Episode 322 - The Worst Civil War, Part 2

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Hello, everyone, and welcome to the History of Byzantium, episode 322.

The Worst Civil War, Part 2.

Last time, we saw how the death of Andronicus III at the age of 44 sparked conflict amongst those closest to him, and sadly, the short, sharp civil war we might expect did not materialize.

The regency government, led by the patriarch, the Empress Anna, and her chief minister, Alexius Apokorcos, were the people's choice to run the empire, but the army remained loyal to their commander, John Cantakuzinos.

This standoff left the Empire rudderless in increasingly choppy waters.

Deprived of money and support, John turned to his foreign allies, the Kraal of Serbia, Stefan Dushan, and the Emir of Aydin, Amor.

They would eventually win the war for him,

but at what cost?

In spring 1343, the governors of the cities of Greece began appealing to Cantakusinos for aid.

His allies, the Serbians, were ranging southwards, capturing Roman towns and Albanian strongholds in the mountains.

There seemed nothing in place to stop Stefan Dushan from making himself master of Greece as well.

By submitting to John, these Roman cities hoped to save themselves from annexation, since presumably the Kral would not attack his allies' territory.

This was the rope which the drowning John needed.

He accepted the submission of a dozen towns across Thessaly and sent his cousin John Angelos to essentially rule Greece on his behalf.

This suddenly gave John the legitimacy, money, and manpower he needed to actually begin campaigning in earnest.

Katakuzinos was glad to be out from under the Kral's thumb and set up his HQ in the city of Veria, about forty-five miles west of Thessaloniki.

John's army now consisted of a corps of loyal professional soldiers, though only a few hundred of them, levies from Thessaly, and the soldiers lent to him by the Serbians.

The rebel decided to drive towards Thessalonica and attempt to turn the city.

He had little hope of intimidating them with such a small force, so he again called on Amor of Ayden to join him.

The Turks brought six thousand men, according to John.

Amor's troops spread out and began to assault the countryside, burning crops, killing livestock, and enslaving the population.

Cantakusinos was terrorizing the Thessalonians into submission.

Inside the city, the ruling coalition was cracking.

As you recall, a faction had taken over the government of the city, calling themselves the Zealots.

They worked with the governor, John Apucoccos, who clearly could not make decisions without their approval.

There was terrible infighting that autumn, with many wanting to submit to Cantacusinos, if only to stop the Turks.

But those committed to the Regency won out and murdered several of the appeasers, including a member of the Palaeolokos family.

Despite suffering from disease and famine, the Thessalonians held out and the zealots kept the gates shut.

While all this was happening, the regency appealed again to Stefan Dushan, and the Kral now switched sides.

With most of Greece under John's protection, the Serbs could not continue their advance, but if they turned against the rebel, then they could.

Alarmed by this, Cantakusinos extended his agreement with Umor to keep the Turks in Europe throughout the winter and into the next summer.

He made what arrangements he could for the defence of Greece, but he moved east.

John's army was now fairly formidable, and as he entered Thrace, a string of towns opened their gates to him.

John also enlisted the aid of an independent Bulgarian warlord called Momchil, encouraging him to become master of the Rhodope region, the mountains which sat at the crossroads of the Byzantine, Serbian, and Bulgarian empires.

It seemed there was no one John would not work with in pursuit of his goal.

He was finally able to enter Didimotichon in triumph in early 1344.

This was all received very badly back in Constantinople.

The regency was desperately short of money.

Alexios Apocorcos began arresting more aristocrats who were suspected of supporting John's cause, confiscating their properties and locking them up in a new prison he'd built.

While the Empress Anna pawned the crown jewels in exchange for a loan of 30,000 ducats from the Venetians, the jewels were never returned.

Yet another humiliation for Byzantium.

The Regency could just about pay for a small army to defend the capital, but they couldn't attack Cantacuzinos directly.

While Apokorcos refused to disband his fleet, he was clearly unable to stop the Turks from sailing to John's aid, and so people began to ask what purpose the sailors served, but these marines in his employ were his main source of power, and since the Empress depended on him to run the state, the Regency clung grimly on.

