35 Facts About Thomas Palaiologos

Thomas Palaiologos was Despot of the Morea from 1428 until the fall of the despotate in 1460, although he continued to claim the title until his death five years later.

Thomas Palaiologos was the younger brother of Constantine XI Palaiologos, the final Byzantine emperor.

In 1432, Thomas Palaiologos brought the remaining territories of the Latin Principality of Achaea, established during the Fourth Crusade more than two hundred years earlier, into Byzantine hands by marrying Catherine Zaccaria, heiress to the principality.

In 1449, Thomas Palaiologos supported the ascension of his brother Constantine, who then became Emperor Constantine XI, to the throne despite the machinations of his other brother, Demetrios, who himself desired the throne.

Thomas Palaiologos hoped to turn the small despotate into a rallying point of a campaign to restore the empire, hoping to gain support from the Papacy and Western Europe.

Emperor Manuel II Thomas Palaiologos had a total of six sons who survived infancy.

Manuel's younger sons, Constantine, Demetrios, and Thomas Palaiologos, were kept in Constantinople as there was not sufficient land left to grant them.

The younger children; Theodore, Andronikos, Constantine, Demetrios and Thomas Palaiologos were frequently described as having the distinction of Porphyrogennetos, a distinction that does not appear to have been shared by the emperor-to-be John.

Soon thereafter, the younger Thomas Palaiologos was appointed as Despot of the Morea, meaning that the nominally undivided despotate had effectively disintegrated into three smaller principalities.

Meanwhile, Thomas Palaiologos was given lands in the north and based himself in the castle of Kalavryta.

Thomas Palaiologos agreed to cede his fortress Kalavryta to Constantine, who made it his new capital, in exchange for Elis, which Thomas Palaiologos made his new capital.

John VIII's preferred successor was Constantine and though this choice was accepted by Thomas Palaiologos, who had developed good relations with his older brother, it was resented by the still older Theodore.

When Constantine was summoned to act as regent in Constantinople while John VIII was away at the Council of Florence from 1437 to 1440, Theodore and Thomas Palaiologos stayed in the Morea.

Constantine and Thomas Palaiologos were determined to hold the wall and had brought all their available forces, amounting to perhaps as many as twenty thousand men, to defend it.

Constantine and Thomas Palaiologos were in no position to ask for a truce and were forced to accept Murad as their lord and pay him tribute, promising to never again restore the Hexamilion wall.

Thomas Palaiologos accepted Constantine's appointment and Demetrios, who soon thereafter joined in proclaiming Constantine as his new emperor, was overruled.

Demetrios was granted Mystras and primarily ruled the southern and eastern parts of the despotate, with Thomas Palaiologos ruling Corinthia and the north-west, variously using Patras or Leontari as his capital.

Since Thomas Palaiologos had spent most of his life in the Morea, and Demetrios most of his life elsewhere, the two brothers hardly knew each other.

Thomas Palaiologos's hopes were not ridiculous; the Fall of Constantinople had been received with as much horror in Western Europe as it had been in the few remaining Byzantine territories in the East.

In 1456, Thomas Palaiologos sent John Argyropoulos as an envoy to the West to discuss the possibility of aid for the Morea.

Demetrios had shifted to becoming even more pro-Ottoman after Mehmed had promised the despot that he would marry his daughter Helena, whereas Thomas Palaiologos increasingly hoped for western aid as the regions of the Morea annexed by Mehmed had been almost the entire area ruled by Thomas Palaiologos, including his capital of Patras.

Lord Demetrios rested his hopes on the friendship and help of the sultan, and on his claim that his subjects and castles had been wronged, while Lord Thomas Palaiologos relied on the fact that his opponent had committed perjury and that he was waging war against the impious.

When Thomas Palaiologos had first heard of Mehmed's invasion, he initially taken refuge at Mantineia to wait and see how the invasion unfolded.

Thomas Palaiologos was unsure of where to travel to next, he attempted to travel to Ragusa, but the city's senate firmly rejected his arrival.

Around the same time, Mehmed II sent messengers to Thomas Palaiologos to implore him to enter into a "treaty of friendship", promising him lands in return for his return to Greece.

Unsure of what to do, Thomas Palaiologos sent emissaries to both Mehmed and the Papacy.

In light of this, Thomas Palaiologos decided that he had no choice; the West was his only option.

In early 1462, Thomas Palaiologos left to Rome to tour Italy and drum up support for a crusade, carrying with him papal letters of indulgence.

The Mantuan ambassador to Rome described him as "a handsome man with a fine, serious look about him and a noble and quite lordly bearing" and Milanese ambassadors who encountered him in Venice wrote that Thomas Palaiologos was "as dignified as any man on Earth can be".

Not only did they make Thomas Palaiologos leave the city, but they sent ambassadors to Rome to request that he not accompany the expedition because his presence would "produce terrible and incongrous scandals".

The reason for Venice's wrath against Thomas Palaiologos might be his advances on Venetian territories during his time as despot, or the fact that his quarreling with his brother Demetrios effectively doomed the Morean despotate.

Thomas Palaiologos gives the age of Thomas's wife at time of her death as 70, which means that she would have given birth to Manuel at the unlikely age of 65.

Genealogist Peter Mallat concluded in 1985 that this uncertainty, as well as the fact that Thomas Palaiologos's eldest known child, Helena, was born almost twenty years before his second eldest known child, Zoe, as meaning that it is possible that Thomas Palaiologos had more children than the generally accepted four.

The existence of a son of Thomas Palaiologos called John cannot be proven with any certainty as no mention is made of a son by that name in contemporary records.

John's existence could be corroborated by the mention of a son by this name by Allatius in 1648 and contemporary documents in Pesaro discussing a Leone Thomas Palaiologos as living there.