The world owes a debt to Ciriaco of Ancona for his assiduous collection of information about the ruins and remains of Greek antiquity, of inscriptions and of clues to the identification of ancient sites. He has been called the father of modern archaeology. Indeed he lived in the past and he seldom turned his attention to the conditions of Greece or the Morea as he found them in the fifteenth century. His stay at Mistra afforded him the satisfaction of gazing down on the site of ancient Sparta and musing on its change of fortune. He wrote an epigram on its past heroic glories, now shrunk to the little measure of Mistra under Constantine (` Misythra sub Constantino').2a
The Turks had come down on the Morea like wolves in the winter before the visit of Ciriaco. They had destroyed the Hexamilion wall for ever. They had sacked and plundered the towns along their way. But it was winter weather that had saved Mistra from their ravages; and it was the winter that had saved the crops and enabled the people to survive. In the summer of 1447 Ciriaco was impressed by the plentiful harvest. It seemed that there might still be hope for the future. Constantine never abandoned that hope. He knew, however, that the future of the Despotate as well as of Constantinople depended on the perpetuation of the ruling house of Palaiologos. His brother, the Emperor John VIII, had never had children to succeed him and by 1447 he was in poor health. His brothers Theodore and Demetrios had fathered but one daughter apiece. Only his brother Thomas had sons, Andrew and Manuel, but they were yet to be born. Constantine's two marriages had come to abrupt and tragic ends. His family and his advisers were keen that he should take a third wife. As early as 1444 there had been talk of his marrying Isabella Orsini, sister of the Prince of Taranto, whose hereditary connections with the islands and mainland of Greece were strong. Nothing came of it.25 In August 1447 the faithful George Sphrantzes was sent to Constantinople to explore the possibilities of arranging a marriage contract for his master either with the Empire of Trebizond or with the Kingdom of Georgia. The negotiations took time and they were overtaken by events.28
In June 11448 Constantine's brother Theodore died in his principality at Selymbria. On 31 October of the same year the Emperor John VIII died.27 The potential successors to the throne of Constantinople had been narrowed down to three: Constantine and his brothers Demetrios and Thomas. Everyone knew that the candidate most favoured by the late Emperor was Constantine. He had said as much on his deathbed. Everyone knew too that his mother, the Dowager Empress Helena Palaiologina, was of the same mind. In the end it was her will that prevailed.
3
CONSTANTINE: EMPEROR AT CONSTANTINOPLE
The news of the Emperor's death came to Constantine at Mistra. He must have known that his brothers Thomas and Demetrios were nearer the scene and that either might forestall him by making a bid for the succession to the throne. Thomas reached Constantinople on 13 November; Demetrios hurried to the capital from Selymbria. Thomas was perhaps not a serious rival. Demetrios, however, had many supporters; for he represented, or claimed to represent, the interests of the powerful anti-unionist faction who looked for an Emperor who would wipe away the shame of the Union of Florence. They would have welcomed Demetrios as Emperor since it was his declared policy to disown the union of the churches which had caused so much bitterness and brought so little reward. It was the resolute action of the Emperor's mother Helena which averted a crisis and prevented the possibility of civil war. Helena, widow of Manuel II, asserted her right to act as regent until Constantine, the eldest of her surviving sons, reached Constantinople. He had always been her favourite and had always been proud to bear her Serbian family name of Dragas or Dragases as well as his father's name of Palaiologos. Thomas readily accepted her decision and Demetrios was overruled. Both joined her in proclaiming Constantine as the new Emperor of the Romans. The first to be informed was the Ottoman Sultan Murad II; and in December the Empress sent Sphrantzes to secure his approval for the appointment of Constantine.'
