John Cananus

John Cananus or John Kananos (Greek: Ἰωάννης Κανανός) was a Byzantine Greek historian who lived during the first half of the 15th century.

Cananus wrote a "a vivid eyewitness account"^[1] of the failed siege of Constantinople by the Ottomans under Sultan Murad II in 1422. He attributes the survival of the Byzantine capital to the miraculous intervention of the Mother of God on 24 August, when he says even the Ottomans saw her on the ramparts. Cananus account is precise in its chronology and useful to military historians for his descriptions of Ottoman siegecraft and Byzantine defences.^[1]

The account differs from the contemporary history of John Anagnostes, who described Murad's sack of Thessalonica in 1430, chiefly in Cananus' frequent religious polemic and in his willingness to write in the vernacular Greek, as opposed to the Atticism of Anagnostes and Critobulus. Their use of Greek, while "artificial in the extreme," is intended as an "imitation of the classics", an ideal which had been "the governing principle for all writers who aimed at a good style not merely under the Roman empire but right to the end of the Byzantine period."^[2] With conventional humility, Cananus apologizes for his deficient education and poor style. He states that he writes for ordinary people, not scholars. His lexicon is colloquial and includes quite a few Western military terms.^[1]

John Cananus is sometimes identified with Lascaris Cananus, who travelled to Scandinavia and Iceland around 1439, but this is only a guess.

Editions

Greek ed., with Latin translation, published with Sphrantzes in Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae, 1838, p. 457-479. (Immanuel Bekker, ed.) View online.
Greek ed., with Latin translation by L. Allatius, published in Patrologia Graeca, vol. 156. (Migne, J.P., ed.) View online.
Lascaris Cananus: Lundström, Vilhelm (ed.) (1902) Laskaris Kananos. Reseanteckningar från de nordiska länderna. Utgifna och kommenterade av Vilh. Lundström. Upsala; Leipzig: Lundequist (Smärre Byzantinska skrifter; 1). (With Swedish Translation) https://archive.org/details/LaskarisKananosReseanteckningarFrnDeNordiskaLnderna
Lascaris Cananus: Jerker Blomqvist 2002. The Geography of the Baltic in Greek Eyes. In Noctes Atticae: 34 articles on Graeco-Roman antiquity and its Nachleben. 36–51. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum. https://books.google.com/books?id=y37hozj-PeIC&dq=iceland+kananos&pg=PA38
Online translation into Russian via German: Georg Jakob. Arabische Berichte von Gesandten an germanische Furstenhofe aus dem 9. und 10. Jahrhundert. Berlin 1927, pp. 46–47. http://vostlit.by.ru/Texts/rus8/Kananos/text.htm^{[permanent dead link]}
Online translation into Russian: А. А. Васильев. Ласкарь Канан, византийский путешественник XV века по Северной Европе и в Исландию. Харьков, 1914. pp. 3–8. https://web.archive.org/web/20110727041740/http://miriobiblion.narod.ru/kananos/kananos.html
Online translation into English: http://hellenisteukontos.blogspot.com/2009/09/lascaris-cananus-updated.html

References

Harris, Jonathan (2010), ‘When did Laskaris Kananos travel in the Baltic lands?’, Byzantion 80, pp. 173–87 View online
Smith, William (1870) Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology View online.
Vasiliev, A.A. (1952). History of the Byzantine Empire, 324–1453. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. p. 350 View online.

Notes

^ ^a ^b ^c Talbot, Alice-Mary (1991). "Kananos, John". In Kazhdan, Alexander (ed.). The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-504652-8.
^ Reynolds, L. D., & Wilson, N. G. (1991). Scribes and scholars: a guide to the transmission of Greek and Latin literature. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-872145-5. p. 46, 47

v t e Byzantine historians
5th century	Annianus of Alexandria Eunapius John Rufus Malchus Olympiodorus of Thebes Panodorus of Alexandria Philostorgius Priscus Sabinus of Heraclea Socrates of Constantinople Sozomen Theodoret
6th century	Agathias Cyril of Scythopolis Eustathius of Epiphania Evagrius Scholasticus Hesychius of Miletus John Diakrinomenos John of Ephesus John of Epiphania Pseudo-Joshua the Stylite Pseudo-Zacharias Rhetor Jordanes John Malalas Liberatus of Carthage Marcellinus Comes Menander Protector Nonnosus Peter the Patrician Procopius Theodorus Lector Theophanes of Byzantium Zacharias Rhetor Zosimus
7th century	John of Antioch Trajan the Patrician Theophylact Simocatta
8th century	Hippolytus of Thebes
9th century	Theophanes the Confessor George Syncellus Nikephoros I of Constantinople George Hamartolos Scriptor Incertus
10th century	Constantine VII Joseph Genesius John Kaminiates Leo the Deacon Pseudo-Simeon Symeon Logothete Theophanes Continuatus
11th century	Michael Attaleiates George Kedrenos Michael Psellos John Skylitzes John Xiphilinus Yahya of Antioch
12th century	Nikephoros Bryennios the Younger Niketas Choniates Eustathius of Thessalonica Michael Glykas Anna Komnene John Kinnamos Constantine Manasses Joannes Zonaras
13th century	George Akropolites Theodore Skoutariotes
14th century	Nicephorus Gregoras Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos John VI Kantakouzenos George Pachymeres Michael Panaretos
15th century	John Anagnostes John Cananus Laonikos Chalkokondyles Michael Critobulus Doukas George Sphrantzes Pseudo-George Kodinos

Authority control databases
International	ISNI VIAF
National	Norway Spain France BnF data Germany Italy Israel 2 Belgium United States Sweden Czech Republic Greece Croatia Netherlands Poland Portugal Vatican
People	Deutsche Biographie
Other	IdRef

This page was last edited on 8 April 2023, at 00:53

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Editions

References

Notes