THEOPHANES, surnamed "the Confessor" (c. A.D. 758 818), Greek ascetic, chronicler and saint, belonged to a noble and wealthy family and held several offices under Constantine V., Copronymus He subsequently founded a monastery (roi) Me-yaXov 'APypoi)) near Sigriane. He took a strong position against the Iconoclastic policy of Leo V. and was imprisoned in Samothrace, where he died (818). He subsequently received the honours of canonization. He continued the Chronicle of George the Syncellus from the accession of Diocletian to the downfall of Michael I. Rhangabes (284-813). The work, although wanting in chronological accuracy, is of great value as supplying the accounts of lost authorities.
There is also extant a further continuation, in six books, of the Chronicle down to the year 961 by a number of mostly anonymous writers (called 01 mETa 0.06pnp, Scriptores post Theophanem), who undertook the work by the instructions of Constantine Porphyro genitus.
Editions of the Chronicle:—Editio princeps, J. Goar (1655) ; J. P. Migne, Patrologia Greece, (Ail; J. Classen in Bonn Corpus Scriptorum
Hist. Byzantinae (1839-41) ; and C. de Boor (1883-85), with an exhaustive treatise on the ms. and an elaborate index; E. W. Brooks in Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 15, p. 578 et seq.
Editions of the Continuation in J. P. Migne, Patr. Gr., cix., and writer in Sitzungsberichte der philos.-philol. und der hist. Cl. der k. by I. Bekker, Bonn Corpus Scriptorum Hist. Byz. (1838) ; on both works and Theophanes generally, see C. Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Literatur (1897) ; Ein Dithyrambus auf Theophanes Confessor (a panegyric on Theophanes by a certain protaalsecretis, or chief secretary, under Constantine Porphyrogenitus) and Ellie neue Vita des Theophanes Confessor (anonymous), both edited by the same writer in Sitzungsberichte der Philos.-philol. und der hist. Cl. der k. bayer. Akad. der Wissenschaften (1896, pp. 583-625 ; and 1897, pp.
371-399) ; Gibbon's Decline and Fall (ed. Bury, 1896-190o), v. p. 53o.