Once the matter of the succession had been peacefully resolved, the Empress nominated two envoys to sail at once for the Morea to invest Constantine as Emperor and escort him back to Constantinople. They were Alexios Philanthropenos Laskaris and Manuel Palaiologos lagros and they took with them Constantine's brother Thomas. They were evidently empowered to conduct a proclamation and investiture of the new Emperor, though not to perform his coronation. No doubt, the army, the people and the elders of Mistra were flattered to be asked to enact the customary acclamation which preceded the crowning of an Emperor by the Patriarch. There was no Patriarch at Mistra; and there is no evidence to support the view that the local bishop took it upon himself to stage a coronation ceremony in one of the churches. The title of Emperor of the Romans was conferred upon Constantine Palaiologos in a civil ceremony, perhaps in the palace of the Despots, on 6 January 1449• It is for this reason that the historian Doukas makes the point that Constantine was never crowned as Emperor and gives it as his opinion that John VIII was the last Emperor of the Romans.'
There were historical precedents for such procedure. The Emperor Manuel I Komnenos had been proclaimed and invested by his dying father in Cilicia, far from the capital. John VI Cantacuzene, Constantine's great-grandfather, was first proclaimed and invested with the imperial robes and headgear at Didymoteichon in Thrace on z6 October 1341. No crown was placed upon his head. With his own hands he put on the imperial headgear (pilon) which had been lying before an icon of the Virgin.' Much the same simple ceremony may have been enacted by Constantine at Mistra. Both Manuel I and John VI, however, had been careful to arrange for a full coronation ceremony to be performed by the Patriarch of Constantinople as soon as they had gained control of the city. In the case of Constantine Palaiologos the ecclesiastical rite of coronation was never performed. It would have caused dangerous disorder. The new Emperor had shown no sign of disowning the union of Florence. There was no Patriarch to crown him at Mistra and many believed that there was no real Patriarch of Constantinople. The Patriarch Gregory III was a committed unionist. For him to set the seal of the church's approval on Constantine by crowning him Emperor in the cathedral of the Holy Wisdom might well have provoked the antiunionists to riot.
Most of them in any case declined to enter the cathedral as long as the Patriarch Gregory remained in office. Among them was John Eugenikos, brother of the fanatically Orthodox Bishop Mark of Ephesos, who had refused to sign the decree of union at Florence. In an address to Constantine as Emperor in 1450, John explained why so many people consistently refused to commemorate his name in church. An emperor, he said, should be the prop of his subjects and the defender and champion of the true faith in their church. At the moment of his coronation and anointment with the holy chrism, he must make a written profession of his faith and swear an oath to uphold Orthodoxy. But who, he asked, is there now to crown you or anoint you or accept your profession of faith? We have an Emperor without a crown, one whose head is dignified only by a meaningless kind of hat (piton): and we have a government that rates ships and money and aid from the west higher than the purity of the faith, setting human fear above the fear of God. John Eugenikos reminded Constantine of the steadfastness in the faith of his ancestor Theodora, widow of Michael VIII, and of her son Andronikos II, and similarly of his much respected father Manuel II; and he urged him to follow their example and be a worthy successor of the first Constantine, the equal of the Apostles, in professing and defending the true faith uncontaminated by the errors of the Latins.'
