No More Learning

His victorious
campaigns had made the support of the Papacy less valuable to him ;
like his father, he desired union with Rone merely as a step to
Constantinople. After a barren interview with the Papal plenipoten-
tiaries, he told Acropolita to get rid of them as best he coulds.
It was not only in theology that his brief taste of power had made
Theodore an opportunist. He noticed, like all his friends, the deteriora-
tion of his own character. Before his accession he had prized knowledge
before riches; now he wrote that he only cared for gold and jewels.
His excuse was that he needed money for the defence of the Empire
against its many enemies, and for the expenses of representation, so
necessary for impressing the Eastern peoples whom he had to fear. It
was with this object that he received the Mongol ambassadors in
theatrical style, seated on a lofty throne sword in hand; while he held
the sound principle, not always remembered by his successors, that the
Greek Empire should look for its safety neither to foreign alliances
nor to foreign mercenaries, but to a strong Greek army. Accordingly,
he left to his successor a well-filled treasury, for he realised that sound
finance is the first requirement of a state. But, though his military and
financial occupations gave him no time for his old studies after his
accession, he did not neglect the patronage of learning in others. He
1 In his Λόγος, όποιον δει είναι βασιλέα, or Βασιλικός ανδριάς (MPG. CXLII.
611-74).
2 Epistulae, cxLII. -III.
3 Sathas, Μεσαιωνική Βιβλιοθήκη, VII. 529.
CH. XVI.


## p. 506 (#548) ############################################

506
Illness and death of Theodore
founded libraries of the arts and sciences in various cities of his
dominions, where the intellectual gymnastics of Byzantium continued to
be practised. He established and endowed schools of grammar and
rhetoric in the precincts of the church of St Tryphon, the martyr and
patron of Nicaea, which he erected there, provided six scholarships for
the students of the institution out of his privy purse, and conducted
the examinations in person. It appears, however, that the results did not
come up to the founder's expectation, for the pupils were sent back by
the imperial examiner to complete their education? A year or two
later, George of Cyprus found that Nicaea was not exactly the Christian
Athens that the glowing rhetoric of Theodore had depicted it. No one
could instruct him in Aristotle's logic; grammar and poetry were alone
taught and those only superficially, and the academic curriculum had
not got beyond the legend of Oedipus and the Trojan war? Still there
was no lack of literary society at Theodore's court. Acropolita and his
anonymous epitomisers were both companions of the monarch on his
journeys; the Patriarch Arsenius strove to imitate the measures of
Anacreon in a Paschal hymn; Theodore Metochítes vied with his
imperial namesake in a panegyric of their native city of Nicaea.
The hereditary malady from which he suffered, aggravated by over-
work, now began to tell upon the Emperor's brain. His suspicion of
everyone of eminence led him to commit acts of tyranny against the
aristocracy, in which he was obsequiously supported by the time-serving
Patriarch and by his bosom-friend and old playmate, George Muzalon,
a man of humble origin, whom he had raised to the highest offices of
state and married to a princess of the imperial house, and who was his
most trusted adviser. Soon Theodore's body as well as his brain was
affected, he felt that his end was at hand, and he craved from his old
tutor Blemmýdes the remission of his sins. The stern monk, who had
courageously opposed the Emperor's despotic policy, refused to forgive
the dying and repentant sovereign. Theodore then turned to the
Metropolitan of Mitylene, fell at his feet in a flood of tears, and implored
his pardon and that of the Patriarch. He then exchanged his imperial
robes for those of a monk, and soon afterwards, in August 1258,
breathed his last, aged 36. His brief reign of less than four years did
not enable him to make a great mark upon the history of his time;
while his voluminous writings are mainly interesting as a proof of that
morbid self-consciousness which was the key of his character and was
doubtless the result of disease.
Theodore's only son, John, was not quite eight years old at the death
of his father, who in his will had accordingly appointed George
Muzalon regent during the minority. Such an appointment was certain
? Epistulae, XLIV. , CCXVII.
2 MPG. CXLII. 21-5.
3 Identified by Heisenberg with Theodore Scutariota, Analecta, 3–18.


## p. 507 (#549) ############################################

Regency and murder of Muzalon
507
to arouse the indignation of the nobles, who had been proscribed by the
low-born favourite and were resolved never to accept his dictatorship.
Conscious of the opposition to himself, the regent in vain endeavoured to
secure the succession by extracting the most solemn oaths of allegiance
to his young charge from the prelates, the senate, the army, and the
people, and by removing the child-Emperor to a strong fortress, while he
offered to resign his own post to anyone whom the nobles might select.
For the moment the conspirators dissimulated, and Michael Palaeologus,
the most prominent of them, begged the regent in their name to retain
his office. When they had thus succeeded in allaying his suspicions,
they made their preparations for his overthrow. The commemoration of
the late Emperor in the mausoleum at Sósandra was chosen for the
attack; the Frankish mercenaries, who were commanded by Palaeologus,
and had been deprived of their pay and privileges during the late reign
at the instigation of the all-powerful minister, were ready to assassinate
their enemy at a hint from their leader. When the fatal day arrived,
the conspirators and the mercenaries took up their places at the church
of the monastery. As soon as Muzalon and his two brothers arrived,
the soldiers demanded that the young Emperor should be produced.
His
appearance only increased the uproar; a movement of his hand, in
token that the tumult should cease, was taken as a signal for attack; the
mercenaries rushed into the church, where the service had already begun,
and hacked Muzalon and his brothers to pieces as they crouched at the
altar. Even the still fresh tomb of the Emperor was not safe from
insult.
It was necessary to appoint a new regent without delay, for the
Mongols in the east, the Despot of Epirus in the west, and the lingering
Latin Empire in the north were all enemies whom a child could not
combat. Of the numerous nobles who had been the victims of
Theodore's tyranny, Michael Palaeologus was the ablest and the most
prominent.
He had been the brains of the late conspiracy; he was
affable, generous, and jovial ; he was a distinguished officer; he was
direct descendant of the Angeli and connected by marriage with the
reigning dynasty; his future greatness had been foretold—and the
Nicene Court was very superstitious. All classes of the population, all
three races in the army-Greeks, Franks, and Cumans-welcomed his
selection; he was appointed guardian, the dignity of Grand-Duke was
conferred upon him, and the clergy, obsequious as ever, soothed any
qualms of conscience that he might feign and told him that what he had
done would be a crown of righteousness at the Day of Judgment. Ere
long a mortal crown, that of Despot, was placed by the Patriarch on
his head. But nothing short of the imperial title would satisfy his
ambition. Possible rivals were driven into exile; promises and a liberal
use of the public money, now at his disposal, secured him the support of
the Church for his further designs; and the Patriarch, who still felt
CH. XVI.


