Niccolò Comneno Papadopoli

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.

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.