PALEOLOGI, DINASTIA dei. — They ruled the Byzantine Empire from 1259 until the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453. The P. family appeared at the court of the Comneni in the 12th century. They held high offices in the State and were related by marriage to the imperial family. At the end of the 12th century, an Alessio P. married Irene, daughter of Alessio III Angelo; their daughter married, apparently, a cousin, Andronico P., an important figure at the court of Nicaea. From them was born in 1225 the most famous P., Michele, who, after having served Giovanni III Vatatz and Teodoro II Lascaris, in 1259 succeeded, with great skill, in removing the young heir Giovanni IV from power and seizing the throne. The usurpation was legitimized in the eyes of the population by the reconquest of Constantinople (25 July 1261), expelling the Latin emperor: Michele VIII was recognized as the restorer of the Byzantine Empire. The transfer of the capital, however, from Nicaea to Constantinople had serious consequences, because the Byzantine positions in Anatolia were weakened in the face of the reorganization of the Turkish forces by the clan of Osman, while in the West the king of Sicily, Carlo d’Angiò, claiming the rights acquired from the last Latin emperor, adopted an openly hostile attitude.
Michele VIII P., faced with the danger, at that moment extremely grave, of a Sicilian attack, sought to resist by relying on the papacy and initiated negotiations for the union of the Churches. Only under Gregorio X did an agreement seem to have been reached: in 1274 Byzantine ambassadors appeared at the ecumenical Council of Lyons and declared that they submitted to the Roman Church, recognizing its doctrine and papal primacy. Michele VIII, however, then encountered the determined opposition of the Greek clergy: he sought to overcome the resistance by resorting to violence, but then, in view of the dangerous internal situation, renounced imposing the union. Martino IV excommunicated him in 1281 and supported Carlo d’Angiò’s plans to attack Constantinople, but the Sicilian Vespers saved the Byzantine emperor, who had meanwhile initiated agreements against the Angevin king in Aragon and in other states hostile to Sicily. Andronico II, who succeeded Michele VIII in 1282, was able to abandon his father’s pro-Latin policy; indeed, he allowed the unionist ecclesiastics to be persecuted. As a result, new plans for an expedition against Byzantium arose in the West, but they never reached any conclusion. Instead, Andronico II’s political and military incapacity was exploited by the Turks to advance decisively through Asia toward the Aegean coasts. Andronico, lacking arms, then turned to a company of Catalan mercenaries (the Almugavari), but disagreement soon arose: the Catalans first threatened Constantinople, then moved into Greece and settled there. The Turks, for their part, seized Brussa in Bithynia in 1326, and the threat to the Byzantine capital grew more serious. On the other hand, Andronico II was forced to endure the arrogance of the Italian maritime republics: Genoese and Venetians fought one another in the Bosporus with complete indifference to the Emperor and exploited the Empire through the commercial privileges they imposed. With Andronico III (1328), the policy of seeking aid in the West by offering the papacy religious union was resumed. New negotiations were conducted at Avignon by Anna of Savoy, mother and regent
for Giovanni V P., but the civil wars and the usurpation of Matteo Cantacureno (Giovanni VI), who sought an understanding with the Turks, brought the projects to an end. The situation became more serious when the Turks seized Gallipoli in 1354 and began the conquest of Thrace. In 1363 Murād I seized Adrianople: the siege of Constantinople virtually began. Once again Byzantium resumed negotiations with the Roman See; in 1369 Giovanni V P. appeared in Rome and solemnly abjured the schism before Urbano V. But this was a personal act that had no effect whatsoever on the attitude of the Byzantine clergy and people, obstinate in their hostility to anything that smacked of the West. Giovanni V, having returned after suffering imprisonment for debt in Venice and finding himself abandoned by everyone, resigned himself to becoming a vassal of the Turkish sultan. He was succeeded by Manuele II P., who, in search of aid against the increasingly grave Turkish threat, came to the West in 1399; he visited Paris and London, but achieved nothing. Fortunately, the battle of Angora, won by the Mongol ḥān, Tamerlane, against the Turkish sultan Bājazīd (1402), reduced the Turkish pressure around Constantinople for several years. Manuele II again began negotiations with Pope Martino V; especially after Murād II’s siege of Constantinople in 1422, the negotiations became urgent. Giovanni VIII P., after the fall of Thessalonica in 1430, initiated new simultaneous negotiations both with Pope Eugenio IV and with the Fathers of the anti-Roman Council of Basel. Finally, in 1438, the Emperor came to Italy to take part in the Council for union, which the Pope first convened at Ferrara and then at Florence. Here a formula satisfactory to both parties was finally found, but Giovanni VIII encountered opposition to the Union among the clergy, the people, and even within his own family. His brother and successor, Costantino XI, allowed complete freedom to opposition to the Latins, and in 1450 an anti-unionist council condemned the errors of the Latin Church. Yet, under the pressure of the Turkish threat, in December 1452 Costantino XI had the union proclaimed once again in Hagia Sophia, but the people rose in tumult and Hagia Sophia was deserted as having been profaned by the Latins. In May 1453 Costantino XI found himself alone defending Constantinople: the Greeks did not greatly lament this, because they preferred to sacrifice their independence rather than be reconciled with Rome.
The dominion of the P. thus represents the long and slow agony of the Byzantine world. Constantinople was no longer in the 14th and 15th centuries the great commercial and intellectual center it had been in the 10th and 11th centuries. Trade had shifted to other routes. Consequently, the P. led a precarious existence; their finances did not allow them to organize an energetic defense with fortresses and mercenary troops. Constantinople too, after the Latin sack of 1204, had lost the splendor of the age of the Comneni: it was poor and full of ruins. Nevertheless, it remained a center of considerable intellectual and artistic activity. The schools flourished: they were adorned with philosophers such as Gemisto Pletone, and with rhetoricians and philologists who studied and commented on works of classical antiquity. Painting too experienced a notable revival, an attempt to emerge from the hieratic stylization of the preceding age, and it was connected with the development of Italian painting. The civilization of the P. still offers the possibility of fruitful new research, and even the emperors’ efforts to resist the Muslim advance deserve to be studied and assessed.