View source for John Cananus

{{short description|Byzantine Greek historian}}
'''John Cananus''' or '''John Kananos''' ({{langx|el|Ἰωάννης Κανανός}}) was a [[Byzantine Greeks|Byzantine Greek]] historian who lived during the first half of the 15th century.

Cananus wrote a "a vivid eyewitness account"<ref name=ODB>{{ODB|first=Alice-Mary|last=Talbot|author-link=Alice-Mary Talbot |title=Kananos, John|url=https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195046526.001.0001/acref-9780195046526-e-2747}}</ref> of the [[Siege of Constantinople (1422)|failed siege]] of [[Constantinople]] by the [[Ottoman Empire|Ottomans]] under Sultan [[Murad II]] in 1422. He attributes the survival of the Byzantine capital to the miraculous intervention of the [[Theotokos|Mother of God]] on 24 August, when he says even the Ottomans saw her on the ramparts. Cananus account is precise in its chronology and useful to military historians for his descriptions of Ottoman siegecraft and Byzantine defences.<ref name=ODB/>

The account differs from the contemporary history of [[John Anagnostes]], who described Murad's [[Siege of Thessalonica (1422–1430)|sack of Thessalonica]] in 1430, chiefly in Cananus' frequent religious polemic and in his willingness to write in the [[Modern Greek|vernacular Greek]], as opposed to the [[Atticism]] of Anagnostes and [[Michael Critobulus|Critobulus]]. Their use of Greek, while "artificial in the extreme," is intended as an "imitation of the classics", an ideal which had been "the governing principle for all writers who aimed at a good style not merely under the Roman empire but right to the end of the Byzantine period."<ref>Reynolds, L. D., & Wilson, N. G. (1991). Scribes and scholars: a guide to the transmission of Greek and Latin literature. Oxford: Clarendon Press. {{ISBN|0-19-872145-5}}. p. 46, 47</ref> With conventional humility, Cananus apologizes for his deficient education and poor style. He states that he writes for ordinary people, not scholars. His lexicon is colloquial and includes quite a few Western military terms.<ref name=ODB/>

John Cananus is sometimes identified with [[Lascaris Cananus]], who travelled to Scandinavia and Iceland around 1439, but this is only a guess.

== Editions ==
* Greek ed., with Latin translation, published with [[George Sphrantzes|Sphrantzes]] in ''[[Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae]]'', 1838, p.&nbsp;457-479. ([[August Immanuel Bekker|Immanuel Bekker]], ed.) [https://books.google.com/books?id=y2MGAAAAQAAJ View online.]
* Greek ed., with Latin translation by [[Leo Allatius|L. Allatius]], published in ''[[Patrologia Graeca]]'', vol. 156. ([[Jacques Paul Migne|Migne, J.P.]], ed.) [https://books.google.com/books?id=E8rI-c0u0SgC&q=cypriani&pg=PA60 View online].
* Lascaris Cananus: Lundström, Vilhelm (ed.) (1902) Laskaris Kananos. Reseanteckningar från de nordiska länderna. Utgifna och kommenterade av Vilh. Lundström. Upsala; Leipzig: Lundequist (Smärre Byzantinska skrifter; 1). (With Swedish Translation) https://archive.org/details/LaskarisKananosReseanteckningarFrnDeNordiskaLnderna
* Lascaris Cananus: Jerker Blomqvist 2002. The Geography of the Baltic in Greek Eyes. In ''Noctes Atticae: 34 articles on Graeco-Roman antiquity and its Nachleben''. 36–51. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum. https://books.google.com/books?id=y37hozj-PeIC&dq=iceland+kananos&pg=PA38
* Online translation into Russian via German: Georg Jakob. Arabische Berichte von Gesandten an germanische Furstenhofe aus dem 9. und 10. Jahrhundert. Berlin 1927, pp.&nbsp;46–47. http://vostlit.by.ru/Texts/rus8/Kananos/text.htm{{dead link|date=April 2017 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}
* Online translation into Russian: А. А. Васильев. Ласкарь Канан, византийский путешественник XV века по Северной Европе и в Исландию. Харьков, 1914. pp.&nbsp;3–8.  https://web.archive.org/web/20110727041740/http://miriobiblion.narod.ru/kananos/kananos.html
* Online translation into English: http://hellenisteukontos.blogspot.com/2009/09/lascaris-cananus-updated.html

== References ==
* Harris, Jonathan (2010), ‘When did Laskaris Kananos travel in the Baltic lands?’, ''Byzantion'' 80, pp.&nbsp;173–87 [http://www.medievalists.net/2011/08/04/when-did-laskaris-kananos-travel-in-the-baltic-lands/ View online]
* [[William Smith (lexicographer)|Smith, William]] (1870) [[Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology]] {{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20080613182758/http://www.ancientlibrary.com/smith-bio/0602.html View online]}}.
* [[Alexander Vasiliev (historian)|Vasiliev, A.A.]] (1952). History of the Byzantine Empire, 324–1453. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. p.&nbsp;350 [http://www.intratext.com/IXT/ENG0832/__P2C.HTM View online].

== Notes ==
{{reflist}}

{{Byzantine historians}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cananus, John}}
[[Category:15th-century Byzantine historians]]
[[Category:15th-century Greek writers]]