Others, however, were prepared to accept Constantine as their lawful Emperor because of his lineage and also because there was no evident alternative; and he had his eloquent supporters, some of whom no doubt courted his favour by their flattery. John Dokeianos, the scholar and bibliophile of Mistra who had once compared him to Themistocles, wrote an encomium of him. It is almost wholly rhetorical bombast, but it praises Constantine's prowess as a huntsman, a horseman and a soldier, recalling his brilliant campaign at Patras and his successful months as regent in Constantinople dur
ing his brother's long absence in Italy. Dokeianos also delivered an address to Constantine when he was raised to the throne.' John Argyropoulos, a younger scholar, wrote an oration to Constantine when he arrived in Constantinople to `take the sceptre' from his late brother, as well as an address which is mainly a eulogy of John VIII; and, somewhat presumptuously, he presented the new Emperor with a Basilikos or Essay on Kingship, probably the last of its kind in Byzantine literature. In it he describes Constantine as `the greatest of emperors and now, by good fortune, Emperor of the Hellenes'. His choice of words may well betray the influence of Gemistos Plethon.' Michael Apostolis, a pupil of Argyropoulos and of Plethon, sent an address to Constantine as Emperor, enclosing a profession of his own faith. Constantine Laskaris, on the other hand, another student of Argyropoulos, who had been captured by the Turks in 1453 and escaped to Italy, was less sure of Constantine's credentials and declared that he had been proclaimed but never crowned as Emperor.' While Demetrios Katadoukinos, otherwise known as Katablattas, hailed Constantine as Emperor on the occasion of his arrival at Constantinople in March 1449.8
Opinion was divided about Constantine's imperial status. The division was mainly between those who approved and those who condemned his policy of union with the Roman church; though there were clearly some who praised him merely to win his patronage. Argyropoulos was certainly a committed unionist and later travelled widely in the west, earning a doctorate in Padua and teaching Greek in Florence. He was one of those, like Bessarion and Apostolis, in love with the new humanism in Italy. John Eugenikos took the opposite view. But even he described Constantine as `the best and most holy of emperors' and once, perhaps by oversight, as the `God-crowned Emperor'. The hierarchy of the Orthodox church, however, who were mostly of a like mind with Eugenikos, would not confirm or sanction the constitutional position of the new Emperor until he had been through the customary ceremony of ecclesiastical coronation. That could not safely be performed by the unionist Patriarch Gregory III; and Constantine was wise to keep quiet about the matter. In his own mind he was none the less convinced that his proclamation and investiture at Mistra had sufficed to give him the constitutional rights of the one true Emperor, not of the Hellenes but of the Romans. His first known official document as such was a chrysobull issued in February 1449 before he left Mistra for Constantinople, granting favours to the sons of Gemistos Plethon. It bears his signature as Constantine Palaiologos in Christ true Emperor and Autokrator of the Romans. It was the proudest of all imperial titles and Constantine XI was the last to bear it.'
Early in January 1449 he had written to the Venetian Duke of Candia in Crete, Antonio Diedo, to announce the death of his brother John VIII and the fact of his own succession to the throne. He asked the favour of a safe passage to Constantinople on a Venetian ship. The Duke of Candia replied promptly and courteously, on 9 January, correctly addressing Constantine as `illustrissime et serenissime imperator' and expressing sympathy on the death of his brother. It so happened that the Venetian Captain of the Gulf, the commander of the Adriatic fleet, was then at Candia; and the Duke assured Constantine that he would shortly be sailing for Modon in the Morea, where he could obtain the necessary mandate from the Venetian authorities to fulfil the Emperor's request as soon as possible.10 Given the strained relations between the Despots of the Morea and the Venetians it was a pleasant exchange of courtesies. In the event, however, it seems that Constantine made his journey to the capital on a Catalan ship. Perhaps he could not wait for the Venetians to complete their formalities. It is none the less a measure of the feeble state of the Byzantine Empire that its new Emperor had to call on the help of foreigners to get from Greece to Constantinople."
He arrived on iz March 1449. Two weeks later he took the first and most necessary step to secure his position by arranging a truce with the Turks, sending Andronikos lagaris as his ambassador to the Sultan. The truce was designated to include his brothers, thus protecting the Morea from further attacks, at least for a time.12 In some ways it was easier for him to deal with the Turks than with the native Byzantine opposition, the anti-unionists. He was patient with them and tried more than once to talk them round by holding discussions. John Eugenikos sent him the minutes of one such meeting in the form of an apologia from the leaders of the antiRoman Orthodox community in Constantinople. They had organised themselves as a Synaxis or synod in opposition to the synod headed by the Patriarch whom they refused to recognise.13 Constantine was not a fanatical advocate of the union of Florence. But he remained convinced that it held out the hope of survival. Only if they were seen to be upholding it could he and his people hope to secure from western Christendom the practical help which they so desperately needed. The anti-unionists saw this as a basely materialistic argument. It was clear to them, as John Eugenikos had said, that the Emperor and his government would do better to trust in God than to pin their hopes on rescue coming from the Latins. Those who had betrayed the faith of their fathers for the sake of material rewards would surely forfeit the blessing and the help of God.
