Thomas Palaiologos (Greek: Θωμᾶς Παλαιολόγος; 1409 – 12 May 1465) was Despot of the Morea from 1428 until the fall of the despotate in 1460, although he continued to claim the title until his death five years later. He was the younger brother of Constantine XI Palaiologos, the final Byzantine emperor. Thomas was appointed as Despot of the Morea by his oldest brother, Emperor John VIII Palaiologos, in 1428, joining his two brothers and other despots Theodore and Constantine, already governing the Morea. Though Theodore proved reluctant to cooperate with his brothers, Thomas and Constantine successfully worked to strengthen the despotate and expand its borders. In 1432, Thomas brought the remaining territories of the Latin Principality of Achaea, established during the Fourth Crusade more than two hundred years earlier, into Byzantine hands by marrying Catherine Zaccaria, heiress to the principality.
In 1449, Thomas supported the ascension of his brother Constantine, who then became Emperor Constantine XI, to the throne despite the machinations of his other brother, Demetrios, who himself desired the throne. After Constantine's rise to the throne, Demetrios was then assigned by Constantine to govern the Morea with Thomas but the two brothers found it difficult to cooperate, often quarreling with each other. In the aftermath of the Fall of Constantinople and end of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II allowed Thomas and Demetrios to continue to rule as Ottoman vassals in the Morea. Thomas hoped to turn the small despotate into a rallying point of a campaign to restore the empire, hoping to gain support from the Papacy and Western Europe. Constant quarreling with Demetrios, who supported the Ottomans instead, eventually led Mehmed to invade and conquer the Morea in 1460.
Thomas and his family, including his wife Catherine and his three younger children Zoe, Andreas and Manuel, escaped into exile to the Venetian-held city of Methoni and then to Corfu, where Catherine and the children stayed. In the hopes of raising support for a crusade to restore his lands in the Morea, and possibly the Byzantine Empire itself, Thomas travelled to Rome, where he was received and provided for by Pope Pius II. His hopes of retaking the Morea never materialized and he died in Rome on 12 May 1465. After his death, his claims were inherited by his oldest son Andreas, who also attempted to rally support for a campaign to restore the fallen despotate and the Byzantine Empire.
Contents
Biography
Early life and appointment as despot
As the Byzantine Empire fell apart and fragmented over the course of the 14th century, the emperors of the Palaiologan dynasty came to feel that the only sure way to keep their remaining holdings intact was to grant them to their sons, receiving the title of despot, as appanages to defend and govern. Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos (r. 1391–1425) had a total of six sons who survived infancy. Manuel's eldest surviving son, John, was raised to co-emperor and designated to succeed Manuel as sole emperor upon his death. The second eldest son, Theodore was designated as Despot of the Morea and the third eldest, Andronikos, was made Despot of Thessaloniki in 1408 at just eight years old. Manuel's younger sons, Constantine, Demetrios, and Thomas (the youngest, born in 1409), were kept in Constantinople as there was not sufficient land left to grant them. The younger children; Theodore, Andronikos, Constantine, Demetrios and Thomas were frequently described as having the distinction of Porphyrogennetos ("born in the purple"; born in the imperial palace during the reign of their father), a distinction that does not appear to have been shared by the emperor-to-be John.
Relations between the Palaiologos brothers were not always good. Though the young John and Constantine appears to have got on well with each other, relations between Constantine and the younger Demetrios and Thomas were not as friendly. The complex relationships between the sons of Manuel II were put to the test when John, now Emperor John VIII, appointed Constantine as Despot of the Morea in 1428. Since his brother Theodore refused to step down from his role as despot, the despotate became governed by two members of the imperial family for the first time since its creation in 1349. Soon thereafter, the younger Thomas (aged 19) was also appointed as Despot of the Morea, meaning that the nominally undivided despotate had effectively disintegrated into three smaller principalities.
Theodore did not make way for Constantine or Thomas in the despotate's capital, Mystras. Instead, Theodore granted Constantine lands throughout the Morea, including the northern harbor town of Aigio, fortresses and towns in Laconia (in the south), and Kalamata and Messenia in the west. Constantine made his capital as despot the town Glarentza. Meanwhile, Thomas was given lands in the north and based himself in the castle of Kalavryta.
Despot under the Byzantine Empire
Shortly after being appointed as despots, Constantine and Thomas, together with Theodore, decided to join forces in an attempt to seize the flourishing and strategic port of Patras in the north-west of the Morea, then under the rule of its Catholic Archbishop. The campaign, which was unsuccessful, possibly due to Theodore's reluctance to partake, was Thomas's first experience of war. Constantine later captured Patras on his own, ending 225 years of foreign ownership.
Thomas's early tenure as Despot of the Morea was not without acquisitions either. For years, Thomas and Constantine had been eating away at the last remnants of the Principality of Achaea, a crusader state established during the Fourth Crusade in 1204 which had once governed almost the entire peninsula. It was Thomas who finally brought an end to the principality by marrying Catherine Zaccaria, daughter and heir of the final prince, Centurione II Zaccaria. With Centurione's death in 1432, Thomas could claim control over all of his remaining territories. By the 1430s, Thomas and Constantine had ensured that nearly the entire Peloponnese was once more in Byzantine hands for the first time since 1204, the only exception being the few port towns and cities held by the Republic of Venice.
