Italian, appeared in 1509 and was translated into French in 1519. The final version was made in 1538 and a full Italian text was published in 1890 though without any historical commentary. This book presents an English translation of the full text with a preface, commentary and notes; a discussion of the sources which Spandounes might have consulted and an assessment of the value and interest of this hitherto neglected and undervalued treatise.

The district of Epiros in north-western Greece became an independent province following the Fourth Crusade and the dismemberment of the Byzantine Empire by the Latins in 1204. It retained its independence despite the recovery of Constantinople by the Greeks in 1261. Each of its rulers acquired the Byzantine titles of Despot, from which the term Despotate was coined to describe their territory. They preserved their autonomy partly by seeking support from their foreign neighbours in Italy. The fortunes of Epiros were thus affected by the expansionist plans of the Angevin kings of Naples and the commercial interests of Venice. Until 1318 it was governed by direct descendants of its Byzantine founder. Thereafter it was taken over first by the Italian family of Orsini, then conquered by the Serbians, infiltrated by the Albanians, and appropriated by an Italian adventurer, Carlo Tocco. Like the rest of Byzantium and eastern Europe it was ultimately absorbed into the Ottoman Empire in the fifteenth century. The Despotate of Epiros illuminates part of Byzantine history and of the history of Greece in the Middle Ages.

This book traces the diplomatic, cultural and commercial links between Constantinople and Venice from the foundation of the Venetian republic to the fall of the Byzantine Empire. It aims to show how, especially after the Fourth Crusade in 1204, the Venetians came to dominate first the Genoese and thereafter the whole Byzantine economy. At the same time the author points to those important cultural and, above all, political reasons why the relationship between the two states was always inherently unstable.

The Byzantine Empire, fragmented and enfeebled by the Fourth Crusade in 1204, never again recovered its former extent, power and influence. Its greatest revival came when the Byzantines in exile reclaimed their capital city of Constantinople in 1261 and this book narrates the history of this restored empire from 1261 to its conquest by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. First published in 1972, the book has been completely revised, amended, and in part rewritten, with its source references and bibliography updated to take account of scholarly research on this last period of Byzantine history carried out over the past twenty years.

John Cantacuzene reigned as Byzantine emperor in Constantinople from 1347 to 1354. A man of varied talents, as a scholar, soldier, statesman, theologian and monk, he was unique in being the only emperor to narrate the events of his own career. His memoirs form one of the most interesting and literate of all Byzantine histories. Following his abdication in 1354, he lived the last thirty years of his life as a monk, a writer and a grey eminence behind the throne. This book is not a social or political history of the Byzantine Empire in the fourteenth century. It is a biography of a much maligned man who had a hope, however naive, of coming to terms with the emerging Muslim world of Asia and of winning the co-operation of western Christendom without compromising the Orthodox faith of the Byzantine tradition.

John Cantacuzene reigned as Byzantine emperor in Constantinople from 1347 to 1354. A man of varied talents, as a scholar, soldier, statesman, theologian and monk, he was unique in being the only emperor to narrate the events of his own career. His memoirs form one of the most interesting and literate of all Byzantine histories. Following his abdication in 1354, he lived the last thirty years of his life as a monk, a writer and a grey eminence behind the throne. This book is not a social or political history of the Byzantine Empire in the fourteenth century. It is a biography of a much maligned man who had a hope, however naive, of coming to terms with the emerging Muslim world of Asia and of winning the co-operation of western Christendom without compromising the Orthodox faith of the Byzantine tradition.

What kind of lives did women in the Byzantine empire lead? Just how subservient were they in so male-dominated a society? In this collection of biographies Donald M. Nicol uncovers the unexpected fact that in the later years of the empire, at least, some aristocratic women enjoyed influence and exercised initiative. The ten ladies whose lives are described here did not complain of male oppression: instead, despite the conventions of caste and court, they found an outlet for their talents in religion, patronage, friendship and scholarship. They left a lasting influence on the society in which they lived. The story of their achievements offers new perspectives on the Byzantine empire, and a fascinating insight into the lives of women in past times.

Theodore Spandounes belonged to a Byzantine refugee family who had settled in Venice after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453. He wrote an account of the origins of the Turkish rulers and of their phenomenal rise to power. It was partly a plea to the Popes and princes of western Christendom to unite against the infidel and one of the earliest works of its kind. The first version of the book, written in Italian, appeared in 1509 and was translated into French in 1519. The final version was made in 1538 and a full Italian text was published in 1890 though without any historical commentary. This book presents an English translation of the full text with a preface, commentary and notes; a discussion of the sources which Spandounes might have consulted and an assessment of the value and interest of this hitherto neglected and undervalued treatise.