By far the most learned member of the anti-unionist Synaxis was George Scholarios, who had been a pupil of Mark Eugenikos. He had dedicated his Commentaries on Aristotle to Constantine while he was still Despot at Mistra.14 He had been a prominent member of the Byzantine delegation at the Council of Florence and shown himself to be an eloquent supporter of the union of the churches, composing tracts in favour of Latin theology and doctrine. After the council he continued to serve the Emperor John VIII as secretary and for some years he avoided all controversy. Under the influence of his former teacher Mark Eugenikos, however, he began to change his views; and when Mark died in April 1445, Scholarios inherited his role as spokesman of the anti-unionist party. The death of John VIII affected him deeply; and when Constantine arrived in the capital, Scholarios became a monk. He announced his intention to do so in a sermon which he preached, while still a layman, before the Emperor on zi November 1449.15 He explained his reasons for thus retreating from the world in a long letter to Constantine.16 He entered one of the city monasteries and took the monastic name of Gennadios. As a monk he had more leisure and more influence. He composed yet more tracts and treatises, now expounding not the virtues but the errors of Latin theology, at first privately and discreetly, later with more publicity and greater abandon. As the monk Gennadios he kept up a friendly correspondence with Constantine for a while." He was in due course to become the first Patriarch of Constantinople under Ottoman rule after the fall of the city to the Turks in 1453. But in the last years of Byzantine Constantinople he became an embarrassment to the last Christian Emperor. Unlike others of his persuasion, Gennadios was not unconditionally opposed to union with the Roman church, whose doctrine he understood better than most Greeks. But he believed that the union must be effected through reconciliation and reason, by tolerance and persuasion, not under the duress of political circumstances and pressure from the Roman side."' Nor did he express any doubts about Constantine's status as Emperor for all that he had never been crowned by a Patriarch.
Once Constantine had been installed as Emperor the question of the perpetuation of the ruling dynasty of Palaiologos was more urgent than ever. The search was intensified for a wife and Empress who might give him a son. In February 1449, while still at Mistra, he sent an envoy to Italy to see King Alfonso V of Aragon and Naples, with whom he had earlier had dealings. The envoy, Manuel Dishypatos, was instructed to ask for help against the Turks, but also to sound the ground about a marriage alliance. The proposal was that the Emperor Constantine should marry Beatrice, a daughter of Pedro, King of Portugal, who was Alfonso's nephew. It was further suggested that Pedro's brother might marry the daughter of John II of Lusignan, King of Cyprus. She was Constantine's niece. The second of these proposals was realised in 1456 when Carlotta, daughter of John II of Lusignan, became the wife of Juan, Duke of Coimbra and son of Pedro of Portugal. But for reasons unknown nothing came of the plan for Constantine to marry into the royal house
of Portugal.19
There were, however, other eligible ladies nearer the Byzantine world. In August 1447 George Sphrantzes had been sent from Mistra to Constantinople to explore the possibilities of a marriage contract either with the Kingdom of Georgia or with the Empire of Trebizond.20 Princesses from the imperial family of Trebizond had married into the family of Palaiologos before. That, however, might prove to be an impediment since the Byzantine church, which Constantine could not risk offending, was very strict about the prohibited degrees of marriage. In October 1449 Sphrantzes left Constantinople to visit both Georgia and Trebizond and to come to a decision about which ruling family could offer the more suitable bride for his Emperor. He was away for nearly two years. In his memoirs he gives a long and fascinating account of his travels on his master's service. He did not go alone. He was accompanied by an impressive retinue of young noblemen, soldiers, priests, monks, physicians, singers and musicians with their instruments; and he carried a variety of expensive gifts. The Georgians were intrigued by the musical instruments and came from far and wide to hear them played. Sphrantzes was instructed to send back written reports on the merits and demerits of each prospective bride so that Constantine could make the final decision himself and report back by messenger.21
The Immortal Emperor Page 5