Skip to content
Wellsprings
Zonaras

Zonaras

c. 1070 CE–c. 1160 CE · Constantinople (Istanbul)

John Zonaras (c. 1070 – after 1159 CE) was a Byzantine Greek historian, canon lawyer, and theologian active in Constantinople. He held senior administrative and judicial offices under the emperor Alexios I Komnenos, serving as protasekretis (chief secretary) and megas droungarios, before withdrawing after Alexios's death to monastic life on the island of Hagia Glykeria, where he composed his major works. His chronicle, the Epitome Historion ("Epitome of Histories"), in eighteen books, narrates events from the biblical Creation to the death of Alexios I in 1118, drawing on a wide range of earlier sources. It is valuable to historians because it preserves portions of works now otherwise lost, most notably several books of Cassius Dio's Roman History. Zonaras also produced a widely used commentary on the canons of the Orthodox Church.

See Zonaras’s journey on the map →

Life journeyclick any stop, or use ←/→

Stop 1 of 1

Constantinople (Istanbul)קונסטנטינופולOttoman Empire

We know they were here, but the specifics of what they did at this stop aren’t recorded yet in our corpus.

About Constantinople (Istanbul)

Constantinople, today Istanbul in Turkey, was the Greek colony of Byzantium until Constantine I refounded it as the imperial capital in 330, and for over a millennium it was the capital of the Byzantine Empire and a centre of Greek learning and Christian authority: the council of 381, which Gregory of Nazianzus led for a time, affirmed the Nicene Creed and ranked the city's bishop second only to Rome's, and Hagia Sophia rose in 537. Jews are recorded there from the late fourth century. Sacked by the Fourth Crusade in 1204, it fell to the Ottomans in 1453, serving as their capital and a seat of Islamic learning until 1923; after 1492 Sephardi exiles made it a leading Jewish centre.

In Constantinople (Istanbul) at the same time

Michael of Ephesus

See other sages who lived in Constantinople (Istanbul)→

In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with Zonaras’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.

In the same tradition

Michael of Ephesus

The world in their lifetime

Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Zonaras’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

Works(3)