Note 657 — APPENDIX A TRADITIONAL MISCONCEPTIONS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE OSMANLIS AND THEIR EMPIRE

The dates given under the Latin columns in Chalcocondylas are almost invariably wrong and are responsible for much of the confusion of European historians in the matter of chronology. Chalcocondylas himself is full of mistakes, and knew very little about the history of Byzantium and the Osmanlis in the fourteenth century. But he is not as bad as his Latin translator, whom the historians have followed. In order to trace some of the errors, I collated the Greek text of Chalcocondylas with the Latin translation through the first two books of his history, which cover the period 1300-1403. The glosses and the inexact translations are many. For example of glosses, in I. c. 4 B, ‘quos Tartaros nominant’ after Scythis; I. c. 7 C, ‘Orthogulus adhibitus in colloquium’, at beginning of third sentence; I. c. 10 C, ‘ex tribus, Orchanes nomine’, after ‘filius eius natu minimus’; I. c. 12 C, ‘circiter viginti duo’ in the sentence ‘Orchanes cum regnasset annos mortem obiit’. For a very unfaithful translation compare Latin with Greek original in I. c. 27, the end of A and beginning of B. In I. c. 28 C ἓξ καὶ τριάκοντα is translated ‘triginta septem’! The letters cited refer to column position in Migne edition.