George Kodinos (Greek: Γεώργιος Κωδινός), also Pseudo-Kodinos or Codinus, is the conventional name of an anonymous late 15th-century author of late Byzantine literature.
Their attribution to him is only traditional, and is based on the fact that all three works come in the same manuscript. The works referred to are the following:
Patria (Πάτρια Κωνσταντινουπόλεως), treating of the history, topography, and monuments of Constantinople. It is divided into five sections: (a) the foundation of the city; (b) its situation, limits and topography; (c) its statues, works of art, and other notable sights; (d) its buildings; (e) and the construction of the Hagia Sophia. It was written in the reign of Basil II (976-1025), revised and rearranged under Alexios I Komnenos (1081–1118), and perhaps copied by Codinus, whose name it bears in some (later) manuscripts. The chief sources are: the Patria of Hesychius Illustrius of Miletus, the anonymous Parastaseis syntomoi chronikai, and an anonymous account (ἔκφρασις) of St Sophia (ed. Theodor Preger in Scriptores originum Constantinopolitanarum, fasc. i, 1901, followed by the Patria of Codinus). Procopius, De Aedificiis and the poem of Paulus Silentiarius on the dedication of St. Sophia should be read in connexion with this subject.
De Officiis (Τακτικόν περί των οφφικίων του Παλατίου Kωνσταντινουπόλεως και των οφφικίων της Μεγάλης Εκκλησίας), a treatise, written between 1347 and 1368, of the court and higher ecclesiastical dignities and of the ceremonies proper to different occasions, as they had evolved by the middle Palaiologan period. It should be compared with the earlier De Ceremoniis of Constantine Porphyrogenitus and other Taktika of the 9th and 10th centuries [1].