It didn't help that the Genoese, the main supplier of grain to the capital, were at war with the Mongols of the Golden Horde over their colonies in the Crimea, leading to food shortages and rising prices.

Inevitably, the Empress Anna followed John's lead in looking for foreign allies to back her cause.

The Bulgarians were now courted and offered a string of towns in Thrace if they would crush the rebel.

This included the city of Philippopolis, which Ivan Alexander occupied that summer, more Roman territory given away for little advantage.

The Tsar's actual attempts to fight Cantacusinos came to nothing, since he was badly outclassed by the Turks.

Anna had more luck with her fellow Latins.

She sent letters to the Pope offering her personal submission to the Holy See, along with that of her son John, and her timing was good since the papacy was in the midst of organising a Christian alliance against the Turks.

Piracy in the Aegean was a major problem for all the Western governments who had interests there.

So that summer a combined fleet of Venetians, Latins from the Aegean, and the Hospitallers of Rhodes attacked the Anatolian coast.

They managed to defeat various Turkish squadrons and occupy the port at Smyrna.

This meant that Amor had to abandon Thrace and head home, leaving Cantacusinos vulnerable.

This was welcome relief for the people of Thrace who were being assaulted as their brethren at Thessalonica had been.

Cantacusinos is honest enough to admit that he was treating Roman soil like enemy territory in order to force towns to submit to him.

It was working too, as most of western Thrace was now under his control.

The momentum seemed to be with Cantacusinos.

Nobles were abandoning the regency and going over to his side, including Manuel Apokorcos, the son of his archenemy.

With his help, Adrianople finally opened its gates to John in early 1345.

That summer, Alexius Apocorcos went to inspect his new prison along the Bosphorus.

It was being renovated while still accommodating his aristocratic inmates.

Unbelievably, Apokorcos took a tour of the facilities without his bodyguards.

He was beaten to death by a group of prisoners who were enjoying some yard time.

In response, Apocorcos's marines descended on the prison and murdered about two hundred high ranking members of the Byzantine elite.

The Regency government was falling apart.

When news of the prison incident circulated, more nobles began to switch sides.

One of them was Apocorcos' other son, John, the governor at Thessaloniki.

He and many other nobles wanted an end to the standoff and sent peace feelers to Cantacusinos.

Unfortunately, the Empire's second city bucked the trend that was developing.

When the Zealots heard what was being planned, they,

well, lived up to their name.

With the dock workers behind them, they rallied the populace against the governor.

A riot ensued, which saw Apokorkos and about a hundred other rich citizens butchered in the streets and their homes ransacked.

The Zealots' new leader, Andreas Palaeologos, took charge of the city and affirmed its support for the Empress.

Despite this, the regency now controlled little more than Constantinople, its environs, and the islands of the northern Aegean.

Thessalonica was more or less independent.

Cantacuzinos held the rest.

And yet still the war dragged on.

Despite telling the Pope how appalled she was that John had hired Turks, Anna now contacted the Beyliks of Western Anatolia to look for allies.

But John beat her to it.

With Omur busy fighting the Latins, Cantacusinos made a deal with Emir Ohan of the Osmanlis, or as they would later be known, the Ottomans.

So determined was Cantacuzinos to secure their support and prevent them from attacking him that he offered Ohan his daughter in marriage.

This was quite the scandal in Christian courts, but John had seen the Turks up close.

He knew that they were a match for any army in the Balkans.

If he allowed his enemies to make friends amongst the Beyliks, then his cause would be lost.

In 1346 his daughter Theodora was married to the Emir.

The ceremony took place at Silimbria on the European side of the Sea of Marmora.

It was not a union blessed by the Church, given the groom was a Muslim, nor was he present for the wedding.

He sent a group of noblemen to attend instead, and they were feasted for several days.

The ceremony was given all the pomp and circumstance that John could muster, and Cantacusinos got what he wanted.

Orhan's men would step into the role previously occupied by Amur.

