John Anagnostes

He was an eyewitness to the Ottoman sack of Thessalonica on March 29, 1430; an event he described in detail in his Account of the Last Capture of Thessalonica (Διήγησις περί τῆς τελευταίας άλώσεως τῆς Θεσσαλονίχης), which he wrote with an accompanying monody lamenting the city's fall.

Thessalonica had been captured by the Ottomans in 1387; though they were unable to hold the city in the wake of the Battle of Ankara in 1402 when it reverted to the Byzantine Empire.

The Byzantines, when they were unable to hold the city, sold it to the Republic of Venice in 1423; though not in time to mount a defense against another Ottoman siege that year.

Greek ed., with Latin translation by L. Allatius, published with Sphrantzes in Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae, 1838, p. 483-534.

Eugenia Russell, St Demetrius of Thessalonica; Cult and Devotion in the Middle Ages, Peter Lang, Oxford, 2010, pp. 133–45.