Download PDF | Constantinople and the Latins_ The Foreign Policy of Andronicus II, 1282-1328 (Harvard Historical Studies)-Harvard University Press (1972).
399 Pages
At the age of twenty-two, Andronicus II became sole ruler of Byzantium. His father, Michael VIII, had been a dashing figure—a good soldier, brilliant diplomat, and the liberator of Constantinople from its fifty-sevenyear Latin occupation. By contrast Andronicus seemed colorless and ineffectual. His problems were immense —partly as a result of his father’s policies—and his reign proved to be a series of frustrations and disasters.
For forty-six years he fought to preserve the empire against constant encroachments. When he was finally deposed in 1328 by his grandson and co-emperor, Andronicus III, almost all of Asia Minor had been lost to the Turks, Westerners had taken over the defense of the Aegean, and the Catalan army he had invited to help him fight the Turks remained to fight the emperor.
In this penetrating account of Andronicus’ foreign policy, Angeliki E. Laiou focuses on Byzantium’s relations with the Latin West, the far-reaching domestic implications of the hostility of western Europe, and the critical decision that faced Andronicus: whether to follow his father’s lead and allow Byzantium to become a European state or to keep it an Eastern, orthodox power.
The author, who argues that foreign policy cannot be understood without examining the domestic factors that influence, indeed create, it, devotes a large part of her study to domestic developments in Byzantium during Andronicus’ reign—the decline of the power of the central government; the spread of semi-independent regional authorities; the state of finances, of the army, of the church.
She concludes that, contrary to common opinion, Andronicus II sincerely desired the union of the Greek and Latin churches, when, in the last years of his reign, he realized that the political situation made such a union necessary. Maintaining also that the conquest of Asia Minor by the Turks was not a foregone conclusion when Andronicus II came to the throne, she discusses at length the errors of policy and the manifold circumstances which combined to precipitate that loss.
Angeliki E. Laiou teaches history at Harvard University.
Harvard Historical Studies, 88 SBN 674-16535-7
Jacket illustration: Andronicus II, from a miniature of Andronicus and Christ, from a chrysobull of 1293 in the Byzantine Museum, Athens. Photograph courtesy of S. P. Lambros, Aebnwyua Butautwav x Abronparopwu (Athens: G.C. Eleftheroudakis, S.A., 1930.)
Acknowledgments
This book was written over a period of six years, during which it has been changed very considerably from its original form. Several of my friends and teachers have helped me to collect the material and to organize my thoughts. Professor D. A. Zakythinos, my teacher at the University of Athens, was the first to show me the delights of Byzantine history and to introduce me to some important aspects of the discipline. I am grateful for his help then and subsequently.
When I began research, Professor Charles H. Taylor of Harvard University and Professor Charles T. Wood of Dartmouth College brought to my attention the information contained in the French National Archives. In fact, part of the book derives from work done in a seminar directed by Mr. Taylor. Later, the director of the French National Archives gave kind and valuable help in locating material from often faulty references. I am also grateful to the Vatican Library for permission to publish the letters of Athanasios I which appear in Appendix I.
A grant from the Canaday Fund, in the summer of 1967, allowed me to spend three uninterrupted months working on the manuscript.
The book was read by several people at various stages. Professor Giles Constable read it when it was still a dissertation, and made important suggestions. Professor H. J. Hanham was very helpful with ideas which cleared up significant portions of the book. I should also like to thank Professor Donald Fleming and Mr. and Mrs. 8. D. Warren for giving the manuscript their attention and comments.
Professor R. L. Wolff, my teacher, advisor, and colleague, directed my Ph.D. dissertation and has since read the manuscript almost as many times as I have, offering unstinting help and advice at every point. Always ready to discuss questions of conceptualization and detail, presenting an example of scholarly excellence, he has been the perfect teacher and advisor. Without his direction, this book would have been impossible.
A. E. L. March 1972 Paris
Introduction
Andronicus IJ Ducas Angelus Comnenus Palaeologus, pious Emperor of the Romans, became sole ruler of Byzantium in his twenty-second year, on the death of his father, Michael VIII, December 11, 1282.! For forty-six years he ruled a state which he and all his contemporaries still called an empire, although it was smaller than most European kingdoms and weaker at sea than either of the two great Italian maritime republics, Venice and Genoa. For forty-six years he tried to preserve his patrimony against Turks, Bulgars, Serbs, Venetians, Catalans, and Tartars, finally to be deposed in 1328 at the age of sixty-eight by his young grandson, Andronicus ITI.