They would serve as the core of John's army, though they would continue to plunder and enslave Romans as they campaigned.

As Antony Caldelles comments, the value of a royal Roman match had never before been so low, or its cost so high.

Thirteen forty six was a particularly dark year for Romania.

An earthquake struck, causing part of the dome of the Ahia Sophia to collapse, a terrible portent for the Regency government.

Meanwhile a Genoese pirate fleet captured Chios and Phokia, the places Andronicus III had worked so hard to restore to Roman rule.

Finally, Stefan Dushan had himself crowned emperor.

He elevated the Archbishop of Skopje to be his patriarch, and was named Emperor of the Serbs and Greeks.

He was not claiming to be the Roman Emperor, but was acting as his equal and asserting his jurisdiction over the Roman people he conquered.

From what we can tell, Serb rule was fairly good for the Byzantines of Macedonia.

Their churches were respected, and new laws were issued in both languages to facilitate cooperation.

The three Orthodox powers of the Balkans had an informal agreement not to enslave each other's people, which helped the transition.

Dushan's newfound status anticipated the success of his armies.

With John roaming around Thrace, the towns of Macedonia were left to fend for themselves.

In September, the Serbians captured Ceres, the second most important city in the region, and then surged down to the Aegean coast, capturing Mount Athos and essentially encircling Thessaloniki, which was now the only Roman city left west of the Rhodoke Mountains.

In response, Cantakusinos was formally crowned at Adrianople in May.

Though he had been hailed as Vasilevs for the last few years, he had not enjoyed a coronation.

He continued to uphold the rights of the now fourteen John Palaeologos, refusing to crown his own son Matthew, as some suggested he do.

By the end of the year, he moved to Salimbria so that he could keep a close watch on events inside Constantinople.

The situation there was finally moving towards a conclusion.

With Apokorkos gone, the fleet had been taken over by Andreas Fakiolatos.

He had tried to raise money by collecting duties from ships passing through the Bosphorus and increasing taxes on certain transactions, but this had angered the Genoese who dominated trade at the capital.

The Genoese lobbied the Empress to stop his activities, and it seems she agreed in exchange for assistance against Cantacusinos.

This pushed Faciolatos into the rebels' camp.

He sent word to John that he would open a gate for him if he came to the city.

On the night of the 2nd of February, 1347, Cantacuzinos and a thousand men arrived at the Golden Gate.

It had been walled up long before, but Fakiolatos' men made a breach, and the rebel army streamed through.

The Empress woke the next morning to discover that she was blockaded in the palace at Vlakionai.

Cantakuzinos did not want to storm the gates, since he was maintaining to the end that he was the wronged party who was only asserting his right to rule on behalf of young John.

The Empress refused to negotiate, and eventually the soldiers lost patience and smashed the gates down.

Now Anna was willing to talk.

On the 8th of February, the terms were announced to the exhausted Roman people.

Cantacusinos and Palaeologos would reign together.

For the next ten years, the older man would be the senior partner.

After that, they would be co-emperors.

Young John would marry older John's daughter.

As historian Donald Nicoll comments, it was a deal that surely could have been done six years earlier.

Count Ekuzinos announced that there would be no reprisals against anyone who deposed him.

All political prisoners were released, and the past was to be forgotten.

His own side praised him for his generosity and kindness, but if anyone wanted the past to be forgotten, it was John.

It was he who had enabled the Serbs to conquer Macedonia and the Turks to ravage Thrace.

And for what?

The only political issue being fought over during this civil war was the position of John himself.

As I said in Part I, I do understand the dilemma he was in.

He had been running the state for a long time and was evidently loyal to Andronicus's family.

But just to prove that he was right, he seemed willing to destroy what was left of the empire.

No one was in a better position to know what the consequences of his actions would be.

He knew that Stefan Dushan would invade and conquer, and he knew what the Turks would do to his own people.

More than that, he must have known the potential problems created by allowing the Turks to reconnoitre the Balkans and its beaches, now that they had fleets of their own.

As Antony Caldellis says after reading John's memoirs, Cantacusinos always put his short-term interests ahead of the common good, even while he argued at tedious length the opposite.

