Life
In his sixteenth year he was sent by his father, the logothete Constantine Akropolites the elder, to the court of John III Doukas Vatatzes, emperor of Nicaea, where Akropolites continued his studies under Theodore Hexapterygos and Nicephorus Blemmydes. The emperor afterwards entrusted him with important state missions, as did his successors (Theodore II Laskaris and Michael VIII Palaiologos). The office of Grand Logothete, or chancellor, was bestowed upon him in 1244.
As commander in the field in 1257 against Michael II, despot of Epirus, he showed little military ability. He was captured and kept for two years in prison, from which he was released by Michael Palaiologos. Meanwhile, Michael Palaiologos was proclaimed emperor of Nicaea, afterwards expelling the Latins from Constantinople, and became emperor of the restored Byzantine Empire; and from this moment Akropolites becomes known in the history of the eastern empire as one of its greatest diplomats. After having discharged the function of ambassador at the court of the Bulgarian Tsar Constantine, he retired for some years from public affairs, and made the instruction of youth his sole occupation.
In the meantime, Michael, afraid of a new Latin invasion, proposed to Pope Clement IV to reunite the Greek and the Latin Churches; and negotiations ensued which were carried on during the reign of five popes, Clement IV, Gregory X, John XXI, Nicolaus III, and Martin IV. Akropolites was chosen as the emperor's ambassador, and in 1273 he was sent to Pope Gregory X. In 1274, at the Second Council of Lyon, he confirmed by an oath in the emperor's name that that confession of faith which had been previously sent to Constantinople by the pope had been adopted by the Greeks. The reunion of the two churches however roused considerable opposition in Byzantium and was afterwards broken off. It did however serve its main purpose, delaying and ultimately entirely averting a Latin attack on Constantinople. In 1282, Akropolites was once more sent to Bulgaria, and shortly after his return he died, in the month of December of the same year.
Read more about this topic: George Akropolites
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“The life of a creator is not the only life nor perhaps the most interesting which a man leads. There is a time for play and a time for work, a time for creation and a time for lying fallow. And there is a time, glorious too in its own way, when one scarcely exists, when one is a complete void. I mean—when boredom seems the very stuff of life.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“All my life long I have been sensible of the injustice constantly done to women. Since I have had to fight the world single-handed, there has not been one day I have not smarted under the wrongs I have had to bear, because I was not only a woman, but a woman doing a man’s work, without any man, husband, son, brother or friend, to stand at my side, and to see some semblance of justice done me. I cannot forget, for injustice is a sixth sense, and rouses all the others.”
—Amelia E. Barr (1831–1919)