Written for The Historical Times Magazine : Byzantine Edition
By 1346, the Byzantine Empire was in steep decline – no longer the powerful bastion of Eastern Christendom.
In the 11th Century, a wave of Turkic tribes fleeing Mongol oppression entered Byzantine lands in the east in search of a new homeland. The crushing defeat of the Byzantine army at Manzikert in 1071 by the Seljuk Sultan Alp Arslan opened the way for their westward migration. A century later in 1176, at the Battle of Myriocephalon, the Seljuks won a second decisive victory over the Byzantines sweeping away their resistance. Turkic migration across Anatolia was now almost unhindered.
Byzantine power also came under attack from the west. Centuries of conflict following the Great Schism between Pope and Emperor led to the fall of Constantinople in 1204. This attack on Byzantium by Latin knights of the Fourth Crusade weakened the Eastern Roman Empire irreversibly and lay the foundations for its ultimate collapse. However, the Byzantines succeeded in regaining control of Constantinople in 1261, but at considerable cost. In their effort to recapture their capital, they turned their backs on their empire’s Anatolian hinterland, allowing the Turkic tribes to push even further west towards the shores of the Marmara and Aegean Seas.
The Byzantine Empire was further being weakened from within. The ambiguous laws of succession, internal disputes and dynastic jealousies resulted in a series of long and destructive civil wars. The Turkic beyliks took advantage of the constant discord between factions within the Byzantine Court to cement their power and assert their authority in Anatolia. One such Turkic beylik, strategically situated on the Byzantine frontier, would emerge above all others to inherit the lands of the crumbling Eastern Roman Empire and establish a new world order… The Ottomans.
(photo – @fiveminthistory)
Osman I inherited the Ottoman beylik from his father Ertuğrul Gazi in 1281, becoming the chief of the Kayı tribe. He declared independence from the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum in 1299, thereby establishing the Ottoman Principality that was to develop into the Ottoman Empire. He initiated a campaign of raids and expansion into Bithynia, the Byzantine’s last held territories in western Anatolian, aided by his son and heir Orhan. This audacious campaign of conquest culminated in the siege and capture of Bursa on 6th April 1326. Byzantine power in Anatolia had all but collapsed. The Ottomans were poised to play their part in history…
Orhan continued his father’s legacy by expanding his territories through conquest. Byzantine towns and villages on the Black Sea coast, along the Bosphorus and on the south shores of the Marmara Sea fell to his superior and more disciplined forces. In 1331 Nicaea, the most important Byzantine city after Constantinople, surrendered to the Ottomans followed by Nicomedia and Pergamum. During the second half of his reign, Orhan consolidated his power by securing a period of peace and stability enabling him to establish legislative bodies, religious and educational foundations, and a large standing army. It was clear that the Ottomans had decided to settle in Anatolia, and the new Byzantine Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos quickly realised that he needed to make Orhan his ally.
In 1341 Emperor Andronikus III Palaeologus died unexpectedly, leaving his nine-year-old son John V as his successor. Having served as Commander-in-Chief of the Byzantine army under the former Emperor, and been his most trusted adviser, John Kantakouzenos assumed the role of regent. However, encouraged by jealousies of rival courtiers, the Empress Dowager Anna of Savoy distrusted his ambitions. She allied herself with his enemies, and while he was away from Constantinople inspecting the Empire’s borders his regency was overthrown, his family exiled or imprisoned, his property confiscated, and his army ordered to disband. This they refused to do. Instead, his army proclaimed him Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos. He announced his intention to co-rule with the young Emperor and vowed to overthrow those responsible for usurping his regency. And so began another Byzantine civil war that was to last until 1347.
Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos looked to the most powerful of the Turkic rulers, Orhan I, for aid and support in his war against the regency in Constantinople. He wanted to cement a deep, long-lasting diplomatic alliance with the Ottomans, so offered Sultan Orhan I his daughter Princess Theodora Maria’s hand in marriage. The Sultan knew a marriage alliance with a Byzantine princess would increase his political prestige and influence in the region, so agreed. In the summer of 1346, the Byzantine princess was escorted to the city of Selymbria on the Sea of Marmara amid great pomp and circumstance. Princess Theodora sat on a throne of gold surrounded by curtains of silk and gold with armed guards at her side. At a signal these curtains opened to reveal the princess dressed in a gown of imperial Byzantium purple, encircled by kneeling eunuchs and ceremonial marriage torches. She was greeted with great ceremony by high-ranking dignitaries of the Ottoman Court accompanied by a full Ottoman cavalry regiment. The Sultan had also sent a fleet of thirty ships to carry his young bride across the sea to Bithynia, once Byzantine but now Ottoman territory. The joyful sound of flutes and trumpets filled the air as Theodora boarded one of the waiting ships, and the voices of poets chanting nuptial songs accompanied her out of port. Sultan Orhan awaited her at his camp where the couple were married, before travelling inland to the Ottoman capital of Bursa where she entered his harem and became known as Theodora Hatun.
