The Last Centuries of Byzantium, 1261-1453The Byzantine Empire, fragmented and enfeebled by the Fourth Crusade in 1204, never again recovered its former extent, power and influence. Its greatest revival came when the Byzantines in exile reclaimed their capital city of Constantinople in 1261 and this book narrates the history of this restored empire from 1261 to its conquest by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. First published in 1972, the book has been completely revised, amended, and in part rewritten, with its source references and bibliography updated to take account of scholarly research on this last period of Byzantine history carried out over the past twenty years. |
Contents
The Byzantine Empire after the Fourth Crusade | 1 |
The Empire in exile and its restoration | 19 |
the reign | 39 |
The battle of wits between east and west | 58 |
The Byzantine dilemma in the thirteenth century | 72 |
the reign | 91 |
The restoration of orthodoxy | 99 |
Symptoms and causes of decline | 113 |
13 | 209 |
the last | 251 |
the first crisis 13911402 | 296 |
19 | 307 |
The last reprieve 140225 | 319 |
The Ottoman revival and the reign of John VIII | 339 |
the fall | 369 |
The last outposts of Byzantium | 394 |
Common terms and phrases
Adrianople Alexios Apokaukos army Arsenites Asia Minor Athanasios Aydin Barker battle Bayezid bishops Branković brother Bulgarians Byzantine Emperor Byzantine Empire Byzantine Family Byzantium Cantac capital Catalans century Charles of Anjou Christian Church command conquest Constantine Council crusade daughter defence Demetrios Kydones Despotate of Epiros Didymoteichon died Doukas emir Emperor John Emperor Manuel Emperor Michael Empire of Nicaea Empress enemies Europe Fall of Constantinople Family of Kantakouzenos father favour fight fleet frontier Galata Gallipoli Genoese Greece Greek Gregoras Hungary imperial island John Cantacuzene John VII King Laskaris Latin Empire Macedonia married Mehmed Michael VIII Mistra monastery Mongols monks Morea Murad Nicol Nikephoros nople Orhan Orthodox Osmanlis Ostrogorsky Ottoman Empire Pachymeres Palaiologos Palamas Papacy Patriarch Pope provinces reign Roman Rome rulers Runciman Schreiner seemed sent Serbian ships soldiers St Sophia Stephen Dušan Sultan Theodore Thessalonica Thessaly Thrace throne treaty Trebizond troops Turkish Turks Umur Vatatzes Venetians Venice walls western
Popular passages
Page 437 - Les grandes crises religieuses a Byzance. La fin du schisme arsenite', Academic Roumaine, Bulletin de la Section Historique, xxvi (1945), 225-313 Laurent, V., 'Une princesse byzantine au cloitre.