Crowns and other valuables

Empress Helena of Byzantium (?) 1437-39.

Lesnovo, Macedonia  

(This entry is taken from an article by Raymond-Joseph Loenertz, the professor of my professor, to which you will find a link at the end.)

Being a Palaiologos emperor in the last 100 years of the Eastern Empire meant being in a perpetual state of humiliation. Several times before 1400, the Emperors had to pawn icons, jewels, and relics in order to obtain money and ships, mostly because of the shameful civil war among members of the ruling families.   In 1390, Manuel II was driven out of Constantinople by his nephew John VII.  He took refuge with the Knights of Rhodes with whom he pawned a remarkable assortment of religious items and crowns to get money and ships. (I have not been able to find any study of the precious items from these various episodes of pawning, and I hope readers will be able to direct me.)

Manuel was finally able to pay off this loan, and on 21 November 1398 he signed off on an inventory to Friar Renaud de Giresme who returned his deposit. This, as best as I can translate, is what Manuel had pawned for his ships:

• silver box containing a piece of the true cross, with gold fastenings
  
• enkolpion* (engol phium) with precious stones, figure of Christ, with gold "pearls"
  
• another similar image
  
• gold enkolpion, form of a cross, with two pearls
  
• image of St. George with 18 precious stones, and with pearls around his head and shield
  
• image of the Saints Causoni (? sancti causoni ?) overlaid with gilded silver image of St. Theodore overlaid with gilded silver
  
• image of Jesus Christ being taken from the cross overlaid with gold
  
• enkolpion with image of the Hodegetria (odigitora) with gold cover
  
• small image of the Hodegetria with gold cover
  

(Now we get to the crowns. For this first one, look at three of the four pictures here, and speculate.)

• crown with 11 peaks with 11 large green stones and 18 small green stones, and 11 large red stones (rubeos) and 24 small red stones, and two small green stones, and 88 pearls.
  
• 2 pearl fillets, one with 24 pearls, and the other with 10
  
  
  
   
  
• silver thurible ** with its cover.
  
• large gilded silver cup with a cover.
  
• 2 silver ewers with covers.
  
• pearl crown with 126 pearls.
  
  
• book of the holy evangelists, completely ornamented, with a key.

Elena of Serbia.

* Enkolpion = sacred image or relic worn on the chest.

** Thurible = censer.

  R.-J. Loenertz, "John V Paléologue à Venise (1370-1371)," Revue des études byzantines 16 (1958): 217-232.

When the Palaiologos family visited Monemvasia

Dying child, fresco of King David
Voronet Monastery, Romania  

In 1400, Manuel and Helena Palaiologos left Constantinople on a Venetian galley.  Married in 1392, they now had five children and she was pregnant again. Manuel was on his way west to get aid for Constantinople, under desperate threat from Beyazid.  Manuel had come to terms with his nephew, John VII, and had left him in charge of the City, but unwilling to take the chance of his family becoming hostages, he had decided to take them to the Morea to stay with his brother Theodoros, the Despot.

There were rumor that John had already come to terms with Beyazid, that he had 10,000 Turkish horsemen, that he would give the Turks Constantinople in exchange for the Morea. Theodoros, fearful of another Turkish invasion -- there had been two in the past four years, had sold off Corinth, Kalavrita, and Mistra to the Knights of Rhodes, and had moved his administration to Monemvasia.

So when Manuel and his family arrived in the Morea -- it was a Venetian galley so they had to bypass Monemvasia which would, of course, have been a convenient stop and go on to Methoni -- Helena and the children and her suite had to travel back to Monemvasia.  I hope there was a ship they could travel on, rather than have to make that miserable trip by land, but the famous Monemvasia shipping disappears from the record in the 15th century whenever you need a ship.


These were the children: John, aged about 7; Constantine; Theodoros, aged about 3, and two sisters.  Sphrantzes tells us about the sisters, but no Byzantine -- or anyone else -- managed to write down the names of Helena's mother or of her daughters.  We know nothing about where they stayed in Monemvasia: I have climbed up that sun-blasted rock to the citadel three times in my life, though never pregnant, and I hope Helena was able to stay in the lower city.  A few people had great wealth in Monemvasia, but we know nothing of anyone's relationship to the imperial family at this point.  It would have been a fine city for small boys to explore, with swimming off the rocks, and perhaps the occasional day on a fishing boat.

Helena gave birth to a son whom she named Andronikos.  This means that she not only named him for Manuel's grandfather, Andronikos III, but she named him for the only emperor to have visited Monemvasia. Manuel's biographer, John Barker, who has an extraordinary taste for prurience, begins on Andronikos like this:

For Manuel's third son, however, we know no precise date of birth. Since Andronicus is not mentioned among the children left behind in 1400, assuming Ducas did not overlook him, he was presumably not born at that time. As there is no evidence to warrant suspecting Helena of misconduct during her husband's absence, there would thus be two possibilities for his birth date: either Helena was pregnant with him when Manuel left.

Well, duh.

Two years earlier, in 1398, the Eighth Death, as the chronicles called it, had broken out in the Morea.  In 1401, plague erupted again.  It is recorded in ports, in Methoni and Koroni.  It was still raging in 1402, so that the Venetians, planning for Manuel's return trip, would not take the responsibility of letting him stop in Methoni.  Manuel's return was delayed, and delayed again, so that it was well into 1403 before he left Venice and by that time, Methoni was clear of plague and his ship was free to stop there.

Plague had also appeared in Monemvasia.  Three of the Palaiologos children died -- Constantine, and the two little girls.  Plague is identified first of all by its devastating high fever, and their deaths would not have been clean and tidy like that of the child in the picture above. The children were buried in a church in Monemvasia. Despot Theodoros established a fund for liturgies and Manuel later gave the Metropolitan of Monemvasia the territory of Helikovounos so the income could provide  two liturgies each week -- on Thursday and Saturday -- for the children's souls. Plague would be a commonplace for the two older sons -- two of John's wives would die of plague, and so would Theodoros.

In any mention of Manuel's daughters, the subject of illegitimacy has to come up.  Barker cannot let the topic alone: "Manuel apparently had several other illegitimate children," and continues with a breathtaking sequence of assumptions about these dead daughters for which he can offer no evidence: "Whatever our ignorance about these children, however, it is still plain that they must have been illegitimate, though by whom is not known, and that they were sired by Manuel before his assumption of the throne and his marriage."* Sphrantzes is the way we know about these daughters, and nothing he says or does not say can be twisted to justify this twaddle.

Helena had to travel back to Methoni to meet Manuel, this time with three children.  The Venetians had agreed to transport a suite of 25-30 people along with Manuel, though by the time Helena and Manuel met up in May, they had a suite of 58 people. They then apparently sailed to Vasilopotamos, near Elos, at the end of the Eurotas River, and then traveled up to Mistra where Manuel and Theodoros discussed how Manuel was going to repay the Knights of Rhodes after the people of Mistra flatly refused to let them into the city.

In Feburary 1404, there was a new son who was named Constantine in place of the one who died.

The next time you are in Monemvasia, light candles for the unnamed daughters.

* No one should write me about Manuel's illegitimate daughters who has not read Thierry Ganchou's meticulous study on the subject:  “Ilario Doria, le gambros Génois de Manuel II Palaiologos: beau-frère ou gendre?" Études Byzantines 66 (2008): 71-94, which should put paid at least to the Zampia question.