In the year 1271 the treachery of Andronicus Tarchaniotes, the emperor’s nephew, reanimated the war in Thessaly. Having invited the Tatars to invade the empire from the north, he abandoned Mount Hæmus, of which he was governor, to their ravages, and fled to Joannes Ducas, prince of the Vlakhs, his father-in-law, whom he persuaded to invade Thessaly. The emperor sent his brother, Joannes Palæologus, with an army of forty thousand men and a fleet of sixty-three galleys, to re-establish the imperial supremacy. Joannes Ducas was besieged in his capital, Neopatras, and the place was reduced to the last extremity, when the prince passed through the hostile camp in the disguise of a groom, to seek assistance from his Latin allies. Leading a horse by the bridle he walked along, crying out that his master had lost another horse, and would reward the finder. When he reached the plain of the Sperchius he mounted his horse, and gained the territory of the Frankish marquis of Boudonitza. The duke of Athens furnished him with a band of three hundred knights, and he returned to Neopatras with such celerity that he surprised the imperial camp, and completely dispersed the army. Joannes Palæologus escaped to Demetriades (Volo), where his fleet was stationed. A squadron composed of Venetian ships, and galleys of the duke of Naxos and of the barons of Negropont, was watching the imperial fleet. On hearing of the total defeat of the army they attacked the admiral Alexius Philanthropenus in the port, and were on the point of carrying the whole Greek fleet by boarding, when Joannes Palæologus reached the scene of action with a part of the fugitive troops. He immediately conveyed a large body of soldiers to the ships, and reanimated the sailors. The Latins were compelled to retire with the loss of some of their own ships, but they succeeded in carrying off several of the Greek galleys.
In the following year the imperial fleet, under the command of Zacharia, the Genoese seigneur of Thasos, defeated the Franks near Oreus in Eubœa and took Jean de la Roche, duke of Athens, prisoner. But, on the other hand, Joannes Ducas again routed the army in Thessaly, and by his activity and military skill rendered himself the most redoubted enemy of Michael; so that, when the majority of the Greek population declared openly against the emperor’s project for a union with the Latin church, the prince of Wallachian Thessaly became the champion of the orthodox church, and assembled a synod which excommunicated Michael VIII (1277).
In the year 1278 Charles of Anjou would in all probability have besieged Constantinople, had he not been prevented by the express commands of his suzerain, Pope Nicholas III, who was gained over by Michael’s submission to expect the immediate union of the Greek with the papal church. But the elevation of Martin IV to the see of Rome changed its policy. The emperor Michael was excommunicated, and, to render the excommunication more insulting, he was reproached with persecuting the Greeks who consistently abstained from his own delusive compliances. Michael revenged himself by ceasing to pray for the pope in the Eastern churches.
A league was now formed between the pope, the king of Naples, and the republic of Venice, for the conquest of the Greek Empire, and a treaty was signed at Orvieto on the 3rd of July, 1281. The danger was serious. Charles of Anjou promised to furnish eight thousand cavalry, and the Venetians engaged to arm forty galleys, in order to commence operations in the spring of 1283. In the meantime a body of troops, under the command of Solimon Rossi, was despatched to occupy Dyrrhachium and assist the Albanians, who had recently revolted against Michael. This expedition proved unsuccessful; Rossi was taken prisoner while besieging Belgrade (Berat), and the Neapolitans and Albanians were completely defeated. But the Greek emperor could only intrigue to avert the great storm with which he was threatened by the treaty of Orvieto, and in the end he was saved by the deeds of others. The Sicilian Vespers delivered the Greeks from all further fear of Charles of Anjou and of a French invasion, and Michael was able to smile at the impotent rage of Martin IV, and despise his excommunications.
The vicinity of the Bulgarians, joined to their national power and influence over the numbers of their countrymen settled in the Greek Empire, gave Michael some uneasiness at the commencement of his reign. Constantine, king of Bulgaria, had married a sister of the dethroned emperor Joannes IV, and he was induced, by the feelings of his wife, by the intrigues of the fugitive sultan of Iconium, and by the hopes of assistance from the Mogul emperor, Hulaku, to attack the Greek Empire. Michael took the field against the Bulgarians, and in the year 1265 drove them beyond Mount Hæmus. A treaty which the emperor concluded with a powerful Tatar chief named Nogay, and civil dissension among the Bulgarians, relieved Michael from all serious danger on his northern frontier during the remainder of his reign. The affairs of Servia, also, gave the emperor very little trouble.
The period of Greek history embraced in the present chapter of this work, extending through the century and a half during which the empire of Constantinople was ruled with despotic sway by the dynasty of Palæologus, is the most degrading portion of the national annals. Literary taste, political honesty, patriotic feeling, military honour, civil liberty, and judicial purity, seem all to have abandoned the Greek race, and public opinion would in all probability have had no existence—it would certainly have found no mode of expression—had not the Greek church placed itself in opposition to the imperial government, and awakened in the breasts of the Greek people a spirit of partisanship on ecclesiastical questions which prepared the way for the open expression of the popular will, if not for the actual formation of public opinion. The church was converted into an arena where political and social discontent of every kind arrayed their forces under the banners of orthodoxy, heresy, or schism, as accident or passion might determine.
The anxiety of the emperor Michael VIII to be relieved from the ecclesiastical censures pronounced by the patriarch Arsenius against him, for his treachery to his pupil and sovereign Joannes IV, was the commencement of his disputes with the Greek church, and of his negotiations with the popes. Michael solicited the patriarch to impose some penance on him which might expiate his crime, but Arsenius could suggest nothing but reparation. The emperor considered this tantamount to a sentence of dethronement, and he determined to depose Arsenius. Arsenius was deposed, and exiled to Proconnesus. Germanus, the bishop of Hadrianopolis, a mild and learned prelate, was named his successor.
Even in his banishment Arsenius was considered to be the lawful patriarch by the majority of the orthodox, and he was visited by thousands who were anxious to hear his words and receive his blessing. The emperor was eager to punish him, but his popularity rendered it dangerous to attempt doing so in an arbitrary way. A conspiracy was discovered against the emperor’s life, and some of the accused, when put to the torture, declared that Arsenius was implicated in the plot. The examination of the affair was remitted to a synod, which gratified the emperor by excommunicating Arsenius without waiting for his conviction. Germanus interceded for his predecessor. Arsenius was absolved from the accusation, and a pension of three hundred bezants was allowed him for his subsistence, granted from the privy purse of the empress; for it was believed that Arsenius would accept nothing from the excommunicated emperor.
Twelfth Century Knight, in Coat of Mail