Michael Critobulus

Michael Critobulus (Greek: Μιχαήλ Κριτόβουλος, c. 1410 – c. 1470) was a Greek politician, scholar and historian. He is known as the author of a history of the Ottoman conquest of the Eastern Roman Empire under Sultan Mehmet II. Steven Runciman included Critobulus' work, along with the writings of Doukas, Laonicus Chalcondyles and George Sphrantzes, as one of the principal Greek sources for the Fall of Constantinople in 1453.

Critobulus is a Romanization of the name, which is alternatively transliterated as Kritoboulos, Kritovoulos, Critoboulos; sometimes with Critobulus' provenance affixed (e.g. Critobulus of Imbros).

Critobulus' birth name was Michael Critopoulos. He changed this modern Greek family name to the more classical-sounding "Kritoboulos" in reference to a figure of that name in the dialogues of Plato.

He belonged to a family of landowners on the island of Imbros. In the 1450s he was a local political leader of the island and played an active role in the peaceful handover of Imbros, Limnos and Thasos to the Ottomans after the final breakdown of the Byzantine Empire.

He later wrote the work History in five books. It is a historical account of the rise of the Ottomans and the final conquest of the remainder of the Eastern Roman Empire. Its main part is a biography of the Ottoman sultan Mehmet II, the Conqueror, to whom the work was also dedicated. Writing under Ottoman rule, Critobulus expressed admiration for Mehmet in his work, and combined mourning for the Greek loss with an acceptance of the shift of power to the Ottoman Turks, which he interpreted as a divinely ordained world historic event.

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