Kinlight · The Byzantine Emperors

John V Palaiologos

1332 – 1391 · Generation XXXVIII · Emperor (r. 1341–1391) · Palaiologos

Portrait of John V Palaiologos

John (AD 1332 – 1391). Emperor (r. 1341–1391). Married Helena around AD 1347. Son of Andronikos III; long reign interrupted by civil wars. Emperor from the age of eight, he watched his mother pawn the crown jewels to Venice while regents fought over him and the Black Death swept the capital. His appeal to Serbia in the second civil war ended in a Turkish victory at Demotika that handed the Ottomans their first European soil. Searching the West for help, he converted to Catholicism in Saint Peter’s in 1369 — the first emperor to visit Rome in seven centuries — only to be detained in Venice as a debtor on the way home; by 1371 he had accepted Ottoman suzerainty. Twice deposed, by son and by grandson, he was finally ordered by Bayezid I to demolish his new fortifications at the Golden Gate. He obeyed, and the humiliation is said to have hastened his death.

One of 20 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 KomnenosJohn KomnenosAlexios I KomnenosTheodora KomneneAndronikos Angelos DoukasAlexios III AngelosIrene AngelinaTheodora PalaiologinaMichael VIII PalaiologosAndronikos II PalaiologosMichael IX PalaiologosAndronikos III PalaiologosJohn V Palaiologos.

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Life

  • 1332 — Born
  • 1347 — Married Helena
  • 1391 — Died

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