by John Hall
Thomas’s marital status has never seriously been questioned. He married Catherine Zaccaria, daughter of the last Latin prince to rule the Greek island of Chios, in 1430, and she died at Corfu in 1462 aged fifty. She was the mother of all the claimed children of Thomas except Rogerio, the proposed issue of an alleged earlier marriage of Thomas which has been widely ridiculed by historians.
The earliest printed reference to a son of Thomas called John occurs in De ecclesiae occidentalis atque orientalis perpetua concensione, which translates as ‘The Western and Eastern Churches in Perpetual Agreement’, a work published in 1648 by the Greek scholar Leo Allatius. This names ‘Andrea, Manuele et Ioanne’ as Despot Thomas’s sons. What may be of crucial importance is that Allatius was custodian of the Vatican Library and so enjoyed unfettered access to one of the world’s greatest collections of books and manuscripts. Born in Chios in 1586 and educated at the Greek College in Rome, he gained a solid reputation as a historian and philosopher and won the confidence of Popes Gregory XV and Alexander VII. His works include the first methodical discussion of vampires. Among acquisitions he oversaw for the Vatican were the magnificent Palatine library presented to Pope Gregory and the manuscript collections of several great Italian dynasties, among them the Rovere dukes of Urbino.
This being the time of the Counter-Reformation, entry to the Vatican Library was jealously guarded. Access to the archives became so restricted that no one was allowed in except the staff, on pain of excommunication. Following the French occupation of Rome in Napoleonic times, much of the great library was looted and carted off to France, along with the captive pope. Most of the collections were returned to Rome in 1815 and a few detained in France, but an unknown quantity was lost. So although the first known mention of John Paleologus comes in Allatius’s book, there is a possibility of the loss of earlier documents known to the librarian which supported the legitimacy of an English line descending from John. Harder to explain is why a world-famous scholar like Allatius would simply make him up.
Of Andrew and Manuel Paleologus much more is known, but little to their credit. Andrew’s appearance is known from several portraits including Pinturiccho’s fresco in the Appartmento Borgia in the Vatican. The heir to Thomas’s title of emperor-in-exile has the familiar long face, high cheek bones and aquiline nose of the Paleologi.
Andrew is dismissed in Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as ‘contemptible to his enemies and burdensome to his friends’ and ‘degraded by the baseness of his life and marriage’. The Victorian historian George Finlay, in his History of Greece, remarks that Andrew would hardly merit attention ‘were it not that mankind has a morbid curiosity concerning the fortunes of the most worthless princes’. And while kindly old Pope Pius provided the heir with a generous pension, his successor Sixtus IV seems to have had less time for Byzantine hangers-on, and Andrew’s marriage to a common streetwalker of Rome called Caterina – not even her surname is known – offered an excuse to cut off the money. Sixtus, the builder of the Sistine Chapel, eventually reinstated the pension and even raised funds for a military expedition to restore Andrew as despot of Morea, but the money leaked away without a blow struck against the Turks.
Once more cold-shouldered by the pope, Andrew hawked himself round the courts of Europe offering to cede his rights to the throne of Constantinople to the highest bidder. He even made a vain journey to London to tempt Henry Tudor. In the end Charles VIII of France outbid the king of Naples and the duke of Burgundy for the imperial title in return for an annual pension of 4,300 ducats. Four years later, in 1498, Charles’s death left Andrew penniless but once again in possession of the phantom crown which he proceeded to sell off to Ferdinand of Aragon. Between times he travelled to Russia to sponge off his sister Zoe, now married to Ivan III, Grand Duke of Moscow, and succeeded in relieving her of all her jewels. Like one of the bogus Paleologi of today, he traded honorific titles to gullible snobs for cash in hand. When Andrew died in 1502 his widow had to beg the pope for the money to bury him. Or rather, this unseemly picture has long been the received wisdom about Andrew and his wife. Scholarly efforts to rehabilitate the pair have been made in recent years and it has been pointed out that the first printed reference to the wife as a prostitute dates from the seventeenth century.7
Yet to contemporaries Andrew’s failings paled into insignificance compared with those of his brother Manuel. Despised as he was, Andrew at least made feeble attempts to reclaim his birthright, but Manuel quickly despaired of squeezing more money out of the pope and returned to Constantinople. There he threw himself on the mercy of the sultan and was rewarded with a pension and a pair of concubines. Manuel was survived by a son, named after his brother Andrew, who in the words of Gibbon ‘was lost in the habit and religion of a Turkish slave’. This is how far we have departed from the ‘power, dignity and renown’ of the mighty Paleologi lamented by Sir Bernard Burke.