Michael VIII had been a dashing, imposing figure. A good general, a brilliant and subtle diplomat, he had left his mark on the Europe of his day. He had entered Constantinople on August 15, 1261, hailed as the liberator who had ended the hated Latin occupation of fifty-seven years. Michael’s contemporaries could forgive him much because of that one glorious victory. He has come down through history as the last successful Byzantine emperor, a soldier who began the reconquest of the old territories of the empire, a diplomat who formed alliances with Aragonese, and Mongols, and Egyptians to serve his own ends, a statesman who managed to foil the most ambitious and able ruler of his times, Charles of Anjou, the brother of Louis IX of France.”
Viewed against the brilliant exploits of his father, Andronicus seems by contrast a pale, colorless man. He had to pay the bills for Michael’s expensive policies, and his reign was a long story of frustrations and disasters. Any man would have suffered by comparison with Michael VIII. Andronicus, young, inexperienced, and pious, inherited almost insoluble problems. Posterity has dealt unkindly with him, losing sight of his few successes and not evaluating properly the great burdens bequeathed to him. Critics have blamed him for his failure to stop the Turkish conquest of Anatolia. The accusation is easy to make: it is more difficult, and more important, to discover why Andronicus failed.
Here opinions differ. One modern historian has argued that Andronicus neglected Asia Minor and left it open to the Turks because he was so preoccupied by his relations with western Europe.* But a European contemporary -~Marino Sanudo Torsello—maintained that Andronicus’ stubborn refusal to cooperate with the West, on the West’s terms, undermined the defense both of Europe and of Andronicus’ own empire against the Turks, and the same judgment has been passed by V. Laurent.*
A superficial glance at the events of his long reign lends support to the adverse judgment of history. By 1328, when his reign ended, almost all of Asia Minor had been lost to the Turks. Only a few cities, of which the most important was Nicaea, were left to the Byzantines. Westerners—the Genoese of Phocaea, the Hospitalers of Rhodes, the Venetians of Crete and Nigroponte (Euboea)~—-had taken over the defense of much of the Aegean. Andronicus had invited a Catalan army to help him fight the Turks, but instead of obtaining the victory he had expected, had become involved in hostilities with these mercenaries. Other dangers were not well parried. It was as if Michael VIIT’s masterly diplomacy had been reversed.
Venice and Genoa were no longer balanced against one another. Instead, they fought a bloody war in imperial waters and dragged the empire into a conflict that could bring it no profit. Charles of Valois at one point seemed about to take over the moribund empire, whose neighbors, Serbs, Bulgars, and Turks, had already started to overrun it. Byzantium was diplomatically isolated and, after repeated devaluations of the coinage, poor.” During the years of Andronicus’ reign, the empire seemed to be shut in upon itself. Deeply concerned with the preservation of orthodoxy, relinquishing its centralized form of government and losing its cohesion, troubled by civil wars, the empire fought a deadly and mostly lonely war against the Turks. Its failures during the reign of Andronicus IT forecast the eventual collapse of 1453.
On the whole, historians have been satisfied with passing judgment, without undertaking a careful study of Andronicus II’s reign, which, after all, encompasses forty-six of the most formative years of the restored Byzantine Empire. To place Andronicus II’s reign in the proper perspective is neither an easy nor an engaging task, but it is a necessary one, if one is to understand not only Byzantine policy during the period of Andronicus II, but also the predicament of the Byzantine state during the remaining years of its existence.
This book is not a comprehensive history of the reign of Andronicus II, but a study of his foreign policy, and particularly of his relations with western Europe. The recovery of Constantinople by the Byzantines gave the West an incentive to attack Byzantium in an effort to restore a Latin dynasty to the throne. Thus, both Michael VIII and Andronicus II had to face the hostility of western powers—Venice, the Angevins of Naples, the papacy, the French royal house—and had to make considerable efforts to forestall a western attack.
This had far-reaching implications for their domestic policy, as well as for their policy toward other powers. As long as the West was hostile, neither Michael VIII nor Andronicus II could use their full resources to defend the imperial territories in Asia Minor and the Balkans. Andronicus II made a continued and strenuous effort to clarify the Byzantine position with regard to western Europe, while trying to save the eastern part of his empire.
