Byzantine statesman, historian, and theologian. His chronicle of Byzantium's humiliations during the Third and Fourth Crusades (1189 and 1204) and his anthology of 12th-century theological writings constitute authoritative historical sources for this period and established him among the most brilliant medieval Greek historiographers.

Nicetas, a protégé of his brother Michael (Choniates, Michael), archbishop of Athens, served as a district governor in Philippopolis (now Plovdiv, Bulgaria), where he witnessed the Crusaders' ravages under Frederick I Barbarossa (Frederick I). He later experienced the looting of Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1204 by the Crusaders from the West. Forced to flee Constantinople, Nicetas moved to Nicaea, site of the Byzantine court-in-exile, and wrote the 21-volume History of the Times, a record of the rise and fall of the 12th- and 13th-century Byzantine dynasties, beginning with the Greek emperor John Comnenus (1118–43) and concluding with the intrusion of the first Latin Eastern emperor, Baldwin I of Flanders (1204–05).

A fervent Greek Byzantine nationalist, Nicetas produced a generally objective and concrete, although rhetorical, account of the Crusaders' campaigns in Byzantium.

In the theological sphere Nicetas composed the Panoplia Dogmatike (“Thesaurus of Orthodoxy”), a collection of tracts to use as source material for responding to contemporary heresies and to document the 12th-century Byzantine philosophical movement.