The Problem of Demetrios

This is the next to the youngest of the Palaiologos brothers -- Demetrios, about 63 years old, as a monk -- in the last year of his life, in 1470.

[Much later addition to the blog:  This picture is not a picture of Demetrios Palaiologos, son and brother of emperors.  This is a picture of Demetrios Palaiologos, a Venetian resident and aged stratioto.  He is wearing Venetian, not monastic, dress.  He has been frequently misidentified.]

[Much much later note:  I have changed my mind about Demetrios in several ways and have found more information.  I intend to rewrite this in a later post. 14 May 2012.]

He was different from his brothers, from the five who lived to become adults. History has marked him as the black sheep of the family, and it is not clear why things worked for him that way.

The first piece of evidence is his absence from a pattern of early -- too-early -- responsibility. John was associated with his father as Emperor by the age of 11. Theodoros was Despot of Mistra at the age of 10. Andronikos was Despot of Thessalonike at 8. Thomas was sent out to train as Despot at 8 and was given his own lands to govern at 19 under the Despotate. We don't know about Constantine.

This absence shifts, becomes more puzzling. In 1422, at the age of 15, he was assigned to govern the island of Lemnos. He refused to go, and in 1423, 4 July, got his uncle (or step- brother-in-law) Ilario Doria, to get him to Genoese Galata across the Golden Horn so he could board a ship to go to the Turks. This was probably something the Genoese didn't want to risk being involved with, so on the 7th Demetrios started for Hungary. In 1425 he was on Lemnos and stayed there for at least ten years, apparently quietly. There is no information about Hungary or what happened on Lemnos.

The second piece of evidence is from Sphrantzes, who knew but disliked him, and adored Constantine and their father. Sphrantzes said that Demetrios was not "porphyrogennetos according to the custom of Constantinople." It may not be possible now to retrieve what it meant to be a porphyrogennetos according to the custom of Constantinople but all the other brothers were.*** It does not mean that they were born in a porphyry-lined chamber: that deteriorated, or was out of use by the 11th century. Possibly it was a title given by the Emperor. At any rate, as a child he was singled out by that omission and he noticed it. I have wondered if he might not have been one of those boys we would now identify as having ADD but whom previous generations simply identified as bad.

Manuel II died in 1425 and John became emperor. Was it before or after that when Demetrios went to Lemnos? The next information is about his marriage. Here again Demetrios is different from his brothers for whom their father had obtained permission from the Pope to marry Roman Catholics. In April 1436, six years after the youngest brother had married, John sent a ship to the Morea to bring Zoe Paraspondylos, daughter of the Grand Duke, to Constantinople to marry Demetrios.

He was firmly allied with the anti-Unionist pro-Ottoman camp against all of his family except his mother, and was apparently considered unreliable enough that when John went to the Council of Ferrara-Florence, he took Demetrios with him rather than leave him in Constantinople. At the Council, Demetrios argued theology on the side of the anti-Unionists and against his brother. He arrived home in February of 1440 to learn that his Zoe had died in in December, of plague. A year and a half later, Paul Asan brought his daughter Theodora from the Morea to Constantinople to marry him, and he was made governor of Mesembria on the Black Sea. This was his second Orthodox wife.

The next year, after having observed Demetrios closely and noticed his craving for the throne, John suggested that he exchange Mesembria for Constantine's territories in the Morea, but he refused and the next April, 1442, he was given Ottoman support for, or he joined a Turkish attack on, Constantinople. The Turks demanded that Demetrios be given Selymbria/Silivri just south of Constantinople. The attack failed. John put Demetrios and Theodora, and their new baby Helena (named for their mother) under close adult supervision. Constantine was given Selymbria to which he appointed Sphrantzes "to guard against the Sultan and Demetrios." Five years John died and Demetrios was again reported intriguing for the throne, an effort forestalled by his mother.

When Constantine arrived in Constantinople in 1449, he sent Demetrios to the Morea to rule as Despot of Mistra. Thomas had already been there for thirty years and Demetrios immediately began trying to assert his seniority because of age and because of having received Constantine's Mistra. He signed his acts there as porphyrogennetos but whether he had been given the title, or assumed it, is unknown.

Demetrios corresponded with John Eugenikos about undoing Church Union. His wife Theodora was in private correspondence with one of the most unpleasant individuals of the period, anti-Unionist Georgios Scholarios who trimmed his sails to the prevailing winds.. They criticized and plotted against Georgios Gemistos, the much-loved and dotty old philospher who had given Mistra its only significance in the past 50 years.

Demetrios, and Thomas, were too busy defending their holdings in the Morea against Turkish incursions to send any aid to Constantinople -- had they wanted to. After the Fall of the City, the Morea erupted in revolts that threatened to overthrow both brothers. They asked for Ottoman aid and got it. During the next six years the brothers "swallowed their oaths like cabbages" and "ate each others' hearts," warring against each other, flailing against the inevitability of history, treading water as the Ottoman tide engulfed their world.

In 1460, Mehmed came to the Morea to settle affairs once and for all. On the seventh anniversary of the Fall of Constantinople, 29 May, he received the surrender of the Despotate of Mistra from Demetrios and took him and his family back to Adrianople. Demetrios was treated quite well: he lived in the palace and was given the taxes from four islands, though he could not resist his impulses for intrigue and in 1467 was exiled to Didymoteichon for two years. He was brought back to Adrianople in 1469, probably already ill, went into a monastery, took the name David, and died the following year.

Demetrios is an uncomfortable person, uncomfortable because of these fragments of information that do not add up to a whole person or even an interesting one. But a person who is so relentlessly outside his family indicates that the family has problems, and history has invested too much in maintaining the image of Manuel II as philosopher and intellectual to look at him as father. Demetrios brings the Palaiologos family to a tattered and inelegant end, unsatisfactory if you want a coherent narrative, sad if you think of the child who did not satisfy his family.


*** Go here for further information on porphyrogennetos.