General situation in the Empire.

        The territory of Michael’s Empire was greatly reduced from the territory of Byzantium in the epoch of the Comneni and Angeli, especially after the First Crusade. In 1261 the Empire comprised the northwestern corner of Asia Minor, the major part of Thrace and Macedonia, Thessalonica, and several islands in the northern part of the Aegean Sea (Archipelago). Accordingly, the Bosphorus and Hellespont, these exceedingly important strategic and commercial waterways, belonged to the restored Empire. The Despotat of Epirus came under the Empire’s suzerainty. At the very beginning of his reign Michael received as ransom for the prince of Achaia, William Villehardouin, captured by the Greeks in the battle of Castoria, three strong Frankish fortresses in the Peloponnesus: Monemvasia, situated on the eastern coast, the great rock rising out of the sea near the ancient Epidaurus Limera, which is “not only one of the most picturesque sites of the Peloponnesus, but has a splendid record of heroic independence which entitles it to a high place in the list of the world’s fortresses;”[2] the well-known fortified castle of Mistra; and Maina, another castle erected by the Franks in the mountains of Taygetus to overawe the Slavs dwelling there. These three strongholds became the strategic bases of support from which the troops of the Byzantine emperors successfully fought the Frankish dukes.

        But the rest of the formerly great Empire was menaced on all sides by peoples politically or economically strong: the Turks threatened from Asia Minor, the Serbs and Bulgars from the north; the Venetians occupied some of the islands of the Archipelago, the Genoese, certain points on the Black Sea, and the Latin knights, the Peloponnesus and a portion of Middle Greece. Michael Pataeologus was not able even to unite all the Greek centers. The Empire of Trebizond continued to live a separate and independent life and the Byzantine possessions in the Crimea — the theme of Cherson (Korsun) with the adjacent country frequently referred to as “the Gothic Klimata” — were in the power of the emperors of Trebizond and paid them tribute. The Despotat of Epirus was only to a certain extent dependent upon the restored Empire of Michael. Under Michael Palaeologus the Empire reached the widest limits of the last period of its existence, but these limits were preserved only during his reign, so that “in this respect Michael Palaeologus was the first and also the last powerful emperor of restored Byzantium.”[3] The Empire of the first Palaeologus resembled, to the French scholar, Diehl, “a slender, dislocated, miserable body upon which rested an enormous head — Constantinople.”[4]

        The capital, which had never recovered after the sack of 1204, passed into the hands of Michael in a state of decay and ruin; the best and richest buildings stood as if recently sacked; the churches had been robbed of their precious furnishings; the palace of Blachernae, which, from the time of the Comneni, had been the imperial residence and had dazzled strangers with its rich decorations and mosaics, was completely devastated; inside it was, said a Greek contemporary, “full of Italian smoke and fume”[5] from the carousals of the Latin emperors, and was therefore uninhabitable.

        Though the Byzantine Empire of the Palaeologi continued to be of great importance from a cultural standpoint, Constantinople ceased to be one of the centers of European policy. “After the restoration under the Palaeologi the Empire has almost exclusively the local significance of a national Greek medieval kingdom, which, in substance, is the continuation of the Empire of Nicaea, though it established itself in the Blachernae and arrayed itself in the antiquated forms of the old Byzantine Empire.”[6] Round this aging organism younger peoples were growing and gathering strength, especially the Serbs of the fourteenth century under Stephen Dušan (Dushan) and the Ottoman Turks. The enterprising commercial Italian republics, Genoa and Venice, especially the former, got control of the whole trade of the Empire, which became wholly dependent on them financially and economically. The only question was which of these peoples would put an end to the Empire of the eastern Christians, seize Constantinople, and become master of the Balkan peninsula. The history of the fourteenth century was to answer this question in favor of the Turks.

