Andreas Palaiologos, Date of Birth, Date of Death
TweetAndreas Palaiologos
pretender Despot of the Morea
Date of Birth: 
About Andreas Palaiologos
- Andreas Palaiologos or Palaeologus (Greek: ??d??a? ?a?a???????; Serbian Cyrillic: ??????? ????????; 17 January 1453 – 7 April 1502), sometimes anglicised to Andrew, was the titular Despot of the Morea from the death of his father Thomas Palaiologos in 1465, to his own death in 1502.
- After the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the subsequent Ottoman invasion of the Morea in 1460, Thomas fled to Corfu, with his children Andreas, Manuel and Zoe.
- After the death of Thomas in 1465, the then twelve-year-old Andreas moved to Rome and, as the nephew of the final Byzantine emperor Constantine XI, became the head of the Palaiologos family and the chief claimant to the throne of the ancient Byzantine Empire. Thus from the 1480s, Andreas claimed the title of "Emperor of Constantinople".
- His use of this title was supported by some of the Byzantine refugees who lived in Italy, but not officially by the Pope, who only recognised him as the Despot of the Morea. In 1480, Andreas married a woman called Caterina, whom later historians have alleged was a prostitute, and he supposedly lived an extravagant and irresponsible lifestyle, which eventually led to him falling into poverty.
- A more likely cause for Andreas's poverty is probably the fact that the pension and funding provided to him by the Pope was constantly cut back, from an initial 300 ducats to just 50 ducats near the end of his life, far too little to sustain his household. Though Andreas did travel Europe in search for a ruler who could aid him in retaking Constantinople, he rallied little support.
- The Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, who had conquered Constantinople in 1453, died in 1481 and his two sons Cem and Bayezid fought a civil war over who was to succeed him.
- Seeing his opportunity, Andreas attempted to organize an expedition in southern Italy during the summer of 1481 with the goal of crossing the Adriatic Sea and restoring the Byzantine Empire.
- The expedition was cancelled in the autumn when Bayezid had successfully stabilized his rule.
- Andreas would never return to Greece. Desperate for money, Andreas sold his rights to the Byzantine crown in 1494 to Charles VIII of France and later granted the same rights in his will to Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile.
- Andreas kept for himself only the title of Despot of the Morea, though he probably never received the money due for the sales of the imperial title.
- He died in poverty in Rome in 1502.
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