Manuel II Palaiologos has retired to a monastery, where he die at seventy-five on June 21, 1425, leaving numerous literary works (many of which survive).

The well-educated emperor is the author of numerous works of varied character, including letters, poems, a Saint's Life, treatises on theology and rhetoric, and an epitaph for his brother Theodore I Palaiologos and a ‘mirror for prince’ (Latin: specula principum or rather, principum specula) for his son and heir John VIII.

This mirror of prince has special value, because it is the last sample of this literary genre bequeathed to us by the imperial Greeks.

John is sole emperor from July 1425, ruling the area immediately surrounding Constantinople, while his brothers govern remnants of the fragmented empire in the Greek Peloponnese and in the districts on the Black Sea.