This book traces the diplomatic, cultural, and commercial links between Constantinople and Venice from the foundation of the Venetian Republic to the Fall of the Byzantine Empire. It aims to show how, with the encouragement of the Fourth Crusade in 1204, the Venetians came to dominate first the Genoese and thereafter the whole Byzantine economy. At the same time, the author points to those important cultural and, above all, political reasons why the relationship between the two states was always inherently unstable.

The Byzantine empire in the last two centuries of its existence had to rebuild itself after its conquest and dismemberment by the Fourth Crusade in 1204. Its emperors in exile recovered Constantinople in 1261 and this book narrates their empire's struggles for survival from that date until its final conquest by Ottoman Turks in 1453. First published in 1972, the book has been completely revised to take account of recent scholarship. It remains the best synthesis of the political, ecclesiastical and historical events of the period.

This is a biography of one of the most unusual Byzantine emperors in Constantinople who reigned from 1347 to 1354, and subsequently spent thirty years as a monk. John Cantacuzene was unique in that he wrote his own memoirs and in his varied talents and interests in a long life, as a soldier, scholar, and theologian. His dealings with the earliest leaders of the Ottoman Turks, with the merchants of Venice and Genoa, with the papacy, and with Stephen Dusan of Serbia also give his career a special interest. This is the first biography of John Cantacuzene in English.

John Cantacuzene reigned as Byzantine emperor in Constantinople from 1347 to 1354. A man of varied talents, as a scholar, soldier, statesman, theologian and monk, John Cantacuzene was unique in being the only emperor to narrate the events of his own career. His memoirs form one of the most interesting and literate of all Byzantine histories. Following his abdication in 1354, he lived the last thirty years of his long life as a monk, a writer and a grey eminence behind the throne. This text is not a social or political history of the Byzantine empire in the 14th century. It is a biography of a...

This is a lively collection of ten short, annotated and illustrated biographies of aristocratic ladies of the final years of the Byzantine empire. Some were ambitious mothers; others, unhappy wives; some were nuns or scholars; one became the wife of a Turkish sultan and the stepmother of a famous son; another the champion of the Greek refugees in Venice after the Turks conquered Constantinople in 1453. Their stories demonstrate the enterprise of some Byzantine women in the male-dominated society of their time.

The Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453 and the phenomenal expansion of the Ottoman Empire thereafter produced a ready market in the West for works about the origins, history and institutions of the Turks. Theodore Spandounes, himself of a Greek refugee family from Constantinople who had settled in Venice, was one of the first to publish such a work. Its final version, published in 1538, was written in Italian. This book offers the first English translation of the complete text, with a historical commentary and explanatory notes.

Constantine XI Palaiologos was the last Christian Emperor of Constantinople and Byzantium. In 1453, when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks, he was last seen fighting at the city walls, but the actual circumstances of his death have remained surrounded in myth. In the years that followed it was said that he was not dead but sleeping - the 'immortal emperor' turned to marble, who would one day be awakened by an angel and drive the Turks out of his city and empire. Donald Nicol's book tells the gripping story of Constantine's life and death, and ends with an intriguing account of claims...

The Byzantines lived in a theocratic society. They were less ready than their western contemporaries to draw the line between things spiritual and things temporal, between Church and state. This book explores some of the characteristics of that society in the age of its decline and fall between the thirteenth and the fifteenth centuries. Though irremediably shattered by the effects of the Fourth Crusade in 1204, the Byzantine Empire found the will to reassert itself and to endure for another 250 years. Material recovery was hardly possible, but there was a remarkable reawakening of...

The Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453 and the phenomenal expansion of the Ottoman Empire thereafter produced a ready market in the West for works about the origins, history and institutions of the Turks. Theodore Spandounes, himself of a Greek refugee family from Constantinople who had settled in Venice, was one of the first to publish such a work. Its final version, published in 1538, was written in Italian. This book offers the first English translation of the complete text, with a historical commentary and explanatory notes.

The district of Epiros in north-western Greece became an independent province following the Fourth Crusade and the dismemberment of the Byzantine Empire by the Latins in 1204. It retained its independence despite the recovery of Constantinople by the Greeks in 1261. Each of its rulers acquired the Byzantine titles of Despot, from which the term Despotate was coined to describe their territory. They preserved their autonomy partly by seeking support from their foreign neighbours in Italy. The fortunes of Epiros were thus affected by the expansionist plans of the Angevin kings of Naples and the...