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1 results

  • (b) - Byzantium in exile

  • from 17 - Byzantium after the Fourth Crusade
  • David Abulafia, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    21 October 1999, pp 543-568

  • Summary

    It was in the words of Byzantine contemporaries a 'cosmic cataclysm'. The Byzantine ruling class was disorientated and uprooted. Michael Autoreianos was duly ordained patriarch at Nicaea on 20 March 1208. His first official act was to crown and anoint Theodore Laskaris emperor on Easter Day. Thus was a Byzantine empire recreated in exile in Nicaea. Theodore Laskaris died in 1221. His death was followed by civil strife, out of which his son-in-law John Vatatzes emerged as victor. Germanos II bowed to one of the facts of Byzantine political life: emperors were always likely to use Orthodoxy as a weapon or a bargaining counter in their foreign policy. The Byzantine emperor sought to counter the Angevin threat in various ways. He strengthened the sea walls of Constantinople. The lesson of the Fourth Crusade was its vulnerability to an attack from the sea. Michael Palaiologos therefore wooed Venice to prevent it from joining the Angevin camp.