John VI (Byzantium)

John VI Kantakuzenos

John VI Cantacuzenus ( medium Greek Ἰωάννης ΣΤ 'Καντακουζηνός , * about 1295 in Constantinople Opel ; † 15. June 1383 in Mistra ) was Byzantine emperor from 1341 or 1347 to 1354. A native of the influential family Cantacuzenus and worked as a historian and as a writer an anti-Islamic polemic.

Life

On his mother's side related to the dynasty of the Palaiologists , he was at the accession to the throne of Andronikos III. 1328 appointed as the chief administrator of state affairs. When the emperor died in 1341, Kantakuzenos remained regent for the nine-year-old Johannes V.

Suspected by the empress and in opposition to a powerful court party , he rebelled and was crowned emperor in Didymoticho in Thrace , while John V and his followers stayed in Constantinople. A six-year civil war broke out, in which the parties enlisted the help of the Serbs and Ottomans and hired mercenaries from all over the world. Thanks to Turkish support, Kantakuzenos was able to decide the war in his favor.

In 1347 he entered Constantinople in triumph and forced his opponents to an agreement by which he became co-emperor alongside John V and sole ruler during his minority. Part of this agreement was the marriage of John V to one of his regent's daughters.

During this time the empire, already unstable and limited to a relatively small territory, was put under pressure from all sides. Wars broke out with Genoa , which had a colony in Galata , and the Serbs , who built up an extensive empire on the north-western border. There was also the dangerous alliance with the Turks, who in 1352 conquered their first bridgehead on European soil in Gallipoli , Thrace , and thus gained control of the Dardanelles : Kantakuzenos had recruited foreign aid and when he could not pay the mercenaries, that was for them the welcome occasion to seize a city. In 1354 he was forced to abdicate; John V followed him.

The history of Kantakuzenos in the manuscript written in 1369 (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana , Plut. 9,9, fol. 235v)

Kantakuzenos, who was a follower of hesychasm , whose recognition he had achieved at a synod in 1351, retired to the monastery of St. George in Mangana , where he took the name Joasaph Christodolos, and dealt with scripture work. As a theologian he was called by John V in 1367 to negotiate a church union with the ambassadors of Pope Urban V. In doing so, Kantakuzenos emphasized that, according to the orthodox understanding, there should be no coercion in questions of faith, even with regard to heretics. He died in the Peloponnese and was buried by his sons in Mistra in Laconia . His story in four books covers the years 1320 to 1356. As an apology for his own actions, it must be read with caution; it can be supplemented and corrected by the work of a contemporary, Nikephoros Gregoras . The work is well put together and homogeneous, the events revolve around the main actor (in the person of the author), but are sometimes incorrectly presented on topics with which he was not directly involved.

Fonts

• Ioannis Cantacuzeni imperatoris historiarum libri IV. Ed. Ludwig Schopen . Three volumes, Bonn 1828–1832.
• Johannes Kantakuzenos: History . Translated and explained by Georgios Fatouros and Tilman Krischer . 3 volumes. Anton Hiersemann Verlag, Stuttgart 1982–2011, ISBN 978-3-7772-8221-3 , ISBN 978-3-7772-8628-0 , ISBN 978-3-7772-1112-1 .
• Johannes Kantakuzenos: Christianity and Islam. Apologetic and polemical writings . Greek-German text edition by Karl Förstel ( Corpus Islamo-Christianum , Series Graeca, 6), Oros Verlag, Altenberge 2005.

literature

• Hans-Georg Beck : Byzantine reading book. CH Beck, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-406-08584-9 , pp. 255-256.
• Antonio Carile : John VI. Kantakuzenos. In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages . Vol. 5, Col. 534-535.
• Jean Meyendorff : Projets de Concile Oecuménique en 1367: Un dialogue inédit entre Jean Cantacuzène et le légat Paul. In: Dumbarton Oaks Papers. Vol. 14, 1960 ISSN  0070-7546 , pp. 149-177.
• 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. 363-366.
• Klaus-Peter Todt: Emperor John VI. Kantakuzenos and Islam. Political Reality and Theological Polemics in Byzantium of the Palaiologists . Wuerzburg 1991.

Web links

Commons : John VI. (Byzantium)  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Wikisource: Johannes Kantakuzenos  - Sources and full texts

• Literature by and about John VI. in the catalog of the German National Library

predecessor	Office	successor
Andronikos III.	Emperor of Byzantium 1347–1354	John V.