generous to the Palaiologoi on the face of it, providing housing and money, they were not as plentiful as some historians have claimed. The popes themselves are partly responsible for propagating this idea. For instance, Sixtus IV recorded his generosity towards the Palaiologoi in the frescoes of the Ospedale di Santo Spirito in Sassia. One of the murals depicts Sixtus IV with a grateful Andreas kneeling at his feet. Andreas did not, as usually stated, waste enormous sums of papal money; the monthly 300 ducat pension provided initially to his father Thomas had shrunken to only 50 ducats by 1492. Historians have mostly discarded the 1481 expedition against the Ottomans as more evidence of his incompetence. Runciman went so far as to claim that Andreas "squandered" the money donated by the pope and used it for "other purposes". Though the expedition never happened, there is no reason to believe that Andreas was not serious about it. The fact that Andreas actually traveled to Brindisi suggests that he did intend to lead an expedition to restore the empire. Despite the campaign failing to materialize, the preparations conducted do demonstrate that Andreas did not spend his time in Rome solely in the pursuit of pleasure. Although he did not die wealthy, a common assertion is that Andreas died without any money at all. This idea derives from the fact that Andreas's widow, Caterina, was given money by Pope Alexander VI to pay for the funeral. However, such donations were not rare or necessarily an indication of poverty. The 1487 funeral of another royal exile, Queen Charlotte of Cyprus, was also paid for by the papacy, and there are no records of her being described as extravagant or impoverished. Andreas was buried with honor in the St. Peter's Basilica, suggesting that he had at least retained some individual status. Harris considered the exile of Andreas in Rome as the continuation, and ultimate failure, of a policy pursued by the Palaiologoi for over a century. As the Palaiologan emperors had done before them, both Thomas and Andreas continued to cling to the ultimately unsuccessful plan of securing papal aid for a grand campaign of reconquest and restoration. Ultimately, Andreas's life was not a great success, and his dreams of restoring the Byzantine Empire were dashed by continually having to raise funds to support himself and his household. His difficult situation was not his fault,