Isaac Komnenos (son of Alexios I)

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Isaac Komnenos
Komnenoi
FatherAlexios I Komnenos
MotherIrene Doukaina

Isaac Komnenos or Comnenus (

Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos and Empress Irene Doukaina. He was raised to the high rank of sebastokrator by his older brother John II Komnenos
in reward for his support, but they later fell out, as Isaac began to covet the throne.

In 1130, Isaac and his sons fled to exile after becoming involved in a conspiracy against John. For several years, they wandered in

Seljuk Turks, Isaac was exiled to Heraclea Pontica. During the succession struggle that followed John's death in 1143, he supported the unsuccessful candidacy of his elder nephew, likewise named Isaac, over his younger nephew Manuel I Komnenos
.

Weakened by the onset of an illness, he was forced to retire from public life by Manuel in 1150. Isaac then devoted himself to the construction of the monastery of

Komnenian dynasty
.

Early life

Born on 16 January 1093, Isaac Komnenos was the fifth child and third son of

purple'),[2] and the prestigious title is consistently associated with him throughout his life.[3][4]

Following the death of his uncle, Nikephoros Melissenos, in 1104, Isaac was given the rank of Caesar by his father.[1] During the succession struggle that followed the death of his father in 1118, Isaac supported his elder brother John II Komnenos (r. 1118–1143) against the intrigues of Empress-dowager Irene and their sister Anna Komnene, who favoured the candidacy of Anna's husband, Nikephoros Bryennios the Younger. In return, John II raised Isaac to the rank of sebastokrator (already borne by their middle brother, Andronikos).[4][5] The conferral of this highest court rank, created by Alexios I to honour his elder brother Isaac, marked its bearer as almost equal to the emperor.[6] Nevertheless, throughout his life, in almost all surviving texts or artifacts authored or funded by Isaac, he is known not by his rank, but rather by the title of porphyrogennetos, which is often accompanied by an explicit reference to his father, Alexios I, rather than the reigning emperor, as was customary. This emphasis on his descent is very indicative of Isaac's perception of his status, and most likely represents a conscious choice: a legitimizing device for his imperial ambitions.[7]

Exile and wanderings

Mosaic of a middle-aged, bearded man dressed in bejewelled robes and wearing a crown
Mosaic of Isaac's brother and rival, Emperor John II, at the Hagia Sophia

Relations between Isaac and John II were cordial at first, but began to deteriorate, so that by 1130 they had become estranged. The reasons for this are left unexplained by the sources;

Melitene.[8]

Isaac remained in exile for six years, during which time he traversed most of

Armenian Cilicia to entice its lord, Leo I, into the league. He was initially well received in Cilicia and spent some time there. His eldest son John even married one of Leo's daughters, and received the cities of Mopsuestia and Adana as his new wife's dowry. After a short while, however, they fell out with Leo too, and were forced to seek shelter with Sultan Mesud, abandoning their possessions in Cilicia.[13]

According to Michael the Syrian, news of these machinations enraged John II, who in 1132 embarked on a campaign against both the Turks and the Armenians, capturing two fortresses on the shores of the

Saint John the Baptist near the Jordan River.[14] The historian Konstantinos Varzos considers it likely, although no source mentions this, that the journey also had the purpose of seeking the aid of the King of Jerusalem, Fulk (r. 1131–1143).[15]

Return to Byzantium and accession of Manuel I

Despite his efforts, Isaac's attempted coalition against his brother failed to materialize, while John II's position continued to improve. The emperor's military successes, particularly following his Syrian campaign in 1137–1138 that led to the submission of the Principality of Antioch to the Byzantine Empire, enhanced his standing with the Byzantine aristocracy, officialdom, and the common people. As a result, Isaac's supporters in the empire began to desert his cause.[15] Thus Isaac was forced to seek reconciliation with John II: along with his eldest son John, Isaac met his brother during the imperial army's return from Antioch in spring 1138. John II readily forgave his brother, and brought him to Constantinople. Indeed, according to Choniates, the emperor was more pleased about this reconciliation than his victories.[16] Soon after, in 1139, Isaac's son John again defected to the Turks. Either at that point or a little later, Isaac was banished as a precaution to Heraclea Pontica.[4][17]

