The History of Byzantium · [email protected]

Episode 323 - At Least Things Can’t Get Any Worse

April 25, 2025·29 min·2 clips

A mysterious plague strikes Constantinople, killing indiscriminately and emptying the city in terror.

John Cantacuzinos walks into a wrecked empire. The civil war is over, but the damage is everywhere: Serbian Macedonia, rebellious Thessaloniki, ruined Thrace, and subjects who remember Turkish mercenaries terrorizing ordinary Romans. He is resourceful, but hardly loved. The host presents him as a ruler who won power while leaving some Romans convinced he looked down on the people he ruled. Money is tight. Galata, the Genoese colony across the Golden Horn, is taking in 200,000 gold coins a year, while imperial officials collect only 30,000. John tries the practical route. He builds ships and cuts tariffs at the capital, hoping to pull trade away from Genoese control and bring money back to the state. It goes badly. The Genoese attack the shipyards, destroy Byzantine vessels in the Golden Horn, and answer a Roman assault on Galata with catapults that hit the Church of the Virgin at Flacerni. John keeps going anyway. He finds more money, builds again, and wins reparations plus an offer of rent for Chios because the fighting is bad for trade. That is a win, but a small one. The Romans are not a serious threat to Genoese power, so John takes what he can get and uses the ships he has to deal with Thessaloniki. The Zealots have ruled there for eight years. They still support young John Palaeologos, but Serbian expansion into Greece makes their position look dangerous. Returning to Constantinople has a grim logic. If Thessaloniki stays apart, Stefan Dusan may surround and swallow it; if it returns, many Zealots expect punishment for earlier violence. The politics feel personal because they are. The host's judgment stays dry and bleak, since every answer available to Cantacuzinos seems to open another wound. The ending is darker. The Romans cannot rebuild alone, and an independent Turkish base in Thrace looks, even without hindsight, like a horrendous danger after a decade of enslavement and slaughter by supposed allies.

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from The History of Byzantium