Constans II

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Hexagram from the years 642–647 with a portrait of the young Konstans II .; the back bears the legend typical of Hexagrammata : δEUS AδIUTA ROMANIS ("God help the Romans")
Hexagram from the years 654–659 with portraits of the adult Constantine II and his son Constantine IV ; Front legend : D (ominus) N (oster) CONSTANTINUS C (on) CONSTAN (tius)

Konstans II. ( Greek Κώνστας Konstas , born November 7, 630 , † September 15, 668 in Syracuse ), son of Constantine III. and Gregoria , was from 641 to 668 Eastern Roman and Byzantine emperors . Before his coronation he was called Flavius ​​Heraclius ( Φλάβιος Ἡράκλειος ) after his grandfather , and his name as emperor was actually Constantine according to the law , but his contemporaries seem to have already called him Constantine for unclear reasons.

Life

Before taking over government

Konstans was raised to Caesar by his father Constantine after his accession to power in January 641 . In autumn 641, at the age of eleven, he was brought to the throne by a court party led by the senior military officer Valentinus , the comes excubitorum , who had overthrown his uncle Heraklonas , the half-brother of his father, who had since died, after a few months. Konstans was married to Valentinus' daughter Fausta . The marriage resulted in three sons, of whom the eldest, Constantine , was made co-emperor in 654; the two younger sons Herakleios and Tiberios also advanced to co-emperors in 659. Konstans' brother Theodosios, on the other hand, was passed over and executed as an alleged usurper in 660.

In the first years of the reign of the emperor, who was still underage, the Eastern Roman Senate seems to have had real political significance for the last time; Senators actually conducted official business and acted as advisors. This phase ended when the ruler took over the government himself at the age of 18. Previously there had been a coup attempt by the military, which in 644 or 645, with the participation of Valentinus, seized power in vain. The coup plotters were defeated and Valentinus was lynched by the metropolitan population.

Defense of the empire against Arab advances

The borders of the Eastern Roman Empire (orange) around AD 650

In terms of foreign policy, Konstans' entire rule was overshadowed by Islamic expansion , which forced the empire into a desperate and only partially successful defensive battle. As early as 644, when Konstans was too young to be able to develop a defense himself, there was a Muslim expedition against Amorium . The reconquest of Egypt, which had already been lost in 641/42, failed in 645/46. At the same time Gregory of Carthage renounced Constans, but in 647 he himself succumbed to the Muslim Arabs. For the years 649 and 650 there are epigraphically confirmed reports of Muslim attacks on Cyprus and Soloi, respectively . Konstans, who vigorously took care of the defense of the oppressed empire against the advancing Arabs and personally went to war in the east, nevertheless lost Armenia to the attackers in 652/53 and could not stop their further advance in North Africa. A newly formed Arab naval force defeated the Byzantine fleet in 655 at the Battle of Phoinix . The emperor personally took part in this disastrous battle for the Byzantine side and narrowly escaped death. According to the report of the Armenian historian Sebeos , the caliph ʿUthmān (644–656) even sent Konstans a letter in which he asked him to convert to Islam and submit to it. On the other hand, in 654/55 an Arab force was defeated in Cappadocia; Likewise, the further Arab advance in the Caucasus region in Iberia failed at the Derbent pass , where the Khazars sympathizing with Byzantium attacked the Arabs, who hastily retreated due to high losses.

In 656, Emperor Konstans II unexpectedly received a respite on the Arab front: in the caliphate, after the assassination of the caliph ʿUthmān, open civil war (First Fitna) broke out, as the caliphate of both ʿAlī , the son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed, and Muʿāwiya , the Arab governor of Syria, Muʿāwiya of the Umayyad family . These conflicts so stressed the Arab forces that they could not continue the attacks on Byzantium. In 657/58 a Byzantine-Umayyad armistice was concluded. In 661, however, ʿAlī was assassinated, which ended the civil war among the Muslims. Muʿāwiya was now able to assert itself in the east as well. In May / June 662 the armistice with Konstans II expired, which Muʿāwiya took as an opportunity to pursue a somewhat more aggressive policy against Byzantium. In the winter of 662/663 the Muslims set up their first winter camp in Asia Minor .