Following the wedding, a large Ottoman army moved into Thrace in support of John VI Kantakouzenos. A combined Byzantine and Ottoman force then advanced on the capital and surrounded the walled city hoping it would surrender. Months passed until supporters of John VI Kantakouzenos managed to open the gates finally allowing the Emperor to enter in triumph on 8th February 1347. An agreement was reached between the two warring factions whereby both emperors would rule together, but with John VI Kantakouzenos ruling as senior Emperor for a ten-year period until John V Palaeologus reached maturity at which time power would be shared equally between them. Later that year in May 1347 John V Palaeologus married John VI Kantakouzenos’ daughter Helena, Princess Theodora’s younger sister, in an attempt to maintain the fragile peace. This brought an end to the devastating civil war. A war that cost the already beleaguered Byzantine Empire dearly – concessions had been made to the Ottomans, half its remaining territory had been lost to the kingdoms of Serbia and Bulgaria, the economy lay in tatters, tensions had been heightened between the maritime powers of Genoa and Venice, the population was divided and discontented, the army depleted, and large swathes of land had been plundered.
But what of Princess Theodora Maria Kantakouzenos? What of her fate?
It is known that she was permitted to observe her Greek Orthodox faith during her marriage to Sultan Orhan I, and that she played an active role in supporting and protecting the rights of fellow Christians living under Ottoman rule. Together with her husband, she attended the spectacular three-day celebrations held in Chrysopolis, a village nestled on the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus, to commemorate her father’s victory in the Byzantine Civil War in February 1347. It is also known that she gave birth to a son, named Halil, probably not long after these celebrations. She then disappears from the pages of history until the deaths of both her husband and her son in 1362, which affords her the opportunity to leave Bursa and return to live with her sister Empress Helena at the Imperial Byzantine Court in Constantinople.
During the fifteen years that Princess Theodora was at the Ottoman Court she lived a life of opulence and comfort – respected as wife to the ruling Sultan, as mother to an Ottoman prince and as the princess she was.
In 1354 her father, Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos, was deposed and sent to live in a monastery. He died on 15th June 1383, having spent his years as a monk in prayer and documenting details of his reign.
In 1356/57 Princess Theodora’s son Halil was captured by Genoese pirates and held captive at the fort of Phocaea on the Aegean coast. Sultan Orhan was distraught and appealed to the Byzantine Emperor for help. After failed attempts at his rescue, the Sultan went to Scutari on the Asiatic shores of the Bosphorus to negotiate terms for his son’s release and agreed to pay a large ransom of 30,000 ducats. Prince Halil was released in 1359. As part of the agreement, Prince Halil was betrothed and later married to Princess Irene, a daughter of Emperor John V Palaeologus and Empress Helena Kantakouzenos – Princess Theodora’s sister, and his first cousin. The young couple had two sons born in 1360 and 1361 named Gündüz and Ömer.
In 1362 Sultan Orhan I died. Soon after Prince Halil was executed on the orders of his brother, Sultan Murad I. Sultan Murad knew that the Byzantine Emperor wanted Prince Halil to replace him on the Ottoman throne and would use all means to manipulate him to achieve these ends. The marriage treaty that Sultan Orhan had signed just a few years before to save his son from his kidnappers, ended up being his death warrant. As for the fate of the two baby princes, Gündüz and Ömer, nothing is known.
The Sultan’s Byzantine bride, Princess Theodora Maria Kantakouzenos, died in 1396 having lived a life of heartbreak and adventure at both the Byzantine and Ottoman Courts – leaving behind no trace of her life, not even an image… And within fifty years, an Ottoman Sultan would be ruling his Empire from Constantinople…
