Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419

THE LAST OF THE PALÆOLOGI

It would be a curious historical problem to trace the families of emperors and kings, of heroes and conquerors, from the era of their decline and fall to their ultimate extinction. Some 'Old Mortality' might find as congenial employment in this field of sepulchral research as did the original in clearing up the decayed and moss-grown tombs of the Covenanters. The genealogist makes it his business rather to flatter the great by blazoning the antiquity of their pedigrees, than to teach the world a moral lesson on the instability of earthly grandeur, by chronicling their reverses. Yet the churchyard has its heraldry, from whose records wisdom might be extracted for the benefit of the living.

What dynasty in ancient times held a prouder or wider sway than the illustrious masters of the Roman world? The solid fabric of their power was the growth of nearly a thousand years, and it cost about thirteen centuries of revolutions and barbaric invasions before it was undermined and finally extinguished. If its earlier annals were disgraced by the crimes of a Tiberius, a Nero, and a Domitian, they could boast of the virtues and abilities of a Titus, a Trajan, a Nerva, a Hadrian, the two Antonini, &c.; though it must be admitted that latterly the balance sadly preponderated on the side of vice and corruption. If a Justinian or a Constantine appeared, his reign was but a sunbeam in the midst of the universal degeneracy; or if a ray of splendour was shed on the empire by his virtues or his victories, the transient glory was speedily dispelled by irruptions from without, or intrigue and revolt within. Gradually the work of decay proceeded, until the vast expanse of the imperial conquests was contracted to a few provinces, whose capital had been transferred to the shores of the Bosphorus. A languishing existence of about six centuries and a half—that is, from the revival of the western empire in 800 by Charlemagne, to the taking of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453—was brought to a close by the death of Constantine Palæologus, the last of a race who had continued, says Gibbon, 'to assume the titles of Caesar and Augustus after their dominions were circumscribed to the limits of a single city, in which the language as well as manners of the ancient Romans had been long since forgotten!'

The family of Palæologus was of Greek origin, illustrious in birth and merit. 'As early,' says Gibbon, 'as the middle of the eleventh century, the noble race of the Palæologi stands high and conspicuous in Byzantine history. It was the valiant George Palæologus who placed the father of the Comneni on the throne; and his kinsmen or descendants continued in each generation to lead the armies and councils of the state.' The first that wore the imperial purple was Michael, who was elevated to the throne in 1260. Already he had distinguished himself as a soldier and a statesman, and had been promoted in his early youth to the office of 'constable,' or commander of the French mercenaries. His ambition excited jealousy, and some acts of imprudence involved him in dangers from which he thrice escaped. One of those perils was the usual appeal which was made in the middle ages to the 'judgment of God' to vindicate injured innocence. To this ordeal Michael submitted, in presence of the emperor and the archbishop of Philadelphia. 'Three days before the trial, the patient's arm was enclosed in a bag, and secured by the royal signet; and it was incumbent on him to bear a redhot bolt of iron three times from the altar to the rails of the sanctuary, without artifice and without injury. Palæologus eluded the dangerous experiment with sense and pleasantry. "I am a soldier," said he, "and will boldly enter the list with my accusers; but a layman, a sinner like myself, is not endowed with the gift of miracles. Your piety, most holy prelate, may deserve the interposition of Heaven, and from your hands I will receive the fiery globe, the pledge of my innocence." The archbishop started, the emperor smiled, and the absolution or pardon of Michael was approved by rewards and new services.' The voice of the people and the favour of the army placed the crown on his head, in recompense for his military exploits and his public merits. With his accession terminated the reign of the last of the Latin emperors at Constantinople (Baldwin II.), and Michael became the founder of the Grecian dynasty.