The empire inherited by Andronicus IT from his father was only part of the Byzantine Empire which had been lost to the crusaders in 1204. In Europe, the empire now included Thrace, south of Mesembreia, Macedonia with the frontier stretching south of Philippopolis, Strumica, ProSek, and Prilep, all of which were garrison towns; much of Epirus was still in the hands of a Greek splinter state—the Despotate of Epirus—until parts of it reverted to the Byzantine Empire in 1314-1319.
Thessaly, too, was an independent state, although the northern region reverted to the empire in 1318. To the south were the numerous feudal states set up after the conquest of 1204; of these, the Principality of Achaia in the Peloponnesus was the most important, and it was here that the most productive Byzantine effort took place to recover their heritage from the Franks. In the islands of the Aegean, too, Byzantines and westerners clashed; Nigroponte (Euboea) was the most serious point of conflict, while on Crete the Byzantines maintained agents to stir up opposition against the Venetians. Andronicus II saw it as his task to continue his father’s policy of consolidating Byzantine power by recovering the “‘lost territories’’ in Greece and the Morea.
In terms of revenue, the empire of Andronicus II was very poor. The monies available to the emperor consisted of private and public revenues. His personal income was obtained from his estates, and he also had crown treasures: jewels, and gold and silver plate. Occasionally, the emperor made use of these personal funds, and during the Catalan adventure he melted down some of his treasures. In terms of state revenues proper, the picture is somewhat confused.
The peasantry paid a land tax, which was the basis of state revenues. But although these taxes were collected with zeal, and with some abuses, it was necessary to levy extraordinary taxes to meet particular expenses. Several extraordinary taxes, affecting the large landowner and the small cultivator, as well as urban dwellers, will be mentioned in context. The state still collected some money in the form of duties on shipbuilding, navigation, and commerce, but commercial duties affected domestic merchants, since western ones were granted privileges. Occasionally, domestic merchants, too, were exempted from duties: Michael VIII and Andronicus II granted to the inhabitants of Monembasia privileges which allowed them to engage in virtually untaxed trade.
The fiscal system was also undermined by the spread of the pronota, whose holders were exempted from most taxes, except when an emergency arose. As an institutional term, a pronoia grant designates the grant of a source of revenue to soldiers, as a reward for past services or, in this period, as a guarantee of future participation in the army. Most often, the grant consisted of land. The pronoia had appeared in the Byzantine Empire in the late eleventh century, but it was Michael VIII who, after his accession to the throne, rewarded his several followers with such grants, and also changed the, until then, personal character of the pronoia: upon petition to the emperor, the pronoia-holder could now convert his holding to a hereditary one, although he could still not sell it.
It is difficult to reach firm conclusions about the pronoia system at any particular point in this period, since its spread was sporadic, and not the result of a unified policy. Andronicus IT made many pronoia grants, and in general the pronoia may be seen as the equivalent of a western fief rather than as that of a Byzantine peasant-military holding of the tenth century. That is, the pronoia was a larger grant than the earlier military holding, and with different social implications: it was given not to simple soldiers but to members of an elite, who collected rents and tithes from peasants on the estates granted, and who thus differed substantially from the peasant-soldier of the tenth century.
While this situation obtained in general, the period of Andronicus II was still very fluid; in the sources, the word pronoia was occasionally used to denote small military holdings. Also, although Andronicus made several grants of large pronoiai, he also tried, for a few years in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century, to reverse the trend and create small military holdings in the place of the large, concentrated ones. But in this he failed.
The Byzantine army in this period was a complicated and inefficient institution. There were army units stationed in Asia Minor, Macedonia, Thrace, and the Morea. The commanders were appointed from Constantinople, but the army itself consisted of both local pronoia-holders and soldiers from different parts of the empire (some were refugees), who apparently were paid in cash. There were also foreign mercenaries—Tartars, Alans, Catalans, Turks, and Serbs. All too often, armies were created on the spot, for particular campaigns, and, as will become obvious, they lacked both discipline and training.
Such was the state which Andronicus II tried to preserve, reform, and extend. To this state also he had to give form and direction. The Byzantine Empire was then at a critical pomt: was it going to become a European state, involved and closely connected with the affairs of Europe, as had seemed possible under the reign of Michael] VIII? Or would it remain an eastern power, Orthodox, concerned with Asia Minor and the Balkans, but aloof from developments in western Europe? The issue was fundamental and urgent, and it was decided during Andronicus I1’s reign.
