Alexios II (Trebizond)

Alexios II. Komnenos (* 1282 ; † May 3, 1330 ) was Emperor and Grand Comnene of Trebizond from 1297 to 1330 .

Life

Alexios was born as the elder son of the Trapezuntian emperor John II and his wife Eudokia Palaiologina .

After his father's death, he succeeded him on the throne. Since he was still very young at the time, he was placed under the guardianship of his uncle, the Eastern Roman emperor Andronikos II. Palaiologos . He wanted to marry his ward to the daughter of a high civil servant. Alexios opposed this plan and, without having obtained the prior permission of his uncle, married the Iberian princess Djiadjak , a daughter of Bekka II , the Atabeg of Samatzke . Andronikos wanted to have this marriage annulled by the Church, but the Patriarch of Constantinople refused to comply with this request, since Jiadjak was already pregnant. Alexios' mother Eudokia, who traveled from Constantinople to Trebizond to persuade her son to dissolve the marriage, finally advised him to hold on to her.

After he had withdrawn from his uncle's tutelage, Alexios proved to be a capable and energetic ruler, whose years of reign represented the heyday of the Trapezuntian state.

In 1302 he repulsed an invasion of the Turkmens after they wanted to take Kerasunt , the second largest city of the Trebizond Empire, from Chalybia , which they had previously conquered . As a result, Alexios had a fortress built from which the sea around Kerasunt could be monitored.

Another problem that Alexios had to address during his reign came from the Genoese . The Eastern Roman Emperor Michael VIII. Palaiologos had granted them extensive trading privileges in the Treaty of Nymphaeum in 1261 , which practically brought them a monopoly in Black Sea trade . Your Daphnou trading post , located in an eastern coastal suburb of the city of Trebizond, developed splendidly under these circumstances. Since the Genoese refused the Trapezuntian customs access to the goods handled in Daphnous, tensions arose with Alexios, which ultimately led to a brief war. The peace treaty concluded in 1314 to end hostilities did not end these disputes. Therefore, in 1319 Alexios signed a contract with the Venetians , the Genoese's greatest competitor, in which they were granted the same privileges that the Genoese were contractually entitled to in Trebizond .

Even pirates from the Emirate of Sinope prepared Alexios some difficulties. They often captured the ships of Christian traders and plundered the suburbs of Trapezunts . For this reason, Alexios had sea walls built to protect the port and the population.

Alexios and his wife Djiadjak had a total of seven children, of which Andronikos III. , Basil and Anna later ascended the Trapeze- Funt's throne .

Like his father John II, Alexios was also the target of papal attempts at conversion. In 1329 he received a letter from Pope John XXII. with which he wanted to convince him to convert to Catholicism . However, Alexios died just five months later after a reign of 33 years. He was succeeded by his eldest son Andronikos III, who led Trebizond into a period of unrest and civil war.

literature

• Alexios G. Savvides, Benjamin Hendrickx (Eds.): Encyclopaedic Prosopographical Lexicon of Byzantine History and Civilization . Vol. 1: Aaron - Azarethes . Brepols Publishers, Turnhout 2007, ISBN 978-2-503-52303-3 , p. 149.

predecessor	Office	successor
John II	Emperor of Trebizond 1297–1330	Andronikos III.