him than the 1265 treaty. The truce originally expired in 1273, but it is clear from the wording of the 1277 treaty that it had continued being in force for some time afterward as well. It is unknown whether that was due to an annual extension—possibly repeated—of the treaty, or a complete new treaty that has not survived. The treaty's provisions regarding the free and safe movement of Venetian merchants and their goods were not scrupulously observed by the Byzantines, leading to vociferous protests by the Venetians: in 1278, the Doge submitted more than 300 cases of injury done to Venetian ships, merchants, and goods since 1268, at the hands of the Emperor's subjects; many of them pirates in Imperial employ, but also including soldiers, customs officials and local governors, and even, on one occasion, a (possibly Palaiologos' half-brother Constantine), who had robbed and murdered a Venetian archdeacon captured on a ship off the Morea. Nevertheless, following the Union of the Churches at the Second Council of Lyon in 1274, Palaiologos was at a strong position: the Popes now recognized him as a legitimate ruler, blocked Charles of Anjou's plans to attack Constantinople, and tried to recruit the Byzantines into their plans for a Crusade to recover the Holy Land. At the same time, the Byzantines had been making headway against the various Latin principalities established in the Aegean in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade. Headed by the Latin renegade Licario, the Byzantine fleet recovered most of the smaller Aegean islands, and much of the large island of Negroponte (Euboea), apart from its capital, the city of Negroponte (Chalkis), which was defended by a Venetian . Treaty of 1277 Dismayed at the Byzantine advances, and by the threat posed to Venetian commerce by the corsairs funded by Palaiologos, the Venetians sent envoys to Constantinople to renew the 1268 treaty. A Venetian embassy under Marino Valaresso, Marco Giustinian, and Angelo Marcello had been at the Byzantine court already in 1275. Walter Norden (Das Papsttum und Byzanz, 1903) speculated that a treaty was signed already in that year, but there is no evidence for that in the sources. Events were helped along by the death of the recalcitrant Doge Lorenzo Tiepolo, who resisted any concessions to Palaiologos, and his succession by Jacopo Contarini. The Venetians were also worried by the renewal of a Byzantine treaty with the Genoese, which guaranteed their