The pitiful First Lord of the Imperial Wardrobe

Constantine Palaiologos and Georgios Sphrantzes

Fotis Kontoglou, Town  Hall, Athens

There is no surviving contemporary portrait of either Constantine or Sphrantzes, but this modern one seems quite convincing, and though I would not opt for a flowered silk for battle, it does appear that Sphranzes is wearing the green gown he was given by Constantine when he was rescued from prison at Patras.

At the beginning of his wonderful account of his life, he identifies himself as "the pitiful first lord of the imperial wardrobe" -- πρωτοβεστιαρίτης. He was seventy-six or so then, living as a monk, and suffering miserably from rheumatism. The last of his book speaks of death: Demetrios Palaiologos, his daughter Helene, his wife Theodora.  Cardinal Bessarion. Thomas Palaiologos' daughter Helene.  His friend from childhood and spiritual brother, Joseph. He himself was so ill in his last two years as to have been given last rites three times, and even though "I escaped death, I remained deaf for a long time; I could not even hear bells tolling next to me."   

He wrote a book to record his world forever lost,  a world where wardrobes were important.  So Kontoglou's green gown is important.   The title of protovestiaritis had little to do with being a valet and much to do with indicating that the bearer was physically close to the emperor, essentially all the time. Sphrantzes was close to three of them.   When he was sixteen and a half, Manuel  had put him in charge of his chamber. Sphrantzes had grown up at court, his father was Thomas' tutor, his uncle was Constantine's, and he and his cousins had been the imperial playmates and aides.

While we nowhere get a sense that Manuel was affectionate to his sons, we do see -- in Sphrantzes' telling -- a great deal of fondness for the boy.  In fact, Manuel was easier with the young Sphrantzes than with his own sons, and Sphrantzes could get favors for Contantine that Constantine could not get for himself.  Manuel had a chest Sphrantzes coveted, one that had belonged to his own father, John V.  Manuel had said he wanted to give it to his son John, but then, when he gave Sphrantzes the robe lined with fur, he gave him the chest, too. When Manuel was ill and making provisions for his will, he spoke to his wife and sons specifically directing them to care for Sphrantzes and reward him has he had not been able to.
 
Sphrantzes liked clothes, paid attention to them, at least where he himself was concerned.  The clothes of others are unmentioned. Manuel gave him a caftan -- kavadi -- a dark one lined with fur, and directed that he be given a green robe.  The "new empress" Sophia of Montferrat, sent it to him, saying it was for his future wife.  The position in Manuel's chamber allowed him to become knowledgeable about fabrics, if he had not been already.  When he describes his gifts from Constantine at Patras, he identified the "expensive double green tunic lined with fine green linen" as from Lucca, the red cap embroidered with gold with a silk lining from Thessaloniki, and the heavy gold-colored caftan from Brusa.  There was also a green coat, but its fabric is unspecified. 

He presents himself as Constantine's confidant, but I suspect Constantine never confided completely in anyone.  He doesn't specify his abilities, but the long list of embassies -- and entrusting him to select a wife -- indicates Constantine's estimation of him  It is significant that each place Constantine ruled, Sphranzes was given the highest administrative position: when Constantine was despot in the Morea, Sphrantzes was governor -- κεφάλη -- of Patras; when Constantine was despot in Selybria, Sphranzes was κεφάλη of Selybria; when Constantine was despot of the Morea at Mistra, Sphrantzes was κεφάλη of Mistra.  His job description was put succinctly by Constantine: "You are to govern your command well.  You are to put an end to the many instances of injustice and reduce the power of the numerous local lords.  Make it clear to everybody here that you are in charge -- μόνον ἀρχὴν -- and that I am the lord --μόνον αὐθεντην."

Constantine gave him the highest title in the court, after those given within the imperial family, that of μεγασλογοτθέτης -- but it is not the one he uses to identify himself.  A certain touching jealousy about his dignity and titles can be read in a telling three-way exchange he had with Constantine and Loukas Notaras.

