page_title: Palaiologos
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Palaiologos / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: Wizerunak Konstantyna XI Dragazesa Polski: Konstantyn XI Dragazes Português: Constantino XI Paleólogo Русский: Константин XI English: Emperor Constantine XI Paleologus of Byzantine
context_page_description: The Palaiologos, also found in English-language literature as Palaeologus or Palaeologue, was a Byzantine Greek family that rose to nobility and produced the last and longest-ruling dynasty of the Byzantine Empire. Their rule as Emperors and Autocrats of the Romans lasted almost two hundred years, from 1259 to the Fall of Constantinople in 1453.
  The origins of the family are unclear. Their own medieval origin stories ascribed them an ancient and prestigious origin in ancient Roman Italy, descended from some of the Romans that had accompanied Constantine the Great to Constantinople upon its foundation in 330. It is more likely that they originated significantly later in Anatolia since the earliest known member of the family, possibly its founder, Nikephoros Palaiologos, served as a commander there in the second half of the 11th century. Over the course of the 12th century, the Palaiologoi were mostly part of the military aristocracy, not recorded as occupying any administrative political offices, and they frequently intermarried with the then ruling Komnenos family, increasing their prestige.
context_section_description: During most of their tenure as Byzantine emperors, the Palaiologan dynasty was not well-liked by their subjects. Not only were the means the family had used to gain the throne grim, but their religious policy alienated many within the empire. The Palaiologan emperors aspired to reunite the Eastern Orthodox Church with the Catholic Church of Rome, to ensure legitimacy in the eyes of the West and in an attempt to secure aid against the many enemies of their empire. Michael VIII succeeded in a union at the Second Council of Lyons in 1274, which formally reunited the churches after more than two centuries of schism. On his return to Constantinople, Michael VIII was taunted with the words "you have become a Frank", which remains a term in Greek to taunt converts to Catholicism to this day. The union was passionately opposed by the Byzantine people and of Byzantine landowners not formally under Michael VIII's rule, such as John II Megas Komnenos, Emperor of Trebizond, and Nikephoros I Komnenos Doukas, the ruler of Epirus. Despite Michael VIII's efforts, the union was disrupted in 1281 after just seven years when he was excommunicated by Pope Martin IV. When Michael VIII died in 1282 he died condemned as a traitor and a heretic by his people, who saw him as someone who had bullied them into submission under the Church of Rome. He was denied the traditional funeral pomps of an Orthodox Emperor.
  Though Michael's successor Andronikos II quickly repudiated the Union of the Churches, many of the Palaiologan emperors worked to ensure its restoration. As the Ottoman Empire grew to encompass more and more Byzantine territory, emperors such as John V and Manuel II labored intensely to retore the union, much to the dismay of their subjects. At the Council of Florence in 1439, Emperor John VIII reaffirmed the Union in the light of imminent Turkish attacks on what little remained of his empire. To the Byzantine citizens themselves, the Union of the Churches, which had to John VIII was an assurance of a great western crusade against the Ottomans, was a death warrant for their empire. John VIII had betrayed their faith and as such their entire imperial ideology and world view. The promised crusade, the fruit of John VIII's labor, ended only in disaster as it was defeated by the Turks at the Battle of Varna in 1444. In 1798, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, Anthemus, wrote that the Ottoman Empire had been imposed by God himself as the supreme empire on Earth due to the heretical dealings of the Palaiologan emperors with Christians in the West.
  Behold how our merciful and omniscient Lord has managed to preserve the integrity of our holy Orthodox faith and to save (us) all; he brought forth out of nothing the powerful Empire of the Ottomans, which he set up in the place of our Empire of the Romaioi, which had begun in some ways to deviate from the path of the Orthodox faith; and he raised this Empire of the Ottomans above every other in order to prove beyond doubt that it came into being by the will of God .... For there is no authority except that deriving from God.
  — Anthemus of Jerusalem, 1798
  There is no evidence that the final emperor, Constantine XI, ever repudiated the union achieved at Florence in 1439. Many of his subjects had chastized him as a traitor and heretic while he lived and he, like many of his predecessors before him, died in communion with the Church of Rome. Nevertheless, Constantine's actions during the Fall of Constantinople and his death fighting the Turks redeemed the popular view of the Palaiologan dynasty. The Greeks forgot or ignored that Constantine had died a "heretic", many considering him a martyr. In the eyes of the Orthodox church, Constantine's death sanctified him and he died a hero. As Ottoman rule continued, many Greeks dreamed of a day when a new emperor would once more rule a sizeable Greek domain. Some even believed that Constantine XI would return to rescue them, that he wasn't actually dead but merely asleep, awaiting a call from the heavens to return and restore Christian control over Const
caption: An icon of Constantine XI Palaiologos
exif: {}