Isaac II Angelos
Isaac II Angelos | |
---|---|
Byzantine emperor | |
Reign | 12 September 1185 – 8 April 1195 |
Predecessor | Andronikos I Komnenos |
Successor | Alexios III Angelos |
Reign | 19 July 1203 – 27 January 1204 |
Coronation | 1 August 1203[1] |
Successor | Alexios V Doukas |
Co-Emperor | Alexios IV Angelos |
Born | September 1156 |
Died | January 1204 (aged 47) Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) |
Spouse | Eirene Komnena or Palaiologina (ended 1185) |
Greek Orthodox |
Isaac II Angelos or Angelus (
His father
Rising by revolt
Niketas Choniates described Isaac's physical appearance: "He had a ruddy complexion and red hair, was of average height and robust in body".[2]
During the brief reign of
On 11 September 1185, while Andronikos was absent from the capital, his lieutenant Stephen Hagiochristophorites moved to arrest Isaac. Isaac killed Hagiochristophorites and took refuge in the church of Hagia Sophia.[3] Andronikos was a capable ruler in some ways but was hated for his cruelty and his efforts to keep the aristocracy obedient. Isaac appealed to the populace, and a tumult arose that spread rapidly over the whole city. When Andronikos returned he found that he had lost popular support, and that Isaac had been proclaimed emperor. Andronikos attempted to flee by boat but was apprehended. Isaac handed him over to the people of the city, and he was killed on 12 September 1185.[4]
First reign
Isaac II Angelos strengthened his position as emperor with dynastic marriages in 1185 and 1186. His niece
Isaac inaugurated his reign with a decisive victory over the Norman[6] King of Sicily, William II, at the Battle of Demetritzes on 7 November 1185. William had invaded the Balkans with 80,000 men and 200 ships towards the end of Andronikos I's reign. Elsewhere Isaac's policy was less successful. In late 1185, he sent a fleet of 80 galleys to liberate his brother Alexius III from Acre, but the fleet was destroyed by the Normans of Sicily. He then sent a fleet of 70 ships, but it failed to recover Cyprus from the rebellious noble Isaac Komnenos, thanks to Norman interference. This fleet was misinterpreted by many in the Holy Land as naval support for the Muslim offensive in accordance with Isaac's alliance with Saladin.[7][8] However the theory of a supposed alliance between Isaac and Saladin against the Third Crusade has been discredited by modern research.[8][9]
Isaac's administration was dominated by two figures: his maternal uncle Theodore Kastamonites, who became virtually a co-emperor and handled all civil government until his death in 1193; and his replacement, Constantine Mesopotamites, who acquired even more influence over the emperor.
The oppressiveness of his taxes, increased to pay his armies and finance his marriage, resulted in a
The Emperor's attention was next demanded in the east, where several claimants to the throne successively rose and fell. In 1189 the Holy Roman Emperor
By 1196, Isaac II had allowed the once powerful Byzantine navy to decline to only 30 galleys.[full citation needed]
The next five years were disturbed by continued warfare with Bulgaria, against which Isaac led several expeditions in person.[6] In spite of their promising start these ventures had little effect, and on one occasion in 1190 Isaac barely escaped with his life. The Byzantines suffered yet another major defeat in the Battle of Arcadiopolis in 1194. Isaac organized yet another offensive against Bulgaria in 1195 in cooperation with the Kingdom of Hungary, but Alexios Angelos, the Emperor's older brother, taking advantage of Isaac's absence from camp on a hunting expedition, proclaimed himself emperor and was readily recognised by the soldiers as Emperor Alexios III on 8 (or 9) April.[15][16] Alexios then canceled the expedition and ordered Isaac to be blinded and imprisoned in Constantinople.[6]
Second reign
In 1203, after eight years of captivity, Isaac II was raised from the dungeon to the throne once more[6] after the arrival of the Fourth Crusade and the flight of Alexios III from the capital. Both his mind and body had been enfeebled by his blindness and confinement,[6] and his son Alexios IV Angelos was associated on the throne as the effective monarch.
Heavily beholden to the crusaders, Alexios IV was unable to meet his obligations and his vacillation caused him to lose the support of both his crusader allies and his subjects. At the end of January 1204 the influential court official Alexios Doukas Mourtzouphlos took advantage of riots in the capital to imprison Alexios IV and seize the throne as Alexios V. At this point Isaac II died, allegedly of shock, while Alexios IV was strangled.
Usurpers
Several pretenders rose up and attempted to wrest the throne from Isaac during his reign. These included:
- Alexios Branas
- Theodore Mangaphas
- Pseudo-Alexios II
- Basil Chotzas – initiated a rebellion at Tarsia, near Nicomedia. Initially he had some success, but before long he was seized, blinded, and cast into prison.[17]
- Isaac Comnenus (nephew of Andronicus I Comnenus) – escaped from prison and fled to Hagia Sophia, where he proceeded to incite a mob. Eventually captured, he was suspended in the air and tortured in order to obtain the names of his accomplices. His internal organs suffered severe damage and he died the next day.[18]
- Constantine Tatikios – secretly established a group of 500 individuals who hid in Constantinople. Though they managed to escape detection for some considerable time, he was informed against, captured, and blinded.[18]
Historical reputation
Isaac has the reputation as one of the most unsuccessful rulers to occupy the Byzantine throne..
