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General situation in the Empire
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Page 4
The dynasty of the Palaeologi belonged to a very well-known Greek family which, beginning with the first Comneni, gave Byzantium many energetic and gifted men, especially in the military field. They became related, in the course of time, to the imperial families of the Comneni, Ducae, and Angeli; on the strength of this relationship the first Palaeologi, Michael VIII always, Andronicus II for the most part, as well as his co-emperor and son, Michael IX, and sometimes, perhaps, Andronicus III, signed four family names, for example, Michael Ducas Angelus Comnenus Palaeologus. Later on the Emperors signed only Palaeologus.
The dynasty of the Palaeologi occupied the Byzantine throne for one hundred and ninety-two years (1261-1453), the longest dynasty in the whole course of Byzantine history. The first Palaeologus who mounted the throne of the shaken and greatly curtailed Eastern Empire, Michael VIII (1261-82), cunning, cruel, but talented and an artful diplomat, succeeded in saving the Empire from the terrible danger from the West, that is, from the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and bequeathed the throne to his son Andronicus II the Elder (1282-1328), whom nature had intended for a professor of theology but accident had made a Byzantine emperor. Andronicus married twice. His first wife, Anne, was a daughter of the king of Hungary, Stephen V; his second wife, Violanta-Irene, a sister of the north-Italian marquess of Montferrat, after her brother's death, became the heiress to the margravate; unable as a Byzantine empress to accept the margravate, she sent there one of her sons who founded at Montferrat the dynasty of the Palaeologi, which ceased only in the first half of the sixteenth century.
Andronicus in 1295 crowned with the imperial crown his eldest son by his first wife, Michael. Michael died in 1320, before his father, and is often referred to in historical works as his father's co-emperor, Michael IX. Negotiations were entered upon to marry Michael to Catherine de Courtenay, daughter of the titulary Emperor of Romania (of the former Latin Empire), and the pope was greatly interested in this project; but, in the end, Michael married an Armenian princess, Xenia-Maria.
The son of Michael IX and grandson of Andronicus II, young Andronicus, was for many years during his father's lifetime his grandfather's favorite. But Andronicus was frivolous and given to love affairs, and one of his adventures ended in the accidental murder of his brother and as a result the premature death of his father, Michael IX. This entirely changed the grandfather's attitude. Civil war broke out between grandfather and grandson. Against Andronicus the Elder formed a strong party of opponents whose leading spirit was the later famous Cantacuzene. The civil war ended in favor of Andronicus the Younger who, in 1328, suddenly seized Constantinople and induced Andronicus the Elder to abdicate. The old deposed Emperor, whose long reign had been a new period of decay for Byzantium, ended his days as a monk. He died in 1332.
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://ellopos.net/elpenor/vasilief/fall.asp?pg=4
