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General situation in the Empire
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Page 9
John VIII had no children by any of his three wives. When he died in the autumn of 1448, the question of an heir arose. The Empress mother, Manuel II's wife, who was still alive; the brothers of the late Emperor; and the highest officials of Constantinople fixed their choice upon Constantine, one of the brothers of John VIII, who at that time was the Despot of Morea. The sultan was informed of the choice of the new Emperor and approved the candidate. A deputation was sent to Morea, which notified Constantine of his election to the tottering throne of the once great Empire of Byzantium. At the beginning of 1449, from medieval Sparta, that is from the residence of the Despot at Mistra, he sailed at once for Constantinople in a Catalonian vessel and was solemnly received by the people. It was long believed that Constantine XI was crowned by a layman. But it is now known, since the publication of the works of John Eugenicus by Sp. Lampros, that the coronation of Constantine XI was never performed officially at all. The Church demanded that it should be performed by the patriarch, but it was probably postponed because of the tense antagonism between the partisans of the union of the churches and their opponents. Constantine had been twice married, both of his wives belonging to Latin families which had established themselves in the Christian East one to the family of Tocco, the other to the Genoese dynasty in the island of Lesbos, of Gattilusio but both had died before Constantine's election to the Byzantine throne. The negotiations concerning a third wife for the new Emperor, in the West and East, at Venice, Portugal, Trebizond, and Iberia (Georgia), came to nothing. The fall of Constantinople and Constantine's death prevented the fulfillment of these matrimonial plans. His intimate friend, a diplomat and historian of the epoch of the Palaeologi, George Phrantzes, preserved in his History an interesting description of his mission to find a bride for the Emperor in Trebizond and Iberia. The French historian Diehl remarked that, despite continued matrimonial intercourse between the Byzantine emperors and western princesses, at the critical moment the eyes of the last Emperor, in search of a bride, turned to the near, congenial, and kindred East.
Constantine XI was killed in May 1453, at the taking of Constantinople by the Turks. On the site of the Christian eastern monarchy was founded the strong military empire of the Ottoman Turks.
Of the brothers who survived Constantine, Demetrius Palaeologus was captured by Muhammed II, to whom his daughter was married, and died at Hadrianople as a monk, under the name of David. Another brother, Thomas, ended his days in Italy dreaming of a crusade against the Turks, receiving from the pope his means of subsistence. His son Andreas (Andrew), who had already become a Catholic, was the only legitimate representative of the dynasty of the Palaeologi who possessed rights to the lost Byzantine throne. An interesting document exists in which Andreas Palaeologus transmitted his rights to the Empires of Constantinople and Trebizond as well as to the Despotat of Serbia to the king of France, Charles VIII. When the latter at the end of the fifteenth century undertook his expedition against Naples, he considered it only as the steppingstone to eventual conquest of Constantinople and Jerusalem. In other words, at the end of the fifteenth century dreams of a crusade still existed. Andreas transmission of his rights to Charles VIII seems never to have been fully carried out, for later Andreas again transmitted his rights to the Byzantine throne to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain (Castile). This act, of course, had no practical result.
A History of the Byzantine Empire - Table of Contents
Cf. 3 Posts on the Fall of Byzantium / Pictures of Mistra
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Reference address : https://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/vasilief/fall.asp?pg=9