The labours of the new monarch to retrieve the calamities of war, by encouraging industry, planting colonies, and extending trade, were deserving of all praise. His ambition raised up against him many enemies, spiritual and temporal; but if his policy was not always judicious, he increased his power and his fame by greatly enlarging his dominions. It was by his intrigues that the revolt of Sicily was instigated. A rude insult to a noble damsel by a Frank soldier, during a procession on the vigil of Easter (1282), spread the flame of insurrection over the whole island, and 8000 Franks were exterminated in a promiscuous massacre, which has obtained the name of the 'Sicilian Vespers.' His son and successor, Andronicus, was reckoned a learned and virtuous prince; but his long reign is chiefly memorable for the disputes of the Greek church, the invasion of the Catalans, and the rise of the Ottoman power. He associated with him in the administration his son Michael, at the age of eighteen; and upon the premature death of the latter, his son Andronicus, the emperor's favourite, became the colleague of his grandfather. The reign of the elder Andronicus was consumed in civil discord and disputes with his family, the young princes having raised the standard of revolt in order to get possession of the throne. He was at length compelled to abdicate; and assuming the monastic habit, he spent the last few years of his life in a cell, blind and wretched, his only consolation being the promise of a more splendid crown in heaven than he had enjoyed on earth.

After a series of inglorious struggles among the princes of the imperial house, the crown settled, in 1391, on Manuel, whose reign, however, was little else than a train of disasters. His capital was besieged by Amurath, and the Turks were masters of nearly the whole of his dominions, which had now shrunk into a small corner of Thrace, between the Propontis and the Black Sea, about fifty miles in length and thirty in breadth. To retrieve his fortunes, Manuel resolved on a journey to foreign countries, believing that the sight of a distressed monarch would draw tears and supplies from the sternest barbarians. From Italy he proceeded to the coast of France, where he was received with the characteristic politeness of the nation. Two thousand of the richest citizens of Paris, armed and on horseback, came forth to meet him; and at the gates he was welcomed as a brother by Charles VI., who saluted him with a cordial embrace. He was clothed in a robe of white silk, and mounted on a milk-white steed—a circumstance of great importance in the French ceremonial, white being considered as the emblem of sovereignty. He was lodged in the Louvre, and a succession of feasts and balls, varied by the pleasures of the chase, was got up for his amusement. Having satisfied his curiosity, but without any prospect of assistance, he resolved to visit England. In his progress from Dover, he was entertained at Canterbury by the prior and monks of St Austin; and on Blackheath Henry IV. saluted the Greek hero, who for several days was honoured and treated in London as Emperor of the East. Having failed in the object of his journey, he returned to Constantinople (1402), and was allowed to finish his reign in prosperity and peace in 1425.

In his declining age, he had appointed as his associate his eldest son John, the second of the name. The corruptions of the church, divided between two popes, and the disputes of the clergy, afforded him ample scope for the exercise of his religious zeal, and it was to heal these ecclesiastical schisms that he undertook a voyage to Italy. But the downfall of his race and of the Grecian dynasty was approaching. At his decease (1448), there were five princes of the imperial house; but the death of Andronicus, and the monastic profession of Isidore, had reduced them to three—Constantine, Demetrius, and Thomas. Constantine ascended the vacant throne, the factious opposition of his brothers having been appeased by the interposition of the empress-mother, the senate, the soldiers, and the clergy, who allowed them the possession of the Morea.

