father Thomas, whose warring with his brother Demetrios (Andreas's uncle) allowed the Ottomans to conquer the Morea. The feud between his father and uncle had nothing to do with Andreas, who was just seven years old at the time he and his family fled into exile. The financial situation of the Palaiologoi in the 1470s to 1490s must have been considered precarious for Andreas to sell his titular claims and for Manuel to travel Europe in hopes of employment and eventually reach the Ottomans in Constantinople. Only a single contemporary author and an author of the generation following the two brothers placed the blame for their financial hardships on Andreas. Writing in 1538, Theodore Spandounes claimed that Andreas's brother Manuel was better in every possible way and, writing in 1481, Gherardi da Volterra stated that Andreas's financial situation was due to his excessive indulging in "lovemaking and pleasures". This negative assessment was echoed by many modern historians but Harris believes it has minimal basis. To further paint Andreas negatively, virtually every modern account of his life mentions his 1479 marriage to Caterina, who is often cast in a particularly negative light. Historian Steven Runciman famously described her as "a lady from the streets of Rome" and she is typically identified as a prostitute. In addition to his financial ruin, marrying a prostitute is another point often used against Andreas. She is known from only a single primary source, the books of the Apostolic Camera, which mentions only her first name, meaning that her profession and social standing are unknown. Not even the contemporary critics of Andreas, da Volterra and Spandounes, mention her. The earliest reference to Caterina's "bad character" is from the works of the 17th-century Byzantinist Charles du Fresne, Sieur du Cange, meaning that tales of Caterina have to be considered unsubstantiated oral tradition. The idea forwarded by Byzantinist Dionysios Zakythinos in his 1932 work (1262–1460) that Andreas's marriage to the "prostitute" Caterina was the cause of the papacy cutting back his pension is demonstrably false; Pope Sixtus IV even paid Andreas two years' worth of his pension in advance in 1479, presumably to cover the expenses of Andreas's journey to Russia. Although it is possible that Andreas did live an extravagant life, the more likely root cause for his poverty is the constant reductions to the pension paid to him by the papacy. Though the popes had been