Photios (stepson of Belisarius)

Photios ( Greek  Φώτιος , also Photeinos, Photinos or Photius; * 1st quarter of the 6th century in Constantinople ; † between 578 and 582 ) was a Byzantine military, diplomat, monk, and finally abbot of the Nea monastery in Jerusalem . Photios was the son of Antonina before she married the bodyguard of Emperor Justinian I and later General Belisarius .

From 535 to 540 Photios accompanied his stepfather as a soldier during his Gothic War in Italy and took part in the reconquest of Sicily in 535 and the siege of Naples the following year . From 537 to 538 he was in Rome with Belisarius and his troops during the Ostrogothic siege . Belisarius instructed his stepson to arrest the Pope by Theodahad's grace, Silverius , who he then sent into exile.

Soon after, at the urging of his mother Antonina, a good friend of Empress Theodora I , Photios was withdrawn from Italy, allegedly because he thwarted Antonina's amorous adventures with Theodosios, Belisarius' godson. In 541 Photios, who was made an honorary consul that year , accompanied his stepfather again, now against the Sassanids , who had broken the Eternal Peace of 530 in 540 . During this campaign he informed Belisarius about his mother's relationship with Theodosios. In order to restore the honor of Belisarius, Photios kidnapped Theodosius in Ephesus and kept him prisoner in a secret place. Theodora I, who found out about this, had Photios tortured until he revealed the hiding place. After the liberation of Theodosius, Photios was imprisoned and was only able to escape after more than three years.

His escape led him to Jerusalem, where he became a monk. Under Justin II , Photios began to play an important role in the ecclesiastical environment and became a diplomat and envoy for special tasks. He traveled to Alexandria and Egypt in 565/66, among other places, to reach an agreement there between the warring churches. In 571 he accompanied an imperial escort for the Monophysite bishop Konon of Constantinople to his monastery in Jerusalem, where he imprisoned him.

Between around 565 and 578, probably in the year 572, Photios was involved in the suppression of Jewish and Samaritan rebellions in Palestine and Syria . As a result, he exercised - appropriately or delegated - the imperial right to collect extraordinary taxes and prosecute all kinds of offenders. He relied on a crowd of followers, including other monks. The hostile attitude that John of Ephesus shows in his church history towards Photius could be an indication that he persecuted Monophysitism in the region.

literature

• John Robert Martindale: Photius 2. In: The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire (PLRE). Volume 3B, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1992, ISBN 0-521-20160-8 , pp. 1037-1039.
• Peter Hatlie: The Monks and Monasteries of Constantinople, Ca. 350-850. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2004, ISBN 978-0-521-84821-3 , pp. 202-203 Google Books

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Theophanes Confessor 1, 240, 4-7; Kedrenos 1, 680, 18-21.
2. ^ Prokop , Historien 1, 5.
3. ^ Prokop, Historien 1, 10.
4. ^ Prokop, Historien 1, 18.
5. ^ Liberatus of Carthage , Breviarium causae Nestorianorum et Eutychianorum 22.
6. ^ Prokop, Anekdota 1.
7. ^ Procopius, Anecdota 2.
8. ^ Procopius, Anecdota 3.
9. ↑ Theophanes Confessor 1, 240, 4-7.
10. ↑ Franz Dölger , Andreas E. Müller (ed.): Regesta of the imperial documents of the Eastern Roman Empire from 565-1453 . Part 1, half vol. 1: Regesta from 565-867 . Second and revised by Andreas E. Müller. Edition. CH Beck, Munich - Berlin 2009, p. 1 f. No. 2 (= corpus of Greek documents from the Middle Ages and modern times A / Dept. 1, 1, 1).
11. ↑ John of Ephesus , Church History 1, 31, 29, 5–9.
12. ↑ John of Ephesus, Church History 1, 32, 29, 21 - 1, 32, 30, 26.
13. ↑ John of Ephesus, Church History 1, 32, 30, 18-20.