Ronchey, S. “Il piano di salvataggio di Bisanzio in Morea.” L'Europa dopo la caduta di Costantinopoli: 29 maggio 1453. Atti del XLIV Convegno Storico Internazionale del Centro Italiano di Studi sul Basso Medioevo - Accademia Tudertina (Todi, 7-9 October 2007). Spoleto: Fondazione Centro Italiano di Studi sull'Alto Medioevo, 2008. 517-31.

Another contribution devoted to the plan to “save Byzantium in the West” which unfolded over the half century between the inter-religious marriage of Cleopa Malatesta and Theodore II Palaeologus (1421) promoted by Martino V and the crusade in the Morea called by Pius II at the Council of Mantua in 1459, and then carried out between 1464 and 1466 by Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta after the death of the pope.  The idea of a re-foundation of Constantine’s basileia wove together religious co-existence and political planning.  The plan to reunify the churches (“for appearances” carried out by Bessarion for exclusively political or “realpolitik” reasons at the Council of Florence) was wedded to the reunification of the first and second Rome in one legal entity with the ideal centre at the seat of Peter and the bridgehead in the Morea. This project to reclaim the imperial title of the Caesars in the West was supported by a pro-Byzantine clan made up of the most important Italian signorie (the Malatesta, the Este, the Gonzaga, the Sforza, the Montefeltro.)  The sovereign of the New Byzantium – with a new form of state based on the writings of Georgius Gemistus Pletho – would be Thomas Palaeologus.  The importance of the role of the last “porphyrogenitus” is clear in his status as the object of significant artistic commissions as well as crucial political expectations.

 

REVIEWS

L. Mantelli in Medioevo latino 30 (2009), p. 961.