which mark many of the shorter narratives of that event: such, for example, as those of Leonard, of the Podestà of Pera, of Cardinal Isidore in the 'Lamentatio,' and of others. As he continued to belong to the Orthodox Church and to the Greek as opposed to the Roman party in that Church, his history is free from the denunciations of his fellow Christians for having refused the union agreed to at Florence. The writer's characteristics as a Greek, but also as a servant of the sultan, show themselves in his work. He expresses sympathy with his own people, extols their courage, and laments their misfortunes. But in places his biography of the sultan reads like the report of an able and courageous official. His training and experience in the work of government, his service under Mahomet, and perhaps something in the nature of the man, make his narrative sober and methodical and impress the reader with the idea that the author felt a sense of responsibility for the truthfulness of what he was writing. While the narratives of Phrantzes, Chalcondylas, and Ducas recount some of the incidents of the siege more fully than that of Critobulus, the latter gives more details on others and supplies valuable information which none of them have given. His Life of Mahomet is by far the most valuable of the recently discovered documents, and, as will be seen, I have made use of it as the nucleus of my narrative of the siege.
The manuscript of Critobulus was discovered by the late Dr. Dethier less than forty years ago in the Seraglio Library at Constantinople. It was transcribed by him and also by Herr Karl Müller and was published by the latter in 1883 with valuable notes.[1]
Two other works of importance unknown to Gibbon
- ↑ Herr Müller's preface is dated 1869, but I am not aware that it was published before it appeared in Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, vol. v. The dedicatory epistle to Mahomet was published from another and a somewhat longer version by Teschendorf in 1870 in his Notitia Codicis Bibliorum Sinaitici (Leipzig).