Dodge to the west

Instead of continuing to oppose the Arab attackers with all his might in order to save at least Asia Minor, the Emperor decided, after he had at least been able to secure Armenia and the Caucasus for the time being, to move west. In June 662 he left Constantinople with an army for Italy. The emperor probably wanted to secure Italy against enemy attacks and also strengthen the defense in the part of North Africa that was still held. Furthermore, after the loss of Egypt, Sicily had become more important for the grain supply. Perhaps the emperor also planned to set up a new navy undisturbed in Sicily in order to wrest control of the sea from the Arabs. In public, however, he apparently declared that he wanted to make "ancient Rome" his capital again. In fact, in almost two centuries, Constans was the first emperor to personally visit Rome, the former capital of the Roman Empire ; but it stayed there for barely two weeks. So the first and for a very long time the last stay of an emperor in Constantinople ended without results.

After a campaign against the Lombards , Konstans moved his residence to Syracuse in Sicily. The high tax burden in Italy led to significant dissatisfaction with the emperor's government. In Constantinople, on the other hand, he was resented for his absence.

Solidus Konstans' II. From the years 667/668; on the back the three sons Tiberios (left), Constantine IV., Herakleios (right)

Domestic and church politics

Domestically, the emperor, who evidently was not particularly popular and was repeatedly the target of attacks, tried once again to assert his claim to rule over the church. In the context of religious policy, there was also a conflict with the papacy regarding its 648 ban on discussion of the question of whether Jesus had one or two natures (see monophysitism and monotheletism ). This dispute led to the condemnation of Maximus Confessor by an imperial court as well as to the arrest, deportation and exile of Pope Martin I , because he pushed through the condemnation of monotheletism and its supporters in a synod in Rome in 649. In 666 Konstans withdrew the sovereignty of Rome from the Church of Ravenna and made it an independent church. Probably two unsuccessful usurpations in Carthage and Ravenna also belong in this context. Constans was as rulers among the population of Constantinople apparently quite unpopular, what might one 's explanation of his later campaigns in the West.

Death and evaluation of his rule

Konstans was murdered by a valet on September 15, 668 (according to the traditional dating) while visiting a steam bath in Syracuse. However, James Howard-Johnston has pleaded July 15, 669 as the date of death; he also regards the murder of the emperor as part of an intrigue in which the court of caliphs in Damascus is said to have been involved. Constantine IV put down the subsequent usurpation of the guard commander Mizizios and then resided again in Constantinople . The usurpation of Saborios in 667/68 had already collapsed before.

The balance of power of Konstans II is hardly positive. During his reign, the empire found itself in a permanent defensive battle, in the course of which Byzantium suffered heavy losses. However, the emperor tried, at least initially, to turn the tide; He is probably only partly to blame for the military catastrophes, although in the end he seems to have given up. His Italian expedition was partly interpreted as an "escape to the west". At least he managed to stop the advance of the Arabs in Asia Minor, where the border stabilized. The Muslims could not establish a permanent base north of the Taurus Mountains . But at the time of Konstans' death, the supremacy of the Eastern Roman Empire in the Mediterranean was finally ended. With regard to the constitution of the subject, it is disputed whether this was introduced during Konstans' reign.