Sphrantzes was a serious little man, and, I think, lonely.  His book is erratic in what it tells and what it doesn't tell.  He is deeply respectful of women, so respectful, that he does not expose them to our common gaze, except that he does say that Constantine's wife Theodora was really lovely.  But he knew Sophia of Montferrat, he knew Cleofe Malatesta, and he might have left us something about them.  Or about Helena, wife and mother of emperors. Or about his wife. Or about a lot of other things.

A few times his senses break through his dignity and repression, and he gives us memorable images that allow you to slip into a different story entirely.  Like the tower where he was imprisoned at Patras:

"I was taken prisoner; I had sustained multiple wounds and was thrown into the dark tower of a house, full of ants, weevils, and mice, as it was located in front of the grain storage.  I was put in secure irons and my leg was held by a strong chain, which was attached to a big post."

Or the time Mehmed I asked permission to pass through Constantinople on the way to Asia Minor.  There was a formal escort to whom Mehmed talked all the way.  Then:

"The holy emperor and his sons were waiting with a boat . . . When Mehmed embarked they greeted each other from their respective boats and carried on a conversation until they reached Skoutari . . . Mehmed landed and went to the tents that had been pitched for him.  The imperial family ate, drank, and sent food to each other on the boats until they sailed home early in the evening . . ."

And one last from Corfu where he had retired:

"On January 15, 1470, so much snow covered the whole island of Corfu as no local inhabitant had ever seen.  It was even possible to catch foxes and hares by hand."

Most of the quotations are from Marios Philippides, The Fall of the Byzantine Empire: A Chronicle by George Sphrantzes (Amherst, 1980).

Misunderstanding Mistra, Part Two

Wedding crowns, Athens  

 

Last night when I was not sleeping, I found myself thinking about the marriages of the sons of Manuel II Palaiologos.  A fairly dismal subject, on the whole, with a great deal of waste and grief on all sides.  It is an article of faith that Manuel received a letter from Pope Martin V giving permission for his sons to marry Western rite brides, and this is demonstrated by showing that in August 1420, Sophia of Montferrat and Cleofe Malatesta of Pesaro were shipped out as the first lucky candidates. (By the way, none of these women married to the Palaiologos sons was a princess: enough of the "Latin princesses" theme.) There is a vast wasteland of articles on the marriages of the sons of Manuel II, and having recently written on this topic myself (with more to come), I think it needs re-evaluating.  

The marriages of John VIII are no proof of this Western rite theme.  When he was 21, in 1414, he was presented with a child bride in the person of Anna of Moscow.  She died of plague three years later.  He had been so detached from her that he did not learn of the event for another year.  Then there was Sophia of Montferrat.  John left her a bride unwedded, and she left him after nearly six years.  This cannot be considered a Western rite marriage. When he remarried in 1427, this time blissfully, his bride Maria was from Trebizond and of the Eastern rite.

Theodoros II of Mistra married Cleofe Malatesta in January 1426 and he, too, left her a bride unwedded.  After six years, he decided to be married after all and pressured her -- despite a written promise to the Pope -- to convert to the Eastern rite.  She assured her family that this was an outward conversion -- "I have not become a nun just because I have been anointed with a little oil." -- and spent the next six years doing penance for her act.  This, too, cannot be considered a Western rite marriage.

Constantine's two marriages were both to Latin rite women, and both of them died during pregnancy.  Both women, Theodora Tocco and Caterina Gattilusi, were from families that had lived in Greek-speaking lands for generations, and both were certainly bilingual.  From what we know of these Latin-Greek families, their choice of rite was fluid, and they were at home in both.  Neither of these marriages was arranged under the papal dispensation and there is no information as to any observation of any rite.  Theodora was part of the territorial settlement concluding the Palaiologos conquest of the Tocco territories in the Morea. Caterina's family was related to the Palaiologoi and she was chosen for her suitability.

Moving on to Demetrios, both of his marriages -- to Zoe Paraspondylos and to Theodora Asan -- were in the Eastern rite.

Which leaves Thomas.  His marriage to Catarina Zaccaria in January 1430 was, again, outside the papal dispensation and part of the territorial settlement in the peace treaty by which the Palaiologoi acquired the Principality of Achaia and added 50% more territory to the Despotate. She might have been considered a princess, as her father was known as the Prince of Achaia, but no contemporary document calls her that.  Sphrantzes calls her "kyra." The marriage was celebrated at Mistra.  It is highly unlikely that the ceremony was in the Western rite.