Foreign policy in this period was still made by the senior emperor and his close advisers. Even the co-emperors, Andronicus’ son Michael [X, and _ his grandson Andronicus III, were not involved in policy-making which affected foreign relations. For this reason, the personality of the emperor and of his confidants is an important part of this study. However, a fundamental question arises which must be answered before the personality of the emperor can be considered. The Byzantine Empire of Andronicus II’s period was a relatively decentralized state, and one may well wonder to what extent decisions taken at Constantinople affected the state as a whole. It is a well-attested fact, for example, that imperial officials often acted in ways opposed to state policy: there were officials who did not follow the directives of Constantinople concerning the commercial privileges of Venetian and Genoese merchants, thus giving rise to strained relations between Byzantium, Genoa, and Venice.
In the more remote areas-—-Asia Minor, the Morea, the reconquered parts of Thessaly and Epirus, Greece, even on occasion Macedonia—the control of Constantinople was not very tight insofar as domestic affairs were concerned. Throughout this period privileges granted to walled towns made them resemble communes of the western type: towns with a charter, with a certain amount of self-government, with specific administrative, judicial, and commercial privileges. To some degree this development will be followed, but its effects lie outside our scope, except for one thing: they point up the progressive decentralization of the Byzantine state, and so present the possibility of a discrepancy between expectations and realities—the expectation of Constantinople that its foreign policy decisions would be followed throughout the realm, and the reality that parts of the empire were becoming semi-independent. Foreign policy was taking place at the state level, while the state was degenerating.
To what extent, then, is a study of Byzantine foreign policy—as made in Constantinople—justified and possible? First, one has to remember that the process of the collapse of the Palaeologan state was still at an early stage. By the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century, successive civil wars and enemy invasions had so disrupted the Byzantine state that the emperor’s authority was limited to Constantinople and parts of Thrace, while individual towns, or individual great landlords, or regional governors such as the despot of the Morea occasionally made their own foreign policy decisions. In Andronicus II’s time a different situation obtained. Imperial decisions might be very weakened by the time they filtered down to the outlying provinces, but there was still one level of policymaking, and no one but the emperor took it on himself to make decisions on foreign policy.
There were a few exceptions to this rule— the emperor’s wife, Irene, was one—but they were infrequent. Furthermore, no private individual or imperial official had the military or financial power which would enable him to take and enforce independent decisions. Andronicus III did have considerable power during the civil war of the 1320’s, but he lacked interest in foreign policy. In Asia Minor, of course, as imperial control virtually disappeared after 1302, the governors of cities might decide to surrender to the Turks—as happened in Brusa in 1326-——but such action can hardly be considered foreign policy. In any event, Asia Minor was a special case, because the Turkish threat was still considered a domestic problem, although by its great importance it affected foreign policy.
The foreign policy of Andronicus II is a subject capable of study because Constantinople was recognized in this period as the place where responsible foreign policy was made. The popes, the kings of France, the kings of Naples, the Holy Roman Emperor, Venice, Genoa, Aragon, Sicily, treated with the emperor; only he made and implemented treaties; only he could be held responsible in the last instance if these treaties were broken. The problems surrounding the union of the churches, or alliances with western European powers, or the grant of commercial privileges to western merchants could be resolved only by the emperor. In the eyes of westerners, no one else had the authority to discuss these matters to their conclusion, and this was still a correct interpretation of matters as they stood in the Byzantine Empire. So, in foreign policy, although not necessarily in domestic policy, the center of the Byzantine Empire was still Constantinople, the palace, the emperor.
The emperor’s personality was of particular importance. Andronicus II was not skillful at analyzing political and diplomatic issues, and he often allowed emotional reactions to dictate his policy. Indeed, the differences in the policies of Michael VIII and Andronicus II may be explained in part by the different personal characteristics of the two men.
Michael VIII was an aggressive soldier and diplomat; Andronicus was neither. He was a gentle, contemplative man. He went on a campaign only once, and that was during his father’s lifetime, in 1280, when he went to southern Asia Minor to fight the Turks. Yet even on that occasion he was more interested in rebuilding the ancient city of Tralleis than in fighting. At a time when soldiers were needed, Andronicus’ lack of the martial virtues no doubt contributed to the contempt with which he was viewed by many of his contemporaries. It is strange that he was of so peaceful a disposition, since his immediate family could boast of a number of men who were brave, if often ineffectual, soldiers; his father, his eldest son Michael IX, his grandson Andronicus III were all more interested than he in warfare, while his relatives, the Tarchaneiotes and the Philanthropenoi, were excellent generals.