Murad II, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, which occupied most of the Byzantine Empire's former territory and had relegated the empire and the despotate as effectively vassal states, felt uneasy about the recent string of Byzantine successes in the Morea. In 1431, Turahan Bey, a Turkish general who governed Thessaly, sent his troops south to demolish the Morea's primary defensive fortifications, the Hexamilion wall, in an effort to remind the despots that they were the Sultan's vassals.
In March 1432, Constantine, possibly desiring to be closer to Mystras, made a new territorial agreement, presumably approved by Theodore and John VIII, with Thomas. Thomas agreed to cede his fortress Kalavryta to Constantine, who made it his new capital, in exchange for Elis, which Thomas made his new capital. Though relations between the three despots thus appears to have been good in 1432, they soon soured. John VIII had no sons to succeed him and it was thus assumed that his successor would be one of his four surviving brothers (Andronikos having died some time before). John VIII's preferred successor was Constantine and though this choice was accepted by Thomas, who had developed good relations with his older brother, it was resented by the still older Theodore. When Constantine was summoned to the capital in 1435, Theodore believed this was to appoint Constantine as co-emperor and designated heir, which was not actually the case, and he too travelled to Constantinople to raise his objections. The quarrel between Constantine and Theodore was not resolved until the end of 1436, when the future Patriarch Gregory Mammas was sent to reconcile them and prevent civil war. When Constantine was summoned to act as regent in Constantinople while John VIII was away at the Council of Florence from 1437 to 1440, Theodore and Thomas stayed in the Morea. In November 1443, Constantine gave over control of Selymbria, which he had received after helping to deal with the rebellion of their younger brother Demetrios, to Theodore, who in turn abandoned his position as Despot of the Morea, making Constantine and Thomas the sole Despots of the Morea. Though this brought Theodore closer to Constantinople, it also made Constantine the ruler of the capital of the Morea and one of the most powerful men in the small empire. With Theodore and Demetrios out of their way, Constantine and Thomas hoped to strengthen the Morea, by now the cultural center of the Byzantine world, and make it a safe and nearly self-sufficient principality. The philosopher Gemistus Pletho advocated that while Constantinople was the New Rome, Mystras and the Morea could become the "New Sparta", a centralized and strong Hellenic kingdom in its own right.
Continued rule in the Morea
Constantinople ultimately fell on 29 May 1453, Constantine XI dying in its defense, ending the Byzantine Empire. In the aftermath of Constantinople's fall, and Constantine XI's death in defense of it, one of the most pressing threats to the new Ottoman regime was the possibility that one of Constantine XI's surviving relatives would find a following and return to reclaim the empire. Luckily for Mehmed II, the two despots in the Morea represented scarcely more than a nuisance and were allowed to keep their titles and lands. When emissaries of Thomas and Demetrios visited the Sultan at Adrianople some months after Constantinople's fall, the Sultan demanded no surrender of territory, only that the despots were to pay an annual tribute of 10,000 ducats. Because the Morea was allowed to continue to exist, many Byzantine refugees fled to the despotate, which made it somewhat of a Byzantine government-in-exile. Some of these influential refugees and courtiers even raised the idea of proclaiming Demetrios, the elder brother, as the Emperor of the Romans and the legitimate successor of Constantine XI. Both Thomas and Demetrios might have considered making their small despotate the rallying point of a campaign to restore the empire, with considerable fertile and wealthy territory under the despotate's control, there did seem for a moment to be a possibility that the empire could live on in the Morea. However, Thomas and Demetrios were never able to cooperate and spent most of their resources fighting each other rather than preparing for a struggle against the Turks. Since Thomas had spent most of his life in the Morea, and Demetrios most of his life elsewhere, the two brothers hardly knew each other.
Shortly after Constantinople fell, a revolt broke out against the despots in the Morea, prompted by the many Albanian immigrants to the region being unhappy with the actions of the local Greek landowners. The Albanians had respected earlier despots, such as Constantine and Theodore, but despised the two current despots and without central authority from Constantinople, they saw their opportunity to gain control of the despotate for themselves. In Thomas's part of the despotate, the rebels chose to proclaim John Asen Zaccaria, son of the last Prince of Achaea, as their leader and in Demetrios's part of the despotate, the leader of the revolt was Manuel Kantakouzenos, grandson of Demetrios I Kantakouzenos (who had served as despot until 1384) and great-great-grandson of Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos (r. 1347–1354). With no hope of defeating the Albanians on their own, the despots appealed to the only power near enough and strong enough to aid them; the Ottomans. Mehmed II did not wish to see the despotate pass into the hands of Albanians, and out of his control, and sent an army to quell the rebellion in December 1453. The rebellion was not fully crushed until October 1454, when Turahan Bey arrived to aid the despots in firmly establishing their authority in the region. In return for the aid, Mehmed demanded a heavier tribute from Thomas and Demetrios, amounting to 12,000 ducats annually rather than the previous 10,000.