All of this means that, instead of forcing the marriages to fit that letter from the Pope, one should look at what actually happened.  Or didn't happen.

The Leopard-Wranglers

XII: Concerning the imperial bride:

One should know that at the arrival of the imperial bride (δεσποίνης νύμφης), whether by land or by water, when the day when she is to be be brought safely into port at The City is known, the emperor, her husband-to-be (ἀνὴρ αὐτῆς ὁ νεόνυμφος) goes to meet her with his father, if he is living; if not, he goes alone. If she comes by land, it is the custom that she alight in the neighborhood of Pēgē; if she comes by ship, near the church of the Blachernes outside the city, where it happens to be suitable. When she arrives at one place or another, the wives of the dignitaries, senators, and the other highest and most well-born archons, welcome the lady and bride-to-be warmly and attend her as an empress. Both the emperors come to meet her, if the bridegroom has no father, he does as has been said. If then she comes by ship, he meets her at the acropolis at the Evgenikos Gate, and if by land, outside the city as has been said. After that, the emperors, or the emperor, leave her there; the wives of the archons mentioned, whether the wives of the despots, or the wives of the sebastokrators, or of the caesars, or of the other well-born, put the red shoes on her. Dressed in the imperial robes prepared in advance, and escorted as an empress, she comes up to the palace on horseback; after that the marriage ceremony is held on the selected day.

Equally, one should know this: when the leopard-wranglers (παρδοβάγιλοι) bring in their leopards, they enter the palace on horse, and similarly leave on horse. Also, those bearing the cold drinks enter the palace on horse.

* * * *

This is my translation of the chapter on imperial brides from Pseudo-Kodinos, a book compiled about 1360 with later additions about protocol at the Palaiologan court in Constantinople, and it got me to thinking about Sophia of Montferrat who was so scalded by her marriage to John VIII.  He rejected her immediately after the wedding, apparently because he did not like her appearance.

But look at the sequence of events in the light of this protocol.  Sophia arrived in Constantinople on a Venetian galley in November of 1420.  It docked on the Golden Horn, under the Blachernae, probably about where the pretty little mosque is now.  She was welcomed by the court ladies as if she were an empress.  She was John's third cousin, her family used Greek names, and she had probably already learned to speak a little Greek.

Then John and Manuel arrived.  These two slight imperial males dressed as stiffly as icons, and behaving almost as stiffly, greeted her.  Then they left and the court ladies put the imperial scarlet shoes on her feet, and dressed her in robes something like her mother-in-law Helena is wearing here. Then they processed along those narrow twisting streets up the steep hill to the Blachernae  on horseback, and we know nothing about how Byzantine women sat a horse.  If they rode astride like Maria of Trebizond, no one has left any information.  

The procession was led by the leopard wranglers, and the picture above, identified as young Giuliani de Medici in the Gozzoli fresco below, leads off the processions of the Magi as one of them.

The boy was about seven years old when the fresco was painted in 1460, anjd the procession of the Byzantines and John VIII into Florence had happened fourteen years before he was born.  He was murdered in the Duomo in 1478 in the Pazzi Conspiracy.  That is a shame, but it has nothing to do with us here.

The wedding was on 19 January 1421.  John was crowned that day -- Pseudo-Kodinos gives meticulous directions for the ceremony, and then, apparently on the next day, John crowned Sophia.  Byzantine emperors crowned their wives.  He never spoke to her again. 

Why was there a wedding at all?  John had two months between meeting her at the boat, and the ceremonies in Agia Sophia and he must have judged this big blond woman instantly.  Would it have been possible for him to have rejected the bride who had been delivered to him (with a great deal in the way of jewels, gold, and financing)?  Does "incompatibility" make a non-marriage easier to accomplish? Did anyone tell her what was going on before it happened?

