Nicephorus Callistus Xanthopoulos

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Part of the series on Eastern Christianity
Eastern Christianity Portal
History Byzantine Empire Crusades Ecumenical council Baptism of Bulgaria Baptism of Kiev East-West Schism By region Asian - Copts Eastern Orthodox - Georgian - Ukrainian
Traditions Oriental Orthodoxy Coptic Orthodox Church Armenian Apostolic Church Syriac Christianity Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church Assyrian Church of the East Eastern Orthodox Church Eastern Catholic Churches
Liturgy and Worship Sign of the cross Divine Liturgy Iconography Asceticism Omophorion
Theology Hesychasm - Icon Apophaticism - Filioque clause Miaphysitism - Monophysitism Nestorianism - Theosis - Theoria Phronema - Philokalia Praxis - Theotokos Hypostasis - Ousia Essence-Energies distinction Metousiosis This box: view • talk • edit

Nicephorus Callistus Xanthopoulos, of Constantinople, the last of the Greek ecclesiastical historians, flourished around 1320.

His Historia Ecclesiastica, in eighteen books, brings the narrative down to 610; for the first four centuries the author is largely dependent on his predecessors, Eusebius, Socrates Scholasticus, Sozomen, Theodoret and Evagrius, his additions showing very little critical faculty; for the later period his labours, based on documents now no longer extant, to which he had free access, though he used them also with small discrimination, are much more valuable.

A table of contents of another five books, continuing the history to the death of Leo VI the Wise in 911, also exists, but whether the books were ever actually written is doubtful. Some modern scholars are of opinion that Nicephorus appropriated and passed off as his own the work of an unknown author of the tenth century. The plan of the work is good and, in spite of its fables and superstitious absurdities, contains important facts which would otherwise have been unknown. The history of Roman Catholicism receives little attention.

Only one manuscript of the history is known; it was stolen by a Turkish soldier from the library at Buda during the reign of Matthias Corvinus of Hungary and taken to Constantinople, where it was bought by a Christian and eventually reached the imperial library at Vienna.

Nicephorus was also the author of lists of the emperors and patriarchs of Constantinople, of a poem on the capture of Jerusalem, and of a synopsis of the Scriptures, all in iambics; and of commentaries on liturgical poems.