Donald Nicol

Donald MacGillivray Nicol ( born February 4, 1923 in Portsmouth, † 25 September 2003 in Cambridge ) was a British Byzantine Studies and Professor of Modern Greek Koraes and Byzantine History, Language and Literature at King's College London.

Life

Nicol attended King Edward VII School in Sheffield and St Paul's School in London. During the war and post-war years from 1941 to 1946 Nicol did his service with the Friends' Ambulance Unit, which led him to a large extent to Greece, especially Ioannina and northwestern Greece with Meteora monasteries and brought into contact with the population and Orthodox monks. From this period dates his acquaintance with Steven Runciman, who was especially cared for at the Athenaeum Club in London.

These coordinates given his academic career. After a first degree in classical philology, he was awarded an assisted by Runciman dissertation on the Despotate of Epirus in 1952 at Pembroke College, Cambridge, a doctorate. The academic year 1949-50 he spent at the British School at Athens. Following the promotion Nicol was from 1952 to 1964 Lecturer in Classics at University College Dublin, 1964-1966 Visiting Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks, 1966-1970 Senior Lecturer and Reader in Byzantine History at the University of Edinburgh. In 1970 he was offered the chair of Professor of Modern Greek Koraes and Byzantine History, Language and Literature at King's College London, where he remained until his retirement in 1988. At King 's College, he was also from 1970 to 1980 Assistant Principal, 1980-1981 Vice - Principal.

Nicol was from 1973 to 1983 editor of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 1975 to 1976 Chairman of the Ecclesiastical History Society, and from 1989 to 1992 Head of the Gennadius Library ( Γεννάδειος Βιβλιοθήκη ) in Athens; to its founder Ioannes Gennadius (1844-1932), he wrote a biography during his stay.

1960 Nicol became a Member of the Royal Irish Academy, 1981 Fellow of the British Academy. The city of Arta in 1990 awarded him honorary citizenship, the University of Ioannina in 1997 appointed him an honorary doctorate.

In 1950 he married Joan Mary Campbell, with whom he had three sons. The family lived in Eltham, where the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus had spent together with King Henry IV in 1400 Christmas. The visit turned Nicol 1970 in a sample post for the planned journal Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies dar.

Research priorities

Nicol was originally a classical philologist and had become a historian, not without looking at history in the wake of Runciman as literature. His main areas of work were the history of the Byzantine dynasties, the Byzantine prosopography, whose development he nudged, the Byzantine diplomacy and relations with Venice, the Francs and the patriarchs, but also Byzantine Archaeology and Art History or social and economic history.

Writings

• The Despotate of Epirus. . Basil Blackwell, 1957 Advanced revision: The Despotate of Epirus from 1267 to 1479. A Contribution to the History of Greece in the Middle Ages. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1984, ISBN 0-521-13089-1.
• Byzantium: its ecclesiastical history and relations with the western world. Collected studies. Variorum Reprints, London, 1972, ISBN 0-902089-35-8.
• Meteora: the rock monasteries of Thessaly. Chapman & Hall, London, 1963 Revised edition. Variorum Reprints, London, 1975, ISBN 0-902089-73-0.
• The Byzantine Family of Kantakouzenos ( Cantacuzenus ) ca 1100-1460: a genealogical and prosopographical study. Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies, Washington, 1968 ( Dumbarton Oaks studies, vol 11).
• End of the Byzantine Empire. Hodder Arnold, 1979, ISBN 0-7131-6250-3.
• Church and Society in the Last Centuries of Byzantium (The Birkbeck Lectures in Ecclesiastical History, 1977), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1979, ISBN 0-521-07167-4.
• Byzantium and Venice. A study in diplomatic and cultural relations. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988, ISBN 0-521-34157-4.
• A biographical dictionary of the Byzantine empire. Seaby, London, 1991, ISBN 1-85264-048-0.
• The Immortal Emperor: the life and legend of Constantine Palaiologos, last Emperor of the Romans Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991, ISBN 0-521-89409-3.
• Byzantium and Venice: A Study in Diplomatic and Cultural Relations. Cambridge University Press, 1992, ISBN 0-521-42894-7.
• The last centuries of Byzantium, 1261-1453. St Martin's Press, 1972, ISBN 0-246-10559-3; 2nd edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1993, ISBN 0-521-43991-4, books.google.de.
• The Byzantine lady: ten portraits, 1250-1500. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994, ISBN 0-521-45531-6, books.google.de.
• The Reluctant Emperor: A Biography of John Cantacuzene, Byzantine Emperor and Monk, C. 1295-1383. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996, ISBN 978-0-521-52201-4, books.google.gr.
• Theodore Spandounes: On the origin of the Ottoman emperors. Ed. by DM Nicol, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1997, ISBN 0-521-58510-4, books.google.de.