On 25 July 1261, Nicene forces under general Alexios Strategopoulos recaptured Constantinople from the Latin Empire, restoring the city to Byzantine rule after almost sixty years in foreign hands. After the recapture of the capital and the restoration of the Byzantine Empire, Michael took care to be crowned emperor in Hagia Sophia, as Byzantine emperors had been before the city was lost to the crusaders. John IV, the last representative of the imperial Laskaris dynasty, was pushed aside in order to consolidate the Palaiologos family on the throne. On John IV's eleventh birthday, 25 December 1261, the boy was deposed, blinded and confined to a monastery. Once news of the act, the blinding of not only the legitimate emperor, but an underage boy, got out, the Patriarch of Constantinople, Arsenios Autoreianos, excommunicated Michael. The emperor's excommunication was not lifted until nine years into his reign, upon the appointment of Patriarch Joseph I. The blinding of John IV was a stain on the Palaiologan dynasty. In 1284, Michael's son and successor Andronikos II Palaiologos visited the blinded and then 33-year-old John IV during a journey in Anatolia, hoping to demonstrate his disapproval with his father's actions.