Demetrios Palaiologos - Life

Life

Demetrios Palaiologos was a younger son of the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos and his wife Helena Dragaš. His maternal grandfather was Constantine Dragaš. His brothers included emperors John VIII Palaiologos and Constantine XI Palaiologos, as well as Theodore II Palaiologos and Thomas Palaiologos, rulers of the Despotate of Morea, and Andronikos Palaiologos, despot in Thessalonica.

As a younger son Demetrios was not expected to rule, but was granted the court title of despotēs in accordance with standard practice. His ambition apparently led to conflict in the imperial family. Although he then received possession of island of Lemnos in from his father Emperor Manuel II in 1422, he refused to live there and fled to the court of King Sigismund of Hungary in 1423, requesting protection against his brothers. More than a year passed until he moved to Lemnos in 1425 where he lived in peace for the next decade.

Perhaps too untrustworthy to leave behind, he was part of the entourage of his brother Emperor John VIII Palaiologos, arriving in Ferrara for the Council of Basel-Ferrara-Florence in 1437, which sought to reunite the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. Opposed to the union, Demetrios left for home in 1439 before the conclusion of the council in Florence, leaving the emperor behind.

Forced to surrender Lemnos as penalty for returning home without the Emperor's consent, Demetrios was compensated with a more distant appanage at Messembria on the Black Sea in 1440. Accordingly, in 1442 he made an alliance with the Ottoman Turks, who lent him military support and besieged Constantinople, demanding that Demetrios be given control of the more strategic appanage of Selymbria (Silivri nearer the capital. This effort failed, and the appanage of Selymbria was turned over first to Constantine Palaiologos and then to Theodore II Palaiologos.

On October 31, 1448, John VIII died, while his designated heir Constantine was in Morea. Using his location nearer Constantinople, Demetrios tried to stage a coup d'état and secure the throne for himself. His attempt failed, mostly due to the intervention of their mother Helena Dragaš. In 1449, the new Emperor Constantine XI gave Demetrios half of Morea in order to remove him from the vicinity of Constantinople.

After the fall of Constantinople to the forces of Mehmed II of the Ottoman Empire on May 29, 1453, the Morea remained the last surviving enclave of the Byzantine Empire under the Palaiologoi. The fall of the capital became a sign for the last members of Kantakouzenos family to try take power in this last free province. Demetrius I Kantakouzenos's grandchild Manuel has started his revolt in 1453. Only in the following year, the forces of the Palaiologos brothers destroyed the rebel forces. Not long after this victory civil war has erupted between Demetrios and his younger brother Thomas, who had already ruled in Morea since 1428. As Thomas was threatening to dislodge Demetrios, the latter called on the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II for support, and surrendered Mistra in 1460.

After the Turks chased out Thomas and his family (who escaped to Italy), Mehmed II refused to return Morea to Demetrios because "he is not man enough to rule any country". He was allowed to spend his life at the palace of Adrianople and was granted the taxes collected from the islands of Imbros, Lemnos, Samothrace and Thasos.

Demetrios lived in honorary captivity until falling out of favor with Mehmed II in 1467. He was then exiled to Didymoteicho until 1469, when he was recalled to court but fell sick during the following year. He briefly became a monk under the name "David" before dying in 1470. His wife Theodora died a few weeks later.