When she left, it was on a Majorcan ship chartered at such short notice that it had to leave the Genoese imports it had been charted for on the wharf.  The ship brought Sophia and small group of courtiers across the Golden Horn to Galata, where the Genoese all came down to the waterfront and paid homage to her as their Empress.  The Majorcan ship took her to Chios, where she was provided a Genoese galley back to Genoa.  When she arrived home in Montferrat, she was welcomed as Empress.  All the way along, everyone, with the exception of John, was very kind to her.

She took her crown when she left.  I had thought it might be her wedding crown -- Greek rite weddings crown the bride and bridegroom, and exchange their crowns -- but Pseudo-Kodinos says nothing about that.  John was crowned at the wedding, as Emperor, and the imperial crown can be exchanged for nothing else.  Sophia was crowned Empress of the Eastern Empire and all she had to show for it was the crown John had put on her head

 * * * * * *

I am giving a paper this weekend at the meeting of the Australian Association for Byzantine Studies at the University of New South Wales in Armindale entitled "The Brides of 1420," in which I will be discussing Sophia's face, and Cleofe's clothes.

The animal in the picture above is actually a cheetah (on the ground below it is a leopard), but "cheetah-wrangler" doesn't work in English nearly as well as "leopard-wrangler." Besides, cheetahs were also called "hunting leopards." Nick Nicholas wrote a paper a few years back -- "A Conundrum of Cats: Pards and their relatives in Byzantium," in which he analyzed all the Byzantine terms for members of the cat family, and then tried to identify each one. Byzantines called a cheetah a pardos.  Gozzoli got it right.  That is, by the way, Benozzo Gozzoli's self-portrait -- the man with the blue and white hat in front of the horse, below.

To be continued.

Sophia of Montferrat

                                                                   

 This faceless Byzantine queen will represent Sophia of Montferrat: it was Sophia's face that was supposed to be the problem.

The short version of the story says that Pope Martin V gave permission for the sons of Manuel II to marry women of the Latin rite. This would do wonders to promote the Papacy's goal of church Union on the one side, and on the other, produce military aid and money for the defense of Constantinople. The first brides, papal nieces, were shipped out in the fall of 1420: Sophia of Montferrat to Constantinople to marry John,  and Cleofe Malatesta to Mistra for Theodoros. 

Sophia had a huge dowry, a gracious manner, the body of a goddess, golden hair down to her feet, and apparently a face such that John refused to have anything to do with her after the wedding and coronation. She lived quietly in the palace with her Italian household and the friendship of her in-laws, Manuel II and Helena. After Manuel died, she "escaped" from Constantinople on a Genoese ship and returned to Montferrat where lived out her life in a convent.

There are problems with this story, though we can concede that he did not like her face. The first problem is that both of those brides, Sophia and Cleofe, were rejected by their husbands, and the stories of both rejections specify sexual rejection. John just ignored the marriage entirely and went on with his life, while Theodoros immediately took a six-year vow of chastity. There is a great deal of room for speculation, but the sexuality of neither man is in question. The specific area of speculation I will mention here is the fact that Manuel II had written a treatise on marriage, presented in the form of a dialogue between himself and his mother, in which he presents his reservations against marriage, and she argues for. Manuel worked on this treatise between 1417 until his death 1425, and it was widely circulated in the palace and among the literati. His sons had read it and seen that the best reason their father could produce for marriage was that it was a good influence for the lower classes. He did grant the possibility of companionship, and an heir to the throne, but he clearly begrudged the necessity.

The second problem is the face. The degree of the problem has much to do with the reports, and the translations of the reports. The conventional report comes from Doukas, and this is how it goes in the conventional translation by Harry Magoulias:

Emperor John, however, was not pleased with his wife. The young woman was extremely well-proportioned in body. Her neck was shapely, her hair blondish with braids flowing down to her ankles like glimmering golden streams. Her shoulders were broad and her arms, bosom, and hands well proportioned. Her fingers were transparent. She was tall in stature and stood very straight -- but her face and lips and the malformation of her nose and eyes and eyebrows presented a most revolting composition. In general, she may be described in the words of the vulgar adage: "Lent from the front and Easter from behind." When Emperor John saw how she looked, therefore, he had no sexual relations with her nor did he ever sleep with her. Consequently, she lived alone in one of the apartments of the palace. 

