Georgios (Ravenna)

Georgios ( Latin Georgius ; † after 710/711) was a Byzantine rebel in the exarchate of Ravenna .

After Emperor Justinian II had regained the throne in 705, he sent a punitive expedition to Ravenna in 709 under the command of the strategos of Sicily , Theodoros . According to the Liber Pontificalis , the Ravennates had supported the usurpation against Justinian, but for chronological reasons the motive is more likely to be found in the striving for independence of Archbishop Felix , who has been in office since 708 . The city was looted and burned down, many members of the ruling class were taken to Constantinople and executed there; Felix was blinded and banished to the Crimea .

According to the (in detail questionable) report by Agnellus , a certain Johannikios , the former notary of the exarch Theodoros, was among the deportees . His son Georgios is said to have headed a revolt in Ravenna at the end of 710 or beginning of 711, which the other cities of the exarchate also joined. The emperor appointed John Rhizokopus as exarch and tasked him with suppressing the uprising, but he was probably killed by the rebels shortly after his arrival in Ravenna. Only his successor, Scholastikios , apparently succeeded in bringing the trouble spot back under imperial control.

What became of Georgios is unclear; his father, incarcerated in Constantinople, was allegedly tortured to death.

swell

• Agnellus of Ravenna , Liber pontificalis ecclesiae Ravennatis 140
• Liber Pontificalis 1, 90

literature

• Thomas S. Brown: Byzantine Italy c. 680 - c.876 . In: Rosamond McKitterick : The New Cambridge Medieval History: II. C. 700 - c. 900. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1991, ISBN 0-521-36292-X , p. 323.
• Ralph-Johannes Lilie , Claudia Ludwig, Thomas Pratsch, Ilse Rochow, Beate Zielke: Prosopography of the Middle Byzantine Period . 5 volumes. De Gruyter, Berlin 1999-2001, No. 1894 (Felix) , 2953 (Ioannes Rhizokopos) , 3428 (Iohannicius) , 7521 (Theodoros) .
• Jeffrey Richards: The Popes and the Papacy in the Early Middle Ages. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London 1979, ISBN 0-7100-0098-7 , p. 212.