Andronikos I (Byzantium)

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Billontrachis Andronikos' I.

Andronikos I. Komnenos ( Middle Greek Ἀνδρόνικος Α 'Κομνηνός , * around 1122 ; † September 12, 1185 in Constantinople ), son of Isaac Komnenos and cousin of Emperor Manuel I , was Byzantine emperor from 1183.

Life

Andronikos was probably born in 1119/20 as the son of the Sebastocrator Isaak Komnenos. His grandparents were therefore Emperor Alexios and the Georgian princess Katai-Irene Bagrationi , daughter of King David the Builder .

Andronikos spent his young years alternating between pleasure and military service . In 1141 he was captured by the Seljuks and held for a year. After being ransomed, he went to Constantinople to the court of his cousin, the Emperor Manuel I, whose favor he enjoyed. Here his niece, Princess Eudokia , became his lover, just as her sister Theodora was the emperor's lover. By their father, his cousin Isaak Komnenos , Andronikos was almost beheaded in a dispute in 1146.

In 1152, Andronikos undertook a campaign to Cilicia , accompanied by Eudokias , after Thoros II of Lesser Armenia had invaded there. Andronikos besieged Mopsuestia (Mamista), but was put to flight under Thoros when the Armenians fell out at night. He returned to the capital without having achieved anything and was sent back to the province. He seems to have left this post too, as he recently escaped an assassination attempt by Eudokia's brothers in the capital.

During this time (1153) a conspiracy against Manuel, in which Andronikos was involved, was uncovered. He was thrown in prison where he spent the next 12 years. Repeated attempts to break out failed; it was not until 1165 that it was successful. He fled to Kiev to the court of Grand Duke Yaroslav of Ruthenia , under whose protection Andronikos established an alliance between the Russians and the emperor, which again brought him the favor of his cousin. With a Russian army he supported Manuel in the invasion of Hungary and the siege of Semlin (today the city of Belgrade ).

After the successful campaign, Manuel and Andronikos returned to Constantinople together in 1168. The following year, Andronikos, the prince of Hungary whom Manuel wanted as his own successor, refused to obey the flag. He was removed from the court but was assigned the province of Cilicia.

Andronikos fled to the court of Raymond of Antioch . Here he married Philippa of Antioch, Raimund's daughter, and Maria Komnena, sister of the Empress Maria of Antioch , for whose hand Konstantinos Kalamanos also asked . However, the marriage was dissolved at the urging of Emperor Manuel. She married Humfried II of Toron , constable of Baldwin the Leper , in 1176 , and died shortly afterwards.

Accompanied by numerous knights, Andronikos went to Jerusalem. King Baldwin was in Egypt at the time, and Andronikos appears to have taken the lead in the defense against the Muslims. After his return, Baldwin enfeoffed him with Beirut . In Jerusalem he met Theodora Komnena , the widow of King Baldwin III. of Jerusalem and niece of Manuel, with whom he fell in love. To avoid the emperor's vengeance, both fled to the court of the Sultan of Damascus , where they did not feel safe enough, so they moved on to Persia and Turkestan , circumnavigated the Caspian Sea and crossed the Caucasus . Eventually they settled among the Turks on the border with the province of Trebizond , on which Andronikos made frequent and successful raids.

During one of these raids, the governor of Trebizond took his castle by surprise, Theodora and her two children ( Alexios and Theodora) were captured and sent to Constantinople. In order to achieve their liberation, Andronicus submitted to the emperor, appeared before him in chains and was pardoned. He was allowed to settle with Theodora in the small town of Oinaion on the Black Sea coast . There he built a gigantic castle that still dominates the area today. Three months before Manuel's death, the latter pardoned him and installed him as governor of Pontus .

Manuel died in 1180, his thirteen-year-old son Alexios II succeeded him under the reign of Empress Maria of Antioch. Shortly after Manuel's death, there had been an unsuccessful conspiracy against Alexios, led by Manuel (Andronikos' son) and Maria (the emperor's sister). Maria then submitted to the emperor and asked for mercy, which was also granted to her.