The first act of the new emperor was to despatch an embassy to Georgia to bring home a princess whom he had chosen for his royal consort. His next care was to inquire into the state of public affairs, which had been completely neglected by the weakness or absence of his predecessor. But the imperial drama had reached its last act. The danger which had long brooded over the doomed house of the Palæologi was ready to burst in resistless fury upon the city of the Cæsars. Mohammed II. had vowed to become master of Constantinople, and vast were the preparations and the implements of war which he had provided for its capture or its destruction. The story of the siege need not here be told; nowhere has it been recorded with more picturesque and energetic brevity than in the glowing pages of Gibbon. Operations were carried on with unprecedented vigour and effect, rendered more terrible by the lavish use of gunpowder and artillery, then almost new elements in the art of war. Constantine did all that a Christian prince and a brave general could do. By his example he animated the courage of his soldiers, and revived the hearts of the citizens, sinking in despair. The scene on the day before the assault is thus described by an eye-witness:—'The emperor and some faithful companions entered the dome of St Sophia, which in a few hours was to be converted into a mosque, and devoutly received with tears and prayers the sacrament of the holy communion. He reposed some moments in the palace, which resounded with cries and lamentations; solicited the pardon of all he might have injured; and mounted on horseback to visit the guards and explore the motions of the enemy.' But the dreaded 29th of May had come; the last hour of the city and the empire had struck. After a siege of fifty-three days, Constantinople, to use the words of Gibbon, 'which had defied the power of Chosroes, the chazan, and the caliphs, was irretrievably subdued by the arms of Mohammed II. Her empire only had been subverted by the Latins; her religion was trampled in the dust by the Moslem conquerors.'

Constantine had nobly done his duty. Amidst the swarms of the enemy who had climbed the walls and were pursuing the flying Greeks through the streets, he was long seen with his bravest officers fighting round his person, and finally lost. His only fear was that of falling alive into the hands of the Infidels, and this fate he sought to avert by prudently casting away the purple. Amidst the tumult he was pierced by an unknown hand, and his body was buried under a mountain of the slain. The last words he was heard to utter was the mournful exclamation: 'Cannot there be found a Christian to cut off my head?' His death put an end to resistance and order, and left the capital to be sacked and pillaged by the victorious Turks. Truly has it been said, that the distress and fall of the last Constantine are more glorious than the long prosperity of the Byzantine Cæsars.

The difficulties and dying moments of the emperor have been faithfully and pathetically dramatised by Miss Joanna Baillie in her tragedy of Constantine Palæologus. She adheres closely to history, only she makes her hero receive his deathblow from the sword of a relenting Turk, who admires his bravery, and pronounces over him a farewell eulogy. All writers agree that the last of the imperial Palæologi was the best of his race; and had he not been so ill supported by his worthless subjects, and deserted by every Christian prince in Europe, he might have repelled the tide of Turkish invasion, though he would never have restored the glory of the empire. Yet gallantly did he front the storm, and perish as became the successor of a long line of kings—the last of the Romans.

The fall of Constantine was the signal for the degradation and dispersion of his whole race. His two surviving brothers, Demetrius and Thomas, reigned as despots of the Morea in Greece; but the ruin of the empire was the gloomy prelude to their own misfortunes. Demetrius became the pensioner of the new Turkish emperor Mohammed, and received a city of Thrace and some adjacent islands for his own maintenance and that of his followers. In this state of humiliating dependence he remained until death released him from his ignominious servitude. Thomas, the other brother, was driven into exile by the invasion of his dominions. He fled to Corfu, and from thence to Italy—according to Gibbon's account—'with some naked adherents; his name, his sufferings, and the head of the apostle St Andrew, entitled him to the hospitality of the Vatican, and his misery was prolonged by a pension of 6000 ducats from the pope and cardinals.' He left two sons (he must have had a third, as will afterwards appear), Andrew and Manuel, who were educated in Italy. The eldest degraded himself by the looseness of his life and marriage, and died the inheritor of an empty title. Manuel was tempted to revisit his native country; and after spending the remainder of his life in safety and ease at Constantinople, he was gathered to his fathers, 'an honourable train of Christians and Moslems attending him to the grave.'