        But if in the sphere of political international life Byzantium under the Palaeologi played a secondary part, its internal life was of great importance. In the epoch of the Palaeologi one may note the interesting fact of the rise of patriotism among the Greek people, accompanied by a turning back to the glories of ancient Greece. For instance, officially the emperors continued to bear the usual title of “basileus and autocrat of the Romans,” but some prominent men of the time tried to persuade the basileus to take the new title of “Emperor of the Hellenes.” The former vast Empire, made up of different nationalities, was transformed into a state small in its territorial limits and Greek in its composition. In the manifestation of Hellenic patriotism in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and in the profound enthusiasm felt for the glorious Hellenic past one may see, not without reason, one of the elements which in the nineteenth century was to contribute to the regeneration of modern Greece. Moreover, the epoch of the Palaeologi, when in the Empire the elements of East and West were marvelously interwoven, was marked by a powerful spiritual and artistic culture, which, considering the severe external and internal troubles, is at first sight unexpected. At that time Byzantium produced not a few scholars and educated men, writers, sometimes of very original talent, in the most varied fields of knowledge. And such monuments of art as the mosaics in the mosque of Kahrieh jami (Qahriye-jami, the Byzantine church of the Chora), the Peloponnesian Mistra, and the churches of Athos are the basis for appreciation of the importance of artistic creation under the Palaeologi. This artistic flowering has often been compared with the primitive renaissance of art in western Europe, that is to say, the earlier period of Italian Humanism. These phenomena in the field of literature and art and the most important problems which made their appearance in connection with them in the works of many scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries belong to a later section on Byzantine culture in the epoch of the Palaeologi.

        To the time of the Palaeologi belong the least investigated problems of Byzantine history. The reason is the extraordinary complexity of the history of the epoch, in external and especially in internal affairs, on the one hand, and on the other, the abundance and variety of the sources, many of which have not yet been published and are preserved in manuscript collections in western and eastern libraries. To date, there exists no complete monograph on any of the Palaeologi which covers all phases of their rule; the existing essays treat of only one side or another of their activity. There is one exception. In 1926 appeared a monograph on Michael Palaeologus by C. Chapman, brief and superficial but of general character.[7]

        The dynasty of the Palaeologi belonged to a very well-known Greek family which, beginning with the first Comneni, gave Byzantium many energetic and gifted men, especially in the military field. They became related, in the course of time, to the imperial families of the Comneni, Ducae, and Angeli; on the strength of this relationship the first Palaeologi, Michael VIII always, Andronicus II for the most part, as well as his co-emperor and son, Michael IX, and sometimes, perhaps, Andronicus III, signed four family names, for example, Michael Ducas Angelus Comnenus Palaeologus. Later on the Emperors signed only “Palaeologus.”[8]

        The dynasty of the Palaeologi occupied the Byzantine throne for one hundred and ninety-two years (1261-1453), the longest dynasty in the whole course of Byzantine history.[9] The first Palaeologus who mounted the throne of the shaken and greatly curtailed Eastern Empire, Michael VIII (1261-82), cunning, cruel, but talented and an artful diplomat, succeeded in saving the Empire from the terrible danger from the West, that is, from the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and bequeathed the throne to his son Andronicus II the Elder (1282-1328), whom “nature had intended for a professor of theology but accident had made a Byzantine emperor.”[10] Andronicus married twice. His first wife, Anne, was a daughter of the king of Hungary, Stephen V; his second wife, Violanta-Irene, a sister of the north-Italian marquess of Mont-ferrat, after her brother’s death, became the heiress to the margravate; unable as a Byzantine empress to accept the margravate, she sent there one of her sons who founded at Montferrat the dynasty of the Palaeologi, which ceased only in the first half of the sixteenth century.[11]

        Andronicus in 1295 crowned with the imperial crown his eldest son by his first wife, Michael. Michael died in 1320, before his father, and is often referred to in historical works as his father’s co-emperor, Michael IX. Negotiations were entered upon to marry Michael to Catherine de Courtenay, daughter of the titulary Emperor of Romania (of the former Latin Empire), and the pope was greatly interested in this project;[12] but, in the end, Michael married an Armenian princess, Xenia-Maria.