Then Alexios' uncle, the Protosebastus Alexios , ran the affairs of state. He seems to have relied heavily on Latin advisers, which made him unpopular with the Byzantine nobility. He was considered quick-tempered and greedy, and he was also said to have had an affair with the Empress who, when Emperor Manuel was on his deathbed, had actually turned to the spiritual life.

The discontented nobles negotiated with Andronikos, who marched into Bithynia with barbaric auxiliaries . Andronikos Angelos , who had been sent against him, ran over to him with his troops, and Admiral Alexios Megadukas also took his side. The Protosebastus was mutilated and blinded by the discontented nobility , his Latin advisers and the leading Venetian and Genoese merchants fled to the Levant or the Black Sea for fear of reprisals on their galleys.

The people opened the gates of the city to Andronikos and began to slaughter and set fire to the remaining Latins, who had made themselves hateful for the ruthless exploitation of their trade privileges. Catholic monks in particular drew the anger of the crowd. Wilhelm von Tire claims that even the inmates of hospitals were massacred and corpses dragged from the graves and that the cut head of the Catholic subdeacon Johannes was tied to the tail of a mangy dog ​​that was dragging him through the city.

Thereupon the Latin Black Sea Fleet attacked the cities on the shores of the Marmara Sea , devastated them and murdered all the inhabitants they could get hold of. She also raided the monasteries along the coast and on the Prince Islands and murdered all the monks and the residents of the area who had fled to the shelter of the altar. The booty from the looting of the monasteries, the golden altar tableware, the consecration gifts and the silk liturgical vestments, amounted to many times what they had forfeited in Constantinople, as William of Tire reports. The fleet then turned to Thessaly , where they located "with the greatest accuracy" all cities and settlements on the coast, pillaged and killed the inhabitants.

Andronikos deposed Maria of Antioch as empress and was solemnly crowned co-emperor at Pentecost 1182 next to his nephew Alexios and his then just ten-year-old bride Agnes (Anna) of Valois ; de facto he thus assumed sole power of government. In the following years he got rid of the people who could have endangered his position of power: Alexios Komnenos, the favorite and adviser of the former empress, was thrown into prison in the spring of 1183, where he died as a result of severe abuse. In July of that year, Maria Komnene, Alexios' sister, and her husband Rainer von Montferrat were murdered. Mary of Antioch was sentenced to death by strangling by Andronikos and killed on August 27, 1183. Finally, Alexios was strangled with a bowstring in October 1183 . Andronikos, now absolute monarch, raised his sons Manuel and Johannes to co-regents. He himself married Alexios' widow Agnes.

During his brief reign, Andronikos tried to limit the power of the nobility and to get the corruption of officials in the capital and the provinces under control. The people should be protected from the greed of the superiors. However, the emperor's violent repression against the leading aristocratic families provoked a series of uprisings by high-ranking military officials who had made a career under Manuel I. After the failed rebellions of Johannes Komnenos Batatzes and Andronikos Lampardas , Theodoros Kantakuzenos, together with Isaak Angelos , a descendant of Alexios I , concentrated the resistance in Nicaia with the support of Turkish auxiliaries, while Isaak's brother Theodoros Angelos held the neighboring Prusa . In the spring of 1184 Andronikos I smashed the Bithynian rebel strongholds with a large force . He celebrated his triumph in the civil war with pompous circus games in the capital .

The aristocrats then asked Wilhelm II of Sicily for help. Accompanied by the Byzantine pretender to the throne Alexios Komnenos, he landed with a strong army in Epirus , marched to Thessaloniki , which he conquered and destroyed in 1185, but was defeated shortly afterwards at Demetritzes and forced to retreat to Sicily.

In 1185, during Andronikos' absence from the capital, his deputy Stephanos Hagiochristophorites ordered the arrest and execution of Isaac Angelos. He fled to Hagia Sophia , from where he appealed to the people. A tumult ensued that quickly spread across the entire city. When Andronikos returned, he saw himself deposed and Isaac enthroned as the new emperor. He handed him over to his opponents, who mistreated him for three days before hanging him by his feet between two pillars. His agony was cut short by a compassionate Italian soldier who thrust his sword into his body.

