The Immortal Emperor
Page 1
THE IMMORTAL EMPEROR
This is an account of the life and death of Constantine XI Palaiologos, the last Christian Emperor of Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire, who lost his city, his Empire and his life when the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople in 1453.
Constantine's early career was spent as a governor in the Morea (Peloponnese). He succeeded as Emperor in Constantinople when his elder brother John VIII died without heir in 31448, and his short and tragic reign ended with the siege and conquest of the city by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II on z9 May 1453. Constantine was last seen fighting at the city walls. The second part of the book records the circumstances of his death and the myth of his eventual resurrection. It was said that the Emperor was not dead but sleeping, the `Immortal Emperor' turned to marble who would one day be awakened by an angel and drive the Turks out of his city and Empire. The book ends with an account of the claims of reputed descendants of Constantine's family to be heirs of the Byzantine throne, a story which extends into recent times.
This is the first book to be published on Constantine since 1892. It is illustrated attractively with prints, drawings and artefacts, while the text is based on an array of primary sources, Greek, western and Slav. Professor Nicol is an experienced and authoritative story-teller, and this tale of fact and myth will engross the historian and general reader alike.
THE
IMMORTAL
EMPEROR
The life and legend of
Constantine Palaiologos,
last Emperor of the Romans
DONALD M. NICOL
Emeritus Professor, Director of the Gennadius Library, Athens
CONTENTS
List of illustrations page vii
Preface ix
List of abbreviations xi
Genealogical table xii-xiii
i THE DWINDLING EMPIRE I
2 CONSTANTINE: DESPOT AT MISTRA 21
3 CONSTANTINE: EMPEROR AT CONSTANTINOPLE 36
4 THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE 54
5 THE DEATH OF CONSTANTINE 74
6 THE IMMORTAL EMPEROR 95
7 THE DYING EMBERS I09
Bibliography 129
Index 141
ILLUSTRATIONS
Between pages 82 and 83
i Mistra in the seventeenth century (from B. Randolph, The Present State of the Morea, Called Anciently Peloponnesus... [London, 1686])
z Sparta by Edward Lear, 1849 (Gennadius Library, Athens)
3 Corinth by Edward Lear, 1849 (Gennadius Library, Athens)
4 Rumeli Hisar on the Bosporos by Edward Lear, 1848 (Gennadius Library, Athens)
5 The Emperor John VIII Palaiologos (from Sp. P. Lambros, Catalogue illustre de la Collection de Portraits des Empereurs de Byzance... [Athens-Rome, 1911], no. 401)
6 The Emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos (from A. Thevet, Les vrais portraits et vies des hommes illustres grecs, latins et payens, anciens et modernes ... [Paris, 1584])
7 The Sultan Mehmed II (from [J. J. Boissard], Res turcicae, id est, plena et succincta descriptio vitae rerumque gestarum imperatorum turcicorum, principum persarum etc. Sumptibus Guilhelmi Fitzeri Anno MDCXXXII [1630
8 Gold seal of Constantine XI (State Archive of Dubrovnik [Ragusa])
9 Silver coin of Constantine XI (private collection)
1o Constantine's signature as Emperor of the Romans, 1451 (on his chrysobull for Ragusa: State Archive of Dubrovnik [Ragusa])
iii The sleeping emperor (from the prophecies of Stephanitzes Leukadios [Athens, 1838])
ii Dedication to the future Emperor of Constantinople (frontispiece of the prophecies of Stephanitzes [Athens, 1838])
13 Constantine I with his mother Helena and Constantine XI with his mother Helena (miniatures from the Venetian manuscript of George Klontzas [15901, ed. A. D. Paliouras [Athens, 19771)
14 Constantine XI and Death (Charon) (Klontzas manuscript)
15 Constantine XI in his tomb (Klontzas manuscript)
16 Monumental brass of Theodore Paleologus in the parish church of Landulph, Cornwall
17 The gravestone of Ferdinand Paleologus, St John's Church, Barbados
PREFACE
Constantine Palaiologos was the last Emperor of Constantinople, the New Rome. He was killed defending his city against the Ottoman Turks in 1453. The Turkish conquest completed the transformation of the Christian Byzantine Empire into the Muslim Ottoman Empire. Constantine's death marked the end of an institution that traced its origins back to the reign of Constantine the Great in the fourth century, or indeed back to Augustus, the first Roman Emperor. For its ruler and people called themselves Romaioi or Romans, not Hellenes or Greeks. The last Constantine reigned as Emperor for not much more than four years. His dominions were restricted to the city and suburbs of Constantinople and a portion of Greece. He ruled them at the mercy of the Turks. But he was proudly conscious of the fact that so long as he held the Queen of Cities he was the one true Emperor of the Romans.
