Hayton of Corycus

An image from Hayton's work La Flor des Estoires, shows Hayton remitting his report on the Mongols to Pope Clement V in 1307. Hayton of Corycus, O.Praem (also Hethum, Het'um, and variants; ; ) was a medieval Armenian nobleman and historiographer. He was also a member of Norbertines and likely a Catholic priest.

Hayton is the author of ("Flower of the Histories of the East";

Biography King Hethum I of Armenia entering Drazark monastery in 1270, the final year of his life. Likely born between and 1245, a member of the influential Armenian Hethumid dynasty in Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, Hayton was the son of Oshin (d. 15 January 1265), Prince of Corycus (Korikos), and younger brother of King Hethum I (d. 28 October 1270) and Sempad the Constable , the chronicler and kingdom's constable (d. 1276). Thus, Hayton is always keen to ascribe motives for Mongol actions that would endear them to his papal audience, as with his account of the Ilkhan Hülegü's rather destructive invasion of Syria (1259–60):

The Khan wanted to go to Jerusalem in order to deliver the Holy Land from the Saracens and to remit it to the Christians. The king Hethum I was very happy with this request, and assembled a great score of men on foot and on horse, because, in that time, the Kingdom of Armenia was in such a good state that it easily had 12,000 soldiers on horse and 60,000 soldiers on foot.

Hayton dictated his text to one Nicolas Faulcon using the French language. Faulcon then prepared a Latin translation of his French text. The work was completed and presented to Pope Clement V in 1307. Faulcon's text is preserved in numerous manuscripts, a total of 18 of the French text and 32 of the Latin text (two which are not independent witnesses but notebooks or indices of variants). Some of these manuscripts still date to the first half of the 14th century. For the French text: Turin University library IV.30, Paris BNF nouv. acq. fr. 886, Vienna national library no. 2620; for the Latin text: Paris BNF lat. 5515 and lat. 14693. There is another French text, translated from Faulcon's Latin text by one Jean le Long in 1351 (preserved in 3 manuscripts). In addition there is one Aragonese translation made for Juan Fernández de Heredia, grand master of the Hospitallers, besides a former Catalan translation having maybe the same origin, and one English language manuscript of the 16th century, presumably made for Henry VIII. The Editio princeps was prepared in Paris in 1510, based on Faulcon's French text. Faulcon's Latin text appeared in Haguenau (1529), Basel (1532) and Helmstedt 1585, Jean le Long's French version in Paris (1529).

An English translation (independent of the English manuscript text) by Richard Pynson was printed in London in the 1520s. Other translations included German (Strasbourg 1534), Dutch (Antwerpen 1563), Italian (Venice 1559, 1562, 1562) and Spanish (Córdoba 1595) versions.

A modern edition of the text was prepared (with modern French translation and commentary) in 1906 for Recueil des historiens des croisades.