Andronikos was murdered in the worst possible way, as Niketas Choniates writes, he was exposed to popular violence, beaten and pushed by the women whose husbands he murdered and dispossessed, his teeth knocked out, shaved, his nose cut off, one eye pulled out and then crucified, he died on September 12, 1185. He was the last Comnene on the throne of Constantinople. His widow Agnes was the third wife of Theodoros Branas . His grandsons Alexios and David founded the Empire of Trebizond . Alexios was shortlisted to become the second spouse of the divorced Georgian Queen Tamara . However, she chose another one.

Andronikos' relative Isaak Komnenos was Emperor of Cyprus until 1192.

The descendants of the emperor Andronikos now live in Georgia, where they are known as Andronika-schwili (descendants of Andronikos). You are the only family of imperial origin in Georgia.

Appreciation

The rule of Andronikos led to the disruption of the system of rule that his ancestor Alexios I had introduced and which had made the restoration of the empire possible for a century. There are three main reasons why the empire did not recover from its three-year rule:

1. The hostility of the Latins: The massacre of the Latins fundamentally changed relations between East and West. In the 12th century, sea trade had grown noticeably. Contrary to earlier assumptions, the emperor in Constantinople was not at the mercy of the Latins, but privileged them in order to be able to keep Greek traders - and thus autonomous forces - in check. Emperor Manuel was very successful with this strategy: the privileges for Pisa and Genoa broke the trade monopoly of Venice and led to competition between the Latins. He had significantly reduced Venice's still great power position in 1172 and renegotiations about privileges for Venice were still pending. Through the massacre Andronikos united the Latins against Byzantium, who now plundered the islands and effectively cut off the capital from southern Greece, Crete, Cyprus and the coast of Asia Minor. Genoese and Pisans made up the fleet that the Normans carried to Greece in 1184/85. After 1204 the Venetians and Genoese settled permanently in the Aegean Sea. The Byzantine rule of the sea was finally over.
2. The usurpation of the throne shook the empire's power base. The Komnen emperors had ruled as heads of families and the solidarity of this large noble family was a prerequisite for the prosperity of the empire. Because of his charisma, Emperor Manuel had been the undisputed boss of the house and had loyally cared for his family. Even after his death, his generals waged successful wars against the Seljuks in 1181–1183. Andronikos destroyed the consensus by eliminating Alexios. The cities and areas that Manuel had promoted most rebelled against Andronikos' rule: Sardis and Sociopolis in western Asia Minor fell away from him, in Nicaea there was an uprising.
3. Andronikos might have solved these problems if he hadn't made the most fatal mistake: The attempt to destroy the aristocracy and to rule the empire autocratically like the rulers of the Macedonian dynasty up to 1025. The basis for such a rule was around the year 1000 been undermined by the military nobility of Asia Minor; This nobility had been in power since 1081 and had contributed significantly to the renewal of the empire. When the nobility had to fear for their life, they fled to the inherited provinces and founded independent partial empires: Cyprus and Trebizond broke away from the empire, a new Bulgarian empire came into being, Serbia was lost, and Constantinople had no influence in Epiros, Thessaly and the Peloponnese more. Andronikos' successors had to fight resistance and fell victim to the Latins in 1204, the empire fell apart.

literature

• Charles M. Brand: Byzantium confronts the West. 1180-1204. Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA 1968, pp. 31-75.
• Harry J. Magoulias: Andronikos I Komnenos: A Greek Tragedy. In: Byzantina Symmeikta. 21, 2011, pp. 101-136 ( online ).
• 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 , pp. 243-245.

Web links

• Andrew Stone: Short biography (English) at De Imperatoribus Romanis (with references).

Remarks

1. ↑ In Latin translation: "Historia rerum orientes gestarum ab exordio mundi orbi condita ad Nostra haec usque tempora", Sigismund Feyrabend, Frankfurt 1637, pp. 161r-161v.

predecessor	Office	successor
Alexios II	Emperor of Byzantium 1183–1185	Isaac II