He was the eighth member of his family to inherit the title since his ancestor Michael Palaiologos had usurped the imperial throne in iz61. He is generally reckoned to have been the eleventh Emperor with the name of Constantine, although Edward Gibbon and others have found reasons for calling him Constantine XII. The facts of his career were recorded by Byzantine chroniclers who knew him and by later Greek historians. The circumstances of his death during the Turkish assault on Constantinople, one of the most dramatic events of the Christian Middle Ages, were described by numerous observers and reporters, Greek, Italian, Turkish and Slav; and the drama of the siege and capture of the city has been eloquently told in more recent years, notably by Sir Steven Runciman. It is not the purpose of this book to retell the tale of the fall of Constantinople in 1453• Its central theme is Constantine Palaiologos, his heroic death and the myths and legends about him that accumulated among the Greek-speaking Christians of later generations. Many of them awaited his resurrection and the restoration of their lost empire, which they came to equate with the Greek nation, a concept that would have been foreign to most Byzantines or Romaioi of the fifteenth century. The last Constantine became a symbol of the hopes and aspirations of an emerging nation of Hellenes which would one day triumph over the ruins of the Ottoman Empire.
The only monograph in English hitherto devoted to Constantine was published in i89z by Chedomil Mijatovich, then Serbian ambassador to the Court of St James. It is significant that he entitled it Constantine, the Last Emperor of the Greeks and dedicated it to His Royal Highness Prince Constantine, then heir to the Kingdom of Greece. He was not alone in thinking that the Hellenic nation which had been forged out of the Greek War of Independence in the nineteenth century was destined to revive the Byzantine Empire whose light had been extinguished by the Turkish capture of Constantinople and the death of its last Christian ruler.
In putting this work together I have relied heavily and gratefully on the unrivalled resources of the Gennadius Library in Athens during my tenure as its Director. More particularly I am indebted to Professor A. D. Paliouras of the University of Ioannina for enabling me to reproduce some of the miniatures from his publication of the manuscript of George Klontzas; to Mr Simon Bendall for freely imparting his expert knowledge of Palaiologan coinage; to Dr Ruth Macrides for her help in tracking down some of the poetic material about the marble emperor; and to Professor A. A. M. Bryer for encouraging my own enthusiasm for the lunatic fringe of Byzantine genealogy.
ABBREVIATIONS
THE FAMILY OF PALAIOLOGOS circa 1350-1500
I
THE DWINDLING EMPIRE
On the night of z March 1354 the coast of Thrace to the west of Constantinople was devastated by an earthquake. Some places disappeared into the gro
und. Some were completely destroyed and depopulated. Others were left defenceless by the collapse of their walls. The survivors fled from their shattered homes looking for refuge in the towns that had been spared. The earthquake was followed by blizzards and torrents of rain. Many of the refugees, especially the women and children, died of exposure. Many more were taken captive by the Ottoman Turkish soldiers who descended on the ruins at break of day. Gallipoli, the largest town in the district, was laid low, though its people managed to get away by sea.' The Turks were familiar with the area. For some years they had been employed as mercenaries in the conflicts that raged over the throne or the trade of the Byzantine Empire. They could easily be summoned across the Hellespont from Asia Minor, which they already controlled; and they could usually be relied upon to go home with their pay and their booty at the end of each campaign. The Byzantine Emperor John VI Cantacuzene believed that he enjoyed a special relationship with their leader Orhan, the son of Osman, the founder of the Osmanli or Ottoman people. In 1348 he had given his daughter as wife to Orhan, as though to demonstrate that symbiosis between Turks and Greeks was possible and that the world could be shared between a Muslim Asia and a Christian Europe.
