George Hamartolus
GEORGE HAMARTOLUS
Also George the Monk, Byzantine historian; fl. mid-ninth century. Nothing is known of his life. His Chronicle, which treats the period from the creation to 842, is edificatory in purpose; his interest is mainly ecclesiastical—he is bitterly opposed to iconoclasm—and his conception of historical causation is naïvely theological. His value lies in the many and varied sources from which he uncritically copied or excerpted, some of which are now lost. His Chronicle has independent value only for the first half of the ninth century. Simple in concept and popular in language and style, it was highly esteemed in the Middle Ages and often excerpted by later chroniclers. It was translated into Old Slavonic and Georgian, and a continuation to 948 was added, probably by a supporter of the deposed Emperor Romanus Lecapenus.
Bibliography: Georgii monachi chronicon, ed. c. de boor, 2 v. (Leipzig 1904). Latin tr. of chronicle in Patrologia Graeca, 110:41–1260, no tr. into any mod. lang. g. moravcsik, Byzantinoturcica, 2 v. (2d ed. Berlin 1958) 1:277–280, full bibliog.
[r. browning]