        The son of Michael IX and grandson of Andronicus II, young Andronicus, was for many years during his father’s lifetime his grandfather’s favorite. But Andronicus was frivolous and given to love affairs, and one of his adventures ended in the accidental murder of his brother and as a result the premature death of his father, Michael IX. This entirely changed the grandfather’s attitude. Civil war broke out between grandfather and grandson. Against Andronicus the Elder formed a strong party of opponents whose leading spirit was the later famous Cantacuzene. The civil war ended in favor of Andronicus the Younger who, in 1328, suddenly seized Constantinople and induced Andronicus the Elder to abdicate. The old deposed Emperor, whose long reign had been a new period of decay for Byzantium, ended his days as a monk. He died in 1332.

        At the head of the government of Andronicus the Younger (1328-1341) stood the chief leader in his rebellion, John Cantacuzene, into whose hands passed the internal administration and the foreign affairs of the Empire. The new Emperor, giving himself up as before to amusements and hunting parties, felt no inclination to occupy himself with state affairs, but nevertheless took a personal part in the many wars fought during his reign. Cantacuzene was not satisfied with the tremendous influence he had obtained, for he aimed at the imperial throne, or at least at an omnipotent regency. This idea possessed him during the thirteen years of Andronicus’ government and was the motivating force of all his activity. Andronicus’ mother, the widow Xenia-Maria, and his second wife, a western princess, Anne of Savoy,[13] were both hostile to Cantacuzene. But by various intrigues he succeeded in maintaining his position until the very death of Andronicus.

        At the death of Andronicus III in 1341, the new Emperor, John V, his eldest son, was hardly eleven years of age (1341-91). A long civil war, in which John Cantacuzene played the chief part, was fought around the throne of the boy Emperor. Against John Cantacuzene there formed a strong party consisting of the widow of the late Emperor, Anne of Savoy, who had been proclaimed regent; her partisan and the former favorite of Cantacuzene, the ambitious and powerful Alexius Apocaucus, the patriarch; and others. The characteristic feature of the civil strife of the fourteenth century was the participation, now on one side, now on the other, of foreign peoples pursuing their own political aims, Serbs, Bulgars, and especially Seljuq Turks as well as Ottoman Turks. Several months after the death of Andronicus III, Cantacuzene, in one of the cities of Thrace, proclaimed himself Emperor (John VI). Shortly after, the solemn coronation of John V Palaeologus was celebrated in Constantinople. Thus in the Empire there appeared two emperors. Cantacuzene, who had found strong support from the Turks (he had even married his daughter to an Ottoman sultan), gained the upper hand. His chief rival Apocaucus was slain in Constantinople. Cantacuzene was crowned at Hadrianople by the patriarch of Jerusalem, who put on the head of the new emperor a golden crown. Then the capital opened its gates to him. The regent Anne of Savoy was induced to yield, and Cantacuzene was recognized Emperor on a par with John Palaeologus. In 1347, Cantacuzene was crowned for the second time, and his daughter Helena was married to the young Palaeologus. Cantacuzene’s ambitious plans were realized.

        In the same year there stood for a short time at the head of the government in Rome a famous dreamer imbued with the recollections of the past glory of the Roman Republic, the tribune Cola di Rienzo. Cantacuzene sent him an embassy with a letter of congratulation upon his attainment of power over Rome.[14]

        The stormy rule of Cantacuzene, during which John Palaeologus was pushed into the background, was important for the international relations of the epoch. For himself Cantacuzene devoted his energies to superseding Palaeologus; he proclaimed his son Emperor, declared him co-emperor and heir, and forbade the name of John Palaeologus to be mentioned in the churches or at public festivities. But Cantacuzene’s influence with the people was gradually declining, and the last blow to his popularity was dealt by the establishment of the Turks in Europe. With the co-operation of the Genoese, John Palaeologus entered Constantinople at the end of 1354. Compelled to abdicate, Cantacuzene took the monastic habit under the name of Ioasaph and spent the rest of his life in writing his important memoirs.[15] In a Greek manuscript in the National Library of Paris are preserved two interesting miniatures of Cantacuzene; in one Cantacuzene is represented twice, in imperial robes and in monastic raiment. His son also abdicated.