Ὁ δὲ βασιλεὺς Ἰωάννης ἦν μὲ στέργων τὴν σύνοικον, ἡ κόρη γὰρ τῷ μὲν σώματι καὶ μάλα εὐάρμοστος, τράχηλος εὐειδής, θρίξ ὑποχανθίζουσα καὶ τοὺς πλοκάμους ὡς ῥύακας χρυσαυγίζοντας μέχρι τῶν ἀστραγάλων καταρεομένους ἔχουσα, ὤμους πλατεῖς καὶ βραχίονας καὶ στέρνα καὶ χεῖρας ἐμμέτρους καὶ δακτύλους κρυσταλλοειδεῖς καὶ τὴν πᾶσαν ἡλικίαν τοῦ σώματος ἀνωῤῥεπη καὶ πολὺ εἰς τὸ ὄρθιον ἱσταμένη, ὄψις δὲ καὶ χείλη καὶ ῥινὸς κατάστασις καὶ ὀφθαλμῶν καὶ ὀφρύων σύνθεσις ἀειδεστάτη, παντάπασιν ὡς ἔπος χυδαῖον εἰπεῖν, "Ἀφ´ ἐμπρὸς τεσσαρακοστὴ καὶ ὄπισθεν πάσχα." Τοιαύτην οὗν ἰδὼν ὁ βασιλεὺς Ἰωάννης οὐκ ἐμιγε τούτην, οὐδὲ τὸ παράπαν σύγκοιτος ταύτης ἐγένετο, διὸ καὶ μονάζουσα ἦν ἐν ἑνὶ τῶν κοιτώνων τοῦ παλατίου.

I have underlined two words in the Greek, the ones Magoulias translates with "malformation" and "revolting." This is how Pierre MacKay and I translate that part: 

but her face and lips, the condition of her nose, and the arrangement of her eyes and eyebrows were extremely unpleasant.

"Condition" is not "malformation," "unpleasant" is not "revolting": we read an implication of aesthetic preference rather than of deformity.

One more example of translation, or paraphrase of Doukas, this from Sylvia Ronchey: 

Il viso di Sofia era veramente brutto. Fronte, naso, denti, occhi, sopracciglia, no si salvava nulla. ’La natura’ sospirò un cortigiano ’aveva rifiutato alla sovrana ogni bellezza.’ ’Spiacevole, per non dire disgustosa’ sentensiò un altro. Dopo una bambina russa di undici anni, Giovanni Palaeologo aveva avuto in moglie da suo padre Manuele una gigantessa dalla faccia di gorgone. 

Scholarship is corrupted to turn a phrase: a giantess with the face of a gorgon.

(A parenthesis here: both Sophia and Cleofe were described by contemporaries as tall. John, and probably Theodoros, was slight and below average height, like his father. We have strong evidence of John's concern for how he was seen in public, and he could not have tolerated a wife larger than he.) 

The section quoted above is from a longer paragraph by Doukas on the Sophia episode. Doukas was not a familiar at the court though Ronchey would make him so: he reports from what he has heard or read, and much of what he relates sounds like gossip. In his paragraph are two provable errors in terms of when events happened: there is no reason to assume that any other specific detail is accurate beyond the fact of the event itself. The wisecrack he quotes typifies Byzantine humor: personal and humiliating -- Mazaris is full of it if you like this sort of thing -- and this passage has been considered quite funny in my hearing by male Byzantinists. 

Sphrantzes, who was in the palace and with the family at the time, who knew Sophia, tells us nothing but the fact of the marriage, and the fact of her departure. He was incapable of writing critically about Manuel, or John, and I suspect that more accuracy would have required criticism. Chalcocondyles, who knew the family and knew people who knew Sophia, wrote a brief account. There is no general English translation of Chalcocondyles available, but we translate it this way: 

He [Manuel] brought him [John] as wife from Italy the daughter of the ruler of Monferrat. She was pleasant in manner, but not attractive in face. Crowned with the diadem, he was made high priest and king over the Greeks. As for her, as he did not live with her, he became hostile and disagreeable to her for a time, and the wife of the emperor [Helena] noticed that her husband was behaving disagreeably and that she was very hateful to her husband . . .

