Forgery of a Chronicle - Chronicle of a Forgery. Formation and Tradition of the so-called Chronicon maius by Pseudo-Sphrantzes

这本名为《编年史》的日记，在风格和文字上都进行了重新修改，并按时间顺序进行了扩展，又名《编年史》。斯法兰茨是一位顶级外交官，也是最后一位拜占庭皇帝君士坦丁十一世(1449-1453)的私人朋友，他是征服君士坦丁堡的目击者。因此，以他的名义出版的这两部作品都具有很高的真实性，直到20世纪30年代，人们开始怀疑《纪事报》是伪造的，不早于莱潘托战役(1571年)之后，一群手稿商人和抄写者在流亡的莫内巴西亚大都市主教的监督下在意大利汇编而成。这篇文章可能是为了激励基督教西方人进行进一步的十字军东征，这一次是为了将君士坦丁堡从奥斯曼手中解放出来，并重新建立拜占庭帝国。最初，该项目的目的是了解来源情况，并通过对迄今被忽视的文件的研究，探索这项工作的历史背景和编撰者的个人情况。然而，迄今为止收集的结果强烈建议将这一任务与新的关键版本的文本相结合，在第一年已经开发了几个版本，几个世纪以来，被认为是最重要的希腊征服来源之一。

The so-called Chronicon maius by Pseudo-Sphrantzes is a stylistically and literarily reworked as well as chronologically extended version of the diary of Georgios Sphrantzes, also known as Chronicon minus. Sphrantzes, a top-ranking diplomate and personal friend of the last Byzantine emperor Constantine XI (1449-1453), was an eye-witness of the conquest of Constantinople. Therefore, a high authenticity had been attributed to both works published under his name, until, in the 1930s, suspicion arose that the Chronicon maius was a forgery, compiled in Italy by a group of manuscript traders and copyists under the supervision of the exiled metropolitan bishop of Monembasia not earlier than after the battle of Lepanto (1571). The text was probably written with intent to motivate the Christian occident for a further crusade, this time in order to free the City of Constantinople from the Osmans and to re-establish the Byzantine Empire. Originally, the project aimed at reapraising the source situation as well as, by the study of hitherto disregarded documents, to explore the historical background of the work and the personal situation of its compilators. However, the hitherto collected results strongly suggest to combine this task with a new critical edition of the text which, in the first years already, developed several versions and, for centuries, was considered to be one of the most important Greek sources of the conquest.