Niccolò Comneno Papadopoli
Italian-Greek lawyer and historian (1655-1740)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Niccolò Comneno Papadopoli (Greek: Νικόλαος Κομνηνός Παπαδόπουλος, Nikólaos Komninós Papadópoulos; 6 January 1655 on Crete – 20 January 1740 in Padua) was an Italian lawyer and historian of Greek origin. He lived in the Republic of Venice.
Life
He was born to Zuanne (Giovanni) Papadopoli, a Greco-Venetian administrator at Candia, present day Heraklion.[1] He claimed descent from the Komnenian dynasty, but this claim is considered fictional by modern historians[2]
Papadopoli studied Canon Law and became a librarian at the University of Padua. In 1726 he published on the history of the university.[3]
That work contains gross inaccuracies (if not lies), for example regarding the life of Oliver Cromwell[4] and Nicolaus Copernicus. Papadopoli had falsely claimed in 1726 that he had seen an entry of Copernicus in records of a "Polish nation" at the university. In the century that had passed since, this claim had been widely published and "found a place in all subsequent biographies of Copernicus, but the decorative particulars added by the historian of the Pavian university have been shown to be wholly incorrect"[5] and utterly baseless[6] as shown over 150 years by Carlo Malagola and Leopold Prowe.
Papadopoli's work was continued since 1739 by Jacopo Facciolati.