καὶ ἀπὸ Ἰταλίας ἀγόμενος αὐτῷ γυναίκα τοῦ Μονφεράτου ἡγεμόνος θυγατέρα, ἐπιεικῆ μὲν τὸν τρόπον, ἀηδὴ δὲ τὴν ὄψιν, διαδήματι ταινιώσας ἀρχιερέα τε καὶ βασιλέα ἐστήσατο τοῖς Ἕλλησι. ταύτην μὲν οὖν, ὡς οὔτε συνῴκει συνεγένετο ὲς ἔχθος ἀφικόμενος καὶ ἀηδῶς ἔχων αὐτῇ ἐπί τινα χρόνον, καὶ ἧ τε γυνή τοῦ βασιλέως ἐνεώρα ὲς αὐτὴν τὸν ἄνδρα ἁηδῶς ἔχοντα, καὶ ἀπεχθάνεσθαι τῷ ἀνδρὶ ὲς τὰ μάλιστα . . .

It is not a great deal different, but Chalcocondyles does not need to exploit Sophia for compare-and-contrast, or for amusement, and his emphasis is on John's unkindness, not on Sophia's appearance which to him was not much of a problem. Doukas emphasizes the reverse.

For almost any word, particularly adjectives, a translation can be selected from a spectrum of choices.  How does one choose? Does the translator decide in advance the meaning the words need to produce? Does the translator take the most sensational of dictionary alternatives? The most conservative? The one that will cover the most possibilities? How does the translator distinguish between Greek ideas of feminine attractiveness, and a medical condition? 

So we really don't know the problem with Sophia's face, beyond the fact that it was most unfortunate where the Greeks were concerned, but this suggests Chalcocondyles heard a version that finds more fault with John's behavior than with her face. And what Chalcocondyles tells us of Theodoros' behavior toward Cleofe in the first years makes it clear that the problem was his. Sons and daughters of rulers knew they would be sold off in one political arrangement or another: that was a given. There are too many questions about this one -- the first being: would the Marchese of Montferrat and the Pope have actually shipped out a genuinely deformed bride? Women with serious disfigurements, if upper-class, usually disappeared into some convent early on. 

What we do know is that Sophia was humiliated by her uncle, the Pope, by her father, by Manuel, and by John, for the sake of a political solution to a problem that was not a problem, and another problem that had no solution.

When she slipped away from Constantinople with the aid of a Genoese ship and a palace plot, she took with her a crown. In a Greek wedding, bride and bridegroom are crowned, and their crowns are exchanged. The day after the wedding, she was crowned queen. Whichever crown she took, that was all she had to show for her six years in the Queen of Cities. It was not enough. 

The fresco is of an Empress Helena from the monastery of Sopocani. I would be grateful for more information.

Dear John

John VIII Palaiologos was a man in frequent crippling pain. He was an oldest son who constantly tried to do the right thing which was never adequate, and who lived a life of unremitting stress for which there were no solutions. His first two marriages were no marriages at all, and his third marriage ended by breaking his heart. He is about forty-six in the portrait to the left.

He was twenty-one at the first marriage in 1414 which was political--someone in his position would have expected nothing else--and the bride was a child, Anna of Russia. Constantinople sent a glorious vestment to the Metropolitan of Moscow with pearl portraits of the couple to celebrate the event. The marriage is not likely to have much affected his life. Anna lived in the women's apartments of the palace, and John served as regent while his father, Manuel, was out of the country. In 1416, when Manuel came home, John left for the Morea, and not until he arrived home in 1418 did he learn that Anna had died of the Eighth Death the previous August.

His second marriage was one of a.brace of marriages arranged on one side by the Pope, Martin V, as part of his project to unite the Eastern and Western churches, and on the other by Manuel II as part of his efforts to get military and financial aid for the battered empire. The brides arrived in November 1420 with large endowments Cleofe's story has already been told here. Sophia of Montferrat was quite young, already widowed, distantly related to the Palaiologues. She had blonde braids down to her feet, an ample bosom, a slender neck. They were married at Agia Sophia in January 1419, he was crowned co-emperor, she was crowned the next day, and he never spoke to her again. He couldn't bear her.

