Manuel I (Trebizond)

Silber-Asper, Manuel I. Komnenos of Trebizond

Manuel I. Komnenos (* around 1218; † in March 1263 ) was emperor and grand comnene of Trebizond from 1238 to 1263 .

Life

Manuel was the second son of Alexios I , the first emperor of Trebizond , and his wife Theodora Axuchina . In 1238 he succeeded his older brother John I on the throne. During his reign, Trebizond was initially a vassal state of the Seljuks of the Sultanate of Iconium and then from 1243 after its temporary collapse in the wake of the Battle of the Köse Dağ , in which Trapezuntian troops had supported the Seljuk units against the victorious Mongols, depending on the Mongols .

In 1253 Manuel tried to establish dynastic ties with the French royal family, since he hoped that such a connection would help the Crusaders against the Seljuks and the Laskarids of Nicaea . However, his request was made by King Ludwig IX. rejected, who suggested Manuel to seek a bride at the court of the Latin Empire of Constantinople . In this context, contemporary witness Jean de Joinville describes that Manuel sent many valuable gifts to Ludwig on the occasion of his advertising, which indicates a certain wealth.

The capture of Baghdad by the Mongols under Hulagu in 1258 and the resulting final destruction of the Caliphate of the Abbasids had the revival of a northern trade route to the sequence of Armenia and the upper Euphrates valley to Erzurum and then over the Zigana pass led directly to Trebizond . This brought about an economic upswing in the city, as the goods brought from the east via the Silk Road were now transported here to the Black Sea for shipping and were not, as before , directed further west via the port cities of the eastern Mediterranean . The resulting increasing prosperity of Trapezeunts can also be seen in the many silver and bronze coins that Manuel had minted . These also circulated in large numbers outside of the Trapezuntian area and especially in Georgia . Even if some of the bronze coins found from this period may still come from Alexios I and various silver asperes must have been minted under John I, the vast majority of them came from Manuel.

It is thanks to him that the Hagia Sophia of Trebizond was rebuilt . The monastic monastery, which was renewed at his instigation between 1250 and 1260, is now a museum and is one of the most beautiful of the magnificent imperial buildings in the Constantinople style that have survived from this period.

When Michael VIII Palaiologos of Nikaia succeeded in recapturing the city of Constantinople from the Latin Empire in 1261, he asked Manuel to give up the imperial title and the associated claims to the succession of the Eastern Roman rulers. The Trapezuntian ruler did not comply with this request.

Manuel died in 1263. He left a total of four children, all of whom later ascended the throne. His first wife Anna Xylaloe , a noblewoman from Trebizond, bore him a son, his immediate successor Andronikos II . He and his second wife, an Iberian princess named Rusudan, had a daughter and later Empress Theodora . From his third marriage to Irene Syrikaina , another Trapezuntian noblewoman, the two sons and later emperors Georg and Johannes II came .

swell

• Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium , Oxford University Press, 1991.
• W. Miller, Trebizond: The Last Greek Empire of the Byzantine Era , Chicago, 1926.
• Art and identity in thirteenth-century Byzantium: Hagia Sophia and the empire of Trebizond / Antony Eastmond, Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004

predecessor	Office	successor
John I.	Emperor of Trebizond 1238–1263	Andronikos II.