Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

The Empire of Nicaea (1204-1261)

Beginnings of the Empire of Nicaea and the Lascarids 

Page 5

This event of 1208 had very great significance for the subsequent history of the state of Nicaea: Nicaea became the center of the Empire, as well as of the Church. By the side of the shaken Latin Empire there grew up this second empire which gradually unified a rather considerable territory in Asia Minor, and by little and little drew the attention and hopes of the European Greeks. In the treaty concluded about 1220 between Theodore Lascaris and the Venetian representative at Constantinople (podesta) the official title of the former, apparently acknowledged by Venice, was: Theodorus, in Christo Deo fidelis Imperator et moderator Romeorum et semper augustus, Comnenus Lascaris. The formation of a new empire caused strained relations with the Empire of Constantinople; the two empires established on the ruins of the single Byzantine Empire could not live on friendly and peaceful terms.

Nicaea, located about forty English miles from Constantinople, became the capital of the new empire. Its position at the intersection of five or six roads, gave it a special political importance. Nicaea had achieved fame in Byzantine history as the site of two ecumenical councils, and its inhabitants boasted of the powerful walls, towers, and gates erected in the Middle Ages. These are still well preserved today. A short time before the First Crusade Nicaea had succumbed to the Seljuq Turks, but the crusaders who had taken the city away from them had been compelled, to their great discontent, to return it to Alexius Comnenus.

Magnificent palaces and numerous churches and monasteries, of which now not a trace remains, adorned medieval Nicaea. Speaking of Nicaea and recalling the First Ecumenical Council, an Arabian traveler of the twelfth century, al-Harawy (el-Herewy) wrote: In the church of this city one may see the image of the Messiah and the portraits of the Fathers enthroned on their seats. This church is the object of particular reverence. The Byzantine and western historians of the thirteenth century point out the vast extent and wealth of Nicaea. A writer of the thirteenth century, Nicephorus Blemmydes, spoke of Nicaea in one of his poems: Nicaea, a city with wide streets, full of people, well-walled, proud of what it encloses, being the most excellent mark of imperial sympathy. Finally, in the literature of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries are preserved two panegyrics of Nicaea. The author of one of them, Emperor Theodore II Lascaris, addressed Nicaea: Thou hast surpassed all the cities, since the Romaeic state, many times divided and crushed by foreign troops has been founded, established, and strengthened only in thee. The second panegyric was written by a very well-known statesman of the fourteenth century, a diplomat, politician and administrator, theologian, astronomer, poet, and artist, Theodore Metochites, whose name is associated with the famous mosaics of the Constantinople monastery Chora (now the mosque Kahrieh Jami), which have been preserved to the present time.

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