Thessalonica, East Roman Theme of

Kantakouzenos, who directs both domestic and foreign policy for the Emperor, has encouraged a reform of the law courts and promoted commercial independence from the Genoese and Venetians by initiating a large shipbuilding project.

Emperor Andronikos has suffered losses to the Ottoman Turks in Anatolia; but he has managed to regain the islands of Chios, Phocaea, and Lesbos from the Genoese with the aid of the rebuilt navy, and has reasserted imperial control over the long-separated provinces of Epirus and Thessaly.

At the Emperor's death on June 15, 1341, Kantakouzenos asserts his claim as regent for the ten-year-old John V. However, when Kantakouzenos leaves Constantinople to battle the Serbs in Thrace, his political rivals—led by his former partisan Alexius Apocaucus, the patriarch John Kalekas, and the empress mother Anna of Savoy, who holds power in Constantinople—declare him a traitor and imprison his supporters.

Constantinople’s empire is again near collapse; the south Slavs of the Western Balkans, united under Serbian monarch Stephen Dusan, have take most of Greece and southern Dalmatia, capturing Epirus and Thessaly in 1348.

Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos nevertheless does what he can to restore the economy and stability of the Greek empire.

To coordinate the scattered fragments of its territory he assigns them as appanages to individual members of the imperial family.

His son Manuel takes over the province of the Morea in 1349 with the rank of despot.

The revolutionary movement in the shrinking domains of the empire is most memorable and lasting in Thessalonica, where a faction known as the Zealots has seized power in a coup d'état and governs the city as an almost independent commune until 1350.

The junior emperor John V will rule in Thessalonica after 1351.

Dušan, now that has conquered Epirus and Thessaly, seeks to obtain Constantinople.

To acquire the city, he needs a fleet.

Knowing that fleets of southern Serbian Dalmatian towns are not strong enough to overcome Constantinople, he opens negotiations with Venice, with which he maintains fairly good relations.

Venice fears a reduction of privileges in the Empire if Serbs become the masters of Constantinople over the weakened Greeks, but if the Venetians had allied with Serbia, Dushan would have examined existing privileges.

Once he became master of all imperial lands (especially Thessalonika and Constantinople) the Venetians would gain privileges.

Venice chooses to avoid a military alliance.

While Dušan seeks Venetian aid against the Empire, the Venetians seek Serbian support in the struggle against the Hungarians over Dalmatia.

When sensing that Serbian aid would result in a Venetian obligation to Serbia, Venice politely turns down Dušan’s offers of help.

Kantakouzenos tries to regain lands the Empire has lost while Dušan launches the Bosnian campaign (absent the Serbian troops in Macedonia and Thessaly).

In support, the Constantinopolitan patriarch Kallistos in 1350 excommunicates Dušan in order to discourage the Greek population in Dušan's Greek provinces from supporting the Serbian administration and thereby assist the Kantakouzenos campaign.

The excommunication does not stop Dušan's relations with Mount Athos, which still address him as Emperor, though rather as Emperor of Serbs than Emperor of Serbs and Greeks.

Kantakouzenos raises a small army and takes the Chalcidic peninsula, then Veria and Voden.

Veria is the richest town in the Botia region.

Dušan had earlier replaced many Greeks with Serbs, including a Serb garrison.

However, the remaining locals are able in 1350 to open the gates for Kantakouzenos.

Voden resists Kantakouzenos but is taken by assault.

Kantakouzenos now marches toward Thessaly but is stopped at Servia by Caesar Preljub and his army of five hundred men men.

The imperial force retires to Veria, and the aiding Turk contingent goes off plundering, reaching Skopje.

Dušan, once word of the imperial campaign reaches in Hum, quickly reassembles his forces from Bosnia and Hum and marches for Thessaly.

The self-styled emperor Simeon Uroš, despot of Epirus and Acarnania, has been able to seize control of both Epirus and …

…Thessaly and rule independently in 1358/59 following the death of Nikephoros II Orsini of Epirus.

While Simeon Uroš is in Epirus, Radoslav Hlapen of Vodena attempts to seize Thessaly on behalf of his stepson Thomas Preljubović.

Simeon Uroš is forced to cut his losses by recognizing Radoslav Hlapen's conquests, turning over Kastoria to him, and marrying his daughter Maria to Thomas.

Hlapen recognizes Simeon Uroš's suzerainty in at least some of these lands and provides a buffer between him and the Serbian nobles to the north.

Simeon Uroš establishes himself in Trikala in Thessaly, and spends the remaining decade of his reign in relative peace.

He soon recognizes two of the Albanian leaders in Epirus, Gjin Bua Shpata and Peter Losha, as despotes of Arta and Angelokastron.

He turns over Ioannina, his last major possession in Epirus, to his son-in-law Thomas  who from 1366 reigns there as vassal despotes.

Simeon Uroš In Trikala presides over a court including Greek, Serbian, and Albanian nobles, but he shows preference for the Greek relatives of his wife.

He also founds and generously endows the monasteries of Meteora.

He dies sometime between 1369 and 1371, and his son John succeeds him.

Much of the Greek peninsula had been lost by the Byzantine Empire at first to the Serbs and then to the Ottomans in the fourteenth century.

By the beginning of the fifteenth century, the Ottoman advance means that Byzantine territory in Greece is limited mainly to its now-largest city, Thessaloniki, and the Peloponnese (Despotate of the Morea).

After the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453, the Morea is the last remnant of the Byzantine Empire to hold out against the Ottomans.

However, this, too, falls to the Ottomans in 1460, completing the Ottoman conquest of mainland Greece.

With the Turkish conquest, many Byzantine Greek scholars, who up until now are largely responsible for preserving Classical Greek knowledge, flee to the West, taking with them a large body of literature and thereby significantly contributing to the Renaissance.