## p. 508 (#550) ############################################

508
Michael VIII Palaeologus crowned Emperor
some scruples at the abandonment of the boy-Emperor's cause, was
compelled to perform the coronation ceremony. Oaths were cheap at
Nicaea, and the hypocritical Palaeologus found no difficulty in praying
that he might be handed over to the devil if he should plan any harm
against the lawful heir and successor of the Empire. With equal
readiness all ranks of the nation swore, under pain of excommunication,
that, if one of the two Emperors were found scheming against the other,
they would slay the schemer, and that if the plot were successful, they
would kill the usurper and raise some senator to the throne. This
done, Michael Palaeologus was, on 1 January 1259, proclaimed. Emperor,
and a little later crowned at Nicaea. It had been intended by the
partisans of the lawful dynasty that the coronation of the two Emperors
should take place on the same day, and that John IV should first receive
the crown. But, at the last moment, the friends of Palaeologus secured
the postponement of the boy's coronation, while the usurper blandly
promised to hold the imperial dignity merely as a trust during the
minority of the lawful Emperor. His innocent rival, caring for none of
these things and heedless of his approaching fate, was sent back to his
childish games at Magnesia, and Michael VIII, having secured his
position at home, devoted himself to the foreign policy of the Empire,
then in need of a firm hand.
His first thought was for the safety of his European provinces. His
namesake, Michael II of Epirus, had advanced his eastern frontier to the
Vardar, and threatened to become a formidable competitor for the
reversion of Constantinople. Even before his coronation, Palaeologus
had sent his brother John to attack the despot, while he gave him
the option of peace on favourable terms. Strengthened meanwhile by
two matrimonial alliances with Manfred of Sicily and William de
Villehardouin, Prince of Achaia, the despot replied with insolence to the
proposals of the Emperor, who, after futile negotiations at the Sicilian
and Achaian courts, ordered his brother to resume his attack. The
decisive battle of Pelagonia placed the Prince of Achaia at the mercy of
the Emperor, who was thus ultimately able to obtain a permanent footing
in the Peloponnese, and the imperial troops entered the Epirote capital
of Arta, where the luckless Acropolita was still languishing in prison.
The Nicene forces penetrated as far south as Thebes; but these latter
successes had little real value, for even the Greek population regarded
their compatriots from Nicaea as interlopers. Fresh reinforcements
arrived from Italy to aid the native dynasty, and a year after the battle
of Pelagonia the despot's son Nicephorus defeated and captured Alexius
Strategopulus, the imperial commander and the future captor of
Constantinople.
1 The year is absolutely settled not only by Pachyméres (1. 81, 96) but also
by documents signed by Michael VIII as Emperor in 1259. (Miklosich and Müller,
op. cit. , v. 10-3 ; vi. 199–202. )


## p. 509 (#551) ############################################

First attack on Constantinople
509
It was against that city that the efforts of Michael VIII were now
directed. The Emperor Baldwin II, with naïve ignorance of the
relative strength of their respective Empires, had demanded from him
the cession of all his European dominions from Salonica eastward, and,
when he sarcastically refused this ridiculous demand, professed willingness
to be content with an extension of territory to the mouth of the
Maritza. Michael VIII at this told the Latin envoys, who had already
had some experience of his quality as a soldier during his governorship of
Bithynia, that he would remain at peace with their master on condition
that he received half the customs dues and the same proportion of the
profits from the mint. His forces were not yet sufficient for the siege of
so great a city; but in the spring of 1260 they captured Selymbria, and
occupied all the country up to the walls of Constantinople, except the
strong fort of Aphameia outside the Golden Gate, a district inhabited
by Greek farmers, known as “the Independents” because neither party
could depend upon them. The Emperor had been prevented from
taking part in these operations by the resignation of his enemy, the
Patriarch Arsenius, who regarded himself as the representative of the
legitimate Emperor, and whose gran rifiuto, as rare in the Eastern as in
the Western Church, produced a schism dangerous to the usurper. The
election of a new Patriarch favourable to himself demanded his presence
at Lampsacus, and it was only after this question had been settled that
he felt it safe to join his troops before Constantinople. His hopes of
taking the city were based upon the treacherous overtures of one of the
garrison. Among the prisoners captured at the battle of Pelagonia
was a noble Frank, Ancelin de Toucy', who was a cousin of the Greek
Emperor. His relationsbip had procured him his release, and he was at
this time living in a house on the wall and had command of certain of
the gates. Michael accordingly thought that this man, a kinsman whom
he had loaded with presents, might be trusted to betray the city. He
therefore amused the Franks by an attack upon the castle of Galata,
while he was really all the time awaiting the fulfilment of his corre-
spondent's promises. But time went on, the famous archers of Nicaea
continued to display their skill, and yet the gates remained closed. At
last, an evasive message came from Ancelin, to the effect that the governor
of the city had taken away the keys. The Emperor then withdrew, and
accepted the offer of a year's truce with his Latin foes. The only result
of this futile attack was the discovery of the remains of Basil “the
Bulgar-slayer" in the ruined monastery of St John the Evangelist in the
Hebdomon quarter. Michael VIII received the skeleton of his great
1 Acropolita and the Anonymous Chronicler call him simply ’Agéa, adding that
he was one of the prisoners of Pelagonia, which points to Ancelin de Toucy, and
a cousin of Michael VIII, which might apply to a descendant of A. de Cayeux.
But the former was living in Constantinople in the last years of the Latin Empire
(Χρονικόν του Μορέως, 1. 1321).
+
CH. XVI.


## p. 510 (#552) ############################################

510
Diplomatic manquvres of Palaeologus
predecessor with the highest honour, and ordered it to be laid to rest in
the monastery of the Saviour in his newly-won city of Selymbria.
Like a cautious diplomatist, the Emperor used the breathing-space
that he had obtained by his truce with the Latins to create a political
situation favourable to his great design. He sent the serviceable Acro-
polita on a secret mission to the Bulgarian Tsar, Constantine Asên,
doubtless with the object of securing the neutrality of that monarch,
whose wife, the sister of John IV, was naturally indignant at her brother's
exclusion from his rights by the usurper and was urging her husband to
assist him. The Greek envoy was only partially successful ; but on the
side of his Asiatic neighbours, the Seljūq Turks, Michael was able to
feel perfectly secure. With their Sultan he was already on terms of
friendship, dating from the time when he had fled to the court of
Iconium, and now, by a sudden reverse of fortune, Kai-Kā’ūs II and his
brother were glad to find a refuge from the advancing Mongols in the
Greek Empire, and Michael to use the Seljūgs as a buffer against those
formidable hordes. The wives and children of the Sultan were carefully
guarded at Nicaea, while the Sultan accompanied his host on his com-
paigns as a further hostage for the good behaviour of his people.
Having thus courted the neutrality of the Bulgarians and gained the
security of his Asiatic dominions, Michael sought the alliance of some
Latin state which might aid him in his designs against the Latin
Empire. Of all the Western governments Genoa was most clearly in-
dicated as his ally. The Genoese were a maritime power; they were the
rivals of Venice, whose participation in the Latin conquest of Greece had
given her an enormous preponderance in the Levantine trade, and whose
recent victory in the long-drawn struggle for the church and commerce
of Acre rankled in their minds. On the other hand, if they had fought
against the Nicene Empire in defence of Constantinople in 1236 and had
surprised the vassal island of Rhodes in 1249, and if Vatatzes had once tried
to restrict their commercial privileges, he also had endeavoured to make
them his allies in 1239, and his successor was now only carrying out his
policy. To the shrewd statesmen of Genoa the only obstacle to the
suggested alliance was the certainty of incurring the anger of the Pope,
the special protector of the Latin Empire. But the prospects of larger
profits prevailed over the fear of spiritual punishments. Two Genoese
envoys proceeded to Nymphaeum, and there, on 13 March 1261, was
signed the memorable treaty? which transferred to the Genoese the
commercial supremacy in the Levant so long enjoyed by their hated
competitor. The concessions granted them by Michael were of two
kinds: those within his own Empire, which it was in his power to
bestow at once, and those in his prospective dominions, at present
1 Continuator Caffari apud Muratori, RR. II. SS. vi. 481.
2 The best text is in Atti della Società Ligure di Storia patria, xxvii. 791-809.


