Essays on the Latin Orient

John Stuart Mill · en
Boniface’s son, although born in the country and named after Salonika’s
patron-saint (whose church was, however, the property of the chapter
of the Holy Sepulchre while a Latin archbishop occupied the see), was
then barely two years old. His mother was regent, but the real power was
wielded by her bailie, the ambitious count of Biandrate, whose policy
was to separate the kingdom from the Latin empire and draw it closer to
the Italian marquisate. His quarrels with the Emperor Henry were viewed
with joy by the Greeks; and, after his retirement, and in the absence
of the young king in Italy, the kingdom was easily occupied, in 1223,
by Theodore Angelos[441], the vigorous ruler of Epeiros, where, as at
Nice, the city of the famous council, Hellenism, temporarily exiled from
its natural capital, had found a refuge. The Greek conqueror exchanged
the more modest title of “Despot of Epeiros” for that of “Emperor of
Salonika,” while the exiled monarch and his successors continued to amuse
themselves by styling themselves titular kings of Salonika for another
century. But the separate Greek empire of Salonika was destined to live
but little longer than the Latin kingdom. The first Greek Emperor, by one
of those sudden reverses of fortune so characteristic of Balkan politics
in all ages, fell into the hands of the Bulgarians; and, after having
been reduced to the lesser dignity of a Despotat, the empire which he had
founded was finally annexed, in 1246, to the stronger and rival Greek
empire of Nice, which, in 1261, likewise absorbed the Latin empire of
Constantinople. No coins of the Latin kingdom exist; but we have a seal
of Boniface, with a representation of the city walls upon it. Of the
Greek empire of Salonika there are silver and bronze pieces, bearing the
figure of the city’s patron-saint; while a tower contains an inscription
to “Manuel the Despot,” identified by Monsignor Duchesne[442] with Manuel
Angelos (1230-40), the Emperor Theodore’s brother and successor, but
locally ascribed to a Manuel Palaiologos, perhaps the subsequent Emperor
Manuel II, Despot and governor of Salonika in 1369-70.