Byzantium between the Ottomans and the Latins: A study of political attitudes in the late Palaiologan period, 1370-1460

This dissertation is a study of the political attitudes that emerged in the last century of the Byzantine Empire in response to rapid Ottoman military expansion. In an atmosphere of political and military instability marked by civil wars and foreign invasions, how people from different segments of Byzantine society reacted to the Ottoman threat, what kinds of solutions they sought, and the corresponding choices they made with respect to foreign alliances are problems that merit careful investigation. A primary goal of the dissertation is to trace the links between the political dispositions of individuals or groups and their socio-economic interests through prosopographic research.; Chapter One establishes the background by a discussion of overall political events. In Chapters Two and Three, an overview of the political attitudes of the inhabitants of Thessaloniki is supplemented by a comparative analysis of social and economic conditions during three administrations (Byzantine, Ottoman and Venetian) under which the citizens lived between 1382 and 1430. Chapter Four turns to Constantinople and examines the rivalries and dissensions in the imperial court that demonstrate the extent to which the Ottomans interfered in Byzantine internal affairs during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Chapter Five deals with Bayezid I's siege of Constantinople (1394-1402) as a case study for the specific economic adjustments, social tensions, and political responses a direct military threat from the Ottomans gave rise to. In Chapter Six, the dispositions of various individuals or social groups in Constantinopole vis-a-vis the Ottomans, the Latins, and the question of Church union are analyzed in the context of the political, economic and social developments of the last fifty years preceding the city's fall to the Ottomans in 1453. The final two chapters focusing on the Morea pick up some themes addressed in connection with the countryside of Thessaloniki and provide a basis for comparing and contrasting the local factors that played a role in the political choices made by the Empire's rural populations. Lastly, the attitudes upheld in ecclesiastical and monastic circles with regard to the Ottomans and Latins is a theme embedded in all chapters.