Maria Bagrationi

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Nicephorus III. and Mary of Alania
Mary of Alania, seal

Maria of Alania (* around 1050, † after 1103) was the wife of two Byzantine emperors. She married first Michael VII Dukas (ruled 1071-1078) and then his successor Nikephoros III. Botaneiates (ruled 1078-1081).

Youth and marriage to Michael VII. Dukas

Mary of Alania was the daughter of the Georgian king Bagrat IV and his second wife Borena of Alania . As a Georgian princess, she was originally called Martha , had a sister named Mariam and a brother who ruled Georgia as King Giorgi II from 1072-1089 .

Martha was sent to the Byzantine court in Constantinople as a little girl in 1056 to be brought up under the supervision of Empress Theodora . Perhaps also to vouch for the good behavior of her father as a pledge, a practice that has been common too many times. However, when Theodora died soon afterwards, she returned home.

About ten years later she was chosen as the bride for the Byzantine heir to the throne Michael, son of Emperor Constantine X. Dukas . This choice was exceptional, as Byzantine heirs to the throne rarely married foreign princesses and, moreover, Mary's Georgian origins were underestimated in Constantinople, despite her royal blood. So Martha / Maria traveled to Constantinople again in 1066, but the marriage with Michael did not take place until a few years later, around the time of his accession to the throne in 1071 as Michael VII. Anna Komnena praised the red-haired, light-blue-eyed Maria, who was her tutor for several years (see below), as an extraordinarily beautiful woman. Some of Mary's female relatives, who had also come to Constantinople in her wake, married into the high Byzantine aristocracy. So the second wife of the governor of Trabzon , Theodoros Gabras , was possibly Maria's sister Mariam.

In 1074 Maria gave birth to a son, Konstantin Dukas Porphyrogennetos , who was made co-regent that same year and betrothed to Olympia, a daughter of the Norman ruler Robert Guiskards . Now it fell to Mary the task of bringing up the fiancée of her son who had been brought to Constantinople.

Marriage to Nikephorus III. Botaneiates

1077/78 appeared almost simultaneously no less than three pretenders against Michael VII, of which the older general Nikephorus III. Botaneiates could prevail. Michael VII had to abdicate and go to the studio monastery . Mary of Alania first fled to a monastery with her son. In order to legalize his position by establishing a connection with the Dukas house, the recently widowed Botaneiates (after, among other things, his prospective marriage to the mother of the deposed emperor, Eudokia Makrembolitissa , had not come about) married Maria regardless of the fact that Michael VII was still alive. Therefore, this marriage was considered illegitimate. Maria entered into the marriage mainly to secure the succession of her son Constantine to the throne.

When Botaneiates proclaimed his own nephew Nikephoros Synadenus as his successor instead of Maria's little son , there was no official break between the ruling couple; the empress was however induced to support the coup d'état of the general Alexios (I) Komnenus and his older brother Isaac . In return she received the promise that the Komnenen brothers would make their son heir to the throne again. Since Isaak was married to Maria's cousin Irene, he and his brother could often visit Maria in her rooms due to this family connection. To further facilitate this private intercourse for the purpose of planning the conspiracy, the empress adopted Alexios, who was only about five years her junior and rumored to have been her lover, as her adoptive son and made him a member of the ruling family. Alexios' birth mother Anna Dalassene , who was probably the main initiator of the alliance between her sons and the empress, also agreed . In February 1081, Maria warned the Komnenen of the discovery of their plans. The brothers fled Constantinople to the army stationed in Thrace , and Alexios returned with his soldiers just under two months later and forced Botaneiates to abdicate. On April 4, 1081 he became the new emperor.

Next life

Maria of Alania was initially allowed to stay in the imperial palace, and Alexios I is said to have even thought of marrying her, but under great pressure he finally had his wife Irene Dukaina crowned empress a week after his own coronation . Now Maria moved to the Mangana Palace and held court there; she also owned extensive estates. Her son Constantine was made co-emperor and later betrothed to Alexios' eldest daughter, born in December 1083 and later historian Anna Komnena.

Around the mid-1080s, Maria became a nun without significantly changing her lifestyle at the Mangana Palace. She supported church institutions, made donations for the Georgian monastery Iviron on Mount Athos and was the patroness of writers, namely the theologian and philosopher Theophylact of Ohrid , who raised her son, and of Eustratios of Nikaia , who was a student of the Byzantine philosopher John Italos was and Maria, among other things, devoted a treatise on natural phenomena. The former empress continued to maintain relationships with her mother Borena and with her financed the construction of the Kappatha monastery in Jerusalem .

After Alexios had a son named Johannes in 1087 , the position of Maria's son Constantine, who lost his status as heir to the throne, deteriorated. In 1092 Johannes received the title of co-emperor. The engagement of Constantine and Anna Komnena remained, and Anna was brought up by Maria according to Byzantine custom from around 1090 until the untimely death of Constantine († around 1095/96). When Alexios visited Constantine on his estate in Pentegostis (near Serres in Greece) in 1094 , he was supposed to be murdered at the instigation of Nikephoros Diogenes , a half-brother of Michael VII. The plan failed; but although Maria was apparently privy to the attack, Alexios left her unmolested.

After the death of her son, Maria probably retired to a monastery. In 1103 she was still alive because a church synod convened by the Georgian King David IV sent her greetings. However, the exact year of her death is unknown.

literature

  • Ara Edmond Dostourian: Armenia and the crusades. Tenth to twelfth centuries. The Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa. University Press of America, Lanham MD 1993, ISBN 0-8191-8953-7 .
  • Anna Komnene : Alexias. Translated, introduced and annotated by Diether Roderich Reinsch. DuMont, Cologne 1996, ISBN 3-7701-3492-3 .
  • Michael Psellos : Chronography. Ou histoire d'un siecle de Byzance (976-1077). Texts établi et traduit by Emile Renauld. 2 volumes. Societe d'Edition Les Belles Lettres, Paris 1967.

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predecessor Office Successor
Eudokia macrembolitissa Empress of Byzantium
1071-1081
Irene Dukaina