Constantine XI Palaiologos
1404 – 1453 · Generation XL · Emperor (r. 1449–1453) · Palaiologos
Constantine XI Palaiologos was the last Byzantine emperor, killed when Constantinople fell to the Ottomans on 29 May 1453. He was the fourth son of Manuel II Palaiologos and the Serbian noblewoman Helena Dragaš, from whom he took the name Dragases. Little is known of his youth, but from the 1420s he proved himself a capable soldier and a trusted deputy to his elder brother John VIII, serving twice as regent while John travelled abroad.
In 1428 he was made Despot of the Morea, the Peloponnese, which he ruled with his brothers Theodore and Thomas. Together they brought almost the whole peninsula back under Byzantine rule for the first time since the Fourth Crusade and rebuilt the ancient Hexamilion wall that guarded the peninsula. Between 1444 and 1446 he campaigned into central Greece and Thessaly, until the Ottoman sultan Murad II marched on the Morea in 1446.
He married twice and was twice widowed. His first wife, Theodora Tocco, whom he married in July 1428, died in November 1429, and his second, Caterina Gattilusio of Lesbos, died about a year after their wedding. When John VIII died childless in October 1448, Constantine was proclaimed emperor at Mystras on 6 January 1449. He inherited little more than a besieged capital, deep division over the union of the Orthodox and Catholic churches agreed at Florence, and no heir.
In 1452 the young sultan Mehmed II built the fortress of Rumelihisarı on the Bosporus to cut the city off, and in April 1453 he laid siege with an army perhaps 80,000 strong. The defenders numbered perhaps a tenth of that. Constantine refused to leave and died fighting in the last assault, although no reliable eyewitness account of his death survives. Later Greek legend made him the Marble Emperor, rescued by an angel and hidden beneath the Golden Gate to return one day and retake the city.
Place in the family
- Constantine XI Palaiologos was the second of 3 children of Manuel II Palaiologos and Helena recorded in this archive.
One of 19 people of Palaiologos (1190–1503) in this archive. The last and longest-lived house — it retook the city in 1261 and lost it in 1453.
Line of descent: Manuel Komnenos → John Komnenos → Alexios I Komnenos → Theodora Komnene → Andronikos Angelos Doukas → Alexios III Angelos → Irene Angelina → Theodora Palaiologina → Michael VIII Palaiologos → Andronikos II Palaiologos → Michael IX Palaiologos → Andronikos III Palaiologos → John V Palaiologos → Manuel II Palaiologos → Constantine XI Palaiologos.
Parents
- Manuel II Palaiologos (1350 – 1425)
- Helena (1372 – 1450)
Siblings
- John VIII Palaiologos (1392 – 1448)
- Thomas Palaiologos (1409 – 1465)
Sources
- Constantine XI Palaiologos · Wikipedia
- Fall of Constantinople · Wikipedia