Life in exile
When Thomas had first heard of Mehmed's invasion, he had initially taken refuge at Mantineia to wait and see how the invasion unfolded. Once it became clear that the Ottomans were marching towards Leontari and would soon arrive outside Mantineia, Thomas, his entourage (including other Greek nobles, such as George Sphrantzes), his wife Catherine and his children Andreas, Manuel and Zoe fled to Methoni. Thomas and his companions fled to the island of Corfu on ships provided by Venice, arriving there on 22 July 1460. Although Catherine and the children stayed on Corfu, the island was only a temporary refuge for Thomas, and the local government was unwilling to allow him to stay for too long in fear of antagonizing the Ottomans. Thomas was unsure of where to travel to next, he attempted to travel to Ragusa, but the city's senate firmly rejected his arrival. Around the same time, Mehmed II sent messengers to Thomas to implore him to enter into a "treaty of friendship", promising him lands in return for his return to Greece. Unsure of what to do, Thomas sent emissaries to both Mehmed and the Papacy (to tell the Pope of his predicament). The envoy to Mehmed found the Sultan at Veria and was, despite the Sultan's words, immediately arrested and put in chains along with his entourage.
A few days later the envoy was set free and returned to Thomas at Corfu with a message; either Thomas was to come to Mehmed in person, or he was to send some of his children. In light of this, Thomas decided that he had no choice; the West was his only option. On 16 November 1460, he left his wife and children behind on Corfu and set sail for Italy, landing in Ancona. In March 1461, Thomas arrived in Rome, where he hoped to convince Pope Pius II to call for a crusade. As the brother of the final Byzantine emperor, Thomas was the highest profile ruler in exile out of all the many Christians who escaped the Balkans over the course of the Ottoman conquest.
Upon arriving in Rome, Thomas met with Pius II, who bestowed him with the Golden Rose, lodging in the Ospedale di Santo Spirito in Sassia and a pension of 300 ducats each month (for a total of 3600 annually). In addition to the papal pension, Thomas also received an additional 200 ducats a month from the cardinals and 500 ducats from the Republic of Venice, which also begged him not to return to Corfu as to not affect Venice's already tenuous relations with the Ottomans. Thomas's many followers considered the money provided to him to be barely enough to support the despot, and certainly nowhere near enough to also support themselves. The Papacy recognized Thomas as the rightful Despot of the Morea and the true heir to the Byzantine Empire, though Thomas never claimed the imperial title.
Children and descendants
It is generally accepted that Thomas had four children with Catherine Zaccaria, the number given by George Sphrantzes. These four children were:
Helena Palaiologina (1431 – 7 November 1473), the older of the couple's two daughters, Helena was married to Lazar Branković, a son of Đurađ Branković, Despot of Serbia. By the time of the Morea's fall, Helena had long since moved to Smederevo with her husband (who eventually became the Despot of Serbia in 1456). Lazar died in 1458 and Helena was left to care for the couple's three daughters. In 1459, Mehmed II invaded Serbia and put an end to the despotate, but Helena was allowed to leave the country. After spending some time in Ragusa, she moved to Corfu and lived there with her mother and siblings. After that, Helena became a nun and lived on the island of Lefkada, where she died in November 1473. Though Helena had many descendants through her three daughters Jelena, Milica and Jerina Brankovic, none of them carried on the Palaiologos name.
Zoe Palaiologina (c. 1449 – 7 April 1503), the younger daughter of Thomas and Catherine, Zoe was married off to Ivan III, Grand Prince of Moscow, by Pope Sixtus IV in 1472, in the hope of converting the Russians to Roman Catholicism. The Russians did not convert, with the marriage being celebrated according to Eastern Orthodox tradition. Zoe was called "Sophia" in Russia and her marriage to Ivan III served to strengthen Moscow's claim to be the "third Rome", the ideological and spiritual successor to the Byzantine Empire. Zoe and Ivan III had several children, who in turn had numerous descendants and though none carried the Palaiologos name, many of them used the double-headed eagle iconography of Byzantium. Ivan the Terrible, Russia's first crowned tsar, was Sophia's grandson.
Andreas Palaiologos (17 January 1453 – June 1502), the older of the couple's two sons and the third child overall, Andreas lived most of his life in Rome, surviving on a gradually declining papal pension. After Thomas's death, Andreas was recognized by the Papacy and others in Italy as the rightful heir to the Despotate of the Morea and he would later go on to claim the title Imperator Constantinopolitanus ("Emperor of Constantinople") as well, hoping to one day restore the fallen Byzantine Empire. He attempted to organize an expedition to restore the empire in 1481, but his plans failed and he later ceded the rights to the imperial title to Charles VIII of France, hoping to use him as a champion against the Turks. Andreas died poor in Rome, whether or not he had any children is uncertain. His will specified that his titles were to be granted to the Catholic Monarchs in Spain (though they never used them).