Andronicus II of Byzantium (25 March 1259-13 February 1332) was Emperor of the Byzantine Empire from 11 December 1282 to 24 May 1328, succeeding Michael VIII and preceding Andronicus III.
Biography[]
Andronicus Palaiologos was born in Nicaea, Empire of Nicaea in 1259, the son of Michael VIII Palaiologos. He was acclaimed his father's co-emperor in 1261, and he was crowned in 1272. He became sole emperor on his father's death in 1282, and he repudiated his father's decision to nominally unite Orthodoxy with the Catholic Church. Apart from religious unrest, he also had to deal with economic problems, dismantling the Byzantine fleet to make up for the empire's declining wealth and depending on the Republic of Venice and the Republic of Genoa for naval protection. When Venice went to war with the Byzantine Empire in 1296-1302 and 1306-1310, the lack of a Byzantine navy proved disastrous. In 1298, he married his daughter off to King Stefan Milutin of Serbia to keep the peace in the Balkans, but the Byzantine frontier in Asia Minor collapsed due to Michael VIII's shift of focus to reconquering the Latin Christian crusader principalities which had been set up in the aftermath of the Sack of Constantinople. In 1302, the Ottoman Turks defeated the Greeks at the Battle of Bapheus, confirming Ottoman rule over Bithynia. Andronicus responded by hiring Roger de Flor's Catalan Company to fight against the Turks, but, following Roger's murder in 1305, the Catalan mercenaries mutinied and devastated Thrace, Macedonia, and Thessaly on their road to southern Greece, where they conquered the Duchy of Athens. Prusa fell to the Ottomans in 1326, while the Germiyanids conquered Simav in 1328, the Sarukhanids took Magnesia in 1313, and the Aydinids took Smyrna in 1310. From 1305 to 1307, Theodore Svetoslav of Bulgaria conquered much of northeastern Thrace, and, from 1320 to 1328, Andronicus fought a civil war against his disowned grandson Andronicus III for control of the empire. Andronicus III seized power in 1328, forcing Andronicus II to abdicate, and Andronicus II died as a monk in Constantinople in 1332.