John I. Dukas Komnenos

John I Dukas (Ιωάννης Α 'Δούκας) (* approx. 1240 ; † shortly before 1289 ), was ruler in Thessaly and central Greece from 1268 . As the illegitimate son of the despot Michael II Komnenos Dukas Angelos (* 1205; † 1266/68) of Epirus and a woman named Gangrené, he was also called the bastard of Thessaly . He was married to Hypomone, a daughter of the voivode Vlach Taronas.

Immediately before the Battle of Pelagonia in September 1259, Johannes allegedly got into a dispute with Prince Wilhelm II of Villehardouin , who is said to have mocked him for his illegitimate birth. His father Michael is said to have used this as an excuse to withdraw with his army, and was reason enough for Johannes to switch sides, thereby contributing to the victory of the Empire of Nikaia over the Latin principality of Achaia .

After the death of his father, he followed him in Thessaly and Central Greece ( Greater Wlachia ) and ruled from Neopatra. Although Emperor Michael VIII of Byzantium awarded him the title of Sebastocrator and in 1272 married his nephew Andronikos Tarchaneiotes ( Ταρχανειώτης ) to a daughter of John, the latter took an oppositional stance towards the Byzantine Empire and joined a coalition of Epirus, Serbia and Bulgaria who helped Charles of Anjou , King of Sicily , to rebuild the Latin Empire . In 1277, however, John rose to be the advocate of Orthodoxy after Michael VIII had agreed to the reunification of the Eastern and Western Churches at the Council of Lyon in 1274. On May 1, 1277, John convened a “ synod ” of fugitive monks to formally ban the emperor, the patriarch Johannes Bekkos and Pope Nicholas III. uttering what led to his own banishment. Twice he was able to successfully repel the invasion of a numerically stronger Byzantine army: Between 1273 and 1275 in alliance with Jean de la Roche at Neopatras and in 1277 at Pharsalos, where the Byzantines under Johannes Synadenus and Michael Kaballarios were supported by auxiliary troops of the Mongol leader Nogai Khan .

In the rule in Thessaly he was followed by his son Constantine († 1303), married to Anna Euagionissa and her son John II. Dukas († 1318). His daughter Helena Angelina was first married to the Duke of Athens, William I de la Roche , and her second marriage to Hugo von Brienne , Count of Lecce.

literature

• Божидар Ферјанчић: Севастократори у Византији. In: Зборник радова Византолошког института. Vol. 11, 1968, ISSN  0584-9888 , pp. 141-192, there pp. 180-181, digitized .
• Ferdinand Gregorovius : History of the City of Athens in the Middle Ages. From the time of Justinian to the Turkish conquest . Reprint, CH Beck, Munich 1980.
• Donald M. Nicol : The Despotate of Epiros (1204-1267) . Oxford 1957, pp. 154-155. 172-181. 186-189.
• Donald M. Nicol: The Last Centuries of Byzantium, 1261-1453 . 2nd Edition. Cambridge 1993.
• John Julius Norwich : Byzantium. Decay and Fall 1072-1473 . Econ, Düsseldorf, Munich 1998.
• John Joseph Saunders : The history of the Mongol conquest . Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1971.
• Alexios G. Savvides, Benjamin Hendrickx (Eds.): Encyclopaedic Prosopographical Lexicon of Byzantine History and Civilization . Vol. 3: Faber Felix - Juwayni, Al- . Brepols Publishers, Turnhout 2012, ISBN 978-2-503-53243-1 , pp. 369-370.
• Kenneth M. Setton: The Papacy and the Levant, 1204-1571 . Volume 1. Philadelphia 1976, p. 59.
• Alice-Mary Talbot: John I Doukas . In: Alexander Kazhdan (Ed.): The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium . New York-Oxford 1991, Vol. 2, pp. 1044-1045.
• Erich Trapp et al .: Prosopographisches lexicon of Palaeologi . 1. Fascicle: Ἀαρών-Ἀψαρᾶς. Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1976, ISBN 3-7001-0169-4 , p. 18 No. 208.