In submitting to the sultan, Manuel was following in the footsteps of his uncle, the perfidious ex-despot Demetrius, who died there in 1470 after seeing his wife join their daughter in the sultan’s harem. Some sources say Demetrius converted to Islam, others say he died a monk. Some say he had no male heir, others say a son called Manuel became a fervent Moslem with the nickname El Ghazi, or Holy Warrior, who was given command of the Ottoman forces. The constant repetition of given names, especially Andrew and Manuel, causes much confusion over the descent of the Paleologi, and there are even published family trees which make El Ghazi the father of the John named on the Landulph brass.
There are other theories as to John’s true identity. Among the more persuasive is that he was an illegitimate son of either Thomas or one of Thomas’s undisputed sons, a status which would still secure him illustrious patronage. The favours heaped by popes on their own bastards have filled dozens of books – Pope Julius himself had a pampered daughter – and a natural offspring of one of the imperial Paleologi would certainly possess the bona fides to satisfy the Rovere affinity. Some sources mention an illegitimate son of Andrew who was appointed a captain in the Pontifical Guard, but his name was Constantine.
A more beguiling conjecture is that John was the legitimate offspring of Andrew and his wife Caterina, and therefore the true heir. Yet whereas discreet support for an imperial bastard would appear a laudable act of charity, there was surely no question that an alliance of Christian powers – the only conceivable means by which the empire might be restored – would unite beneath the banner of the streetwalker’s son, even overlooking the fact that his father had twice sold off the imperial honours. Here is reason enough why John would become ‘shadowy’ even in his own lifetime. But we shall return to these theories later.
The later descent of the English Paleologi according to the Landulph pedigree – Theodore, Prosper and Camilio – has provoked no controversy and is amply supported by the archives at Pesaro, so our focus must remain on John. The name Leone is sometimes given in contemporary documents instead of John, the two names being liable to confusion in Latinised form when an initial I is employed in place of the non-existent J of the Latin alphabet. The Allatius reference to ‘Ioanne’ as a third son of Thomas suggests how the names might be muddled, especially when taken from a handwritten source. A Pesaro document dated 1535 refers to the long and faithful service of Leone Paleologus to the papal captain Giovanni della Rovere, lord of Senigalli, whose son was to become the first Rovere duke of Urbino. This is presumably the John of the Landulph inscription.
The Rovere were one of the great families of Renaissance Italy, producing two popes – Sixtus IV and Julius II – and intermarrying with the likes of the Gonzaga and Este. The first duke’s father died in 1501, so if we subtract such a span of years as might reasonably constitute ‘long and faithful service’ we go back to a date when it would be impossible for an imposter to charm his way into this exalted circle. The fall of Constantinople and arrival of the emperor-in-exile would still be within living memory; the first duke, Francesco Mar
ia I, was the nephew of Julius II to whom the imperial refugees would be known personally.
Next in line according to the Landulph pedigree is the earlier Theodore Paleologus, who also entered the ducal service. A Pesaro pedigree gives this Theodore’s year of birth as 1504 and date of death as 1540; Theodore’s son, named on the Landulph brass as Prosper, was the third generation to serve the Rovere. And by service we mean military service, for these Italian Paleologi were fighting men like their Byzantine forebears. The Rovere themselves had come to prominence as condottieri, and in the early years of the sixteenth century John Paleologus would have taken part in his patron’s private war against the Borgias. After 1509, when Duke Francesco Maria was appointed commander-in-chief of the Papal States, it is probable that John also fought in wars against Ferrara, Venice and Bologna. We do not know in which of the duke’s many wars the son Theodore first saw action; in this generally long-lived family, his death at the age of thirty-six may well have occurred on active service, whether in combat or as victim to one of the diseases that commonly ravaged military camps – a fate reserved for a later Theodore Paleologus during the English Civil War.