Michael VIII was fully aware of the contrast between his own temperament and that of Andronicus. It is said that he had much preferred Andronicus’ younger brother, Constantine, who from infancy had been the favorite. Constantine the Porphyrogenitus—born in the purple—had all the virtues an emperor was expected to have, and to those he added a pleasant disposition and a sense of humor. Gregoras wrote that Michael would have liked to bequeath the empire to Constantine, but could not do so because Andronicus was older. Had Michael VIII been a legitimate emperor, he might perhaps have changed the line of succession; he was certainly unscrupulous enough to have done so. But he himself had usurped the throne, and it seems almost certain that the one thing which kept him from making Constantine his heir was the fear of undermining yet further the legitimacy of the dynasty. As it was, he did his best to make Constantine independent of Andronicus: he tried to find a good, rich Latin princess for the boy, and apparently contemplated giving him Macedonia, including Thessalonica, as a semi-independent appanage.’ Along with the burdens of government the young Andronicus thus inherited the emotional burden of knowing that his father did not really want him as an heir. He must have harbored resentments against his father, and it is not accidental that as soon as he became sole emperor he proceeded to reverse many of his father’s policies, and even to clear the administration of the men who had been closest to Michael. Andronicus’ early lack of interest in western European affairs, his passionate concern with Asia Minor, his tolerance for religious and political groups which had opposed Michael must all be seen in the context of his uneasy relations with his domineering father. Only late in his life was Andronicus able to overcome this emotional impediment, and he then embarked upon policies which closely resembled those of his father.
There were further differences in temperament between Andronicus II and Michael VIII. Unlike his father, Andronicus was a profoundly pious man, and his piety was to have unfortunate diplomatic results. Where Michael VIII had subordinated the religious feelings of his orthodox subjects to his own desire for a political and religious union with the West, Andronicus II reversed his father’s policy, bowed to the sentiments of monks, clerics, and people, and dissolved the union of the churches. As a result, there was now no restraint on the ambitions and plans of the various western pretenders to the Byzantine throne whom the union of the churches had held in check. On at least two occasions, in 131] and in 1324-1327, Andronicus recognized the dangers of his policy, and allowed political realities to overcome his piety; he then suggested a new union of the Byzantine and Latin churches. But none of these negotiations came to a conclusion. In his later years, piety was reinforced by superstition, a sad combination, but understandable in a sad, disappointed, and harassed man.
Andronicus had many attractive personal characteristics. He was intelligent, very honorable, and had a high concept of family loyalty. Yet this was a dangerous period, which demanded that in a ruler intelligence be tempered with tough realism, honesty with diplomatic agility, family feelings with a degree of harshness. Only rarely did Andronicus behave in accordance with the demands of his times. He surrounded himself with a number of intellectuals, such as Nicephorus Choumnos, Theodore Metochites, and Nicephorus Gregoras, all of whom made important contributions to Byzantine letters and scientific thought. But he should not have permitted Metochites—neither very able, nor very honest—to influence domestic and foreign policy. Metochites, in fact, was a greedy opportunist whose only saving grace was that he used some of the wealth he acquired to rebuild and decorate the monastery of the Chora (Khariye Djami), whose beautiful frescoes and mosaics are now once again restored.® Andronicus II’s entourage, including as it did a large number of intellectuals, reflected the emperor’s love for erudite discussion. It is, of course, not possible to assess how much time, which might profitably have been allotted to policy matters, was diverted to the perusal of theological or philosophical matters. Yet a glance at Pachymeres and Gregoras, the main Byzantine sources for this period, indicates that the emperor spent a considerable part of his time in such discussions. Byzantium had an intellectual emperor at a time when it could ill afford him; and the strange phenomenon of rapid deterioration of the state on the one hand, and the flourishing of cultural life on the other, a phenomenon typical of the Byzantine Empire in the last century of its existence, began during the reign of Andronicus II.
