Alexios IV of Trebizond

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Alexios IV Megas Komnenos
Emperor and Autocrat of all the East and Perateia
Komnenos
FatherManuel III Megas Komnenos
MotherEudokia of Georgia

Alexios IV Megas Komnenos or Alexius IV (Greek: Αλέξιος Μέγας Κομνηνός, romanized: Alexios Megas Komnēnos; c. 1379 – 1429), Emperor of Trebizond from 5 March 1417 to 26 April 1429.[1] He was the son of Emperor Manuel III and Gulkhan-Eudokia of Georgia.

Reign

Alexios IV had been associated in authority and given the title of

despotes by his father as early as 1395. Nevertheless, the two quarreled as Alexios was impatient to assume supreme power; William Miller compared this to "the first three sovereigns of the House of Hanover" for whom "the heir-apparent always quarrelled with his father."[2] When his father died in 1417, Alexios was accused by some of having expedited his death.[3]

Alexios inherited a conflict with the Genoese, who defeated the fleet of Trebizond and seized a local monastery, which they converted into a fortress. By 1418 he had signed a peace agreement and paid reparations to the Genoese until 1422. A new dispute arose over the emperor's obligations in 1425 and was not resolved until 1428. Relations with the Republic of Venice were generally better.[4]

After the death of

Byzantine Emperor John VIII Palaiologos in 1427.[5]

According to

Theodora Kantakouzene. He also attempted to kill his parents but the nobles intervened and prevented him, and John fled to Georgia.[9]

When Alexios IV's wife Theodora died in 1426, he was so distraught that Bessarion wrote him no less than three monodias, which help to shed some light on this otherwise dark period lacking in sources.[9]

Due to John's disloyalty and usurpation, Alexios IV made his younger son

Maria.[11]

Burial

According to Anthony Bryer, John IV felt remorse for his father's death and one of the three indications Bryer provides is a free-standing tomb he had constructed outside of the Chrysokephalos cathedral, into which he moved his father's remains from its burial spot inside the cathedral.[12] Due to a Turkish tradition that the tomb housed the body of a Turkish hero of the last siege of Trebizond, it was spared until 1918. In 1916, during the Russian occupation of Trebizond, Fyodor Uspensky excavated the tomb, finding one skeleton facing face, and a second one interred afterwards. The older skeleton Bryer, following Uspenskij's report, identified as Alexios'.[13]

On the Russian withdrawal from Trebizond, the older skeleton was entrusted to

John Tzimiskes, and the thirteenth-century Dukai of the Despotate of Epirus might also survive.[14]

Marriage and children

In 1395, Alexios married

Theodora Kantakouzene. They had at least six children:[15]

Two further daughters have been attributed to Alexios by later genealogists. Michel Kuršanskis has argued these marriages never really happened, and their existence is based on a misreading of an interpolation to Chalcondyles.[16] These daughters are:

  • Theodora of Trebizond, presumed wife of
    Ak Koyunlu. There is not mention of this marriage in any contemporany source. It is possible that she was confused with Theodora Despina, daughter of John IV and wife of Uzun Hassan, son of Ali Beg. An other option was that the Alexios' Theodora married instead Osman Beg
    , father of Ali.
  • Eudoksia Valenza of Trebizond, wife of Niccolò Crispo, Lord of Syros. She was proposed as the daughter of Alexios when Ambassador Caterino Zeno's claim in his notes that she was the daughter of John IV proved to be false or an his error. Other historians argue instead that she was a Genoese woman.

References

  1. ISSN 1479-5078
    .
  2. ^ William Miller, Trebizond: The last Greek Empire of the Byzantine Era: 1204-1461, 1926 (Chicago: Argonaut, 1969), p. 73
  3. ^ George Finlay, The History of Greece and the Empire of Trebizond, (1204–1461) (Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1851), p. 393
  4. ^ Miller, Trebizond, p. 79
  5. ^ a b Miller, Trebizond, p. 80
  6. ^ B.Ferjančić, Byzantines in Serbia in the first half of the 15. century, Serbian Academy od Sciences and Arts, Belgrade 1987-p.181
  7. ^ Anastasia Heidi M. Larvoll, The Marriage of despot Djuradj/Georg Brankovic and despina Eirene Kantakouzenos, The Building of Political Alliances through Marriage between Byzantium and Serbia in the 1400s, Institute for History IAKH University of Oslo, 2006-p.34-40
  8. ^ Finlay, History of Greece, p. 398
  9. ^ a b Miller, Trebizond, p. 81
  10. ^ Miller, Trebizond, p. 82
  11. ^ A. Vasiliev, "Pero Tafur, a Spanish Traveler of the Fifteenth Century and his Visit to Constantinople, Trebizond, and Italy", Byzantion, 7 (1932), p. 98
  12. ^ Bryer, "'The faithless Kabazitai and Scholarioi'", in Maistor: Classical, Byzantine and Renaissance Studies for Robert Browning, Ann Moffatt editor Byzantina Australiensa, 5 (1984), p. 324
  13. ^ Bryer, "'The faithless Kabazitai'", p. 325
  14. ^ Bryer, "'The faithless Kabazitai'", p. 326 and n. 58
  15. ^ Michel Kuršanskis, "La descendance d'Alexis IV, empereur de Trébizonde. Contribution à la prosopographie des Grands Comnènes", Revue des études byzantines, 37 (1979), p. 247
  16. ^ Kuršanskis, "La descendance d'Alexis IV", pp. 244f

External links

Alexios IV of Trebizond
Komnenid dynasty
Born: 1382 Died: 1429
Regnal titles
Preceded by
Emperor of Trebizond

1417–1429 		Succeeded by
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