It was perhaps a naive conception, based on a personal friendship. Orhan was a man of his word. His son Suleiman did not subscribe to gentlemen's agreements about the partition of the world. In 135a some of Suleiman's troops, supposedly in the pay of the Byzantine Emperor, had occupied a fortress near Gallipoli. When the fighting was over they refused to go home, claiming possession of the fortress by right of conquest. It was the first permanent settlement by the Ottoman Turks on European soil. The earthquake two years later gave them the chance to expand and consolidate it. Suleiman crossed the straits from the coast of Asia Minor and occupied the ruins of Gallipoli. He brought with him a great crowd of soldiers and Turkish immigrants to repair and inhabit the deserted towns and villages. A Turkish garrison was installed in Gallipoli and the city was repopulated by Muslims. Gallipoli controlled the sea passage over the Hellespont from Asia to Europe. Legend had it in later years that Suleiman had seen the way across lit up for him by a moonbeam on the water. Once they were in possession of Gallipoli the Ottoman Turks would never go home. The way into Europe was open to them. The year 1354 marks the point of no return for the Christian Roman or Byzantine Empire. By 1405, only fifty years later, Suleiman's successors were masters of Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedonia, Thessaly and most of central Greece. The Byzantine Empire was reduced to the city and suburbs of Constantinople, parts of the Peloponnese, a few of the Greek islands and whatever else the Turks would allow them; for their emperors were obliged to pay tribute to the Ottoman Sultans and to serve as their vassals.'
It was in 1405, on 8 February, that Constantine Palaiologos was born. He was the fourth of the seven sons of the Emperor Manuel II who had come to this throne in 1391.3 Manuel Palaiologos ruled over a dwindling and disintegrating empire. The great trunk of the tree of Constantinople, where its first seed had been planted, seemed to be hollow and bending in the cold wind blowing from the east. One of its younger branches, however, was still flourishing. In 1349 the Emperor John Cantacuzene, the friend and father-in-law of Orhan, had invested his son Manuel with the imperial title of Despot and sent him to take charge of the Byzantine province of the Peloponnese or the Morea, as it had come to be called. Central and southern Greece had been in foreign hands ever since the Fourth Crusade in 1204. The crusaders on their career of conquest had set up a French Duchy of Athens and a French Principality of Achaia in the Morea. The nationality of their rulers changed more than once over the years. But to the native Greeks they were all foreigners. The merchants of Venice reaped most of the material profits from occupied Greece through their commercial colonies in the islands and their harbours on the mainland. Little by little, however, the Byzantines were able to win back long lost territory as the Principality of Achaia became enfeebled through lack of recruits and maladministration. Manuel Cantacuzene served as Despot in the Morea for over thirty years. He was a talented soldier, governor and statesman; and under his regime the province prospered and grew at the expense of its foreign neighbours. Its capital was at Mistra, whose romantic and haunting ruins still look down from a spur of Mount Taygetos on to the plain of Sparta. When Manuel died in 1380 it passed from the family of Cantacuzene to the then ruling house of Palaiologos, first to Theodore, son of the Emperor John V, then in 1407 to Theodore II, son of the Emperor Manuel II and elder brother of Constantine Palaiologos. Each bore the grand title of Despot which only a reigning emperor could confer; and their province came to be known as the Despotate of the Morea.4
Towards the end of the thirteenth century the Empress Yolande of Montferrat had proposed to her husband Andronikos II that he should adopt the western practice of partitioning his dominions among his sons and stepsons. The Emperor was shocked. He protested that the single monarchy of the Roman Empire could never be split and turned into a polyarchy.5 The days of such conscientious adherence to Byzantine tradition were long over by the beginning of the fifteenth century. Succeeding emperors had come to feel that the only way to hold together the scattered fragments of their empire was to keep them in the family by allotting towns and provinces to their sons to govern and defend, granting to each the title of Despot. Manuel II was blessed with a rich progeny of sons. One of them, Michael, died in 1406, so that their number was reduced to six. His eldest son John was designated to succeed him as emperor. His second son Theodore was appointed Despot in the Morea. His third son Andronikos was nominated as Despot at Thessalonica in 1408, when he was barely eight years old. There was not much more territory to be apportioned. When his fourth son Constantine was born therefore, in 1405, Manuel kept him in Constantinople until a suitable appanage became available.'