literature

  • Pasquale Corsi: La spedizione Italiana di Costante II . Bologna 1983.
  • Salvatore Cosentino: Constans II and the Byzantine navy . In: Byzantine Journal . Vol. 100, 2008, pp. 577-603.
  • John F. Haldon: The Empire That Would Not Die. The Paradox of Eastern Roman Survival, 640-740. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Massachusetts) 2016.
  • John F. Haldon: Byzantium in the Seventh Century. The Transformation of a Culture . 2nd ed. Cambridge 1997, especially p. 53ff.
  • James Howard-Johnston : Witnesses to a World Crisis. Historians and Histories of the Middle East in the Seventh Century . Oxford 2010.
  • Walter Kaegi: The early Muslim raids into Anatolia and Byzantine Reactions under Emperor Constans II. In: Emmanouela Grypeou u. a. (Ed.): Encounter of Eastern Christianity with Early Islam . Brill, Leiden 2006, pp. 73-92.
  • Ralph-Johannes Lilie , Claudia Ludwig, Thomas Pratsch, Ilse Rochow, Beate Zielke: Prosopography of the Middle Byzantine Period . 1st department: (641−867). Volume 2: Georgios (# 2183) - Leon (# 4270). Created after preliminary work by F. Winkelmann . Published by the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. De Gruyter, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-11-016672-0 , pp. 480-485 No. 3691 .
  • Alexios G. Savvides, Benjamin Hendrickx (Eds.): Encyclopaedic Prosopographical Lexicon of Byzantine History and Civilization . Vol. 2: Baanes-Eznik of Kolb . Brepols Publishers, Turnhout 2008, ISBN 978-2-503-52377-4 , pp. 229-232.
  • Andreas N. Stratos: Byzantium in the seventh century. Vol. III. 642-668 . Amsterdam 1975.
  • Constantin Zuckerman: On the title and the office of the Byzantine basileus. In: Travaux et Mémoires du Center de recherche d'Histoire et Civilization de Byzance. Vol. 16 (= Mélanges Cécile Morrisson ), 2010, ISSN  0577-1471 , pp. 865-890 ( online ; PDF; 1.4 MB ).

Web links

Commons : Konstans II.  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Andreas Urs Sommer : The coins of the Byzantine Empire 491-1453. Regenstauf 2010, ISBN 978-3-8664-6061-4 , p. 204.
  2. ↑ Andreas Urs Sommer: The coins of the Byzantine Empire 491-1453. Regenstauf 2010, p. 204.
  3. ↑ Kaegi: The early Muslim raids into Anatolia. 2006, p. 79.
  4. ↑ Kaegi: The early Muslim raids into Anatolia. 2006, p. 78.
  5. ↑ Kaegi: The early Muslim raids into Anatolia. 2006, p. 76.
  6. ↑ Kaegi: The early Muslim raids into Anatolia. 2006, p. 80f.
  7. ^ Robert W. Thomson, James Howard-Johnston: The Armenian History Attributed to Sebeos. Liverpool 1999, Chapter 50, pp. 143-147 (English translation) and pp. 273f. (historical commentary).
  8. ^ Robert W. Thomson, James Howard-Johnston: The Armenian History Attributed to Sebeos. Liverpool 1999, Chapter 51, pp. 147-149 (English translation) and p. 278 (historical commentary).
  9. ↑ Kaegi: The early Muslim raids into Anatolia. 2006, p. 85.
  10. ↑ Kaegi: The early Muslim raids into Anatolia. 2006, p. 85.
  11. ↑ Ralph-Johannes Lilie : Byzanz. The second Rome . Berlin 2003, p. 103; Ralph-Johannes Lilie: The Byzantine reaction to the expansion of the Arabs. Studies on the structural change of the Byzantine state in the 7th and 8th centuries . Munich 1976, p. 68.
  12. ↑ Kaegi: The early Muslim raids into Anatolia. 2006, p. 83.
  13. ↑ Kaegi: The early Muslim raids into Anatolia. 2006, p. 85f.
  14. ^ Theophanes AM 6153.
  15. ↑ Andreas Urs Sommer: The coins of the Byzantine Empire 491-1453. Regenstauf 2010, p. 201.
  16. ↑ To assess his reign, cf. summarizing Haldon, Byzantium in the Seventh Century , pp. 62f.
  17. ↑ See in summary Howard-Johnston, Witnesses to a World Crisis , p. 126, p. 490f.
  18. ↑ Kaegi: The early Muslim raids into Anatolia. 2006, p. 88.
  19. ↑ See for example Ralph-Johannes Lilie: Byzanz. The second Rome . Berlin 2003, p. 104f.
  20. ↑ Kaegi: The early Muslim raids into Anatolia. 2006, p. 89f.
predecessor Office successor
Heraklonas Emperor of Byzantium
641–668 		Constantine IV
personal data
SURNAME Constans II
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Byzantine emperor
DATE OF BIRTH 7th November 630
DATE OF DEATH September 15, 668
Place of death Syracuse