Shortly before John II died in April 1143, he had designated his fourth and youngest son Manuel as his heir over his third (and oldest surviving) son, the sebastokrator Isaac. Consequently, Manuel's succession was not immediately secure.[18][19] In this struggle for the throne, the elder Isaac threw his support behind his namesake nephew. However, the intervention of John Axouch, the commander-in-chief of the army, was decisive in securing the throne for Manuel. Isaac, who had been living in relative comfort in Heraclea, was imprisoned on Axouch's orders.[4][9][20] Manuel nevertheless quickly felt his position strong enough to release his uncle as well as his older brother, and both attended Manuel's coronation on 28 November 1143.[21][22] Even then, Isaac did not abandon his ambitions: according to the contemporary John Kinnamos, during one of Manuel's first campaigns against the Turks in 1146, when news spread in the camp that the emperor, rushing into the fray, was surrounded by enemies, Isaac immediately sped to the imperial tent, ready to be proclaimed emperor in case Manuel was killed.[23][24]

Final years and death

Photo of a domed Byzantine church with red-brick walls and lead-covered roof
The katholikon of the Monastery of Theotokos Kosmosoteira today

After 1150, Manuel forced his uncle to retire from public affairs,

Pantokrator Monastery, he also ordered the erection of a hospital outside the monastery walls.[25][26] The typikon was also a kind of last will, where Isaac regulated the affairs of his household—the head of his retinue Leo Kastamonites, his secretary Michael, his cupbearer (pinkernes) Constantine, his personal priest and household treasurer (protovestiarios) Constantine, and others—his family, and other dependents, such as a Jewish couple that he had personally converted to Christianity, baptizing them with the names of his parents. Isaac probably died shortly after the typikon was written.[27]

Works

In contrast to John, who was chiefly engaged in warfare throughout his reign, Isaac was a scholar and patron of learning and the arts.[28][29] Apart from his foundation of the Kosmosoteira monastery, in Constantinople he restored the monastery of St. Stephen in the Aurelianae quarter, which he later attached to the Kosmosoteira as a hostel for monks visiting the capital.[30][31]

In c. 1120 he rebuilt the

Maria Doukaina. The Chora was also the initial location of his tomb, before he had it transferred to the Kosmosoteira.[4][32] The Chora Church contains the only securely attested depiction of Isaac, in a deesis mosaic that dates to the church's restoration by Theodore Metochites in the early 14th century, but which most likely faithfully reproduces the original decoration of the church after Isaac's reconstruction. As historian Kallirroe Linardatou points out, in the mosaic, Isaac bears a crown that exceeds the simple circlet usually borne by a sebastokrator by being richly decorated and featuring a domed cover, attributes that deliberately hint at features of imperial crowns.[33] He also commissioned a number of icons, either mentioned in the typikon of the Kosmosoteira or known through the epigraphs associated with them.[34]

The court poet Theodore Prodromos wrote an

politic verse, preserved in the Seraglio Octateuch, and as the likely patron of this luxurious manuscript.[4][36][37] In the typikon, Isaac himself claims to have composed poetry and compiled it in a book,[4][38] and is sometimes identified with the writer called "Isaac Komnenos the porphyrogennetos" who composed two commentary works on Homer.[39]

Family and descendants

Isaac Komnenos was married c. 1110 to Irene,[40] who may have been either the anonymous daughter of Volodar of Peremyshl (r. 1085–1124), known from the Slavonic Primary Chronicle to have married "the son of Emperor Alexios",[41] or, according to a different hypothesis, Kata, a daughter of David IV of Georgia (r. 1089–1125).[42] Their children were:[43]

  1. Muslim, settled at the Seljuk capital of Ikonion and married Sultan Mesud's daughter.[44]
  2. A daughter (born c. 1114), possibly named Maria, who married the military commander Joseph Bryennios.[45]
  3. Anna Komnene (born c. 1116), who married the courtier and ambassador John Arbantenos.[46]
  4. Andronikos I Komnenos (c. 1118 – 1185), adventurer and eventually emperor in 1183–1185.[47]

In addition, Isaac had a

foster son, Constantine, whom he called by the diminutive Kostintzes.[40]

Isaac's imperial ambitions—an "ancestral inheritance passed to his children", according to Kinnamos

demise in 1461.[51]

