Sphrantzes George. The Fall of the Byzantine Empire: A Chronicle by George Sphrantzes: 1401-1477

Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1980. — 174 p. — ISBN: 0-87023-190-8.George Sphrantzes, also Phrantzes or Phrantza (Greek: Γεώργιος Σφραντζής or Φραντζής; 1401 – c. 1478) was a late Byzantine Greek historian and Imperial courtier. He was an attendant to Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos, protovestiarites ("Lord of the Imperial Wardrobe") under John VIII Palaiologos, and a close confident to Constantine XI Palaiologos. He was an eyewitness of the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, made a slave by the victorious Turks, but ransomed shortly afterwards. Sphrantzes served the surviving members of the Palaiologian family for the next several years until taking monastic vows in 1472. It was while a monk he wrote his history, which ends with the notice of Sultan Mehmed II's attempt to capture Naupaktos, which he dates to the summer of 1477; Sphrantzes is assumed to have died not long after that event.
His Chronicle (Χρονικόν), which, like most Byzantine chronicles, begins with the creation of the world but is more detailed when talking of the history of the House of the Palaiologoi from 1258 to 1476. It is a very valuable authority for the events of his own times. The distinctive traits of his work are loyalty to the Palaiologoi -- Sphrantzes often exaggerated their merits and suppressed their defects -- hatred of the Turks, and devotion to Orthodoxy. Steven Runciman described his work as "honest, vivid and convincing" and that Sphrantzes "wrote good Greek in an easy unpretentious style."
For centuries it was believed that Sphrantzes wrote two works, one the Minor Chronicle and the other the Major Chronicle. The Major Chronicle is more detailed particularly about the siege of Constantinople. But, beginning in 1934, it was demonstrated that the Major Chronicle was written decades later by Makarios Melissenos ("Pseudo-Sphrantzes"), a priest who fled to Naples from a Greek-Venetian island conquered by the Ottomans. Why Melissenos selected Sphrantzes to elaborate and expand upon is not clear.