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.