From this date—early in the sixteenth century—little is known of the name and lineage of the Palæologi. The crescent waved over the royal city of Constantine; and, as an old Byzantine annalist remarks, the last heir of the last spark of the Roman Empire seemed to be extinct. History had forgotten them, and the restless tide of human vicissitudes rolled onwards, unconscious of their existence. Italy was understood to be the asylum of the imperial outcasts; and there they might have vegetated in oblivion, or dropped into unhonoured graves without leaving a single representative, had not a monumental inscription revealed the fact, that a descendant of the Cæsars had found a retreat and a tomb in an obscure parish in England. In the small church of Landulph, in Cornwall, the following inscription upon a small metal tablet, fixed in the wall, removes all doubt as to the identity and royal pedigree of the person whose memory it records. In its original spelling it runs thus:—'Here lyeth the body of Theodoro Paleologvs of Pesaro in Italye, descended from ye Imperiall lyne of ye last Christian Emperors of Greece, being the sonne of Prosper, the sonne of Theodoro, the sonne of John, the sonne of Thomas, second brother to Constantine Paleologvs, the eighth of that name, and last of ye lyne yt raygned in Constantinople vntill svbdeued by the Turkes; who married with Mary ye davghter of William Balls of Hadlye in Sorffolke Gent., and had issu five children, Theodoro, John, Ferdinando, Maria, and Dorothy, and departed this life at Clyfton ye 21st of Janvary 1636.'1 It appears, then, that Theodore, who married and died in Cornwall, was the fourth in direct descent from Thomas, younger brother of the Emperor Constantine, and who fled 'with some naked adherents to Italy,' where his children were educated.2 The truth of the story related in the inscription was corroborated by a circumstance which happened upwards of twenty years ago. The vault in which Palæologus was interred having been accidently opened, curiosity prompted the lifting of the lid. The coffin, which was made of oak, was in an entire state, and the body sufficiently perfect to shew that the dead man exceeded the common stature. The head was a long oval, and the nose believed to have been aquiline; a long white beard reached down the breast—another symbol of his Greek extraction.

Of his family little is known: Theodore, the eldest son, was a sailor, and died on board the Charles II., as is proved by his will, dated 1693. He appears to have possessed landed property, and to have left a widow named Martha, but no issue. The younger daughter, Dorothy, was married at Landulph to William Arundell in 1636, and died in 1681.3 Maria died unmarried, and was buried in the same church in 1674. Of John and Ferdinando, the other sons, no memorial seems to have been preserved in this country; and it was believed as highly probable that the church of Landulph contained the remains of the last survivors of the Grecian dynasty, once the illustrious sovereigns of Byzantium.

Time, however, the great revealer of secrets, brought to light facts which proved that one of the sons of Theodore of Pesaro in Italy had removed to the West Indies, where he lived for some years, and died in 1678. It is mentioned by the historian Oldmixon4 as a tradition, that a descendant of the former imperial Greek family of Constantinople resided in Barbadoes; but he doubts the fact, without giving any reason for his scepticism. The tradition, however, proves to have been quite current, and the circumstance that led to its confirmation, and to the discovery of the body of Ferdinando Palæologus, and other relics testifying to his connection with the Greek emperors, are narrated by Sir Robert Schomburgk in his recent history of Barbadoes. During the terrible hurricane of 1831, which nearly destroyed the island, among the other public buildings that yielded to the violence of the storm, was the parish church of St John, which stood in a romantic situation near the 'Cliff,' at an elevation of 824 feet. When the ruins were removed, and in clearing out the rubbish, 'the coffin of Ferdinando Palæologus (we quote Sir Robert's account) was discovered under the organ-loft, in the vault of Sir Peter Callotin. The circumstance that the coffin stood in a direction opposite to the others deposited in the vault, drew attention to it; the head was lying to the west, the feet pointing to the east, according to the Greek custom. These accounts raised the curiosity of the rector of the parish; and in order to ascertain how much truth was connected with the tradition, he resolved to examine the supposed coffin of Palæologus; it was consequently opened on the 3d of May 1844, in presence of Mr R. Reici, jun.; Mr. J.G. Young; and Mr J. Hinkson. The coffin was of lead, and in it was found a skeleton of an extraordinary size, imbedded in quicklime, which is another proof of the Greek origin of Palæologus, as it is the custom in Greece to surround the body with quicklime. The coffin was carefully deposited in the vault now in possession of Josiah Heath, Esq., of Quintyer's and Redland.'