        John V Palaeologus finally became sole Emperor, but received, especially after the destructive civil war and foreign failures, a pitiful heritage. According to T. Florinsky, “Some islands and one province (Thrace) thoroughly ruined and depopulated, on one side of which, close to the capital, the rapacious Genoese had a footing, while on the other side rose the powerful Turkish state: this was the Empire which he had to govern.”[16]

        Moreover, John’s family troubles were not ended. He had never been intimate with his eldest son Andronicus, who in 1376, with the help of the Genoese, deposed his father, was crowned as Andronicus IV (1376-79), and made his son John co-emperor. The old John V, as well as his favorite son and heir, Manuel, were put in prison. In 1379 John V succeeded in escaping and, with the help of the Turks, regained his throne. John V and Andronicus came to an agreement which lasted until the death of the latter in 1385. After that John V, disregarding his grandson John, crowned as co-emperor his son Manuel. Finally, at the very end of the reign of John V, a rebellion was raised against him by his grandson. In 1390 the young John seized Constantinople and governed it, but only for a few months, under the title of John VII. New documents from the archives of Venice indicate that John’s rebellion of 1390 was organized by Sultan Bayazid. The Venetian Senate, as usual very well-informed of the situation in Constantinople through its merchants, apparently judged it probable that Bayazid would be at that time on the Byzantine throne. In any case, in the instructions given the Venetian envoys about to go to Constantinople in 1390, they were admonished: “If you find Murad’s son [Bayazid] in Constantinople, you must try to obtain from him the repeal of the sequestration of Venetian vessels.”[17] Owing to the activity of Manuel, John V was restored. At the beginning of 1391 John V died after a long, stormy and unhappy reign. His son Manuel became Emperor (1391-1425).

        A short time before his ascension to the throne the new Emperor had married Helena, daughter of the ruler of Northern Macedonia, Constantine Dragosh (Dragases), a Slav, or, as C. Jireček said, “the only Serbian who became Empress of Byzantium.”[18] She gave birth to six sons, of whom two became the last Byzantine emperors, John VIII and Constantine XI; the latter is often given the Slavonic name of his grandfather on his mother’s side, Dragosh (Dragases). The two last Palaeologi on the imperial throne were accordingly half-Slav. A picture of Helena, surnamed Palaeologina, is on a beautiful miniature in a precious Greek manuscript at the museum of the Louvre in Paris. In this miniature are Emperor Manuel, his wife Helena, and three of their sons, crowned by the Virgin Mary. This manuscript, one of the jewels of the Louvre, containing the works of St. Dionysius the Areopagite, was sent to Paris by Manuel as a present some years after his return to Constantinople from Paris.[19] Another portrait of Helena has been preserved on a lead seal or molybdobullon.[20]

        Manuel, handsome, noble, very well educated, and endowed with literary talent, even as a youth during his father’s lifetime felt sharply all the horror of the situation of the Empire and all the humiliating burden of his heritage. When the government of Thessalonica was confided to him by his father, he entered into negotiations with the population of a Macedonian city captured by the troops of the Sultan Murad with the aim of annihilating the Turkish garrison and freeing the city from the Turkish yoke. The sultan learned of the plan and determined to punish severely the governor of Thessalonica. Unable to make an adequate resistance, Manuel, after a fruitless attempt to take refuge with his frightened father, set out directly to the residence of Murad and expressed to him his repentance for his behavior. “The impious but reasonable sultan,” said a historian of the fifteenth century, “favorably kept him as a guest for several days, and, supplying him when he took his leave, with food for his journey and rich presents, sent him back to his father with a letter in which he begged John V to pardon his son for what he had done in ignorance.” In his valedictory address to Manuel, Murad said: “Govern peacefully what belongs to you and do not seek for foreign lands. But if you have need of money or any other support, I shall always be glad to fulfill your request.”[21]

