June 1341 – February 1347
The Byzantine civil war, 1341–1347
Andronikos III dies in June 1341, and his son John V is nine years old. John Kantakouzenos, the late emperor’s chief minister, acts as regent. In September, while he is away from Constantinople, the megas doux Alexios Apokaukos and Patriarch John XIV win over the empress Anna of Savoy and take power. In October 1341 Kantakouzenos’s army proclaims him emperor at Didymoteicho, and the two sides go to war.
The megas doux Alexios Apokaukos in a manuscript of Hippocrates made for him, 14th centuryWikimedia Commons, Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0 (Alexios Apokaukos. Photograph after XIV century Greek manusc Wellcome V0028644.jpg)
Most towns of Thrace and Macedonia side with the regency, and the Zealots take over Thessalonica. In the winter of 1342–1343 Umur of Aydın sails up the Maritsa with a large fleet, relieves Didymoteicho and fights for Kantakouzenos until 1344, when a crusading fleet takes the harbour castle of Smyrna and draws him home. Stefan Dušan of Serbia, first Kantakouzenos’s ally and then the regency’s, takes most of Macedonia, Serres in September 1345, and is crowned emperor at Skopje on 16 April 1346.
Stefan Dušan as emperor in a fresco of the monastery of Lesnovo, 1349Wikimedia Commons, unknown painter, CC BY-SA 3.0 (Stefan Uroš IV Dušan of Serbia Lesnovo fresco.JPG)
From 1345 Orhan sends troops to Kantakouzenos. In the summer of 1346 Orhan marries Kantakouzenos’s daughter Theodora: his envoys come to Selymbria with 30 ships and take her across the Marmara to Bithynia. On the night of 2 February 1347 Kantakouzenos’s men enter Constantinople by the Golden Gate, and on 8 February he becomes senior emperor beside John V. The Black Death reaches the city the same year.
Sources
- John VI Kantakouzenos, Histories, books 3 and 4.
- Donald M. Nicol, The Last Centuries of Byzantium, 1261–1453 (2nd ed., 1993).
- John V. A. Fine, The Late Medieval Balkans (1987).
- Paul Lemerle, L’Émirat d’Aydin, Byzance et l’Occident (1957).
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