Career
He is known as the author of a history of the Ottoman conquest of the Eastern Roman Empire under Sultan Mehmet World War II Steven Runciman included Critobulus" work, along with the writings of Doukas, Laonicus Chalcondyles and George Sphrantzes, as one of the principal Greek sources for the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. Critobulus is a Romanization of the name, which is alternatively transliterated as Kritoboulos, Kritovoulos, Critoboulos. Sometimes with Critobulus" provenance affixed (eg Critobulus of Imbros).
Critobulus" birth name was Michael Critopoulos.
He changed this modern Greek family name to the more classical-sounding "Kritoboulos" in reference to a figure of that name in the dialogues of Plato. He belonged to a family of landowners on the island of Imbros.
In the 1450s he was a local political leader of the island and played an active role in the peaceful handover of Imbros, Limnos and Thasos to the Ottomans after the final breakdown of the Byzantine Empire. Diether R. Reinsch (ed), Critobuli Imbriotae historiae.
(Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae 22).
Berlin: de Gruyter, 1983. Diether R. Reinsch and Photini Kolovou (ed and transl), Κριτοβούλου του Ιμβρίου Ιστορία. Athens: Ekdoseis Kanaka, 2005.
Charles T. Rigg (ed and transl), History of Mehmed the Conqueror.
Princeton: Princeton Uttar Pradesh, 1954.
