Theodore Meliteniotes was a Byzantine Greek

Byzantine Greeks

Byzantine Greeks or Byzantines is a conventional term used by modern historians to refer to the medieval Greek or Hellenised citizens of the Byzantine Empire, centered mainly in Constantinople, the southern Balkans, the Greek islands, Asia Minor , Cyprus and the large urban centres of the Near East...

 astronomer, a sakellarios

Sakellarios

Sakellarios is an official entrusted with administrative and financial duties . The title was used in the Byzantine Empire with varying functions, and remains in use in the Eastern Orthodox Church....

(treasurer) in the Byzantine

Byzantine Empire

The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...

 bureaucracy, a supporter of Gregory Palamas

Gregory Palamas

Gregory Palamas was a monk of Mount Athos in Greece and later the Archbishop of Thessaloniki known as a preeminent theologian of Hesychasm. The teachings embodied in his writings defending Hesychasm against the attack of Barlaam are sometimes referred to as Palamism, his followers as Palamites...

 and an opponent of the reunion with the Catholic Church. He became didaskalos ton didaskalon, i.e. the director of the Patriarchal School

Magnaura

The Magnaura was a large building in Constantinople. It is equated by scholars with the building that housed the Senate, and which was located east of the Augustaion, close to the Hagia Sophia and next to the Chalke gate of the Great Palace...

 in 1360.

Works

Theodore wrote an exegesis

Exegesis

Exegesis is a critical explanation or interpretation of a text, especially a religious text. Traditionally the term was used primarily for exegesis of the Bible; however, in contemporary usage it has broadened to mean a critical explanation of any text, and the term "Biblical exegesis" is used...

 on the Gospels and a poem on Sôphrosynè

Sophrosyne

Sophrosyne is a Greek philosophical term etymologically meaning healthy-mindedness and from there self-control or moderation guided by knowledge and balance....

 (Temperance) may be attributed to him.

Tribiblos

Theodore's main work is his Astronomical Tribiblos, in three books, whose autograph manuscrit is preserved (Vaticanus gr. 792), composed before 1352. The work deals with an assortment of mathematical and astronomical issues and draws from some earlier Greek authors like George Pachymeres

George Pachymeres

Georgius Pachymeres , a Byzantine Greek historian and miscellaneous writer, was born at Nicaea, in Bithynia, where his father had taken refuge after the capture of Constantinople by the Latins in 1204...

 and Theodore Metochites

Theodore Metochites

Theodore Metochites was a Byzantine statesman, author, gentleman philosopher, and patron of the arts. From c. 1305 to 1328 he held the position of personal adviser to emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos.- Life :...

. The second book is devoted to Ptolemy

Ptolemy

Claudius Ptolemy , was a Roman citizen of Egypt who wrote in Greek. He was a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology. He lived in Egypt under Roman rule, and is believed to have been born in the town of Ptolemais Hermiou in the...

, whose calculations he explained in the manner of Theon of Alexandria

Theon of Alexandria

Theon was a Greek scholar and mathematician who lived in Alexandria, Egypt. He edited and arranged Euclid's Elements and Ptolemy's Handy Tables, as well as writing various commentaries...

. Finally, in book 3 he devotes himself to Persian astronomy, drawing especially from George Chrysococces, whose work he corrected in many places. In all of them, he explicitly condemns Astrology

Astrology

Astrology consists of a number of belief systems which hold that there is a relationship between astronomical phenomena and events in the human world...

, dissociating his Astronomy from the Persian tradition represented by Chrysococces.

It is clear the pedagogical character of the Tribiblos, that may have been used to give senior astronomy training to the bizantine clergy.