John Spyridonakes

Johannes Spyridonakes ( Middle Greek Ἰωάννης Σπυριδωνάκης ; † after 1201) was a Byzantine governor who defied Emperor Alexios III in the Rhodope Mountains in 1201 . he lifted.

Life

Spyridonakes, originally a Cypriot craftsman of low origin, won the favor of Alexios III at court, who appointed him Protovestiarios . As such, he was responsible for the imperial cloakroom, the safe and the emperor's private box. In the summer of 1199 he took part in the first campaign against the rebel Dobromir Chrysos , who had defected from Byzantium in eastern Macedonia .

Before 1201, Spyridonakes was commissioned as governor ( Dux ) with the administration of the strategically important topic Smolena in the Rhodope Mountains on the Bulgarian border. After the suppression of the Ivanko rebellion , he broke away from Byzantium in the spring of 1201, particularly encouraged by a large-scale uprising sparked at the same time by Dobromir Chrysos and Manuel Kamytzes in the neighboring Vardar - Struma region to the west . Alexios III sent a force under the supreme command of his son-in-law Alexios Palaiologos against the renegade governor and forced him to flee to the court of the Bulgarian Tsar Kaloyan . His further fate is unknown.

swell

• Niketas Choniates , Historia 507; 534-535 (ed. Jan-Louis van Dieten, CFHB Ser. Berol. Vol. 11, 1975); Orationes 106-110

literature

• Charles M. Brand: Byzantium confronts the West, 1180-1204. Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA 1968, ISBN 0-81-431764-2 , pp. 132-133.
• Jean-Claude Cheynet: Pouvoir et contestations à Byzance (963-1210) (= Publications de la Sorbonne. Series Byzantina Sorbonensia. Vol. 9). Reimpression. Publications de la Sorbonne Center de Recherches d'Histoire et de Civilization Byzantines, Paris 1996, ISBN 2-85944-168-5 , p. 138 No. 197.
• Jean-Claude Cheynet, Jean-François Vannier: Études prosopographiques (= Publications de la Sorbonne. Série Byzantina Sorbonensia. Vol. 5). Publications de la Sorbonne Center de Recherches d'Histoire et de Civilization Byzantine, Paris 1986, ISBN 2-85944-110-7 , p. 171.
• Jan-Louis van Dieten: Niketas Choniates. Explanations of the speeches and letters together with a biography (= Supplementa Byzantina. Vol. 2). Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York NY 1971, ISBN 3-11-002290-7 , pp. 129-136.
• Alexander P. Kazhdan (Ed.): The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium . Oxford University Press, New York NY 1991, ISBN 0-19-504652-8 , p. 1940.
• Alicia Simpson: Niketas Choniates. A Historiographical Study. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2013, ISBN 978-0-19-967071-0 , pp. 142, 310.