PALEOLOGI, DYNASTY OF. — They ruled the Byzantine Empire from 1259 until the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453. The family of the Paleologi appeared at the court of the Comneni in the 12th century. They held high offices in the State and were related to the imperial family. At the end of the 12th century, an Alexios Paleologos married Irene, daughter of Alexios III Angelos; his daughter married a cousin, Andronikos Paleologos, an important figure at the court of Nicaea. From them was born in 1225 the most famous of the Paleologi, Michael, who, after serving John III Vatatzes and Theodore II Laskaris, in 1259 cleverly removed the young heir John IV from power and seized the throne. The usurpation was justified in the eyes of the people 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 serious consequences because the Byzantine positions in Anatolia were weakened in the face of the reorganization of Turkish forces by the clan of Osman, while on the other hand in the West, Charles of Anjou, King of Sicily, claiming the rights acquired from the last Latin emperor, assumed a distinctly hostile attitude.
Michael VIII Paleologos, faced with the extremely grave danger of a Sicilian attack at that moment, sought to resist by relying on the papacy and initiated negotiations for the union of the Churches. An agreement seemed to have been reached only with Gregory X: in 1274 Byzantine ambassadors appeared at the ecumenical Council of Lyon and declared their submission to the Roman Church, recognizing its doctrine and papal primacy. Michael VIII, however, then encountered the resolute opposition of the Greek clergy; he tried to overcome the resistance by resorting to violence, but faced with the dangerous internal situation, he abandoned the attempt to impose the union. Martin IV excommunicated him in 1281 and supported Charles of Anjou’s plans to attack Constantinople, but the Sicilian Vespers saved the Byzantine emperor, who in the meantime had initiated agreements against the Angevin king in Aragon and other states hostile to Sicily. Andronikos II, who succeeded Michael VIII in 1282, was able to abandon his father’s pro-Latin policy; indeed, he allowed unionist ecclesiastics to be persecuted. Consequently, new plans for expeditions against Byzantium were hatched in the West, but they never came to fruition. Instead, the political and military incapacity of Andronikos II was exploited by the Turks, who advanced decisively into Asia toward the shores of the Aegean. Andronikos, lacking arms, resorted to a company of Catalan mercenaries (the Almogavars), but soon discord arose: the Catalans first threatened Constantinople, then moved into Greece and settled there. The Turks, in turn, in 1326 took Bursa in Bithynia, and the threat to the Byzantine capital grew more severe. On the other hand, Andronikos II was forced to endure the arrogance of the Italian maritime republics: the Genoese and Venetians fought each other in the Bosporus with complete indifference toward the Emperor and exploited the Empire through the commercial privileges they imposed.
With Andronikos III (1328), a return was made 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 Paleologos, but civil wars and the usurpation of Matthew Kantakouzenos (John VI), who sought an understanding with the Turks, thwarted the plans. The situation became more serious when in 1354 the Turks took Gallipoli and began the conquest of Thrace. In 1363 Murad I took Adrianople: he virtually encircled Constantinople. Again Byzantium resumed negotiations with the Roman See; in 1369 John V Paleologos appeared in Rome and solemnly ended the schism before Urban V. But this was a personal act that had no influence whatsoever on the attitude of the Greek clergy and people, who remained obstinately hostile to anything that smacked of the West. John V, having returned after suffering imprisonment for debt in Venice and finding himself abandoned by all, resigned himself to becoming a vassal of the Turkish sultan. He was succeeded by Manuel II Paleologos, who, in order to seek aid against the ever more serious Turkish threat, came to the West in 1399; he went to Paris and London but obtained nothing. Fortunately, the battle of Ankara, won by the Mongol Ḫān Tamerlane over the Turkish sultan Bayezid (1402), reduced Turkish pressure on Constantinople for several years. Manuel II resumed negotiations with Pope Martin V, especially after the siege of Constantinople in 1422 by Murad II; the negotiations became urgent. John VIII Paleologos, after the fall of Thessalonica in 1430, initiated new negotiations simultaneously with Pope Eugenius IV and 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 that the Pope convened first in Ferrara and then in Florence. Here a formula satisfactory to both sides was finally found, but John VIII encountered opposition to the Union among the clergy, the people, and even within his own family. His brother and successor, Constantine XI, allowed full freedom to the opposition to the Latins, and in 1450 an anti-union council condemned the errors of the Latin Church. Yet under the pressure of the Turkish threat, in December 1452 Constantine XI again proclaimed the union in Hagia Sophia, but the people rose in tumult and the church was deserted as profaned by the Latins. Constantine XI found himself alone in May 1453 to defend Constantinople: the Greeks did not lament its loss too much because they preferred to sacrifice their independence rather than reconcile with Rome.
The rule of the Paleologi 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. Trade had shifted to other arteries. Consequently, the Paleologi lived a precarious existence; their finances did not allow them to organize an energetic defense with fortresses and mercenary troops. Even Constantinople, after the Latin sack of 1204, had lost the splendor of the Comnenian age: it was full of ruins. Yet it remained a center of notable intellectual and artistic activity. The schools flourished: they were adorned by philosophers such as Gemistos Plethon, by rhetoricians and philologists who studied and commented on works of classical antiquity. Even painting showed a notable revival, an attempt to break free from the hieratic stylization of the previous age and had links with the development of Italian painting. The civilization of the Paleologi still offered the possibility of fruitful new research, and even the efforts of the emperors to resist Muslim advance are worthy of study and evaluation.