Everything about Michael Panaretos totally explained
Michael Panaretos (
Greek: Μιχαήλ Παναρέτος) (
1320 – c.
1390) wrote a chronicle of the
Trapezuntine empire of
Alexios I Komnenos and his successors from 1204 to 1426. Panaretos was the
protosebastos and
protonotarios in the service of
Alexios III Komnenos. His chronicle is the only direct source on Trebizond and the history of this medieval empire was almost unknown until its discovery by
Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer among the papers of
Cardinal Bessarion in the nineteenth century. The chronicle also contains much valuable material on the early history of the
Ottoman Turks, though, naturally, written from a Byzantine perspective.
Very little is known about Panaretos himself, save the few glimmers which appear in his chronicle. Panaretos makes his first appearance in an entry for 1351 when he records that he went with the mother of the emperor Alexios III,
Irene of Trebizond, against
Limnia to break the power the rebel
Constantine Doranites held there. What Panaretos' exact possession was at this time isn't certain, but his next appearance doesn't come until the Trapezuntine civil war was over when he records he went with the emperor Alexios III in a disastrous attack on
Cheriana, which he himself barely escaped from with his life. Thereafter, his occurrence becomes quite frequent in the annals. In 1363, he was sent with the grand
logothetes, George Scholaris, to Constantinople and met with the emperor
John V Palaiologos, the emperor-monk
John VI Kantakuzenos, and also notably the Venetian
podestà and the capetan of Genoese Galata in order to arrange a marriage alliance between the daughter of his master and one of the sons of the emperor John V.
We also know that he'd at least two sons both of whom died in 1368, one son Constantine who was fifteen, and who drowned, while the other, Romanos, who was seventeen died from disease, both of them within a relatively short period of time while Panaretos was off at Constantinople again. Panaretos was obviously heartbroken by this event because it's the only personal event that he makes mention of. His chronicle, which has been called laconic, is indeed very short and is no more than twenty pages in the printed form, though about half of the chronicle is devoted to the years between 1349 and 1390. For these years his chronicle is very informative and though it may not be as full as some might wish he says what counts. Throughout the chronicle, his countrymen are never Greeks, as was the custom in Byzantium, but always Romans, or more often than not Christians.
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