Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

The Empire of Nicaea (1204-1261)

The Despotat of Epirus and its relation to the Empire of Nicaea 

Page 4

Interesting and fresh information on this subject is contained in the precious collection of the letters of the above-mentioned metropolitan of Naupactus, John Apocaucus. From his correspondence, wrote V. G. Vasilievsky, we learn for the first time what an active part in the Epirotic movement was taken by the Greek clergy and especially by the Greek bishops. The proclamation of Theodore Angelus as the Emperor of the Romans was considered very seriously; Thessalonica, which had passed over into his hands, was contrasted with Nicaea; Constantinople was openly indicated to him as the nearest goal of his ambition and as an assured gain; in speech, thought, and writing, it was the common opinion that he was destined to enter St. Sophia and occupy there the place of the Orthodox Roman emperors where the Latin newcomers were sitting illegally. The realization of such dreams did not lie beyond the limits of possibility; it would be even easier to take Constantinople from Thessalonica than from Nicaea.

The proclamation of Theodore's coronation as the Emperor of Thessalonica and his anointment by the archbishop Demetrius Chomatenus must have brought about a political rupture between Thessalonica and Nicaea as well as an ecclesiastical rupture between the western Greek hierarchs and the patriarchate of Nicaea, which was called the patriarchate of Constantinople.

In the course of a rather long period after the fall of the Latin kingdom of Thessalonica, several western European princes related to the family of Montferrat continued to use in the West the extinct title of king of Thessalonica. They were the so-called titulary kings of Thessalonica, as, after the fall of the Latin Empire in 1261, there were to be titulary Latin emperors in western Europe.

Thus, from 1222, when the Empire of Thessalonica was proclaimed and refused to recognize the Empire of Nicaea, there were in the Christian East three empires: the two Greek Empires of Thessalonica and of Nicaea, and the Latin Empire in Constantinople which was becoming weaker every year. The further history of the thirteenth century is concerned with the relations between these empires, in whose destinies the Bulgarian Kingdom of John Asen II was the decisive factor

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Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/vasilief/epirus-nicaea.asp?pg=4