## p. 511 (#553) ############################################

Treaty of Nymphaeum
511
occupied by the Franks. In the former category were included the
absolute possession of Smyrna, already a flourishing port; and the
right to an establishment with churches and consuls not only there but
at Anaia and Adramyttium, in the islands of Lesbos and Chios, and
at Cassandria in the parts of Salonica ; in the latter were comprised
similar grants at Constantinople and in the islands of Crete and Euboea,
together with the confirmation of their old privileges in the imperial
city, and the church of St Mary and the site of the Venetian castle
there in the event of their sending a naval force to aid in the siege.
Free-trade throughout the present and future provinces of the Greek
Empire, and the closing of the Black Sea to all foreign ships except
those of Genoa and Pisa; an annual present of money and three
golden pallia to the commune and archbishop of Genoa, in revival
of the ancient custom; and war against Venice till such time as both
the high contracting parties should decide upon peace : such were
the further advantages gained by the Genoese. On their side they
promised to grant free-trade to the Emperor's subjects, to allow no
hostile force to be equipped against him in their ports, and to arm a
squadron of 50 or fewer galleys, if the Emperor demanded it, for his
service but at his expense, provided that they were not employed against
the Pope, or the friends of the republic in the West or East, among the
latter the Prince of Achaia and his successors, the King of Cyprus, and
the Knights of St John. On 10 July this treaty was ratified by the
republic; fifteen days later, before the Genoese Alotilla had had time
to arrive", Constantinople fell.
In the early part of 1261 Michael VIII had sent his experienced
general, Alexius Strategopulus, now released from his Epirote prison,
to Thrace at the head of a small force of Greeks and Cumans, with
orders to keep that region quiet and the Bulgarians in check. At the
same time he was told to make a demonstration before Constantinople,
not with any hope of taking the city-for his army was not considered
sufficient for such an enterprise—but in order to frighten the Latin
garrison. Strategopulus, on reaching the modern village of Kuchuk
Chekmejeh, received from the “ Independents,” who were constantly
going to and fro between the city and their farms in the country, informa-
tion which led him to risk an attempt at capturing the capital of the
Latin Empire. He knew that Baldwin II was in desperate straits ; his
informants told him that the new Venetian podestà, Marco Gradenigo, had
gone with almost the whole of the garrison to attack the island of
Daphnusia, which lies off the south coast of the Black Sea, and then
formed part of the Nicene Empire? ; while his nephew Alexius and an
1 Cf. Meliarikes, Ιστορία του Βασιλείου της Νικαίας, 654-8, where all the
authorities for this statement are collected.
Fragmentum Murini Sunuti apud Hopf, Chroniques gréco-romanes, 172.
2
CH. XVI.


## p. 512 (#554) ############################################

512
Capture of Constantinople
“Independent” called Koutritzákes reminded him of a prophecy that
three persons of their names should one day take Constantinople. He
therefore moved to Balukli, opposite the Selymbria gate, where his con-
federates shewed him an old aqueduct, through which a body of soldiers
one by one could enter the city, underneath the walls. A dark night
was chosen for the venture; the band of subterranean invaders emerged
safely inside the fortifications, silently scaled the ramparts, hurled the
somnolent Latins to destruction below, burst open the gate, and pro-
claimed the Emperor Michael from the walls, as a signal to their
friends to enter. Strategopulus and his troops, not more than 1000 in
number, thus obtained possession of Constantinople without striking a
blow, in the early morning of 25 July 1261. The cautious general did
not advance into the heart of the city till broad daylight enabled him to
ascertain the real numbers of the remaining garrison. Indeed, at one
moinent he had almost given the signal for retreat at the appearance of
an armed body of Franks. But the“ Independents,” who knew that their
lives depended on his success, rallied to his aid ; panic seized the Latins,
who fled to the monasteries for safety; while their Emperor took refuge
in the Great Palace above the Golden Horn and then, leaving in his
haste the emblems of sovereignty behind him, embarked on a vessel for
Greece and the West.
Meanwhile the expedition against Daphnusia, having failed to
capture that island, was on its way back when the news reached it that
the Greeks were masters of Constantinople. The podestà was not the
man to abandon the city without a struggle for its recovery ; but his
followers had left hostages behind them in the persons of their wives and
children; and when the Greeks set fire to their homes and they saw
their families fleeing in despair across the burning squares which lined the
water's edge, they thought only of saving them. They conveyed all
whom they could on board their vessels, and followed their fugitive
Emperor, leaving Constantinople in the possession of the victorious
Greek general, whom an extraordinary accident had enabled unaided to
accomplish in a night the dream of fifty-seven years.
Michael VIII was at Meteorion in the Hermus valley, when his
sister aroused him from his sleep with the news that Constantinople was
his. At first he refused to believe that so small a force could have
taken so great a city ; indeed, the people would not credit the story
until they saw the regalia of the Latin Emperor. But, as soon as the
report was confirmed, he set out in haste for his new capital, taking
with him his wife and his little son Andronicus, but leaving behind him
at Magnesia the legitimate occupant of the throne, whom he was now
more than ever anxious to displace. On 14 August he arrived before
Constantinople, and, after passing the night in the monastery of
Kosmidion, the modern Eyyüb, entered the city on the morrow through
the Golden Gate. His entry, by his own special desire, partook of a


