Emperor Michael Palaeologus and the West, 1258-1282

On Easter Monday, 1282, the bells of Santo Spirito summoned the faithful of Palermo to Vespers. But what began as a call to worship ended in revolution for the Sicilians, victory for Aragon, and the collapse of a vast coalition to restore Western rule over Constantinople. Byzantium was saved from a second occupation by the Latins.

This book examines the relations between Greeks and Latins, Eastern and Western Christendom, during the reign of the Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII Palaeologus (1258-1282). The investigation focuses on the career of the Emperor from the years immediately preceding his recovery of Constantinople from the Latins in 1261 to the climax of his struggle against the West in the celebrated Sicilian Vespers of 1282. Virtually every facet of Byzantine-Western relations in the later Middle Ages is reflected in Michael’s reign, for, as will be seen, restoration of Greek rule after a half-century of alien occupation did not arrest the penetration of Latin influence within the Empire. And, externally, it excited the hostility of an aggressive West, eager to reassert its authority in Byzantium. Michael was therefore faced with a succession of diverse problems demanding almost immediate solution at his hands. It was his ability to cope with these difficulties, when failure would have resulted not only in Western political domination but, possibly, even in realization of the basic Byzantine fear—Latinization of the Greek people —that marks his reign as crucial for the subsequent history of East and West.

Central to Michael’s diplomacy was his aim of appeasing the papacy, still near the pinnacle of its power, which alone could save the Greek Empire from Western designs. Thus was signed at Lyons the controversial ecclesiastical union with Rome, which resulted in the establishment of a kind of papal protectorate over Constantinople and, in effect, the tying of Byzantium to the Western political system.