Andrea Massimo Cuomo. Ioannis Canani de Constantinopolitana obsidione relatio: A Critical Edition, with English Translation, Introduction, and Notes of John Kananos' Account of the Siege of Constantinople in 1422. Byzantinisches Archiv 30. DeGruyter, 2016.

From DeGruyter

This volume fills the need for a new critical edition and linguistic study of John Kananos' account of the siege of Constantinople in 1422. New research on the manuscripts has produced a new stemma codicum and shown that the oldest witness of this narrative, Vat. gr. 579 (ff. 355r - 364v), was written in Constantinople and belonged to the prolific scribe Phlamules Kontostephanos, who also provided the copy with a title in which the name of John Kananos is mentioned for the first time. The philological approach adopted here explains contradictions among the manuscripts and Kananos' peculiar vernacularisms and reveals a surprisingly realistic and elaborate Greek. The accompanying English translation, a chapter on the language of Kananos, and a complete thesaurus make this volume a valuable contribution to the study of late Byzantine literature.