## p. 513 (#555) ############################################

Nicaea merges in Byzantium
513
religious rather than a political character. Special prayers for the
occasion were composed by the historian Acropolita, in the absence of
Blemmýdes, and recited from one of the towers of the gate by the Metro-
politan of Cyzicus—for the widowed Church had no Patriarch. The
famous image of the Path-finding Virgin guided the Emperor, as, after
many genuflexions, he passed on foot through the Golden Portal to the
neighbouring monastery of Studion; and a thanksgiving service in the
church of the Divine Wisdom completed the ceremonial. But Michael
did not consider the recovery of the ancient seat of Empire duly ratified
till he had been crowned Emperor in the imperial city of Constantine.
His enemy Arsenius was induced to resume his functions as Patriarch,
and to perform this second coronation in Santa Sophia. No mention
was made of the legitimate sovereign in the coronation oath, but
Strategopulus, the real conqueror of Constantinople, received the
honour of a triumph, and his name was ordered to be mentioned for the
space of a year in the public prayers throughout the Empire. John IV
was blinded and imprisoned in a fortress, where many years later the
conscience-stricken successor of the usurper visited him? .
Thus, after the lapse of fifty-seven years, the Empire of Nicaea merged
in the greater glories of Byzantium, and the centre of gravity of Hellenism
was removed from Bithynia to the Bosphorus. Amidst the universal re-
joicing, we are told that one voice was raised in lament at the return to
Constantinople, that of the Emperor's private secretary, who may have
foreseen with the eye of a statesman that the coming Turkish peril
needed a strong bulwark in Asia Minor, or who may have realised that
the past can never be recalled and that the newly-conquered Byzantium
would not be the old. But with a patriotism similar to that of the
Piedmontese and Florentines in our own day, the people of Nicaea and
Nymphaeum acquiesced in an act which, while it redounded to the glory
of the Greek name, reduced their cities to the dull level of provincial
towns. We are told, indeed, that, though Nicaea “like a mother aided
her daughter with all that she had,” yet even after this sacrifice she
still excelled all other cities, some by her situation, some by her fertile
soil, others by her great circumference, others by her beautiful buildings,
others again by her philanthropic establishments. But, when every
year the great festival of St Tryphon was celebrated in the church
which Theodore II had built, the thoughts of the older men may have
gone back with regret to the time when the Patriarch resided in their
midst, when letters flourished by the waters of the Askanian mere,
when
the heralds announced the arrival of the Emperor in the holy city from
his autumn pleasaunce of Nymphaeum.
The Empire of Nicaea, the chief of the three mainstays of Hellenism
after the Frankish Conquest, has left but few tangible memorials behind
? But a document of Charles I of Anjou, dated Trani 9 May 1273, states that he
has escaped and invites him to Sicily. ASI, Ser. 111. , vol. xxii. 32.
C. MED. A. VOL. IV. CH. XVI.
33


## p. 514 (#556) ############################################

514
History of Trebizond: defeat of Malik
it. A picturesque ruin, however, called by the peasants the “ Castle of
the Genoese,” still marks the site of the imperial palace at Nymphaeum,
the scene of the famous treaty. If we have no seals of any of the five
Nicene Emperors, there are, at any rate, coins of all of them, except the
unhappy John IV, while the elder Sanudo? tells us that the latter was
portrayed in the gold hyperperi of Michael VIII as a child in the arms
of his treacherous protector. One extant coin of Michael was un-
doubtedly minted at Nicaea, for it bears the figure of St Tryphon, the
patron of that city. The brief and uncertain tenure of the Franks
in Asia Minor accounts for the absence of all Frankish coins, which were
doubtless replaced by the money of Venice, the chief Latin mercantile
power in the Greek dominions. Irene, Theodore II's daughter, is still
portrayed in the church of Boyana near Sofia; portraits of all five Nicene
Emperors are to be found in manuscripts; and to the Nicene Empire is
ascribed the first modern use of the double-headed eagle as a symbola.
But, although Nicaea was now only an appendage of Constantinople,
the rival Greek Empire of Trebizond continued its separate existence.
From the moment when the Seljūqs occupied Sinope, a wedge was driven
between the two Hellenic states, which thenceforth did not come into
collision, while Trebizond during the latter years of Alexius I and the
reigns of his three immediate successors alternated between an occasional
interval of independence and vassalage to the Seljūms or the Mongols.
On the death of the founder of the Empire in 1222, his eldest son John
was set aside in favour of his son-in-law Andronicus Gídos, who was
perhaps identical with the general of Lascaris--a theory which would
account for the selection of an experienced commander in preference to a
raw youth as ruler of a young and struggling community. Andronicus I
soon justified his appointment. A ship bearing the tribute of the
Crimean province of Trebizond, together with the archon who collected
the annual taxes, was driven by a storm into Sinope. The governor, a
subordinate of Malik, the son of the Seljūq Sultan Kai-Qubād I, not
only seized the vessel and all its cargo but also sent his ships to plunder the
Crimea, in defiance of the treaty recently made by his master with the
new Emperor. Andronicus, on receipt of the news, ordered his fleet to
retaliate by attacking Sinope; and his sailors not only plundered the
district right up to the walls of the “mart,” but captured the crews of
the ships lying in the harbour, who were exchanged for the captive
archon and his taxes. Malik now marched upon Trebizond, which was
even then strongly fortified, a fact which the astute Emperor contrived
to make known to the enemy by pretending to sue for peace and inviting
him to send envoys to negotiate it inside the city.
The governor of
Sinope fell during the siege; Malik was deluded into making another
1 Apud Hopf, Chroniques gréco-romanes, 114; P. Lámpros, Zeitschrift für
Numismatik, ix. 44-6.
? Sp. P. Lámpros, Néos 'EXAnvouvnuov, vi. 433-73.