I know the geography of the empire can be hard to follow at times, but by allowing the Serbs free reign in Macedonia, John had surrendered a region roughly the same size as Thrace, where he was stationed, an enormous part of the territory which remained to the Romans.

Worse, though, this allowed the Serbs to park their armies next to Greece, which they will in time conquer as well.

John did not intend for this to happen, of course, but he is responsible for the Romans losing over half of their remaining territory, permanently hobbling them, and making a recovery almost impossible, on top of which he allowed the Turks to roam around what was left, dragging people off into slavery.

It's hard to argue with Antony Cordellis' assessment of John as the worst emperor in Byzantine history.

He had, of course, achieved his goal.

He was now master of the Roman world.

And next time he will try to undo some of the damage he's done.

Hopefully nothing apocalyptic will interrupt him.

As a postscript to this episode, I should tell you that while the civil war was raging, the Byzantines managed to get themselves into a new religious crisis that I didn't even have time to cover.

This was not an issue that interested the public, it was a dispute amongst the elites, but it was a significant one.

It's known to historians as Hesychasm.

Hesychia means stillness or silence in Greek, and this term had long been associated with various monastic practices involving silent meditation.

I actually talked a little bit about this back in episode 196 for the Hard Core amongst you.

Hesekia had been practiced on Mount Athos for a long time, Athos, the mountainous peninsula not far from Thessaloniki, which was dominated by powerful monasteries.

Those who engaged in a particularly intense form of solitary meditation were eventually able to see a light with no obvious source.

During the 1330s, the claim emanated from Athos that this light was a visible emanation of the Godhead itself.

It was claimed claimed to be the same light seen during Jesus' transfiguration, or by Moses when he encountered the burning bush.

As is often the case in Byzantine history, it was only when these ideas were brought to the capital that they excited controversy.

And predictably, it was another attempt to discuss church union which sparked this argument into life.

Papal envoys were in the capital back in 1334, and those defending the Orthodox position fell out over the claim that Hezekiah could allow one to experience divine energy.

An Athenite monk, Gregory Palamas, made the case for Hezekiah.

His thinking found support in the form of John Cantacusinos, who had political as well as religious connections to Mount Athos.

When the civil war broke out, Palamas became a political prisoner.

This gave Hesikasm a more prominent position in Byzantine politics than it might otherwise have done, because when John won the civil war, he was able to triumphantly free Palamas and have the patriarch deposed.

The church then came to be dominated by Athonite appointments, including Palamas himself, who was made Archbishop of Thessaloniki.

In the years to come, Palamite theology became entwined with Orthodoxy.

Again, to lean on Antony Caldellis, he says, The Palamites were able to retroactively revise their understanding of the Orthodox tradition, making it seem as if it had always been leading up to Palamas.

Moreover, Orthodoxy came to be strongly associated with mysticism and Athos, both of which had previously been marginal.

This caused great controversy in elite circles.

Chief amongst those who opposed these changes was Nicephoros Gregoras, our other historian for this period.

It's at this point that he falls out with Cantacusinos.

The details of Hezychasm pertain to theological concerns that are beyond the scope of our narrative, but it's important to understand in passing.

To quote Antony Caldelles one last time

In an age of defeat and humiliation, Palamas was offering a way towards an angelic dignity.

Worldly things were like dirt and dust, but illumination bestows upon man the dignity of a prophet, apostle, or angel of God.

It could be attained by any one through prayer, and was not mediated by powerful men or institutions.

In a period of inequality and social collapse, it was an appealing message.

A comparison could be made to the rise of icons in political prominence back in the eighth century, a similar period of political chaos.

Finally, it's worth saying that Hezekiah was not favored by Catholic thinkers, and so it became another reason to dismiss the Byzantines as heretics, and therefore another obstacle to church union, which will be coming around again.

And we're back live during a flex alert.

Oh, we're pre-cooling before 4 p.m., folks.

And that's the end of the third.

Time to send it back to 78 from 4 to 9 p.m.

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