by Cyril Mango
Roughly half the population in the area of Constantinople that managed to flee before the Latin conquest migrated to north-western Greece—the highland area of Epiros, Acarnania, and Aetolia. Here a small principality took shape under the leadership of Michael Komnenos Doukas, a cousin of the former Byzantine emperors Isaac II and Alexios III. The entity he founded is customarily called the ‘Despotate of Epiros’, although Michael himself never held the title despotes. In essence, Michael established himself as the accepted leader and rallying force of Greeks in the vicinity of Arta, and under his rule (1204–15) Epiros became the European centre for preserving Byzantine culture, as well as formulating plans and military agendas for curbing further Latin expansion in the region. Michael’s descendants were to have a long history. In fact their polity may be traced, albeit with discontinuities, down to 1461, when it was finally conquered by the Ottomans.
Facing: Detail of one of the two ‘pilastri Acritani’, erected outside St Mark’s basilica, Venice. Part of the loot of the Fourth Crusade, they were removed from the sixth-century church of St Polyeuktos at Constantinople.
In Asia Minor, the chief Hellenophone successor state was the so-called ‘Empire of Nicaea’. This was situated in north-western Anatolia, and was founded by Theodore I Laskaris, son-in-law of Alexios III Angelos Komnenos. Laskaris clearly aimed at rebuilding the Byzantine imperial establishment—i.e. at translating to Bithynia the core institutions of emperor, court, patriarch, bureaucracy, and army. He was not actually crowned emperor until 1208, by the newly elected patriarch Michael Autoreianos, but by that act he officially proclaimed the existence of a Byzantine ‘empire in exile’. His successors ruled Nicaea down to 1261, and it was nominally on behalf of the ruling Laskarid dynasty that Constantinople was recovered in that seminal year. Since the empire of Nicaea eventually controlled the western flank and rim of the Anatolian plateau, its economy became a prosperous mix of grain production in the rich riverine valleys, and craft production and trade in roughly a dozen key cities. The capital, Nicaea, was blessed with powerful walls, and was situated with rapid access to Constantinople.
We cannot explore here the evolution of these new entities—Frankish, Italian, and Greek—over the period 1204–61 in any detail. A salient theme for future Byzantine history, however, was the parallel ambition of Epiros and Nicaea to recover Constantinople, and the eventual emergence of Nicaea as the stronger of the two, ultimately winning the prize. The expansion of Nicaea was the collective achievement of three rulers—Theodore I, the founder; his successor John III Doukas Vatatzes; and ultimately Michael Palaiologos, who usurped the throne of Vatatzes’ grandson, John IV, and returned to Constantinople to found the last dynasty that ruled the imperial city.
Theodore Laskaris rose to power in Nicaea as a resistance leader, organizing refugees and native Bithynian Greeks into a fighting force to block the Franks from expanding in Anatolia, and likewise maintain the realm intact vis-à-vis the Seljuks to the east. In the latter endeavour he scored major successes, but by 1214, when he concluded a détente with the Latins, the latter were still ensconced in the Nicomedian peninsula. By this treaty, however, he established a modus vivendi with the Franks, and in 1219 he similarly made peace with the Venetians of Constantinople on generous terms. At no point in these rapprochements, however, did Theodore make major theological or ecclesiastical concessions; his concern was to stabilize relations with the new European powers, and establish the fledgling Nicaean state on secure foundations. The administrative apparatus that evolved in his reign was largely court-centred, and evidently a simplification of the preceding Constantinopolitan pattern. In sum, his was a credible, if frequently precarious, beginning.