## p. 515 (#557) ############################################

History of Trebizond: Seljūgs and Mongols
515
ול
attack by the appearance of a man in his camp, who purported to be the
leading citizen and pretended to invite him to enter in the name of his
fellows. But a sudden thunderstorm scattered the attacking army, and
Trapezuntine piety ascribed the deliverance of the city to the inter-
vention of St Eugenius, who had personated their chief magistrate in
order to lure to destruction the infidel who had ordered the destruction
of his monastery. Thus baffled, Malik fled, only to fall into the hands
of the mountain-folk, who dragged him before Andronicus. The
Emperor wisely received him with honour, and released him on condition
that the tie of vassalage which had bound Trebizond to Iconium should
cease.
But Trebizond did not long remain independent. A new and
formidable rival of the Seljūqs appeared in the person of Jalāl-ad-Dīn, the
Shāh of Khwārazm, who called himself “King of the Globe," and it
would appear that Andronicus assisted him against Kai-Qubād at the
disastrous battle of Khilat in 1230 and sheltered his flying troops at
Trebizond after their crushing defeat. The natural result of this
unsuccessful policy was that the Greek Empire on the Euxine, weakened
and isolated, once more became a vassal of the Seljūq Sultan, to whom,
in 1240, it was bound to furnish 200 lances, or 1000 men? . About this
time, too, it would seem that the Georgians, who had assisted the
formation and had acknowledged the supremacy of the Empire, severed
their connexion with it, although long afterwards they continued to be
included in the imperial title.
When in 1235 Andronicus I was laid to rest in the church of the
“Golden-headed Virgin,” which he richly endowed and which in its
present form is perhaps a memorial of his reign, the eldest son of
Alexius I was old enough to assume his heritage. But John I, or
Axoûchos, as he was called, after a brief reign of three years, was killed
while playing polo. His son Joannicius was then put into a monastery
and his second brother Manuel ascended the throne. Manuel I obtained
the names of “the greatest captain ” and “the most fortunate"; but his
reign of 25 years witnessed the exchange of the Seljūq for the Mongol
suzerainty. His lances doubtless served in the Seljūq ranks on the fatal day
of Kuza-Dāgh, when the Mongols overthrew the forces of Kai-Khusrū II,
and accordingly the friar Rubruquis, who visited the victors in 1253,
found him “ obedient to the Tartars. ” In that
he sent envoys
to Louis IX of France at Sidon, begging him to give him a French
princess as his wife. The King of France had no princesses with him,
but he recommended Manuel to make a matrimonial alliance with the
Latin Court of Constantinople, to which the aid of “so great and rich a
man” would be useful against Vatatzes? If we may assume that the
monastery of the Divine Wisdom, from which his portrait has now
לל
same year
1 Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale, Bk xxx, ch. 144.
2 Rubruquis, Voyage, 3; Joinville, Histoire de St Louis, 324.
וי
CH. XVI.
33—2


## p. 516 (#558) ############################################

516
Vitality of Hellenism
disappeared, was his work, his riches merited the praise of the saintly
French sovereign. Nor can we be surprised that Trebizond was a
wealthy state, for at this period it was an important depôt of the trade
between Russia and the Seljūq Empire. For the purposes of this traffic
a special currency was required, of which specimens have perhaps sur-
vived in bronze coins of Alexius I, and in both bronze and silver coins
of John I and Manuel I. But no seals of any of these early Trapezuntine
Emperors are known to exist.
Nicaea and Trebizond have, however, apart from aught else, a
permanent lesson for the historian and the politician; they teach us the
extraordinary vitality of the Hellenic race even in its darkest hour.
TABLE OF RULERS.
EMPIRE OF NICAEA
Theodore I Lascaris.
Despot 1204–6; Em-
FRENCH Duchy of NICAEA
Count Louis of Blois and
Chartres 1204-5.
EMPIRE OF TREBIZOND
Alexius I Grand-Comne-
nus 1204.
Andronicus I Gídos 1222.
John I Axoûchos 1235.
Manuel I 1238-63.
peror 1206.
John III Ducas Vatatzes
1222.
Theodore II Lascaris
1254.
John IV Lascaris 1258.
Michael VIII Palaeolo-
FRENCH DUCHY OF
PHILADELPHIA
Count Stephen of Perche
1204-5.
gus 1259.


## p. 517 (#559) ############################################

517
CHAPTER XVII.
THE BALKAN STATES.
I. THE ZENITH OF BULGARIA AND SERBIA (1186-1355).
The close of the twelfth century witnessed the birth of Slavonic
independence in the Balkan peninsula. The death of Manuel I in 1180
freed the Southern Slavs from the rule of Byzantium, and in the following
decade were laid the foundations of those Serbian, Bosnian, and Bulgarian
states which, after a brief period of splendour acquired at the expense
of one or other Christian nationality, fell before the all-conquering Turk
to rise again in modified form and on a smaller scale in our own time.
As has usually happened in the history of the Balkans, the triumph
of the nation was in each case the work of some powerful personality,
of Stephen Nemanja in Serbia, of Kulin in Bosnia, and of the brothers
Peter and John Asên in Bulgaria.
The founder of the Serbian monarchy was a native of the Zeta, the
older Serbian kingdom of Dioclea and the modern Montenegro. Starting
from his birthplace on the banks of the Ribnica, Nemanja made Rascia,
later the Sanjak of Novibazar, the nucleus of a great Serbian state, which
comprised the Zeta and the land of Hum, as the Herzegovina was then
called, with outlets to the sea on the Bocche di Cattaro and at Antivari,
North Albania with Scutari, Old Serbia, and the modern kingdom before
1913 as far as the Morava. Of the Serbian lands Bosnia alone evaded
his sway, for there his kinsman Kulin, ignoring the authority alike
of the Hungarian crown and of the Byzantine Empire, governed with
the title of ban a rich and extensive country, then “ at least a ten days'
journey
in circumference,” and became the first great figure in Bosnian
history, whose reign was regarded centuries afterwards as the golden
age. Italian painters and goldsmiths found occupation in his territory,
and Ragusans exploited its trade. Miroslav, Nemanja's brother and
Kulin's brother-in-law, whom the former made prince of the land of
Hum, formed the link between these two separate yet kindred Serbian
communities.
Before the time of Nemanja the chiefs of the various Serbian districts,
or župy, who were thence styled župans, had considered themselves as
practically independent in their own dominions, merely acknowledging
the more or less nominal supremacy of one of their number, the so-called
CH. XVII.


## p. 518 (#560) ############################################

518
The Bogomile heresy
לר
יל
“Great Župan. ” Nemanja, while retaining this traditional title, con-
verted the aristocratic federation as far as possible into a single state,
whose head in the next generation took the corresponding name of king.
Further, to strengthen his position with the majority of his people,
he embraced the Orthodox faith, and endeavoured to promote ecclesias-
tical no less than political unity. With this object he laboured to extir-
pate the Bogomile or Manichaean heresy, which was then rife in the Balkan
lands and had attained special prominence in Bosnia. The simple worship
of the Bogomiles, the Puritans of south-eastern Europe, was sometimes
encouraged and sometimes proscribed by the Bosnian rulers, according as
they wished to oppose the pretensions, or invoke the aid, of the Papacy.
Thus Kulin at one time found it expedient to join the Bogomile com-
munion with his wife, his sister, and several other members of his family,
whose example was followed by more than 10,000 of his subjects; while
at another, the threat of Hungarian intervention, supported by the
greatest of the Popes, led him to recant his errors. On 8 April 1203
the ban and the chief Bogomiles met the papal legate on the “ white
plain ” by the river Bosna, and renounced their heretical practices and
beliefs. The oldest Bosnian inscription tells us how Kulin and his wife
proved the sincerity of their re-conversion by restoring a church? .
While Kulin thus ended his career as a devout Roman Catholic,
Nemanja, at the instigation of his youngest son, the saintly Sava,
retired from the world in 1196 to the monastery of Studenica, which he
had founded, leaving to his second son Stephen the bulk of his dominions
with the dignity of “Great Župan,” and to his eldest son Vukan his
native Zeta as an appanage, a proof that the unification of the Serbian
monarchy was not yet completely accomplished. From Studenica he
moved to Mount Athos, where, on 13 February 1200, he died as the monk
Simeon in his humble cell at Chiliandarion. After his death he received
the honours of a saint, and his tomb is still revered in his monastery
of Studenica. Just as the lineage of the ban Kulin is said to linger
on in the Bosnian family of Kulenović, just as later rulers regarded the
customs and frontiers of his time as a standard for their own, so the
Serbs look back to Nemanja as the author of the dynasty with which
their medieval glories alike in Church and State are indissolubly
connected.
Meanwhile, in 1186, a third Slavonic nation had asserted its inde-
pendence of the Byzantine Empire. The unwise imposition of taxes
to furnish forth the wedding festivities of the Emperor Isaac II
Angelus aroused the discontent of the Bulgarians and Wallachs (Vlachs)
of the Balkans. The rebels found leaders in the brothers Peter and John
Asên, descendants of the old Bulgarian Tsars, who summoned the
hesitating to a meeting in the chapel of St Demetrius which they had
built at Trnovo, and by means of a pious fraud persuaded them that
1 Wissenschaftliche Mittheilungen, vii. 215-20.


