Niccolò Comneno Papadopoli

Who was Niccolò Comneno Papadopoli?

Niccolò Comneno Papadopoli was an Italian lawyer and historian of Greek origin.

He was born to Zuanne Papadopoli, a Republic of Venice Administrator at Candia, present day Heraklion.

Papadopoli studied Canon Law and became a librarian at the University of Padua. In 1726 he published on the history of the university.

That work contains gross inaccuracies, for example regarding the life of Oliver Cromwell 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" and utterly baseless as shown over 150 years by Carlo Malagola and Leopold Prowe.

Papadopoli's work was continued since 1739 by Jacopo Facciolati.