It was especially in the reign of Theodore’s son-in-law and successor, John III Doukas Vatatzes, that the rivalry between Epiros and Nicaea emerged in full form. During the 1220s it seemed as if Epiros would attain the goal, particularly after Michael I’s successor, Theodore Komnenos Doukas (c.1215–30), recovered Thessalonica (1224) and Adrianople (1225), and was crowned emperor a few years later. The Epirote essor was cut short, however, when Theodore was defeated and captured by the Bulgarians at the Battle of Klokotnitsa, following which a significant chunk of Epirote territory was provisionally annexed to the Bulgarian empire. While the star of Epiros was waning, however, John III Doukas was steadily consolidating his strength in Anatolia—expelling the Franks in 1224 (Battle of Poimanenon) and driving the Seljuks from the Maeander Valley some time before 1231. His subsequent endeavours down to his death in 1254 were targeted at expanding in Europe, in hopes of reconquering Constantinople. His campaign of 1246 was particularly successful, in the course of which much of Macedonia was seized from the Bulgarians, Thessalonica was captured, and the imperial ambitions of Epiros were scotched.
Facing, above: The city of Nicaea, which is only 1.5 km across, remained protected by its Late Roman walls, repaired in the eighth, ninth, and thirteenth centuries. Here the eastern (Lefke) gate.
Facing, below: The boxlike, three-storey palace of Nymphaeum (Kemalpaşa) near Smyrna was one of the favourite residences of the Nicaean emperors. First half of the thirteenth century.
Facing: The great Deisis in the south gallery of St Sophia, of which the central figure of Christ is shown here, is perhaps the most delicate and accomplished of all Byzantine mosaics. There is no evidence as to the circumstances of its execution, but current opinion places it soon after the Byzantine re-occupation of the city in 1261.
The honour of restoring Greek rule to Constantinople would fall neither to John III’s son, Theodore II (1254–8), nor his grandson, John IV (1258–61). The former was more of a philosopher king—a scholar who gathered at his court a glittering coterie of literati, whose achievements constitute the prehistory to the Palaiologan revival of letters. The latter ascended the throne at the age of 7, but effective control of affairs quickly passed to Michael Palaiologos, scion of one of the great military families of Asia Minor, initially as regent and soon thereafter as co-emperor. Michael quickly proved his worth by organizing victory over a coalition of resurgent Epiros, Achaia, and Sicily (1259)—safeguarding the Nicaean position in Europe, and moreover establishing, via the subsequent acquisitions of Mistra, Monemvasia, and Maina, a springboard for future recovery of the Morea. His most famous accomplishment as co-emperor, namely the reconquest of Constantinople from the Latins in July 1261, was merely a stroke of good fortune, effected by his general Alexios Strategopoulos with minimal military exertion. Nonetheless, when Michael solemnly entered ‘the city’ a month later and was recrowned by Patriarch Arsenios, he celebrated the triumph of decades of Laskarid strategic planning, and effectively his rise to sole rule. The following December, he ordered John IV to be blinded.
1261–1341: The Early Palaiologan Attempt at Reconstruction
With an Orthodox, Hellenophone imperial regime restored to Constantinople, the challenge that Michael VIII and his immediate successors faced was that of maintaining the Laskarid legacy in Anatolia and Europe, and recovering and reintegrating the remaining array of territories lost since the cataclysm of 1204. It was a formidable and ultimately impossible challenge, but one of which the early Palaiologan emperors were acutely aware. Throughout the interval from 1261 to 1341, the challenge was most successfully met by the founder of the dynasty, Michael VIII (1261–82). In the reigns of his son Andronikos II (1282–1328) and great-grandson Andronikos III (1328- 41), the fortunes of the state markedly deteriorated, yet even in 1341, decades after the Anatolian component of the empire had been lost, Byzantium still had the resources and possibilities of enduring as a fairly compact Balkan state.
Having attained the throne of Constantinople at the age of 36, Michael VIII found himself confronted with a plethora of agonizing problems, a situation that would persist to his death in 1282. His blinding of John IV immediately unleashed critiques of the legitimacy of his rule—in the capital, Patriarch Arsenios responded with excommunication (for which he was deposed in 1265
, and replaced by Joseph I); in Bithynia, Michael came to be viewed, particularly by the soldiers, as a usurper trampling upon the glorious Laskarid legacy. After nearly six decades of Latin rule, Constantinople’s infrastructure was close to ruin, testimony to the ineptness and profound impoverishment of the successors of Baldwin and Henry. Michael fully anticipated, finally, that those recently dispossessed of Constantinople—notably the Latin emperor Baldwin II, and the Venetians—would surely embark on agendas of reconquista, which would entail a costly military and diplomatic response. To his credit, Michael established his rule and dealt with these challenges with remarkable success. The attendant costs were indeed enormous, and it would fall to his infinitely less talented son and successor, Andronikos II, to digest their realities. But for this ‘new Constantine’, his very raison d’être was to preserve his throne, restore Constantinople with its traditional imperial and orthodox complexion, and defend it from retaliatory western assault—no matter what the price.