## p. 519 (#561) ############################################

Second Bulgarian Empire
519
the saint had migrated thither from his desecrated church at Salonica,
and that providence had decreed the freedom of Bulgaria. Peter at
the outset assumed the imperial symbols and the style of “ Emperor
of the Bulgarians and Greeks"; but his bolder brother soon took the
first place, while he contented himself with the former capital of Prêslav
and its region, which in the next century still bore the name of “ Peter's
country. " Three Byzantine commanders in vain strove to stamp out
the insurrection : John Asên, driven beyond the Danube, returned at
the head of a body of Cumans, the warlike race which then occupied
what is now Roumania; Nemanja availed himself of the Bulgarian
rebellion to extend his dominions to the south; and the Serbian and
Bulgarian rulers alike hoped to find in Frederick Barbarossa, then on
his way across the Balkan peninsula to the Holy Land, a supporter
of their designs. Isaac Angelus barely escaped with his life near Stara
Zagora ; the victorious Bulgarians captured Sofia, and carried off the
remains of their national patron, St John of Rila, in triumph to their
capital of Trnovo. Such was the contempt of the brothers Asen for
their former masters that they rejected the terms of peace offered them
by the new Emperor, Alexius III, and advanced into Macedonia. But,
in the midst of their successes, two of those crimes of violence so common
in all ages in the Balkans removed both the founders of the second
Bulgarian Empire. John Asên I was slain by one of his nobles, a
certain Ivanko, after a nine years' reign; the assassin temporarily oc-
cupied Trnovo and summoned a Byzantine army to his aid ; but Peter
associated with himself his younger brother Kalojan, and carried on
the government of the Empire until, a year later, he too fell by the
hand of one of his fellow-countrymen, and Kalojan reigned alone as
Emperor of the Bulgarians and Wallachs. ”
The new Tsar continued to extend his dominions at the expense
of his neighbours: from the Greeks he captured Varna in the east,
from the Serbs, divided among themselves by a fratricidal struggle
between the two elder sons of Nemanja, he took Niš in the west; his
Empire extended as far south as Skoplje, as far north as the Danube,
while his relative, the savage Strêz, held the impregnable rock of Prosek
in the valley of the Vardar as an independent prince. Thus, on the
eve of the Latin conquest, Bulgaria had suddenly become the most
vigorous element in the Balkan peninsula, while Serbia lay dismembered
by the disunion of her reigning family and the foreign intervention
which it produced. For Vukan, not content with his appanage in the
Zeta, had invoked the aid of the Pope and the Hungarians in his struggle
to oust his brother from the Serbian throne; King Emeric of Hungary
occupied a large part of Serbia in 1202, with the object of allowing
Vukan to govern it as his vassal, while he himself assumed the style
of “King of Rascia," as his predecessors had long before assumed that
King of Rama” from a Bosnian river-two titles which ever
כי
of "
CH. XVII.


## p. 520 (#562) ############################################

520
Kalojan's success
since then remained attached to the Hungarian crown. His brother had
already made the subsequent Herzegovina a Hungarian duchy, and
Bosnia was only saved from premature absorption by Kulin's politic
conversion to Catholicism. Even the Bulgarian Tsar was treated as
a usurper by the proud Hungarian monarch whose newly-won Serbian
dependency he had dared to devastate.
Menaced alike by his Hungarian neighbour and by the new Latin
Empire, which had now arisen at Constantinople and which claimed
authority over his dominions as the heir of the Greeks, Kalojan thought it
prudent, like other Slav rulers, to obtain the protection of the Papacy.
He begged Innocent III to give him an imperial diadem and a Patriarch;
the diplomatic Pope sent him a royal crown and ordered his cardinal
legate to consecrate the Archbishop of Trnovo as “Primate of all
Bulgaria and Wallachia”; two archbishops and four bishops completed
the Bulgarian hierarchy, and on 8 November 1204 Kalojan was crowned
by the cardinal at Trnovo.
But the crafty Bulgarian was not restrained by respect for the Papacy
from attacking the Latins as soon as occasion offered. His old enemies
the Greeks of Thrace, who had at first welcomed the erection of
Philippopolis into a Flemish duchy for Renier de Trit, speedily offered
to recognise Kalojan as Emperor if he would aid them against their new
masters. He gladly accepted their offer, and soon the heads of some
thirty Frankish knights testified to the savagery of the Bulgarian Tsar.
The Latin Emperor Baldwin I set out with Count Louis of Blois to
suppress the rebellion and relieve the isolated Duke of Philippopolis.
On 14 April 1205 a decisive battle was fought before Hadrianople.
The Count of Blois was killed; Baldwin fell into the hands of the
Bulgarian victor. Even now the end of the first Latin Emperor of
Constantinople is not known with certainty. Two months after the
battle he was reported to be still alive and treated as a prisoner of
distinction. But he soon fell a victim to the rage of his barbarous
captor. Nicetas tells us that the desertion of the Greeks of Thrace to
the Latins infuriated Kalojan, who vented his indignation on his prisoner,
ordered his hands and feet to be cut off, and then cast him headlong into
a ravine, where on the third day he expired. A Flemish priest, however,
who was passing through Trnovo, heard a Bulgarian version of the story
of Potiphar's wife, according to which the virtuous Baldwin was sacrificed
to the injured pride of Kalojan's passionate Cuman consort, and cut
down in the presence of the Tsar. Twenty years later a false Baldwin
was hanged in Flanders, and tradition attaches the name of the first
Latin Emperor to a ruined tower of the medieval Bulgarian capital.
Kalojan did not long survive his victim. For a time his career was
a series of unbroken successes over Franks and Greeks alike. Renier de
Trit was driven from Philippopolis; King Boniface of Salonica was slain
in a Bulgarian ambush and his head sent to the Tsar; so fatal were


