International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Jelena Vukčević
Narodni univerzitet, Trstenik, Serbia; 
[e-mail]
Monemvasia and Despot of Morea, Theodore I Palaiologos
Monemvasia is a town in Peloponnese which was, according to historical sources, founded 
by inhabitants of Sparta in the 6
th
century. Through the history, the town was granted a lot of 
privileges by a lot of Byzantium emperors. Such privileges, relating to administering and ruling 
the town and its territory, as well as to trade freedom, contributed to the economic growth of the 
town. This statement refers to the description of founding and development of the town, and also to 
Monemvasia during the rule of despot of Morea, Theodore I Palaiologos, the products they traded, 
the powerful family Monemvasiot and Monemvasia Metropolitan Church.

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Alexandru Stefan Anca 
Otto-Friedrich-Universität, Bamberg, Germany; 
[e-mail]
Emperor, Patriarch, and the Catalans. 
A Triad of Power in Byzantium at the Beginning of the 14
th
Century
As a result of the arrival in 1303 of the so-called Catalan Company in Constantinople, the 
Byzantine Empire faced major challenges. The emperor Andronikos II had reckoned with a small 
group of mercenaries, but they arrived in numbers exceeding his wildest expectations. He tried to 
deal with the unstable situation in accordance with a time-honored tradition, namely by attempting 
to integrate the newcomers into the political structures of the Byzantine Empire. This soon alerted 
Andronikos’s son and co-emperor, Michael IX, as well as the patriarch Athanasios, who were 
irritated by these actions. The present paper looks at the acting – and interacting with each other 
– of those political actors, and probes into the way they construed their office and their respective 
political roles.