Façade of the palace known by its Turkish name Tekfur Sarayi (late thirteenth century) before restoration. Built against the Theodosian land walls and preceded by a large courtyard, this was probably the main imperial residence during the Palaiologan period.
The miraculous icon of the Virgin Hodegetria being carried in procession through the streets of Constantinople, followed by a crowd of worshippers. In the foreground is a group of itinerant vendors, peddling fruit, vegetables, and caviar. Tracing of wall painting in the monastery of Vlacherna near Arta, end of the thirteenth century.
Michael’s renovation programme included a major restoration of the Blachernai Palace; an Orthodox refurbishing of Hagia Sophia; reconstruction of defence works (e.g. the walls, the Kontoskelion harbour) and public buildings (e.g. markets, streets, baths, harbours, hospices); and a rebuilding of several major monasteries. At the same time, private patronage was responsible for the building or renovation of various other churches throughout the city. The emperor himself even subsidized the construction of a new mosque, replacing that burnt by the crusaders in 1203, with an eye to cultivating political, military, and economic links especially with the Mamlukes.
On the military and diplomatic front, Michael VIII’s most serious challenge came from the Catholic West. The deposed Latin emperor, Baldwin II, was resolved to recover what he deemed his legacy, and initially placed his hopes on his relative, the Sicilian king Manfred, for aid to that end. Before Manfred could act, however, he fell victim to the continuing papal—Hohenstaufen rivalry, when Pope Clement IV reiterated his predecessor Urban IV’s invitation to Count Charles of Anjou, brother of the French king Louis IX, to take possession of the kingdom of Sicily—i.e., with full ecclesiastical sanction. At length Charles invaded and crushed Manfred in a battle at Benevento (1266), whereupon Sicily and southern Italy now came under French rule, with Charles as their first Angevin king.
With a papal client now on the Sicilian throne, Clement IV readily espoused Baldwin II’s cause. In May 1267, at Viterbo, the pope mediated a pact whereby Charles would provide military aid to recover Constantinople, Baldwin would reciprocally provide territorial concessions, and a marriage alliance between the former’s daughter and latter’s son would be formed. Charles was unable to deliver immediately on his campaign promise, and Michael VIII meanwhile manoeuvred adroitly to negotiate a way to neutralize the enemy. In a protracted series of negotiations with the papacy and Louis IX, Michael succeeded in staving off an Angevin invasion by proffering the possibility of ecclesiastical union between Rome and Constantinople, which eventually was achieved, in July 1274, at the Second Council of Lyons. In essence this was a treaty between the emperor and the reigning pope, Gregory X, the key terms of which entailed recognition of papal primacy, and the Catholic doctrines on purgatory and the filioque.
View of the former Genoese town of Galata or Pera in the second half of the sixteenth century.
Facing: Monastery of Chora (Kariye Camii), Constantinople, mosaic of the Deisis, c.1315. The two little figures of donors are those (left) of Isaac Komnenos, son of Alexios I, who had actually died shortly after 1152, and (right) of the nun Melane, former ‘Lady of the Mongols’, i.e. Maria Palaiologina, illegitimate daughter of Michael VIII, who married the Mongol khan Abaga. She lived on until after 1307.