Family
Isaac II's first wife's name, Herina (i.e., Irene), is found on the necrology of Speyer Cathedral, where their daughter Irene is interred.[19] The first wife of Isaac II is usually considered to be a Byzantine noblewoman of unknown name. In an Italian edition of the chronicle of Nicetas Choniates "Greatness and catastrophe of Byzantium" can be found an interesting note to the XIV Book. The names of Isaac II's first wife and eldest daughter, unknown from Byzantine sources, are found in an obituary in the Cathedral of Speyer, the pantheon of German kings. Here, the wife of Philip of Swabia is said to be the daughter of Isaac and Irene (there is reference to the following article: R. Hiestand, Die erste Ehe Isaaks II. Angelos und seine Kinder, in Jahrbuch der Osterreichischen Byzantinisk, XLVII 1997 pp. 199–208). This Irene could be identified with the daughter of George Paleologus Ducas Comnenus and wife Aspae, Bagratiid Princess of Ossetia; the son of this one, Andronicus Paleologus Comnenoducas is known as gambrox (γαμβρός) of Isaac II. Isaac's wife was possibly daughter of Andronikos I Komnenos, Byzantine Emperor (died 1185). A potential foreign origin is also given to her due to having the same name as her daughter, contrary to long-standing Greek custom. Their third child was born in 1182 or 1183 and she was dead or divorced by 1185, when Isaac remarried. Their children were:
- Anna-Euphrosyne Angelina, married to Roman the Great.
- Irene Angelina (c. 1181–1208), married first to Roger III of Sicily and secondly to Philip of Swabia. Isaac is the ancestor of all European monarchs now reigning through Irene's children by Philip.
- Alexios IV Angelos (c. 1182–1204).
By his second wife, Margaret of Hungary (who took the baptismal name "Maria"), Isaac II had two sons:
- Manuel Angelos (b. after 1195 – d. 1212), he was evidently the elder son, being contemplated in 1205 to ascend the Byzantine throne[20]
- John Angelos (b. ca. 1193 – d. 1259). He migrated to Hungary and ruled over Syrmia and Bacs (1227–42) as a vassal of king Béla IV of Hungary.
See also
References
- ^ Geoffrey of Villehardouin, De la Conquête de Constantinople s.48
- ^ Choniates 1984, p. 248.
- ^ Harris 2007, p. 71.
- ^ Choniates 1984, pp. 188–189.
- ^ Burkhardt 2016, p. 50.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 14 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 858.
- S2CID 162541416.
- ^ ISSN 1476-5276.
- OCLC 891400633.
- ^ J. Norwich, A History of Venice, 121
- OCLC 891400633.
- ^ W. Treadgold, A History of the Byzantine State and Society, 658
- ^ Choniates 1984, p. 224.
- ^ Freed 2016, pp. 494–504.
- ^ Schreiner, Peter (1977). Die byzantinischen Kleinchroniken 2. Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae XII(2). pp. 181–182.
- Alexios V"2 months and 16 days". Regnal dates for these emperors are calculated reckoning from the fall of Constantinople on 12 April 1204.
- ^ Choniates 1984, p. 233.
- ^ a b Choniates 1984, p. 314.
- ^ Klaniczay, Gabor. Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe. Translated by Eva Palmai. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 99–100.
- ^ Rodd, Rennell (1907). The Princes of Achaia and the Chronicles of Morea: A Study of Greece in the Middle Ages. Vol. 1.
Sources
- Angold, Michael, The Byzantine Empire: A Political History, 1025–1204, 2nd ed. (London and New York, 1997)
- Brand, Charles M. (1968). Byzantium Confronts the West, 1180–1204. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. OCLC 795121713.
- Burkhardt, Stefan (2016). "Between empires: South-eastern Europe and the two Roman Empires in the Middle Ages". In Jaritz, Gerhard; Szende, Katalin (eds.). Medieval East Central Europe in a Comparative Perspective: From Frontier to Lands in Focus. Routledge.
- OCLC 10605650.
- Freed, John (2016). Frederick Barbarossa: The Prince and the Myth. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-122763.
- Harris, Jonathan (2007). Constantinople: Capital of Byzantium. Hambledon Continuum.
- Harris, Jonathan, Byzantium and the Crusades (London: Bloomsbury, 2nd ed., 2014). ISBN 978-1-78093-767-0
- Harris, Jonathan, 'Collusion with the infidel as a pretext for military action against Byzantium', in Clash of Cultures: the Languages of Love and Hate, ed. Sarah Lambert and Helen Nicholson (Turnhout, 2012), pp. 99–117
- Head, C. (1980) Physical Descriptions of the Emperors in Byzantine Historical Writing, Byzantion, Vol. 50, No. 1 (1980), Peeters Publishers, pp. 226–240
- Hiestand, Rudolf, 'Die Erste Ehe Isaaks II Angelus und Seine Kinder', Jahrbuch der Osterreichischen Byzantinistik, 47 (1997).
- ISBN 0-19-504652-8.
- McDaniel, Gordon L. (1984). "On Hungarian-Serbian Relations in the Thirteenth Century: John Angelos and Queen Jelena" (PDF). Ungarn-Jahrbuch. 12 (1982–1983): München, 1984: 43–50.
- Moravcsik, Gyula (1970). Byzantium and the Magyars. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.
- Ostrogorsky, George (1956). History of the Byzantine State. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
- Savignac, David. "The Medieval Russian Account of the Fourth Crusade – A New Annotated Translation".
- ISBN 0-8047-2630-2.
- Varzos, Konstantinos (1984). Η Γενεαλογία των Κομνηνών [The Genealogy of the Komnenoi] (PDF) (in Greek). Vol. B. Thessaloniki: OCLC 834784665.
External links
- Foreign policy of the Angeli from A History of the Byzantine Empire by Al. Vasilief