By Emma Laws, Cathedral Librarian
Nikephorus Kallistos Xanthopoulos, a Greek historian born around 1256, was apparently about 14 years old when he began researching his colossal Ecclesiastica historia, a history of the church from the time of Christ to the execution of the Byzantine Emperor Phokas in 610. When Xanthopoulos became a priest at Hagia Sophia in Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul), he was able to gain access to the church’s library and to familiarise himself with the works of earlier Greek church historians, including Eusebius, Socrates Scholasticus and Theodoret of Cyrus.
Xanthopoulos included both secular and ecclesiastical events in his mighty work, including the lives of emperors and accounts of military campaigns alongside details of church councils. 18 volumes of his Ecclesiastica historia survive but there were originally 23 volumes – and there is evidence that a further five volumes were at least planned, if not written, continuing the story of the Christian church to the death of Leo VI in 911.
Only one manuscript of Xanthopoulos’s impressive Ecclesiastica historia survives, now in the imperial library at Vienna. However, Sebastian and Gabriel Cramoisy of Paris eventually printed the work in 1630, condensed into just two volumes. Far more manageable! Recently, Exeter Cathedral’s Library was generously gifted a copy of the 1630 edition which, as it turns out, was previously the property of James Carrington (1718-1794), former Prebend and Chancellor of the Diocese of Exeter.