Constantine, son of Irene, blinded by her, and Maria his first wife, great-granddaughter of Saint Philaret the Merciful, and their two daughters, Irene and Euphrosyne, who was the wife of Emperor Michael the Stammerer, and Anna, daughter of Emperor Theophilus. A It should be noted that in the women's monastery of the Gastria, on the right side of the church towards the east, the body of Saint Theodora, empress of Theophilus, and her three daughters, Thecla, Anastasia, and Pulcheria, are buried.
Anselmi Bandurii notes.
(53) And Anna, daughter of Theophilus, along with her sisters Thecla, Anastasia, and Pulcheria, having had their hair shorn, was enclosed in the monastery of Euphrosyne by Emperor Michael, her brother. B (54) In the same monastery, the body of Theodora was deposited by Basil the Macedonian, and the daughters of the same Theodora had been transferred, writes Cedrenus page 545: But not long after, Theodora departed from the living. Her body Emperor Basil and her daughters transferred to the monastery of Avice, which is called Gastria. Moreover, Theodora Augusta is celebrated by writers for the integrity of her faith and the veneration of the holy images, which, once her husband had performed his destiny, she restored in the Eastern Church. From which indeed she was brought into the canon of the Church by the Greeks themselves, and her feast is celebrated on the eleventh day of February. C
CENTURY XV.
DUCAS. NOTITIA
(Hankius De rer. Byzant. Script. Græc., p. 630.)Our Ducas, whose first name is unknown to us, had as his paternal grandfather Michael Ducas, a learned man from the imperial lineage of the Ducae, who, when the adversaries were pursuing in war John Cantacuzenus (after Emperor Andronicus Palaeologus the younger had been taken from the living in the year of Christ 1341) the guardian of Emperor John Palaeologus, and most of his other friends were slaughtered in Constantinople, fled to Asia, and finally found a safe seat in Europe among the Ephesians. D He indicates this in the *Byzantine History*, chapter 5, in the translation of Ismael Bullialdus: "Among those indeed (over two hundred friends of John Cantacuzenus were cast into prison and, except for six, given to death) who were snatched from such great danger, was my paternal grandfather, Michael Ducas. They furthermore, having put on the mantles or cloaks of the monks of that monastery (in the subterranean cave of which they had hidden), fled from Constantinople, and having been ferried across to the opposite continent, Asia, they scattered, some to the eastern regions, others to Bithynia, and others elsewhere; and my grandfather sought Asia, and visited Jesæum (whom Bajazet, the sultan of the Turks, had appointed prince of Ionia)
A whom he had established, and told him what had befallen him. He was indeed learned and most skilled in the liberal arts and sciences, and not ignorant of the medical arts, tracing his lineage from those ancient Ducas, and in that dynasty, as a golden ring in a chain, he shone. The tyrant therefore received him honorably, and provided that all necessities and supplies of all things should be furnished to him, and having heaped benefits upon him, he granted him Ephesus as a place to dwell: which, as a place of exile, was as agreeable and dear to him as his fatherland.
Ducas himself, our author, after Constantinople was occupied by the Turks, was a servant to the Turkish tribute-paying Christian princes who held Lesbos, the island of the Egean Sea. Being sent by Dorino Gateluzo, prince of the Lesbians, in the year of the world 6963, in the second year after Byzantium was subdued by the Turks, which is 1455 of Christ, he carried out duties to Hamza, commander of the Turkish fleet, and established friendship between both, as he himself records in his *History of Byzantium*, chapter 43. After Dorino Gateluzo died, Ducas lived in the court of Dominico Gateluzo, prince of the Lesbians. Sent by him, in the same year of Christ 1455, he brought the tribute of the Lesbians and Lemnians to Mahomet II, the tyrant of the Turks, at Adrianople. In that same year 6963, he says in his *History*, chapter 44, on the thirtieth of June, Dorino Gateluzo, prince of the island of Lesbos, died. B Thereafter, on the first of August, I was sent by his son, the new prince, to Adrianople, that I might pay the annual tribute: three thousand coins for Lesbos, and two thousand three hundred twenty-five for Lemnos. For the tyrant had granted this island to the prince of Lesbos, stipulating the tribute which had been agreed upon between them. A little further on, he says: "I went therefore to adore the prince, as is the custom, and having kissed his hand, I sat before him until he had eaten: when he eventually had been greeted, I withdrew. I counted out the gold coins to the viziers the following day."