## p. 521 (#563) ############################################

Stephen the “ First-crowned”
521
Kalojan's raids to the native population that he styled himself “the
slayer of the Greeks," and they called him “ the dog John. ” He was
about to attack Salonica in the autumn of 1207, when pleurisy, or more
probably a palace revolution prompted by his faithless wife, ended his
life. The popular imagination ascribed the deed to St Demetrius, the
patron-saint of the city, but the usurpation of the dead Tsar's nephew
Boril and his speedy marriage with the widowed Empress pointed to the
real authors of the deed. Kalojan's lawful heir, his son John Asên II,
fled to Russia, while Boril reigned at Trnovo. At first he pursued his
predecessor's policy of attacking the Franks, only to receive a severe
defeat near Philippopolis. Later on, we find him receiving the visit of
a cardinal sent him by the Pope, persecuting the Bogomiles as the
Serbian and Bosnian rulers had done, doubtless for the same reason, and
marrying his daughter to his former enemy, the Latin Emperor Henry,
a striking proof of the growing importance of Bulgaria. But there was
a large party which had remained faithful to the legitimate Tsar; John
Asên II returned with a band of Russians and besieged the usurper in
his capital. · Trnovo long resisted but, at last, in 1218 Boril was
captured while attempting to escape, and blinded by his conqueror's
orders.
A year earlier Serbia had been raised to the dignity of a kingdom.
The Hungarian monarchs, occupied elsewhere, could no longer interfere
in the domestic quarrels of the Serbs. Sava reconciled his brothers and
persuaded the ambitious Vukan, the self-styled “King of Dioclea and
Dalmatia,” to recognise Stephen's right to the position of " Great Župan. ”
An Italian marriage, the example of Bulgaria, the desire of papal
support, and the absence of the jealous King of Hungary in Palestine,
prompted Stephen to ask the Pope once more for a royal crown, an act
for which the negotiations of the Serbian ruler of Dioclea with Gregory
VII furnished a precedent. In 1217 Honorius III sent a legate to
perform the coronation, and the “first-crowned ” King “ of all Serbia”
connected himself with the former royal line by styling himself also
King of Dioclea,” adding Dalmatia and the land of Hum as a flourish
to his other titles. But it has always been a dangerous experiment for
a Balkan ruler to purchase the political support of the Western Church,
at the risk of alienating the Eastern, to which the majority of his
subjects belong. The King of Serbia recognised his mistake; his brother
Sava availed himself of the critical position of the Greek Empire of
Nicaea to obtain from the Ecumenical Patriarch, who then resided
there, his own consecration in 1219 as “ Archbishop of all the Serbian
lands” together with the creation of a separate Serbian Church; and on
his return home he crowned Stephen in 1222 in the church of Žiča,
which the “first-crowned ” king and his eldest son had founded, and
which remains to our own day the coronation church of the Serbian
kings. Thanks to Sara's influence the anger of the King of Hungary at
IN
CH. XVII.


## p. 522 (#564) ############################################

522
Zenith of Bulgaria
this assumption of a royal crown was averted; and, when Stephen died
in 1228, his eldest son Radoslav succeeded to his title. But the second
King of Serbia was of weak character and feeble understanding. His
next brother Vladislav, a man of more energy, was a dangerous rival ;
public opinion favoured the latter; Radoslav became a monk, and
Vladislav in turn was crowned by the reluctant Sava. Together the new
king and the archbishop built the monastery of Mileševo in the Sanjak
of Novibazar, where their bones? were laid to rest. St Sava's memory
is still held in reverence by the Serbs as the founder of their national
Church; many a pious legend has grown up around his name, but
through the haze of romance and beneath the halo of the saint we
can descry the figure of the great ecclesiastical statesman whose constant
aim it was to benefit the country and the dynasty to which he himsel
belonged, and to identify the latter with the national religion.
One of Sava's last acts had been to promote a matrimonial alliance
between the Serbian and the Bulgarian courts, and it was at Trnovo,
then the centre of Balkan politics, that he died. Under John Asên II
the second Bulgarian Empire attained its zenith, and became for a time
the strongest power in the peninsula. The Latin Empire of Constanti-
nople was already growing weaker; the vigorous Greek Empire of
Salonica, which had arisen on the ruins of the Latin kivgdom of the
same name, received from the Bulgarian Tsar a crushing blow at the
battle of Klokotinitza in 1230, and its Emperor, Theodore Angelus,
became his captive; the new Emperor Manuel had married one of his
daughters; the King of Serbia had married another; his own wife was a
daughter of the King of Hungary. Of the two Bulgarian princelings
who had made themselves independent of his predecessors in Macedonia,
Strêz of Prosêk had long before died a violent death, in which the
superstitious saw the hand of St Sava; Slav of Melnik, who had played
fast and loose alike with Latins, Greeks, and Bulgarians, had been
swallowed up in the Greek Empire of Salonica. On a pillar of the
church of the Forty Martyrs, which he built in 1230 at Trnovo, the
Tsar placed an inscription, still preserved, in which he boasted that
he had “captured the Emperor Theodore ” and “conquered all the lands
from Hadrianople to Durazzo, the Greek, the Albanian, and the Serbian
land. ” His mild and statesmanlike demeanour endeared him to the
various nationalities included in his wide dominions; even a Greek
historian admits that he was beloved by the Greeks (a very rare
achievement for a Bulgarian), while a Bulgarian monk praises his piety,
his generous ecclesiastical foundations, and his restoration of the
Bulgarian Patriarchate. During the first Bulgarian Empire the Patriarch
had resided first at Prêslav and then at Ochrida. When that Empire
fell, the Greeks reduced the Patriarchate to an Archbishopric; and,
i Those of St Sava were burned by the Turks at Vračar in 1595 (Arch. f. slav.
Philologie, xxvIII. 90–93).
לי