The Rovere were a good long-term prospect for followers, at least when their arch-rivals the Medici or the Borgia were not in the ascendant. Sixtus IV was notorious even among Renaissance popes for his shameless nepotism, while the bellicose Julius, known as ‘the Fearsome Pope’, successfully wrested back substantial temporal powers lost by previous pontiffs, and enthusiastically endorsed the papal tradition of rewarding relations and supporters. But the Paleologus family’s patron suffered major setbacks under the two Medici popes who followed Julius. The duke was excommunicated and ignominiously ejected from Urbino during the papacy of Leo X, the first pope to face the full blast of the Reformation; he continued in disfavour under Clement VII, best remembered in England for refusing a divorce to Henry VIII. However, Urbino was regained by force in 1522, and Theodore Paleologus may well have been present at the moment of triumph when the papal governor was flung from a palace window.
The duke’s reputation had been severely dented by an incident during the Bologna war of 1511 when, in an act worthy of his foe Cesare Borgia, a cardinal was stabbed on his orders – there is no record of a Paleologus being present at the murder – and the Rovere name suffered again in 1527 when the Sack of Rome was blamed in large part on the duke’s ineffective defence. However, his Byzantine adherents proved loyal in bad times as well as good and the fact they remained in Pesaro, by then favoured over the capital of the duchy, demonstrates an abiding mutual reliance.
But there was an aspect of life at Urbino which would be of special importance to our Theodore. This was the remarkable range of stables which formed the centrepiece of a vast subterranean network of buildings beneath the ducal palace. Here, where Theodore would learn the more respectable side of his future career, the dukes spent lavishly on the care of their horses and riders. Here too were workshops which rang with the hammers of armourers and smiths who equipped the duchy’s private army. Here was the school of war where the young Theodore would follow in his forebears’ footsteps, learning to buckle on both fighting and tilting armour, to angle a twelve-foot lance at the barrier, and to perfect his skills with rapier and dagger.
Prosper Paleologus is found enrolled among the nobility of Pesaro in 1537, a year before Duke Francesco Maria met his death at the hands of a poisoner.8 Prosper appears to have enjoyed a long life as he is twice listed in the records of the Consiglieri di Pesaro, first in the register kept from 1531 and 1551, and again in that maintained between 1569 and 1580. In the second manuscript his name is spelt Prospero. This later roll also includes a Guidobaldo Paleologo, probably a younger brother of Prosper, and the two names also appear together in a document dated 1560. The term consigliere is widely known today thanks to gangster movies like The Godfather: the title was adopted by the Mafia in imitation of the states of Renaissance Italy and generally signifies the third most powerful figure at a court or within a crime family.
In 1578, the year which would see disaster strike the Paleologi, Guidobaldo was also recorded as Capitan dei Porto. He was surely named after Guidobaldo, son of Francesco Maria, who succeeded as second duke of Urbino. Prosper, and probably Theodore until his death in 1540, continued in the employ of Duke Guidobaldo. Here was another Rovere in frequent need of seasoned soldiers, not only against outside enemies but inside Urbino: a revolt by citizens protesting over excessive taxation was bloodily put down in 1573.
The glories of the court of Urbino, renowned as a centre of patronage and learning, can still be vividly pictured thanks to Baldesar Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier, the most reprinted literary work of the Renaissance. Taking the form of a series of imaginary conversations between courtiers in the ducal palace, its extravagant praise of the virtues of the first Rovere duke helped to soften his image as an incompetent general and cardinal-killer. Like the Paleologi, Castiglione served Duke Francesco Maria I as a courtier and soldier, and had earlier served under the great Federico da Montefeltro, last duke of the previous dynasty. Though Castiglione did not regain his place after the temporary expulsion of the Rovere from Urbino, he would almost certainly have fought in the earlier wars alongside John Paleologus and very probably knew the young Theodore also.
