ACOMINATUS (AKOMINATOS),

See also:

• MICHAEL
• MICHAEL (1596-1645)
• MICHAEL (Hebrew Sn,q, " Who is like God? ")

MICHAEL (c. 1140-1220)  , Byzantine writer and ecclesiastic, was born at Chonae (the ancient Colossae) . At an early age he studied at Constantinople, and about 1175 was appointed archbishop of Athens . After the capture of Constantinople by the Franks and the establishment of the Latin empire (1204), he retired to the island of Ceos, where he died . He was a versatile writer, and composed homilies, speeches and poems, which, with his correspondence, throw considerable light upon the miserable condition of Attica and Athens at the time . His memorial to Alexis III . Angelus on the abuses of Byzantine administration, the poetical lament over the degeneracy of Athens and the monodes on his brother Nicetas and Eustathius, archbishop of Thessalonica, deserve special mention . Edition of his works by S . Lambros (1879-1880) ; Migne, Patrologia Graeca, cxl . ; see also A . Ellissen, Michael Akominatos (1846), containing several pieces with German translation; F . Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Athen im Mittelalter, i . (1889); G .

Finlay, History of Greece, iv. pp . 133-134 (1877) . His younger brother NICETAS (Niketas), sometimes called CHONIATES, who accompanied him to Constantinople, took up politics as a career . He held several appointments under the Angelus emperors (amongst them that of " great logothete " or chancellor) and was governor of the " theme " of Philippopolis at a critical period . After the fall of Constantinople he fled to Nicaea, where he settled at the court of the emperor Theodorus Lascaris, and devoted himself to literature . He died between 1210 and 1220 . His chief work is his History, in 21 books, of the period from 118o to 1206 . In spite of its florid and bombastic style, it is of considerable value as a record (on the whole impartial) of events of which he was either an eye-witness or had heard at first hand . Its most interesting portion is the description of the capture of Constantinople, which should be read with Villehardouin's and Paolo Rannusio's works on the same subject . The little treatise On the Statues destroyed by the Latins (perhaps, as we have it, altered by a later writer) is of special interest to the archaeologist . His dogmatic work(Orlvaupor 'OpGoboEias, Thesaurus Orthodoxae Fidei), although it is extant in a complete form in MS., has only been published in part . It is one of the chief authorities for the heresies and heretical writers of the 12th century .

Editions: History, editio princeps, H . Wolf (1557); and in the Bonn Corpus Scriptorum Hist . Bye., 1st ed.,Bekker (1835) ; Rhetorical Pieces in C . Sathas, Mee-awe,, 1 BLf]\LOOhnn, i . (1872); Thesaurus in Migne, Patrologia Graeca, cxxxix., cxl . ; see also C . A . Sainte-Beuve, " Geoffroy de Villehardouin " in Causeries du Lundi, ix.; S . Reinach, " La fin de 1'empire grec " in Esquisses Archeologiques (1888) ; C . Neumann, Griechische Geschichtsschreiber im 12 . Jahrhundert (1888); Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. lx . ; and (for both Michael and Nicetas) C .

Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur (1897) .