Michael VIII Palaeologus

Michael VIII (1225 - December 11, 1282) was the founder of the Palaeologos dynasty that would rule the Byzantine Empire to the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. He ruled the Empire from 1261 to his death.

He deposed the young John IV Lascaris, whose regent he had been. He capitalized on the attempts of his predecessors in the Empire of Nicaea to restore the throne in Constantinople and put the Empire back on the map as a force to be reckoned with. He realized that the danger existed that the Latin West, particularly his neighbors in Italy (Charles of Anjou, Pope Martin IV, and the Venetians) would be unified against him and set out to avoid the mistakes of Manuel I.

To drive a wedge between the pope and the others he decided to unify the Byzantine church with the Catholic one; a tenuous union between the Greek and Latin church was signed at the Council of Lyons in 1274. He did so at a great price at home: his prisons filled with many disgruntled people of Orthodox faith. For a while the wedge worked but in the end Martin IV (working in part for Charles of Anjou) excommunicated him. Then he needed a new wedge and used truly "Byzantine" diplomacy to get the Catalans of Peter III of Aragon to attack Sicily, thus cutting Charles's kingdom in half. (See the Sicilian Vespers massacre.)

This is a list of Byzantine Emperors.

Note: It is difficult to determine when exactly the Roman Empire ends and the Byzantine Empire begins; Diocletian split the Roman Empire into eastern and western halves for administrative purposes in 284. Candidates for the "first" Byzantine emperor include Constantine I (the first Christian emperor, who moved the capital to Constantinople), Valens (the Battle of Adrianople (378) provides one of the traditional cut-off events to mark the start of the medieval period), Arcadius (treating Theodosius I as the last emperor of a single Roman Empire), and Zeno I (as the last western emperor Romulus Augustus was deposed during his reign). Others date the beginning of the Empire even as late as Heraclius (who replaced the traditional Roman imperial title of "Augustus" with "Basileus", the Greek word for "Emperor", and discontinued the use of Latin by making Greek the official language). Numismatists note the monetary reforms of Anastasius I in 498, which used the Greek numbering system. Of course, the Byzantines themselves continued to think of their empire as "Roman" for over a millennium.


View Live Article	This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

Michael VIII Palaeologus

Constantinian dynasty

Non-dynastic

Valentinian-Theodosian dynasty

Dynasty of Leo

Justinian dynasty

Non-dynastic

Heraclian dynasty

Non-dynastic

Isaurian dynasty

Non-dynastic

Amorian (or Phrygian) dynasty

Macedonian dynasty

Non-dynastic

Ducaian-Comnenan dynasty

Angelan dynasty

Lascaran dynasty (in exile in the Empire of Nicaea during the time of the Latin Empire)

Palaeologan Dynasty (restored at Constantinople)