The accounts are most unclear about what was wrong. A writer who knew the family said that she was well-mannered, but that John disliked her, and then came to hate her because of his dislike--thie sequence is understandable. But his unkindness, taken together with the fact that his brother Theodoros was simultaneously hostile to the lovely bride chosen for him, suggests problems within the Palaiologos family left unaddressed by contemporary chroniclers and modern historians. It is perhaps not the place to comment that their father, Manuel II, had written a treatise against marriage (except for dynastic reasons) shortly after his own, late, marriage, and that he had kept the manuscript circulating in the palace all those years.

One writer says her face was distorted, and that she was tall. From that, a modern "historian" meanly pronounces Sophia "una gigantessa dalla faccia de gorgone," and claims that she was confined in the palace. Evidence suggests that neither statement was true. Constantinopolitan wits were saying it was a case of "Easter behind, Lent before." My own thought is that however unfortunate her face, she was also larger than John who was, as the portrait above suggests, physically slight. He was very very conscious of appearances. A religious chronicler said:

This man was crowned with his wife whom they had brought for him with many riches. He accepted her but he did not love her at all. . . . The emperor was extremely addicted to pleasures of the flesh and, for this reason, he had no affection for her.

Another chronicle repeats this. They are monastic chronicles and can be expected to scowl, but they are nearly the only hints we get that John had any life at all that was not being fed into the maw of the state. A secular chronicle mentions one charming interlude, a possibly unwise interlude because a small military action was at stake, shortly before the Sophia marriage:

The Byzantine emperor was at Proikonēsos, at leisure with his lover who happened to be the daughter of a priest, and so he was not there when he was needed.

This is the only time during his father's lifetime that John is reported to have done something he enjoyed. One ventures to hope that this was not the only such interval. Sophia herself lived quietly in the palace with the household staff she had brought from home. John, out of obedience to his father, did not try to end the marriage. But the year after Manuel died, a year after John became emperor in his own right, some time in 1426, Sophia and a few Italian-speaking attendants went for a walk in a garden along the shore. A Genoese boat drew abreast, they boarded, the boat sailed. Somehow no one minded, and Sophia was returned to Montferrat where she lived out her small life in a convent until her death in 1434. It is said that only thing she took with her from Constantinople was the crown with which she had been crowned Empress of the Romans. But the Orthodox used crowns for weddings, and perhaps it was the crown of her marriage.

There was a third marriage for John the next year, his own decision, to the princess Maria of Trebizond. The young Bessarion, who was from Trebizond and related to her, and who appreciated womanly attractions, made the arrangements. If this painting above by Pisanello (who knew both Bessarion and John--and who might have seen a portrait of her), if this small and memorably lovely woman is actually intended to be Maria, we have a sense of the woman they might have seen. John apparently fell completely in love with her, and she with him. What fragmentary reports we have of their marriage shows her riding with him on hunts--wearing masses of rubies and other jewels, taking care of his guests, and sending letters to him when he was away.

While he was away having the worst experience of his life in Ferrara-Florence, trying to save the empire, when the picture above was painted, Maria and Zoe, wife of John's brother Demetrios, both contracted plague. Someone in the palace wrote to someone in Florence saying that the women were ill, but it was decided not to tell the brothers, because John would get upset and take to his bed and things would drag out even longer. Some of the delegation learned, as they were struggling to sail home against the winter storms, that Maria had died of the Tenth Death, on 17 December, but it was decided again to keep the information from John because he was a bad sailor at the best of times, and with this he would insist on going ashore indefinitely..

When the brothers arrived back in Constantinople on the first of February, they were met at the dock by a large and sober group from the palace led by their brother Constantine. Someone confided to Demetrios that Maria had died, but not to tell John. Someone else confided to John that Zoe had died, but not to tell Demetrios. The party walked in silence up to the palace, each brother stoically grieving for the other, to be met by their mother, Helena, who took them to her suite and told them that they were both widowers.

John buried Maria in the family church of the Pantokrator and collapsed into depression. When he himself died nine years later, the unforgiving Othodox clergy denied him funeral rites because of his support for Church Union, but his family buried him in Maria's grave.