derived some revenue from his silver mines:[1] and his family is celebrated by the Greeks as the most ancient and noble of the Teutonic name.[2] After the death of this childless princess, Andronicus souscht in marriage, Jane, the sister of the count of Savoy:[3] and his suit was preferred to that of the French king.[4] The count respected in his sister the superior majesty of a Roman empress; her retinue was composed of knights and ladies : she was regenerated and crowned in St. Sophia, under the more orthodox appellation of Anne ; and, at the nuptial feast, the Greeks and Italians vied with each other in the martial exercises of tilts and tournaments.
Reign of John Palæologus.
A.D.1341, June 15—A.D. 1391
The empress Anne of Savoy survived her husband. Their son, John Palaeologus, was left an orphan and an emperor, in the ninth year of his age ; and his weakness was protected by the first and most deserving of the Greeks. The long and cordial friendship of his father for John Cantacuzene is alike Fortune of John Cantacuzenus honourable to the prince and the subject. It had been formed amidst the pleasures of their youth; their families were almost equally noble;[5] and the recent lustre of the purple was amply compensated by the energy of a private education. We have seen that the young emperor was saved by Cantacuzene from the power of his grandfather ; and, after six years of civil war, the same favourite brought him back in triumph to the
- ↑ The assertion of Tacitus that Germany was destitute of the precious metals must be taken, even in his own time, with some limitation (Germania, c. 5, Annal. xi. 20). According to Spener (Hist. Germanise Pragmatica, tom. i. p. 351), Argentifodinae in Hercyniis montibus, imperante Othone magrio (A.D. 968), primum apertæ, laregam etiam opes augendi dederunt copiam; but Rimius fp. 258, 259) defers till the year 1016 discovery of the silver mines of Grubenhagen, or the Upper Hartz, which were productive in the beginning of the xivth century, and which still yield a considerable revenue to the house of Brunswick.
- ↑ Cantacuzene has given a most honourable testimony, (
Greek characters) (the modern Greeks employ the (Greek characters) for the (Greek characters), and the (Greek characters) for the (Greek characters), and the whole will read, in the Italian idiom, di Brunzuic), (Greek characters) The praise is just in itself, and pleasing to an English ear.
- ↑ Anne, or Jane, was one of the four daughters of Amédée the Great, by a second marriage, and half-sister of his successor, Edward count of Savoy (Anderson's Tables, p. 650). See Cantacuzene (1. i. c. 40-42).
- ↑ That king, if the fact be true, must have been Charles the Fair, who, in five years (1321-1326), was married to three wives (Anderson, p. 628). Anne of Savoy arrived at Constantinople in February, 1326.
- ↑ The noble race of the Cantacuzeni (illustrious from the xith century in the Byzantine annals) was drawn from the Paladins of France, the heroes of those romances which, in the xiiith century, were translated and read by the Greeks (Ducange, Fam. Byzant. p. 258). [Monograph on Cantacuzene : V. Parisot, Cantacuzene, Homme d'etat at historien, 1845.]
