Ancestral Trails 2016 » Andronikos III PALAIOLOGOS (1297-1341)

Personal data Andronikos III PALAIOLOGOS 

• He was born on March 25, 1297 in Constantinople, Byzantium, Turkey.
• He died on June 15, 1341 in Constantinople, Byzantium, Turkey, he was 44 years old.
• A child of Michael IX PALAIOLOGOS and Rita of ARMENIA

Household of Andronikos III PALAIOLOGOS

(1) He is married to Irene von BRAUNSCHWEIG-LUNEBURG.

They got married March 1318, he was 20 years old.

(2) He is married to Anna de SAVOY.

They got married October 1326, he was 29 years old.

Child(ren):

1. Michael PALAIOLOGOS  1337-????
2. Johann V PALAIOLOGOS  1332-1391 
3. Maria Irina PALAIOLOGINA  1327-1384 

Notes about Andronikos III PALAIOLOGOS

Andronikos III Palaiologos (25 March 1297 - 15 June 1341), commonly Latinized as Andronicus III Palaeologus, was Byzantine emperor from 1328 to 1341. Born Andronikos Doukas Angelos Komnenos Palaiologos he was the son of Michael IX Palaiologos and Rita of Armenia. He was proclaimed co-emperor in his youth, before 1313, and in April 1321 he rebelled in opposition to his grandfather, Andronikos II Palaiologos. He was formally crowned co-emperor on February 1325, before ousting his grandfather outright and becoming sole emperor on 24 May 1328.

His reign included the last failed attempts to hold back the Ottoman Turks in Bithynia and the defeat at Rusokastro against the Bulgarians, but also the successful recovery of Chios, Lesbos, Phocaea, Thessaly, and Epirus. His early death left a power vacuum that resulted in the disastrous civil war between his Empress-dowager, Anna of Savoy, and his closest friend and supporter, John VI Kantakouzenos.

Andronikos was born in Constantinople on 25 March 1297, the 38th birthday of his paternal grandfather, Byzantine Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos. His father, Michael IX Palaiologos, began reigning in full imperial style as co-emperor circa 1295.

In March 1318, Andronikos married Irene of Brunswick, daughter of Henry I, Duke of Brunswick-Grubenhagen. In circa 1321 she gave birth to a son, who died in infancy.

In 1320, Andronikos accidentally caused the death of his brother Manuel, after which their father, co-emperor Michael IX Palaiologos, died in his grief. The homicide and the general dissolute behavior of Andronikos III and his coterie, mostly the young scions of the great aristocratic clans of the Empire, resulted in a deep rift in the relations between young Andronikos and his grandfather, still reigning as Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos.

Emperor Andronikos II disowned his grandson Andronikos, who then fled the capital and rallied his supporters in Thrace and began to reign as rival emperor in 1321. Andronikos then waged the intermittent Byzantine civil war of 1321-28 against his reigning grandfather, who granted him to reign as co-emperor Andronikos III.

Empress Irene died on 16/17 August 1324 with no surviving child. Theodora Palaiologina, sister of Andronikos III, married the new tsar Michael Shishman of Bulgaria in 1324. Andronikos III, then a widower, married Anna of Savoy in October 1326. In 1327 she gave birth to Maria (renamed Irene) Palaiologina.

Andronikos III concluded the Treaty of Chernomen of 1327, an alliance with tsar Michael Shishman of Bulgaria against Stephen Uroš III Dečanski of Serbia. The Byzantine civil war flared again and ultimately led to the deposition in 1328 of Emperor Andronikos II, who retired to a monastery.

In 1326, Andronikos III married as his second wife Anna of Savoy, daughter of Count Amadeus V, Count of Savoy and of his second wife Marie of Brabant, Countess of Savoy. Their marriage produced several children, including:

Maria (renamed Eirene) Palaiologina, who married Michael Asen IV of Bulgaria
John V Palaiologos (born 18 June 1332)
Michael Palaiologos, despotes (designated successor)
Eirene (renamed Maria) Palaiologina, who married Francesco I Gattilusio.

According to Byzantine historian Nicephorus Gregoras, Andronikos also had an illegitimate daughter, Irene Palaiologina of Trebizond, who married emperor Basil of Trebizond and took over the throne of the Empire of Trebizond from 1340 to 1341.

In his Dictionnaire historique et Généalogique des grandes familles de Grèce, d'Albanie et de Constantinople (1983), Mihail-Dimitri Sturdza mentions a second illegitimate daughter of Andronikos, who converted (likely under duress) to Islam under the name Bayalun as one among several wives of Öz Beg Khan of the Golden Horde. Detlev Schwennicke does not include this daughter in Europäische Stammtafeln: Stammtafeln zur Geschichte der Europäischen Staaten (1978), and the theory of her existence may reflect theories of Sturdza.

Andronikos III died at Constantinople, aged 44, on 15 June 1341, possibly due to chronic malaria. Historians contend that his reign ended with the Byzantine Empire in a still-tenable situation and generally do not implicate deficiencies in his leadership in its later demise. John V Palaiologos succeeded his father as Byzantine emperor, but at only 9 years of age, he required a regent.

The energetic campaigns of emperor Andronikos III simply lacked sufficient strength to defeat the imperial enemies and led to several significant Byzantine reverses at the hands of Bulgarians, Serbians, and Ottomans. Andronikos III nevertheless provided active leadership and cooperated with able administrators. The empire came closest to regaining a position of power in the Balkans and Greek peninsula after the Fourth Crusade. The loss of a few imperial territories in Anatolia, however, left the Ottoman Turks posed to expand into Europe.

Within a few months after the death of Andronikos III, controversy over the right to exercise the regency over the new emperor John V Palaiologos and the position of John Kantakouzenos as all-powerful chief minister and friend of Andronikos led to the outbreak of the destructive Byzantine civil war of 1341-47, which consumed the resources of the empire and left it in an untenable position. The weakened Byzantine Empire failed to prevent the formation of the Serbian Empire or, more ominously, the Ottoman invasion of Europe.
SOURCE: Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andronikos_III_Palaiologos

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Timeline Andronikos III PALAIOLOGOS

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