Little is known about Constantine's childhood and early years. He was devoted to his mother Helena, the daughter of a Serbian prince, Constantine Dragas. He was frequently described as Porphyrogenitus, implying that he had been born in the purple chamber of the palace. It was a distinction shared by his elder brother Theodore and his younger brothers Demetrios and Thomas though not, it seems, by the eldest of the family, the future Emperor John VIII. While he was still young Constantine won the almost slavish devotion and admiration of the later historian, George Sphrantzes, whose memoirs are a unique and detailed source for Constantine's career. Sphrantzes, who came from the Morea, served at the court of Manuel II. His uncle was Constantine's tutor. His cousins were Constantine's companions, friends and attendants. When John VIII came to the throne he was at first reluctant to grant Constantine's request that Sphrantzes should enter his service; for he was too valuable as an imperial ambassador, diplomat and counsellor in Constantinople.' Constantine got on well with his elder brother and he had his way in the end. His relations with his younger brothers, Demetrios, born in 1406, and Thomas, born in 1409, were less friendly. One of Constantine's encomiasts in later years makes passing reference to his youthful expertise in hunting, horsemanship and the martial arts; and there is testimony enough for his adventurous spirit, vitality and courage.' He may have inherited something of the commanding presence and character of his father Manuel which so impressed those who met him on his travels in western Europe. No contemporary portraits of him survive, except for those on his few coins and seals; and these smudged and stylised effigies do not give him the fine features of his brother John as portrayed by the Italian artists who saw him.9
Constantine was born into a world whose ruling class was surprisingly multi-racial. It was a society constantly under threat of extinction. Intermarriage among its leaders was a means of survival. His grandfather, the Emperor John V Palaiologos (1354-91), was the son of an Italian princess, Anne of Savoy. His uncle, the Emperor Andronikos IV, had married into the Bulgarian royal family. His uncle Theodore I, Despot of Mistra, had married a daughter of the Florentine Duke of Athens, Nerio Acciajuoli. His aunt Eirene had married Halil, son of the Turkish emir Orhan.
His cousin who reigned briefly as John VII had married a lady of the Genoese family of Gattilusio. His brother John VIII was to marry first Anna, daughter of Vasili of Moscow, then Sophia of Montferrat, and third Maria, daughter of Alexios IV Komnenos, Emperor of Trebizond. His younger brother Theodore II, Despot of Mistra, married Cleope Malatesta, daughter of Carlo Malatesta, Count of Rimini. Constantine himself married twice and both of his wives were Italian. As the child of a Serbian mother and a halfItalian father, it is hard to describe Constantine as a Greek. Like most of his Greek-speaking contemporaries he thought of himself as a Roman, a Romaios or Byzantine.
He was seventeen years of age when, in June 14zz, the Ottoman Sultan Murad II laid siege to Constantinople. The Byzantines had enjoyed a long respite from Turkish aggression. The Emperor Manuel II had got on well with the previous Sultan Mehmed I. Mehmed died in 14zi and it at once became clear that the respite was at an end. The Turkish siege was long and bitter. The defence of the city was mainly directed by John VIII, who had recently been crowned as co-Emperor with his father and heir apparent. Thanks to his vigilance the Turks withdrew before the year was out. But the experience proved too much for the elderly Emperor Manuel. In September 14zz he suffered a stroke which paralysed one side of his body. Although he was to linger on for nearly three years, the government of Constantinople was effectively in the hands of his eldest son John. The outlook was dismal. The city of Thessalonica was also under siege by the Turks. Manuel's son Andronikos, who had been given charge of it as Despot, was young and in poor health. In the summer of 1413, with his father's consent, he offered Thessalonica to the Venetians; and in September the city changed hands and became the largest and, it was hoped, the most lucrative of all the Venetian colonies in Greece.10