The major internal event of the fourteenth century was the second civil war, which lasted from 1341 to 1354. Earlier, a civil war had been fought between Andronikos II and his grandson, Andronikos III. It lasted intermittently for seven years (1321-8) and had perhaps been primarily an intra-aristocratic affair, with members of a younger generation trying to seize the crown from the old emperor. Yet it was also attended by the involvement (at the request of both parties) of the Serbians and the Bulgarians (Laiou 1972: 284-300). The second civil war, by contrast, was a much more complex affair. It, too, began as a struggle for the throne, between John Kantakouzenos, member of a great and wealthy family, and the regency for John V, the heir to the throne: Johns mother Anne of Savoy, the Patriarch John Kalekas, and the megas doux Alexios Apokaukos, a man who had become powerful in the administration. However, almost immediately the war acquired strong social aspects. Although all generalizations regarding this issue have exceptions, it holds generally true that John Kantakouzenos was backed by the landed aristocracy, while Apokaukos was backed by the merchants (quite a powerful group), the sailors, and the common people, especially in the cities. The social aspect of the civil war became more evident with the passage of time, particularly in Thessalonike which was ruled by the ‘Zealots’, a radical group whose ideology remains hidden under the obscuring veil of hostile sources; they seem to have been sailors and other people connected with the sea, including possibly some refugees, although their leaders bore aristocratic or upper-class names (such as Michael and Andrew Palaiologos). Some members of the aristocracy of Thessalonike were killed, while the rest fled the city, spreading the tale of the reversal of the natural order of social relations.
Eventually, John Kantakouzenos and the aristocracy won the battle, although they very much lost the war. The opposition collapsed in 1344 and 1345, Alexios Apokaukos was assassinated in 1345, and in early 1346 Kantakouzenos entered Constantinople as co-emperor. He is known as John VI. Thessalonike resisted until 1350, and four years later John V Palaiologos forced John VI to abdicate; he became a monk, and his retirement from imperial politics marks the real end of the civil war.
The war had other overtones as well. Apart from the fact that it is rather reminiscent of the revolution of 1339 in Genoa and the accession of Simone Boccanegra to
Power (although no direct connection can be established: Sevcenko 1953: 603-17), there are tantalizing statements in the sources that Alexios Apokaukos aimed at establishing a new type of Byzantine state: essentially a coastal state, with Constantinople as its capital (Kantak., vol. 2: 537). Such a state would necessarily be tied to commerce, not to agriculture, in emulation of the maritime cities of Italy, and it might well have been westward-looking. Moreover, the civil war was contemporary with a crisis in the Byzantine Church, the Hesychast controversy, which centred on the question of the possibility of experiencing God in his essence through a form of mystical prayer, as the Hesychasts claimed (Meyendorff 1959). While the debate regarding the experience of God in his essence rather than through his works was certainly not novel in the context of medieval Christianity, it acquired major importance in the 1340s and became, to some extent, tied to the civil war, mostly because major proponents of Hesychasm, like the learned Gregory Palamas, were also staunch supporters of Kantakouzenos. His triumph spelled theirs as well.
The political triumph was entirely illusory. In order to win the war, Kantakouzenos had called in foreign allies: Stephen Du§an, krai of Serbia, the Seljuks of the emirate of Aydin, and the Ottomans. Stephen Dusan had brought the Serbian state to its apex. Expanding into Macedonia since the late thirteenth century, the Serbs, who were experiencing a silver rush because of the production of the Novo Brdo mines, and who were undergoing political transformations, were ready for much more than an alliance with the Byzantines. Dusan ended up conquering much of Macedonia, Thessaly, Epiros, and part of Greece, and besieging, though not taking, Thessalonike. After the conquest of Serres, he proclaimed himself Emperor of the Serbs and the Romans, laying claim to the universal empire. His state was ephemeral, but after his death in 1355 Serbian principalities remained on Byzantine soil, notably that of Serres, under John Ugljesha.
The Ottomans, too, had been invited by John Kantakouzenos to Europe, to help him fight the civil war. In 1354, the year Kantakouzenos abdicated, they took over the fort of Gallipoli. They were never to leave Europe again; from that strategic position they began the conquest of the European provinces of the Empire.
The Byzantine aristocracy emerged from the civil war severely weakened. Two civil wars with looting armies had impoverished the countryside, while Dusan confiscated a number of estates to reward his own soldiers (Laiou 1985: 148-56; Oikonomides 1980). Between that and the Ottoman conquests that were soon to follow, the land base of the economic strength of the aristocracy was greatly reduced. Some aristocrats were to turn to commerce and banking instead (Oikonomides 1979).
World History