References

  1. ^ a b Varzos 1984, p. 238.
  2. ^ ODB, "Porphyrogennetos" (M. McCormack), p. 1701.
  3. ^ Linardou 2016, p. 157.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i ODB, "Komnenos, Isaac the Porphyrogennetos" (A. Kazhdan), p. 1146
  5. ^ Varzos 1984, pp. 238–239.
  6. ^ ODB, "Sebastokrator" (A. Kazhdan), p. 1862.
  7. ^ Linardou 2016, pp. 156–158, 162.
  8. ^ a b Varzos 1984, p. 239.
  9. ^ a b c Magdalino 2002, p. 193.
  10. ^ Linardou 2016, p. 158.
  11. ^ Varzos 1984, pp. 240–241.
  12. ^ Varzos 1984, pp. 239–241.
  13. ^ Varzos 1984, p. 241.
  14. ^ Varzos 1984, p. 242.
  15. ^ a b Varzos 1984, p. 243.
  16. ^ Varzos 1984, pp. 243–244.
  17. ^ Varzos 1984, p. 244.
  18. ^ ODB, "Manuel I Komnenos" (C. M. Brand, A. Kazhdan, A. Cutler), pp. 1289–1290.
  19. ^ Magdalino 2002, p. 195.
  20. ^ Varzos 1984, pp. 244–245.
  21. ^ Varzos 1984, pp. 245–246.
  22. ^ Brand 1976, p. 34.
  23. ^ a b Varzos 1984, p. 246.
  24. ^ Brand 1976, pp. 48–49.
  25. ^ Varzos 1984, pp. 246–252.
  26. ^ ODB, "Bera" (A.-M. Talbot, N. P. Ševcenko), pp. 282–283.
  27. ^ Varzos 1984, pp. 251–252.
  28. ^ Magdalino 2002, p. 194.
  29. ^ Linardou 2016, pp. 155–156, 182.
  30. ^ Varzos 1984, p. 250.
  31. ^ Linardou 2016, p. 169.
  32. ^ Linardou 2016, pp. 156, 159.
  33. ^ Linardou 2016, pp. 159–163.
  34. ^ Linardou 2016, p. 156.
  35. ^ Varzos 1984, pp. 252–253.
  36. ^ Varzos 1984, p. 253.
  37. ^ Linardou 2016, pp. 173–176.
  38. ^ Varzos 1984, p. 252.
  39. ^ ODB, "Komnenos, Isaac" (A. Kazhdan), pp. 1144, 1146; "Komnenos, Isaac the Porphyrogennetos" (A. Kazhdan), p. 1146.
  40. ^ a b Varzos 1984, p. 254.
  41. ^ Magdalino 2002, p. 205.
  42. ^ Suny 1994, p. 36.
  43. ^ Varzos 1984, pp. 254, 480–638.
  44. ^ Varzos 1984, pp. 254, 480–485.
  45. ^ Varzos 1984, pp. 254, 486–488.
  46. ^ Varzos 1984, pp. 254, 489–492.
  47. ^ Varzos 1984, pp. 254, 493–638.
  48. ^ Brand 1976, p. 49.
  49. ^ Varzos 1984, pp. 493–637.
  50. ^ ODB, "Andronikos I Komnenos" (C. M. Brand, A. Cutler), p. 94.
  51. ^ Varzos 1984, pp. 637–638.

Sources

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Isaac Komnenos (son of Alexios I).
  • Brand, Charles M., ed. (1976). Deeds of John and Manuel Comnenus, by John Kinnamos. New York: Columbia University Press.
    ISBN 0-231-04080-6
    .
  • ISBN 0-19-504652-8
    .
  • Linardou, Kallirroe (2016). "Imperial impersonations: Disguised portraits of a Komnenian prince and his father". In Bucossi, Alessandra; Rodriguez Suarez, Alex (eds.). John II Komnenos, Emperor of Byzantium: In the Shadow of Father and Son. London: Routledge. pp. 155–182.
    ISBN 978-1-4724-6024-0
    .
  • ISBN 0-521-52653-1
    .
  • Suny, Ronald Grigor (1994). The Making of the Georgian Nation (Second ed.). Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
    ISBN 0-253-20915-3
    .
  • Varzos, Konstantinos (1984). Η Γενεαλογία των Κομνηνών [The Genealogy of the Komnenoi] (PDF) (in Greek). Vol. A. Thessaloniki:
    OCLC 834784634
    .
Preceded by Sebastokrator of the Byzantine Empire
1118 – after 1152
With: Andronikos Komnenos (until 1130/31),
Andronikos Komnenos (1122–1142),
Isaac Komnenos (from 1122),
Manuel Komnenos (1122–1143) 		Succeeded by
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