MICHAEL ACOMINATUS. - Metropolitan of Athens between 1175 and 1222, b. at Chonia (ancient Choni, and for this reason also called Choniates) ca. 1140, d. on the island of Chios, ca. 1222. He completed his studies at the patriarchal school of Constantinople and was appointed secretary of the patriarchal chancery. Having become metropolitan of Athens, he showed zeal for reform against disciplinary abuses and social charity against the burdensome tax system. After the victory of the Latins in 1204, he had a conversation with the pontifical legate Cardinal Benedict at Thessalonica, but he did not wish to submit to the Pope; he withdrew instead to the island of Chios, where he could work peacefully according to his literary tastes and exercise no small influence through his correspondence in favor of the dissident Byzantine Church.
M. left homilies, important speeches, letters and poems (partial ed. in PG 140, 323-84; 1227-72; more complete under the editorship of Spiridion Lampros [2 vols., Athens 1879-80]) to which various additions were later made.
His brother NICETAS (b. at Chona, d. at Nicaea after 1210) was employed, first, at the Greek imperial court of Constantinople and, after 1204, at that of the Greek Emperor of Nicaea. He is known as a theologian of the dissident orthodoxy for his Thesaurus orthodoxae fidei, in 27 books, a historical and polemical work against all heresies, of great value for the history of the errors contemporary with him and for the citations of synods and the fragments of Monophysite works, now lost (partial ed. in PG 139, 1101-1444; 140, 9-281), dependent on the Panoplia dogmatica of Euthymius Zigabenus, but with additions and integrations (cf. F. Cavallera, Le trésor de la foi orthodoxe de Nicetas Acominatos Choniates, in Bull. de Littér. eccles., 1913, pp. 124-37). He is even better known for his history of the 3rd Crusade in 21 books: Historia, which runs from 1180 to 1206 (PG 139, coll. 287-1088 and in Corpus script. byzantin., edited by Bekker, Bonn 1885), followed by the history of the ruin of the statues at the hands of the "Latin barbarians" (De statuis, ibid.).