The aftermath of the Union of Lyons was a mixed and short-lived blessing for Michael. While it temporarily stalled Charles of Anjou’s aggression (and as of 1273, when Baldwin II died, he was still pursuing the project of recovering Constantinople on behalf of his son-in-law, Philip of Courtenay), it simultaneously destroyed Michael’s credibility with his own people—the vast majority of whom now regarded him as an odious traitor who had surrendered to the Latins on the most sensitive of issues, the truths of the Orthodox faith. Moreover, its military value was nullified in 1281, when, through Charles’s influence, his friend Simon de Brie was elected as pope Martin IV. In July of that year, convinced that Michael’s adherence to the Union was hypocritical and politically motivated, Martin endorsed Charles and Philip’s plans for an expedition to recover Constantinople. The following November he excommunicated Michael, denouncing him as ‘patron of the Greeks who are inveterate schismatics and fixed in the ancient schism’. For Charles, of course, this was effectively an ecclesiastical green light to launch an invasion to reconquer Constantinople for the Latins.
Such an undertaking could easily have spelled disaster for Byzantium, but Michael VIII cleverly manoeuvred to undermine Charles from within his own realm. Apprised that Manfred’s son-in-law Peter III of Aragon aspired to recover the Hohenstaufen legacy for his wife, Michael allied with him and dispatched generous subsidies for an invasion of Sicily. It is likely, moreover, that monies found their way from Byzantium into the hands of Sicilians chafing under the oppressions (chiefly fiscal) of Angevin rule, who were coordinating with Peter to stage a rebellion. The upshot was the famed Sicilian Vespers revolt, commencing 30/31 March 1281, which completely sidetracked Charles from his projected campaign to Constantinople, and paved the way for Peter’s installation as the first of the Aragonese kings of Sicily.
Michael VIII’s role in undermining Charles and saving Constantinople from a Latin revanche is rightly regarded as one of his greatest diplomatic triumphs—and this in a career replete with such exploits. Tellingly, it was barely appreciated by his subjects, who all but rejoiced in his death a few months later, and registered no concern that he was denied a decent Orthodox burial. From the Byzantines’ perspective, Michael’s policies had alienated the imperial regime from society at large, and the crushing burden of taxation imposed to support them, particularly in Anatolia, was intolerable. It was now left to his son and successor Andronikos to realign the imperial government with the Orthodox populace, and attempt a mode of government that would be financially sustainable.
In the judgement of many historians, Andronikos II (1282–1328), who came to the throne at 24, was a sadly incompetent ruler, severely lacking in strategic vision and incapable of effectively addressing the most critical military challenges of his time. His ecclesiastical policy was a pragmatic and welcome healing measure—his first official act was to repudiate the Union of Lyons, and to conciliate those who felt themselves victims of Michael’s manhandling of ecclesiastical affairs—yet it only alienated the papacy further. The economies he instituted early in his reign (e.g. reductions in naval and armed forces, extraordinary taxes on pronoiars for campaign financing, debasement of the hyperpyrori) were short-sighted and destructive. His inability, finally, to avert major territorial losses in the Balkans and Anatolia, and control the dynastic strife that erupted in the closing phase of his reign, were egregious failures foreshadowing the irrevocable ravaging of the state in the period 1341–71.
Constantine Komnenos Raoul Palaiologos and his wife Euphrosyne Doukaina Palaiologina. Typikon (charter) of the nunnery of Our Lady of Good Hope at Constantinople, founded in the second quarter of the fourteenth century by Theodora, niece of Michael VIII.
The contraction of Byzantine territory in Anatolia under Andronikos II was particularly tragic in that he, unlike Michael VIII, was seriously concerned by the Turkish expansion towards the coasts that had accelerated throughout the 1270s, as the Seljuk state was disintegrating at the centre, eventually to be replaced, by the early fourteenth century, by a series of smaller principalities or lordships (beyliks). Two years before his father’s death, Andronikos had personally seen the devastation and depopulation wrought by Turkish raids in the Maeander Valley, in the early stages of the rise of the Menteshe beylik. As sole emperor, Andronikos was resolved to establish a more regular and vigorous military presence in Anatolia, although his preoccupation with Balkan affairs prevented him from doing so until the 1290s. By this time, the Ottoman beylik had crystallized under Osman south of the Sangarios River around Söüt, and booty raids, with mixed Muslim and Christian participants, were regularly operative in the nominally Byzantine territory across the river.