## p. 523 (#565) ############################################

John Asên II
523
רר
when the second Empire arose, the Pope, as we saw, could not be
persuaded to grant more than the title of Primate to the Archbishop of
Trnovo. In 1235, however, as the price of his aid against the Latins of
Constantinople, John Asên II obtained from the Emperor Vatatzes of
Nicaea and the Ecumenical Patriarch the recognition of the autonomy
of the Bulgarian Church and the revival of the Bulgarian Patriarchate,
whose seat thenceforth remained at Trnovo until the Turkish conquest
placed the Bulgarian Church once more under the Greeks, from whom
the creation of the Exarchate in 1870 has again emancipated it.
But John Asên II did not confine his energies to politics and religion.
Like his contemporaries in Serbia, Bosnia, and the adjacent land of
Hum, he granted to the Ragusan merchants, who during a large part of
the Middle Ages had the chief carrying-trade of the Balkan peninsula
in their hands, permission to do business freely in his realm. He called
these intermediaries between Italy and the East his “dear guests,” and
they repaid the compliment by recalling his “true friendship. ” Gold,
silver, richly-worked garments, and salt entered the Bulgarian Empire
through the medium of the South Slavonic commonwealth on the
Adriatic, while the centralisation of Church and State at Trnovo gave
that city an importance which was lacking to the shifting Serbian
capital, now at Novibazar, now at Priština, now at Prizren. There was
the treasury, there dwelt the great nobles who occupied the court posts
with their high-sounding Byzantine names, and there met the synods
which denounced the Bogomiles and all their works. The stranger who
visited the “castle of thorns ” (Trnovo) on the festival of Our Lord's
Baptism, when the Tsars were wont to display their greatest pomp, went
away impressed with the splendour of their residence on the hill above the
tortuous Jantra, a situation unique even among the romantic medieval
capitals of the different Balkan races.
The conflict with the Greek Empire of Salonica had been forced
upon the Tsar, and it was not till 1235 that he joined the Greek
Emperor of Nicaea in an attack upon the Latins of Constantinople,
of which the union of their children was to be the guarantee. In two
successive campaigns the allies devastated what remained of the Latin
Empire in Thrace, where the Frankish duchy of Philippopolis, then
held by Gerard de Stroem, fell to the share of Asên, and they advanced to
the walls of Constantinople. Defeated in the attempt to capture the
Latin capital, the allies drifted apart; Asên saw that it was not his
interest to help a strong Greek ruler to recover Byzantium; he removed
his daughter from the court of Nicaea, and transferred his support to
the Franks against his late ally. Suddenly the news that his wife, his
and the Patriarch had all died filled him with remorse for his broken
vows; he sent his daughter back, and made his peace with Vatatzes, a
fact which did not prevent him from giving transit through Bulgaria to
a Frankish relief force on its way to Constantinople. His last acts were
וי
son,
CH. XVII.


## p. 524 (#566) ############################################

524
Decline of Bulgaria
to marry the fair daughter of the old Emperor Theodore of Salonica,
whom he had previously blinded, and then to aid his blind captive
to recover Salonica. In the following year, 1241, on or about the feast
of his patron saint, St John, the great Tsar died, leaving his vast
Empire to his son Kaliman, a lad of seven.
The golden age of Bulgaria under the rule of John Asên II was
followed by a period of rapid decline. Kaliman I was well-advised to
renew the alliance with the Greek Emperor of Nicaea and to make
truce with the Franks of Constantinople. But his youth and inex-
perience allowed Vatatzes to become the arbiter of the tottering Empire
of Salonica, and his sudden death in 1246, at a moment when that
ambitious ruler chanced to be in Thrace, tempted the latter to attack
the defenceless Bulgarian dominions. Kaliman's sudden end was
ascribed by evil tongues to poison; but, whether accidental or no,
it could not have happened at a more unfavourable moment for his
country. Michael Asên, his younger brother, who succeeded him, was
still a child; the Empress-mother, who assumed the regency, was a
foreigner and a Greek; and the most powerful monarch of the Orient
was at the head of an army on the frontier. One after another John
Asên’s conquests collapsed before the invading forces of Vatatzes. The
Rhodope and a large part of Macedonia, as well as the remains of the
Greek Empire of Salonica, formed a European appendage of the Empire
of Nicaea, while at Prilep, Pelagonia, and Ochrida, the Nicene frontier
now marched with that of another vigorous Greek state, the despotat of
Epirus. In the south old blind Theodore Angelus still retained a
small territory; thus Hellenism was once more the predominant force
in Macedonia, while the new Bulgarian Tsar was forced to submit to the
loss of half his dominions.
So long as Vatatzes lived, it was impossible to think of attempting
their reconquest. But in 1253 a quarrel between the Ragusans, his
father's “dear guests,” and the adjacent kingdom of Serbia, seemed to
offer an opportunity to Michael Asên for obtaining compensation from
his fellow-Slavs for his losses at the hands of the Greeks. A coalition
was formed between the merchant-statesmen of Ragusa, their neighbour,
the Župan of Hum, and the Bulgarian Tsar, against Stephen Uroš I, who
had ousted, or at least succeeded, his still living brother Vladislav in
1243. It was agreed that, in the event of a Bulgarian conquest of
Serbia, the Ragusans should retain all the privileges granted them by the
Serbian kings, while they promised never to receive Stephen Uroš or his
brother, should they seek refuge there. The King of Serbia, however,
came to terms with the Ragusans at once, and Michael Asên's scheme of
expansion was abandoned. One result was the removal of the Serbian
ecclesiastical residence to Ipek.
When, however, Vatatzes died in the following year, the young Tsar
Miklosich, Monumenta Serbica, 35, 561.


## p. 525 (#567) ############################################

Constantine 4sên
525
יי
thought that the moment had come to recover from the new Emperor of
Nicaea, Theodore II Lascaris, what the Greeks had captured. At first
his efforts proved successful; the Slavonic element in the population of
Thrace declared for him ; and the Rhodope was temporarily restored
to Bulgaria. But his triumph over his brother-in-law was not for long;
the castles of the Rhodope were speedily retaken ; in vain the mountain-
fastness of Chêpina held out against the Greek troops ; in vain the Tsar
summoned a body of Cumans to his aid; he was glad to accept the
mediation of his father-in-law, the Russian prince Rostislav? , then a
prominent figure in Balkan politics, and to make peace on such terms as
he could. Chêpina was evacuated; the Bulgarian frontier receded to the
line which had bounded it before this futile war. The failure of his
foreign policy naturally discontented Michael Asên's subjects. His
cousin Kaliman with the connivance of some leading inhabitants of
Trnovo, slew him outside its walls, seized the throne, and made himself
master of the person of the widowed Empress. But Rostislav hastened
to the rescue of his daughter, only to find that the usurper, fleeing for
safety from place to place, had been slain by his own subjects. With
the death of Kaliman II in 1257 the dynasty of Asên was extinct.
Rostislav in vain styled himself “Emperor of the Bulgarians. ”
The nobles, or boljare, convoked a council for the election of a new
Tsar. Their choice fell upon Constantine, a man of energy and ability
settled near Sofia, but descended through the female line from the
founder of the Serbian dynasty, whom he vaunted as his grandfather.
In order to obtain some sort of hereditary right to the crown, he
divorced his wife and married a daughter of Theodore II Lascaris,
who, as the granddaughter of John Asên II, would make him the
representative of the national line of Tsars. To complete his legitimacy,
he took on his marriage the name of Asên. Another competitor,
however, a certain Mytzês, who had married a daughter of John Asên II,
claimed a closer connexion with that famous house, and for a time
disputed the succession to the throne. But his weakness of character
contrasted unfavourably with the manly qualities of Constantine; he
had to take refuge in Mesembria, and by surrendering that city to the
Greeks obtained from them a peaceful retreat for himself and his family
near the site of Troy.