Editing John IV Laskaris (section)

==Biography==
John was a son of [[Theodore II Laskaris|Theodore II Doukas Laskaris]], the 3rd Emperor of Nicaea, and [[Elena of Bulgaria]]. His maternal grandparents were Emperor [[Ivan Asen II of Bulgaria]] and his second wife [[Anna Maria of Hungary]]. Anna was originally named Mária and was the eldest daughter of [[Andrew II of Hungary]] and [[Gertrude of Merania]].

John IV was only seven years old when he inherited the throne on the death of his father. The young monarch was the last member of the Laskarid dynasty, which had done much to restore the Byzantine Empire. His [[regent]] was originally the bureaucrat [[George Mouzalon]], but Mouzalon was murdered by the nobility, and the nobles' leader Michael Palaiologos [[Usurper|usurped]] the post. Soon, on January 1, 1259, Palaiologos made himself co-emperor as [[Michael VIII Palaiologos|Michael VIII]]. Michael was, in fact, John's second cousin once removed, since they were both descended from Empress [[Euphrosyne Doukaina Kamatera]].
After Michael's conquest of [[Constantinople]] from the [[Latin Empire]] on July 25, 1261, John IV was left behind at [[Nicaea]], and was later [[political mutilation in Byzantine culture|blinded]] on Michael's orders on his eleventh birthday, December 25, 1261.<ref name= "Hackel p. 71">{{harvnb|Hackel|2001|p=71}}</ref> This made him ineligible for the throne, and he was exiled and imprisoned in a fortress in [[Bithynia]]. This action led to the excommunication of Michael VIII Palaiologos by the Patriarch [[Arsenius Autoreianus]], and a later revolt led by a Pseudo-John IV near Nicaea.

John IV spent the remainder of his life as a monk in [[Gebze|Dacibyza]].<ref>Gharipour Mohammad. [https://books.google.com/books?id=XymeBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA147 ''Sacred Precincts: The Religious Architecture of Non-Muslim Communities Across the Islamic World''] Brill, 2014. {{ISBN|9004280227}} p. 147</ref> There is a rescript of [[Charles of Anjou]], dated 9 May 1273, which refers to a report that John escaped from his imprisonment and invites him to come to his court. Further documents attest to his arrival and receiving a pension from the Angevin arch-enemy of Michael Palaiologos. However, this contradicts the evidence of the historians [[George Pachymeres]] and [[Nikephoros Gregoras]], who record that John remained in Dacibyza until long after Michael's death. In his study of Michael VIII's reign, historian Deno John Geanakoplos discusses the contradictory evidence and comes to the conclusion that the documents of Charles of Anjou were intended to serve as propaganda, "to attract the support of the legitimist, pro-Lascarid Greeks of the Byzantine Empire, as well as to sway the anti-Angevin sentiment of the still surviving Greek population of Charles' own territories of southern Italy and Sicily."<ref>Geanakoplos, ''Emperor Michael Palaeologus and the West'' (Harvard University Press, 1959), pp. 217f {{ISBN?}}</ref>

In 1290 John was visited by Michael VIII's son and successor [[Andronikos II Palaiologos]], who sought forgiveness for his father's blinding three decades earlier. As [[Donald Nicol]] notes, "The occasion must have been embarrassing for both parties, but especially for Andronikos who, after all, was the beneficiary of his father's crimes against John Laskaris."<ref>Donald M. Nicol, ''The Last Centuries of Byzantium, 1261–1453'', second edition (Cambridge: University Press, 1993), p. 99 {{ISBN?}}</ref> The deposed emperor died about 1305 and was eventually recognized as a saint, whose memory was revered in Constantinople in the 14th century.