1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Metochita, Theodore

METOCHITA, THEODORE [Theodoros Metochites], a Byzantine author, man of learning and statesman, who flourished during the reign of Andronicus II. Palaeologus (1282–1328). After the deposition of his patron by Andronicus III., Metochita was deprived of his office of great logothete (chancellor) and sent into exile. He was soon recalled, but retired from political life to a convent, where he died in 1332. He was a man of very great learning, only surpassed by Photius and Michael Psellus. His pupil Nicephorus Gregoras, who delivered his funeral oration, calls him a “living library.”

Only a few of his numerous works have been preserved. The best known is Ὺπομνηματισμοὶ καὶ σημειώσεις γνωμικαί, Miscellanea philosophica et historica (ed. C. G. Müller and T. Kiessling, 1821), containing some 120 essays; for a list of them see Fabricius, Bibliotheca graeca (ed. Harles), x. 417; in these he chiefly made use of Synesius. Of his rhetorical pieces two have been published by C. N. Sathas in Μεσαιωνικὴ βιβλιοθήκη (1872), and two poems on religious subjects by M. Treu (1895). The poems, dealing mainly with contemporary and personal matters, are written in hexameter, not in the usual “political” verse. Metochita was also the author of works on philosophical and astronomical subjects.