        Later, Murad’s successor Bayazid required that John V send him, with the stipulated tribute, his son Manuel and some Greek auxiliaries. Manuel was compelled to yield and take part in a predatory Turkish expedition through various regions of Asia Minor. His humiliation, complete impotence, and the privations of the expedition are clearly felt in Manuel’s letters. Having described famine, cold, fatigue, and the crossing of the mountains, “where even wild beasts could not feed,” Manuel made a tragic remark: “all this is being suffered jointly by the whole army; but one thing is unbearable for us: we are fighting with them [the Turks] and for them, and it means that we increase their strength and decrease ours.”[22] In another letter Manuel wrote an account of the destroyed cities which he had seen during the expedition: “To my question what was the name of those cities, those whom I asked, answered: ‘As we have destroyed them, so time has destroyed their names;’ and immediately sorrow seized me; but I sorrow silently, being still able to conceal my feelings.”[23] Such humiliation and subserviency towards the Turks Manuel had been forced to suffer before he ascended the throne.

        His nobility was manifest when he redeemed his father John V from the Venetians who, on the Emperor’s return from Italy, had arrested him at Venice on account of his failure to pay back borrowed money. While the eldest son of John, Andronicus, who ruled the Empire in his father’s absence, was deaf to John’s prayers to collect the sum due, Manuel obtained it at once and, going to Venice in person, redeemed his father from his humiliating captivity.

        After his long and painful reign Manuel, in the last years of his life, withdrew from state affairs, which he entrusted to his son John, and devoted all his time to the study of the Scriptures. Shortly after, Manuel was struck with apoplexy; two days before his death he took holy orders under the name of Matthias (Matthew).

        His son and successor, John VIII, reigned from 1425 to 1448. The new Emperor was married three times, and all three wives belonged to different nationalities. His first wife was a young Russian princess, Anna, daughter of the grand prince of Moscow, Vasili I; she lived in Constantinople only three years, but in that short time she became very popular in the capital. She fell a victim to the plague. John’s second wife was an Italian, Sophia of Montferrat, a woman of lofty spiritual qualities but so unattractive in appearance that John felt only repulsion for her; the Byzantine historian Ducas, who describes her appearance, gave a popular proverb of his time: “Lent in front and Easter behind.”[24] She could not bear her humiliating position at court, and, with the help of the Genoese of Galata and to the satisfaction of her husband, fled to Italy, where she ended her days in monastic retirement. His third wife John found in a princess of Trebizond, Maria (Mary), of the house of the Comnent, “who was distinguished for her beauty and good manners.”[25] The attractiveness of this charming lady is remarked both by a Byzantine historian, and by a French pilgrim to the Holy Land, who was enraptured by the beauty of the basilissa when he saw her leaving St. Sophia.[26] She possessed great influence over the Emperor, who outlived her. There stands today in one of the Princes Islands (near Constantinople) a small chapel of the Holy Virgin erected by the beautiful Empress of Trebizond.

