The redemption of Philip of Courtenay, heir of the empire of Romania (1259)
Résumé
The story of young Philip, the only son and heir of Baldwin II, the last Latin Emperor of Romania to actually rule in Constantinople being mortgaged by his own father to Venetian merchants and then redeemed, has fascinated historians since the Middle Ages. R. L. Wolff based his argument on a wide range of narrative and documentary sources, but he initially considered more specifically a series of documents copied in a register held in the Venetian State Archives. This register, called or rather nicknamed Pacta Ferrariae – because it contains several treaties and agreements between Venice and the city of Ferrara – is in its present form a composite volume. Concerning the ransom of Philip, can confirm that, as Wolff has argued and despite the doubts expressed by some later commentators, the whole sum had been indeed paid by the king of Castile, and by him alone.