Andreas Palaiologos (; 17 January 1453 – June 1502), sometimes anglicized to Andrew Palaeologus, was the eldest son of Thomas Palaiologos, Despot of the Morea. Thomas was a brother of Constantine XI Palaiologos, the final Byzantine emperor. After his father's death in 1465, Andreas was recognized as the titular Despot of the Morea and from 1483 onwards, he also claimed the title "Emperor of Constantinople" ().
After the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the subsequent Ottoman invasion of the Morea in 1460, Andreas's father fled to Corfu with his family. After Thomas died in 1465, the then twelve-year-old Andreas moved to Rome and, as the eldest nephew of Constantine XI, became the head of the Palaiologos family and the chief claimant to the ancient imperial throne. Andreas's later use of the imperial title, never claimed by his father, was supported by some of the Byzantine refugees who lived in Italy and he hoped to one day restore the empire of his ancestors. Andreas married a Roman woman called Caterina. Though some primary sources allude to the possibility that he had children, there is no concrete evidence that Andreas left any descendants.
As his stay in Rome continued, Andreas fell deeper into poverty. Although historians often blame his impoverished situation on a supposedly extravagant and irresponsible lifestyle, a more likely explanation is that the pension and funding provided to him by the papacy were regularly reduced. Andreas traveled around Europe several times in search of a ruler who could aid him in retaking Constantinople but rallied little support. The Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, who had conquered Constantinople in 1453, died in 1481, and his two sons Cem and Bayezid fought a civil war over who would succeed him. Seeing his opportunity, Andreas attempted to organize an expedition in southern Italy during the summer of 1481 to cross the Adriatic Sea and restore the Byzantine Empire. The excursion was canceled in the autumn after Bayezid had successfully stabilized his rule. Although Andreas maintained hope of recapturing at least the Morea throughout his life, he never returned to Greece.
Desperate for money, Andreas sold his rights to the Byzantine crown in 1494 to Charles VIII of France, who attempted to organize a crusade against the Ottomans. The sale was conditional on Charles, who Andreas hoped to use as a champion against the Ottomans, conquering the Morea and granting it to Andreas. When Charles died in 1498, Andreas once again claimed the imperial titles, using them until his death. He died in poverty in Rome in 1502 and was buried in St. Peter's Basilica. In his will, he granted his titles to Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, neither of whom used them.
Background
The Palaiologos family was the last imperial dynasty of the Byzantine Empire and one of the empire's longest ruling dynasties, ruling the empire from 1259/1261 to its fall in 1453. By the 15th century, the Palaiologan emperors ruled a disintegrating and dwindling empire. Over the course of the 14th century, the Ottoman Turks had conquered vast swaths of territories and by the beginning of the 15th century, they ruled much of Anatolia, Bulgaria, central Greece, Serbia, Macedonia and Thessaly. The Byzantine Empire, once extending throughout the eastern Mediterranean, was more or less reduced to the imperial capital of Constantinople itself, the Peloponnese and a handful of islands in the Aegean Sea, and was forced to pay tribute to the Ottomans.
As the empire dwindled, the emperors came to the conclusion that the only way to ensure that their remaining territory was kept intact was to grant some of their holdings to their sons or brothers, who received the title of despot, as appanages to defend and govern. In 1428, Andreas's father, Thomas Palaiologos, was appointed as Despot of the Morea, governing the prosperous province that constituted the parts of the Peloponnese under Byzantine control together with his older brothers Theodore and Constantine (who would later become Emperor Constantine XI, the final emperor). The brothers worked to restore Byzantine control of the entire peninsula. In 1432, Thomas brought an end to the Principality of Achaea, founded after the Fourth Crusade, by inheriting it through his marriage to Catherine Zaccaria, the daughter of Centurione II Zaccaria, the last Prince of Achaea. During Constantine's, Theodore's and Thomas's rule as despots, Byzantine rule was restored to the entire Morea, save for the scattered towns and port cities under the authority of the Republic of Venice, also holdovers from the Fourth Crusade.
As their empire crumbled, the Orthodox Palaiologan emperors pursued a policy of attempting to secure military aid from Catholic Europe. Since the middle of the 14th century, the Byzantine emperors had looked to Western Europe and the papacy in the hope of securing help to save their empire from the Ottomans. Inspired by the writings of West-oriented intellectuals such as Demetrios Kydones and Manuel Chrysoloras, the Palaiologan emperors believed that if they could only convince the popes of their lack of heresy, the papacy would unleash large western armies to relieve them. This conviction inspired Andreas's great-grandfather John V Palaiologos to travel to Rome and personally submit to the pope in 1369 and his uncle John VIII Palaiologos to attend the 1438–1439 Council of Florence where a union of the churches was proclaimed. The union of the churches was unpopular in the Byzantine Empire, where the populace felt that it was a betrayal to their faith and world view, and it was never fully implemented. John VIII's successor and Andreas's other uncle Constantine XI had sent desperate appeals for help to the pope in 1452 when the Ottomans were closing in on Constantinople.