        John VIII had no children by any of his three wives. When he died in the autumn of 1448, the question of an heir arose. The Empress mother, Manuel II’s wife, who was still alive; the brothers of the late Emperor; and the highest officials of Constantinople fixed their choice upon Constantine, one of the brothers of John VIII, who at that time was the Despot of Morea. The sultan was informed of the choice of the new Emperor and approved the candidate. A deputation was sent to Morea, which notified Constantine of his election to the tottering throne of the once great Empire of Byzantium. At the beginning of 1449, from medieval Sparta, that is from the residence of the Despot at Mistra, he sailed at once for Constantinople in a Catalonian vessel and was solemnly received by the people. It was long believed that Constantine XI was crowned by a layman. But it is now known, since the publication of the works of John Eugenicus by Sp. Lampros, that the coronation of Constantine XI was never performed officially at all. The Church demanded that it should be performed by the patriarch, but it was probably postponed because of the tense antagonism between the partisans of the union of the churches and their opponents.[27] Constantine had been twice married, both of his wives belonging to Latin families which had established themselves in the Christian East — one to the family of Tocco, the other to the Genoese dynasty in the island of Lesbos, of Gattilusio — but both had died before Constantine’s election to the Byzantine throne. The negotiations concerning a third wife for the new Emperor, in the West and East, at Venice, Portugal, Trebizond, and Iberia (Georgia), came to nothing. The fall of Constantinople and Constantine’s death prevented the fulfillment of these matrimonial plans. His intimate friend, a diplomat and historian of the epoch of the Palaeologi, George Phrantzes, preserved in his History an interesting description of his mission to find a bride for the Emperor in Trebizond and Iberia.[28] The French historian Diehl remarked that, despite continued matrimonial intercourse between the Byzantine emperors and western princesses, at the critical moment the eyes of the last Emperor, in search of a bride, turned to the near, congenial, and kindred East.[29]

        Constantine XI was killed in May 1453, at the taking of Constantinople by the Turks. On the site of the Christian eastern monarchy was founded the strong military empire of the Ottoman Turks.

        Of the brothers who survived Constantine, Demetrius Palaeologus was captured by Muhammed II, to whom his daughter was married, and died at Hadrianople as a monk, under the name of David. Another brother, Thomas, ended his days in Italy dreaming of a crusade against the Turks, receiving from the pope his means of subsistence. His son Andreas (Andrew), who had already become a Catholic, was the only legitimate representative of the dynasty of the Palaeologi who possessed rights to the lost Byzantine throne. An interesting document exists in which Andreas Palaeologus transmitted his rights to the Empires of Constantinople and Trebizond as well as to the Despotat of Serbia to the king of France, Charles VIII. When the latter at the end of the fifteenth century undertook his expedition against Naples, he considered it only as the steppingstone to eventual conquest of Constantinople and Jerusalem. In other words, at the end of the fifteenth century dreams of a crusade still existed. Andreas’ transmission of his rights to Charles VIII seems never to have been fully carried out, for later Andreas again transmitted his rights to the Byzantine throne to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain (Castile).[30] This act, of course, had no practical result.

        Zoë, the daughter of Thomas Palaeologus and the sister of Andreas, was married to the far distant Grand Prince of Moscow, Ivan (John) III, and is known in Russian sources as Sophia Palaeologina. A Russian historian, Kluchevsky, said: “As heiress to the declining house of Byzantium, the new Tsarina of Russia had transferred the supreme rights of the Byzantine house to Moscow, as to a new Tsargrad, and there shared them with her husband.”[31]

        Moscow began to be compared with “seven-hilled Rome” and called “the third Rome.” The Grand Prince of Moscow became “Tsar of all Orthodoxy,” and Moscow as the capital of the Russian state became “the new city of Constantine” (i.e., a new Constantinople-Tsargrad).[32] A Russian scholar of the beginning of the sixteenth century, the monk Philotheus, wrote; “Two Romes have fallen, and the third stands, while a fourth is not to be.” The pope called the attention of the successor of Ivan III to his right to defend his “patrimony of Constantinople.”[34] Thus, the fall of Constantinople and the marriage of Ivan III to Sophia Palaeologina brought up the problem of the rights of the rulers of Moscow, those representatives and defenders of eastern Orthodoxy, to the throne of the Byzantine Empire which was seized by the Ottoman Turks m 1453.