Becoming Byzantine in the Late Thirteenth Century

Late medieval Byzantium has been characterised as a ‘small state’ with a population that was more ethnically, linguistically, and confessionally homogeneous than ever before. Reflecting this, elite authors placed a self-conscious emphasis on Orthodox Christianity and Hellenic language and culture as key markers of identity and belonging. However, at the same time, the polity also experienced substantial inward migration of individuals and groups from across the Mediterranean and adjacent regions, and from a wide range of ethnic, linguistic, confessional, and socio-economic backgrounds. This paper focuses on two such foreigners during the late thirteenth century. The first, the Seljuk sultan ‘Izz al-Dīn Kaykāwus II, together with his family and followers, lived within the empire from roughly 1262 until the winter of 1264/65. The second, John Asan III, lived in Byzantine territory for most of his life, following his father’s deposition from the Bulgarian throne in 1257. He later married a daughter of Michael VIII Palaiologos and was given the high court dignity of despotes. This paper exploits the unusually rich surviving evidence concerning these two exiled dynasts in order to explore the ways in which they interacted with ‘native’ Byzantines, their participation in the public life of the empire, and the extent to which they sought and were able to become assimilated into Byzantine society. In doing so, this paper assesses the degree to which late medieval Byzantium – long seen by scholars as an exporter of political and cultural influence – was itself open and receptive to outsiders during a period of considerable turbulence and geopolitical complexity.