ent day, speak of younig Alexis as the son of Isaac by Margaret, daughter of Bela of Hungary, His second wife. This marriage took phice in 1185. Alexis, therefore, in 1200, could not be older than fourteen or fifteen.[1] He had sent messengers to his sister (or more probably his half-sister), the wife of Philip, imploring the help of her husband. He made his way, according to Villehardonin, to Ancona,[2] in Italy. His movements, however, after leaving Constantinople. The balance of the evidence of contemporary writers seems to show that he went direct to Philip of Swabia,[3] after calling at Sicily, and possibly taking Ancona on the way. According to one writer, he was in July at Warzburg, where Philip held his court.[4] Apparently he continued with Philip until the end of the year, where, as I have already mentioned, lie would have seen Boniface. In the summer of 1202 he was in Hungary,[5] probably on his way to the pope with a request for aid. In August, or the beginning of September, he was at Yerona.[6]
In order to understand why he had returned to Italy, we must trace the events which had happened in the interval between his flight from Constantinople and his arrival in Hungary. Young Alexis had appealed, as we have seen, to his sister and her husband Philip. The Swabian king wished for many reasons to help him. Philip, who claimed to be King of the Romans, was the head of the party opposed to the pope. On the death of the Emperor Henry the Sixth, the pope and other princes had refused to recognize his infant son Fred-
- ↑ Two facts are opposed to the accepted statement that Margaret was the mother of Alexis: (1) that the reigning emperor wrote to Innocent the Third that the youth was not porphyrogenetos; and (2) that, according to Nicetas (p. 481), Margaret was only ten years old in 1145; (
Greek characters) "Geo. Acrop." p. G.
- ↑ Villehardouin, xv. c. 70.
- ↑ Gunther, viii.; "Chroniquc dc Morée," p. 10, and " Chronaca di Morea," p. 416; "Chroniques Greco-Romanes" of Charles Hopf; Rigord, p. 55; "Chron. Novgorod." p. 93; "Chron. Gr.-Rom." of Hopf; and others.
- ↑ Bohmer, " Register Imperii," p. 12.
- ↑ "Coutinuatio," 28.
- ↑ Villehardouin, xv. c. 70.