Soon, when Mehemet had ordered Dominico Gateluzo to come to him, that he might concede the principality to him in his presence, Ducas, as his companion, returned to Mehemet, who was staying in camps placed near a Bulgarian village: as he narrates in the same place. "The viziers say to Ducas, 'It is not possible after the tribute is received for him to be called the prince of Lesbos, unless he has approached the most exalted prince and obtained the principality from him. Go therefore and do your best to lead him here. But if he does not comply, he knows what shall be.' Having returned therefore to Mitylene, I brought back the prince of Lesbos with some prominent Latin and Roman men. C Our hope placed in God, we set sail from the island and, having traversed the Chersonese, we arrived at Adrianople. But the prince kept changing his residence due to the plague that was raging: for the contagion of this pestilential disease was so deadly to the Chersonese and all of Thrace that corpses lay unburied at the crossroads. Having therefore found that the prince was staying in Philippopolis, we hastened there; but after we arrived, we learned that he had departed from there two days before, due to the violence of the raging disease, and had moved toward Sophia. Therefore, leaving Philippopolis and having crossed over steep and rugged mountains, we arrived in a journey of three days at a certain village of the Bulgarians called Izlati, where the tyrant had his camp. We met the nobles and satraps, the pashas Mahmut and Seidi Ahmet, displaying many gifts; the next day we stood before the emperor, and after the prince of Mitylene had kissed his hand, we departed from him immediately." A few words later, having described what transpired between Mehemet and Gateluzo: "They then clothed him (Gateluzo) and us, his household and companions, in garments woven with gold and silk: with the agreements written and confirmed by mutual oath, we departed, and on the thirteenth day we arrived in Lesbos, praising God who had saved us from the hands of the unjust."
Shortly after, the Turkish *contostablus*, that is to say the admiral of the sea, moved a lawsuit against Nicolaus Gateluzo, prince of the Lemnians, concerning a certain bireme containing a noble Chian woman and many precious things. D For this reason, Ducas was sent by Dominico Gateluzo, prince of the Lesbians, brother of the prince of the Lemnians, to Constantinople to Mehemet II, the emperor of the Turks. Since he had obtained nothing from him, he was dismissed after old Phocæa, a city of the Lesbian domain, was occupied by the Turks on the 24th of December, in the year of the world 6964, 1455 of Christ. He commemorates these things in the same chapter 44: "But the prince of Lesbos," he says, "having departed for Mitylene, and having been made certain by his brother of the things that had occurred; and since his mother-in-law, as a Chian noblewoman, and other things were being demanded by the *contostablus*, he sent me to plead his cause before the emperor. When I had come to Constantinople, I pleaded the case before the viziers, and affirmed on oath that whatever I had put forward, to be refuted by the Genoese *contostablus*, was true. He likewise, although they were false and feigned, sworn, asserted that what he said was true; according to whom, I having been overruled, the trials were granted. The emperor also proposed that one of two things must be chosen: either to pay ten thousand gold coins, or to prepare for war, which would be brought upon the Lesbians. Since I resisted such a wrong, so alien to justice and fairness, he himself, unknown to all, sent one of his henchmen, who occupied old Phocæa, a town of the prince of Lesbos' domain, on the 24th day of the month of December, in the year of the world 6964. When the tyrant learned that Phocæa had been captured, he dismissed me, having settled the matter."
In the same year of the world 6964, 1456 of Christ, he brought the annual tribute of Dominico Gateluzo, prince of the Lesbians, to the Turks at Adrianople. Chapter 45 teaches this: "The tyrant (of the Turks, driven back by the Hungarians) having suffered insult and rejection, returning, says, he retreats to Adrianople; threatening to seek him in war in the new year at Belgrade; these things were done in the month of July of the aforesaid year (6964). In the following August, I was sent to pay the tribute which the prince of Lesbos pays annually. That having been counted, I asked for those whom the Lemnians had handed over as being guilty of treason, and they were denied to me: and the tyrant orders them, kept in the prisons at Adrianople, to be put to death by the sword; but while they were being led to punishment, moved by repentance, he orders them to be sold, and they were sold for a thousand coins." The same Mehemet II, tyrant of the Turks, toward the beginning of autumn, in the year of the world 6971, 1462 of Christ, the island of Lesbos, which at that time had Nicolaus, the brother of Dominico, Gateluzo as prince...