The Book of the Courtier became required reading for anyone with pretensions of gentility, not only in Italy but throughout Europe, setting the standard for courtly manners up to modern times. By the end of the sixteenth century around 100 editions had been published. Its influence was especially strong in Elizabethan England, informing the works of, among others, Sir Philip Sidney, Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. The Elizabethans’ hero-worship of Sidney was based largely on his perceived likeness to Castiglione’s perfect courtier; Shakespeare pinched some jokes from the book; Jonson plundered it for Every Man out of his Humour.
Castiglione’s model courtier masters the fighting skills and horsemanship of the medieval knight, and to these he adds fluency in Greek and Latin, familiarity with the classical authors and social accomplishments such as poetry, music and drawing. He writes and speaks well and dresses with understated elegance. He serves his lord faithfully and protects and reveres women; in matters of love he always deals honourably. He is naturally of noble birth and ideally good-looking. In all things he must excel without apparent effort, for nonchalance is the surest mark of the gentleman. As our story progresses, we can measure this paragon against the man buried in far-off Cornwall.
Next in line from Prosper Paleologus is his son Camilio, father of our subject. Of Theodore’s mother we know nothing, not even her name. Just as the monument at Landulph refers only to male ancestors, the scant Italian records do not yield a single name of a wife belonging to the four generations who followed Thomas the Despot, nor do they suggest any detail of domestic life beyond the all-important court connection. Castiglione may have exhorted his courtiers to honour women, but the notaries who drew up the Pesaro documents saw no occasion to disclose anything about the women these Paleologi married. But I think we can take for granted that these generations would have had no difficulty in adopting the Catholic faith.
We know little about Camilio either, though as he lived in Pesaro it is reasonable to assume he followed forebears who had now served the Rovere family for the best part of a century. It may or may not be significant that he bore the same name as Castiglione’s only son, though it is possible a friendship between the families influenced the choice. But we do know that Camilio had brothers called Leonidas and Scipione, because the Pesaro records show the arrest of the two of them in 1578 on a charge of attempted assassination. Detained at the same time was their nephew Theodore, described in the court documents as a minor. And so the principal character of our story finally makes his entrance.
Theodore Paleologus was probably named after his great-grandfather, the son of John. Several Byzantine saints called Theodore included two fourth-century Greek military martyrs a
nd the name was frequently used by the imperial family; the variant Teodoro was popular in Italy. St Theodore the General was the original patron saint of Venice, only to be supplanted by St Mark when the apostle’s relics were smuggled out of Egypt hidden from prying Muslim eyes under a cargo of pork. There is another possible reason for the choice of name. A fourteenth-century kinsman of the exiled family was a celebrated warrior who wrote a treatise on the art of war, one of the most influential of the age. This Theodore inherited the Italian marquisate of Montferrato and our Theodore’s family may have decided on the name not only because of its soldierly credentials but to underline their connection with this recently extinct Italian branch of the imperial line.
Given the turbulent times in which he was born, the duchy of Urbino was as good a place as any in which to grow up, indeed a paradise compared with most corners of the world. Urbino’s illustrious reputation may have begun to fade but it was still possible to bask in the afterglow of the world of Castiglione as Theodore learned the ways of the court, polished his languages and enjoyed expert tuition in his chosen business of war. This was the idyll which came crashing down when he joined his uncles in a family blood feud.
Here I must digress briefly to introduce two long-dead rectors of Landulph, born over 100 years apart, who both fell under the spell of their mysterious former parishioner. They are Francis Jago Arundell, who arrived in the parish in 1805, the year of Trafalgar, and John Herbert Adams, born in 1897 and instituted as Landulph’s rector in 1930. Both traced descent from old Cornish families and were sons of doctors; both were graduates of Exeter College, Oxford, a college traditionally associated with West Country scholars. And both belong in that English tradition of clerical amateurs who, from the peace and quiet of a country parsonage, contributed to the world of letters and such fields of knowledge as natural history, folklore and archaeology. These antiquarian rectors of Landulph were men of the stamp of Gilbert White, Charles Kingsley, Francis Kilvert and R.S. Hawker.