In his relations with his family, Andronicus showed a curious mixture of passionate attachment and violent withdrawal when he thought his relatives had betrayed him. One of the most crushing blows of his life came in 1295 when a nephew whom he loved and trusted rebelled against him; it was a blow that he could not respond to rationally. His love for his second wife, YolandaIrene of Montferrat, at times led him to give way to her whims, to the discomfiture of his friends. His piety apparently did not restrain his sexual ardor; he was so persistent a husband, that his wife accused him of satyriasis when she was angry with him. Yet much as he loved her, when she tried to persuade him to parcel out the empire among her sons, he refused, and continued to refuse even though she left his palace and Constantinople itself, and retired to Thessalonica.®
The two basic traits of Andronicus’ character were his sense of honor and his high regard for the office of emperor. Those who advised actions that flagrantly reflected on his honor or dignity did so at their peril. He himself voiced his lofty conception of the duties and responsibilities of his office:
[The emperor] must examine the lists of his armies, and must make ready with arms, and he must be able to raise many and great forces for [his]
struggles against the enemies. . . For there is a time of peace and a time of war, and the things pertaining to each are clearly separated, and the emperor must be able to meet both in a worthy manner . . . I say that he who
reigns by the grace of God must no less think it his duty to provide for the souls [of his subjects], that they may turn toward heaven and that they may choose to live according to divine precepts.'°®
Certainly these are worthy sentiments. ‘That he failed to hve up to them was the result partly of his own inability to assess developments correctly as they arose, partly of factors beyond his control, and partly of the fact that he was a weak man, easily swayed by others and unable to pursue his aims long enough and persistently enough to accomplish them. During much of his life he was under the influence of his father, his second wife, his eldest son, Michael, Theodore Metochites, and the patriarch Athanasios I, all of them people of very forceful character. Even so, he surprised them all] at times by going against their advice.
The most striking example of this was his conflict with the patriarch Athanasios, who normally had his way with the emperor. In the winter of 1306-1307, the population of Constantinople was under the double threat of famine and conquest by the Catalans, who were in control of Thrace. Andronicus conceived the difficult and dangerous plan of starving the Catalans out of Thrace before they could attack the city. He forbade his subjects to cultivate the fields of Thrace, so that the Catalans would be forced by hunger to leave. The obvious danger was that the inhabitants of Constantinople would starve before the Catalans did; and the patriarch, in his role as protector of the poor, implored, advised, and requested the emperor to retract his orders. Andronicus, for once, stood firm, and in doing so saved his empire from a threat that was only too real.'! Unfortunately, his convictions were rarely strong enough to enable him to override the advice of others.
In general, Andronicus was a good, pious, honorable, and generous man. One should not allow the flamboyant successes of Michael VIII to obscure the real problems he left to his son, or pass too harsh a judgment on a man who had to contend with more dangerous situations and take more important and difficult decisions than fall to the lot of most statesmen. Andronicus IJ cuts a sad figure when contrasted with his father and with the young, chivalrous, handsome grandson who succeeded him. Perhaps he reigned too long and was too tired by the end of his reign.1? But he did prevent Constantinople from becoming the capital of a second Latin empire, where the Catalans, the Venetians, and Charles of Valois would have reenacted the miseries of the first Latin Empire. This was no mean feat, and he accomplished it alone. For the rest, the reader will have to keep an open mind, and temper his criticism with a certain amount of compassion for this man who had grandiose ideas without the means to fulfill them, great learning but little political wisdom, and on whom it fell to be the impotent witness of the visible beginnings of the long decline of the empire restored by his father.
This study of Andronicus IT’s relations with western Europe is not a diplomatic history of the traditional type. The trend in modern historiography is to see diplomatic relations as much more than the sum of dispatches, negotiations and treaties, and this is a healthy trend. For such things are only the end result of complex issues which transcend the diplomatic game or form its background. When we move from the level of description to that of interpretation and explanation, the end result is no longer sufficient. The same argument applies a fortiori to discussions of foreign policy. One can describe the foreign policy of Andronicus IT by looking at his treaties with western states, by following his negotiations, successful or not, and the effect of these on his subsequent policy.'*? But such an enterprise would explain very little. Foreign policy does not take place at a rarified sphere, where nothing intrudes upon statesmen except their relations to each other.
On the contrary, domestic issues inform foreign policy as much as international ones, and are perhaps more important in explaining it. Andronicus II’s relations with western Europe cannot be explained without an adequate understanding of the Byzantine attitude to the question of the union of the Greek and Latin churches, without discussion of the internal pressures on both Andronicus II and his western counterparts, above all, without a discussion of the means through which foreign policy becomes effective: the army, the navy, finances. It is a truism today that diplomatic arrangements are only as effective as the relative strength of the states which have undertaken them. That was not less so in the Middle Ages. ‘Therefore, a substantial part of this work has been devoted to domestic issues. Without these sections, this book would have been a different one: more concise but more arid, and much less useful as an aid to understanding Byzantine foreign policy in the reign of Andronicus IT.
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