Biography
Early life
Constantine XI Palaiologos, the last Byzantine emperor, died defending Constantinople from the Ottomans on 29 May 1453. Andreas had been born just four months earlier, on 17 January 1453, as the oldest son of Thomas Palaiologos and Catherine Zaccaria. Following the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople, Andreas's family continued to live in the Morea as vassals of the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II. However, constant bickering between Thomas, who tried to rally support to restore the Byzantine Empire, and his older brother Demetrios, who sided with the Ottomans, led to the Sultan invading the Morea in 1460; Thomas and his family escaped to Corfu. Thomas then left the rest of the family to go to Rome, where he was welcomed and financially supported by Pope Pius II. Thomas maintained hope that he would one day recover his lands and when preparations were being made for a crusade in 1462, which never took place, Thomas personally rode around Italy to drum up support.
Catherine Zaccaria died in August 1462, but it was only in spring 1465 that Thomas summoned the children to Rome. Andreas, his younger brother Manuel, and their sister Zoe, accompanied by their guardian and some exiled Byzantine nobles, arrived at Ancona, but they never met their father, who died on 12 May.
Andreas was 12 years old at the time, and Manuel was 10. Zoe's age is unknown, but she was the oldest of the three. The children went on to Rome, where they were put in the care of Cardinal Bessarion, who had also fled the Byzantine Empire many years ago. Bessarion was one of the few Byzantine clerics who had supported the union of the churches. He provided an education for the children and was the mastermind behind Zoe's marriage to Grand Prince Ivan III of Moscow, which was arranged in June 1472. Andreas continued to stay in Rome by consent of Pope Paul II, who recognized him as the heir of Thomas and the Despot of the Morea. Andreas converted to the Roman Catholic Church.
Initially, Andreas's seal bore the double-headed eagle of the Palaiologan emperors and the title "By the grace of God, Despot of the Romans" (). Perhaps in response to feeling as if he was not receiving the respect due to him, Andreas eventually started styling himself as the "Emperor of Constantinople" (), a title never adopted by his father. The first recorded use of that title was on 13 April 1483, when he issued a chrysobull to the Spanish nobleman Pedro Manrique, Count of Osorno, authorizing him and his descendants to bear the arms of the Palaiologan emperors, to create palatine counts, and to naturalize his illegitimate offspring. Though this title differed from the traditional title used by the Byzantine emperors ("Emperor and Autocrat of the Romans"), it was the traditional designation used for the Byzantine emperors by western Europeans, in particular the papacy. Though Jonathan Harris believes that Andreas's upbringing in Rome could have left him unaware that his title differed from the version actually used by the Byzantine emperors, Andreas did render his imperial title as the standard Byzantine version on those occasions when he rendered it in Greek.
Although hereditary succession had never been officially used in the Byzantine Empire, Andreas was recognized as the rightful heir by some of his contemporaries, most prominently Cardinal Bessarion. One of Thomas Palaiologos's advisors from Patras, George Sphrantzes, visited Andreas in 1466 and recognized him as "the successor and heir of the Palaiologan dynasty" and his rightful ruler. Outside of his aspirations of restoring his empire, Andreas's claim to be an emperor was mostly expressed through insisting on various honors, such as insisting that he be allowed to carry the same type of candle as the cardinals during a 1486 procession in the Sistine Chapel.
Financial troubles
The financial troubles which would persist throughout Andreas's life began shortly after Cardinal Bessarion died in 1472. By 1475, at the age of 22, Andreas had begun offering to sell his claims to the imperial thrones of both Constantinople and Trebizond (the Empire of Trebizond being a Byzantine successor state which lasted until 1461), writing letters to several rulers, including the King of Naples (Ferdinand I) and possibly the Duke of Milan (Galeazzo Maria Sforza) and the Duke of Burgundy (Charles). By writing to many different rulers, Andreas was probably looking for the highest bidder. Andreas's younger brother Manuel also fell into financial hardship but had no titles to sell as he was second-in-line. Instead, Manuel left Rome to travel around Europe, seeking to enter the service of a ruler in some military capacity. Receiving no satisfactory offers, Manuel surprised everyone in Rome by traveling to Constantinople in the spring of 1476 and presenting himself before Sultan Mehmed II, who graciously received him and provided him with a generous pension for the rest of his life.
The origin of the financial hardship experienced by Andreas and Manuel likely lies with reductions to the pension paid to them by the papacy. The amount paid initially to their father Thomas had been 300 ducats a month, with an additional 200 per month from the cardinals. Thomas's courtier George Sphrantzes complained that it was barely enough since Thomas not only had to support himself, but also his household. Although Andreas and Manuel were granted the same pension at first, the money was to be shared between them, and the cardinals stopped paying extra money, meaning that the brothers in effect received only 150 ducats each per month, instead of the 500 that had been paid to their father.