Palaeologi, Dynasty of the

PALAEOLOGI, Dynasty of the. - 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 Alexios P. married Irene, daughter of Alexios III Angelos; his daughter was married to a cousin, it seems, Andronikos P., an important personage of the court of Nicaea. From them was born in 1225 the most famous P., Michael who, after having been in the service of John III Vatatzes and of Theodore II Lascaris, in 1259 knew how with great skill to eliminate the young heir John IV from power and to seize the throne. The usurpation was whitewashed in the eyes of the population by the reconquest of Constantinople (25 July 1261), driving out the Latin emperor: Michael VIII was recognized as the restorer of the Byzantine Empire. The transfer, however, of the capital from Nicaea to Constantinople had grave consequences because the Byzantine positions in Anatolia came to be weakened in the face of the reorganization of the Turkish forces through the work of the clan of Osman, while on the other hand in the West the king of Sicily, Charles of Anjou, claiming the rights acquired by the last Latin emperor, assumed an attitude of clear hostility.

Michael VIII P., faced with the danger, at that moment extremely grave, of a Sicilian attack, sought to resist by leaning on the papacy and opened negotiations for the union of the Churches. Only with Gregory X did an agreement seem to be reached: in 1274 Byzantine ambassadors appeared at the ecumenical Council of Lyon and declared that they submitted to the Roman Church, recognizing its doctrine and the papal primacy. Michael VIII, however, then found the resolute opposition of the Greek clergy: he sought to overcome the resistance by resorting to violence, then in the face of the dangerous internal situation he gave up imposing the union. Martin IV in 1281 excommunicated him and supported the plans of Charles of Anjou to attack Constantinople, but the Sicilian Vespers saved the Byzantine emperor who meanwhile had opened agreements against the Angevin King in Aragon and in other States hostile to Sicily. Andronikos II, having succeeded Michael VIII in 1282, was able to abandon his father's Latinophile policy, indeed he allowed the unionist ecclesiastics to be persecuted. Consequently, there were in the West new projects of expedition against Byzantium, but they never managed to reach any conclusion. Instead the political and military incapacity of Andronikos II was exploited by the Turks to advance in Asia decisively toward the coasts of the Aegean. Andronikos, without weapons, then resorted to a company of Catalan mercenaries (the Almogavars), but soon the discord arose: the Catalans first threatened Constantinople, then passed into Greece and settled there. The Turks in their turn in 1326 seized Brusa in Bithynia and the threat to the Byzantine capital worsened. On the other hand Andronikos II was forced to submit to the abuses of the Italian maritime republics: Genoese and Venetians fought each other in the Bosphorus with complete indifference for the Emperor and exploited the Empire with the commercial privileges that they imposed. With Andronikos III (1328) there is a return to the policy of seeking aid in the West by offering the papacy religious union. New negotiations were conducted at Avignon by Anna of Savoy, mother and regent for John V P., but the civil wars, the usurpation of Matthew Kantakouzenos (John VI), who sought an understanding with the Turks, caused the projects to fail. The situation became more grave when the Turks in 1354 seized Gallipoli and began the conquest of Thrace. In 1363 Murād I seized Adrianople: virtually the siege of Constantinople begins. Again from Byzantium negotiations with the Roman See are resumed; in 1369 John V P. appears in Rome and solemnly abjures the schism before Urban V. But this was a personal act that had no influence at all on the attitude of the Byzantine clergy and people, obstinate in their hostility to anything that smacked of the West. John V, having returned after having suffered an arrest for debts in Venice, finding himself abandoned by all, resigned himself to becoming a vassal of the Turkish sultan. He was succeeded by Manuel II P. who, in order to seek aid against the ever more grave Turkish threat, in 1399 came to the West; he was in Paris and in London, but obtained nothing. Fortunately the battle of Angora won by the ḥān of the Mongols, Tamerlane, over the Turkish sultan Bājazīd (1402) diminished the Turkish pressure around Constantinople for some years. Manuel II again began to negotiate with Pope Martin V; especially after the siege of Constantinople, in 1422, by Murād II the negotiations became anxious. John VIII P., after the fall of Thessalonica in 1430, opened new negotiations simultaneously both with Pope Eugene 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 the union that the Pope convened first at Ferrara and then at Florence. Here a formula satisfactory to both parties was finally found, but John VIII found opposition to the Union, in the clergy, in the people and in his own family. His brother and successor Constantine XI left full freedom to the opposition to the Latins and in 1450 an anti-unionist council condemned the errors of the Latin Church. However under the goad of the Turkish threat, in Dec. 1452 Constantine XI again had the union proclaimed in St. Sophia, but the people rose in tumult and St. Sophia was deserted as profaned by the Latins. Constantine XI found himself alone in May 1453 to defend Constantinople: the Greeks did not complain too much about it because they preferred to sacrifice their independence rather than be reconciled with Rome.

The domination of the P. thus represents a long and slow agony of the Byzantine world. Constantinople was no longer in the 14th and 15th centuries the great commercial and intellectual center of the 10th and 11th centuries. Commerce has shifted to other arteries. Consequently the P. live a straitened life; finances do not allow them to organize an energetic defense with fortresses and with mercenary troops. Even Constantinople after the Latin sackings of 1204 has lost the splendor of the age of the Comneni: it is poor and full of ruins. Nevertheless it is still a center of notable intellectual and artistic activity. The schools are flourishing: they are adorned with philosophers like Gemistos Plethon, with rhetoricians and philologists who study and comment on works of classical antiquity. Painting too presents a notable revival, an attempt to emerge from the hieratic stylization of the preceding age and has links with the development of Italian painting. The civilization of the P. still presents the possibility of new fruitful research and even the efforts of the emperors to resist the Muslim advance are worthy of being studied and evaluated.

Francesco Cognasso