Isaac I Komnenos or Comnenus (Ancient Greek: Ἰσαάκιος Κομνηνός, romanized: Isaákios Komnēnós; c. 1007 – 1 June 1060) was Byzantine emperor from 1057 to 1059, the first reigning member of the Komnenian dynasty.
The son of the general Manuel Erotikos Komnenos, he was orphaned at an early age, and was raised under the care of Emperor Basil II. He made his name as a successful military commander, serving as commander-in-chief of the eastern armies between c. 1042 and 1054. In 1057 he became the head of a conspiracy of the dissatisfied eastern generals against the newly crowned Michael VI Bringas. Proclaimed emperor by his followers on 8 June 1057, he rallied sufficient military forces to defeat the loyalist army at the Battle of Hades. While Isaac was willing to accept a compromise solution by being appointed Michael's heir, a powerful faction in Constantinople, led by the ambitious Patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Keroularios, pressured Michael to abdicate. After Michael abdicated on 30 August 1057, Isaac was crowned emperor in the Hagia Sophia on 1 September.
As emperor, he rewarded his supporters, but also embarked on a series of fiscal measures designed to shore up revenue and eliminate the excesses allowed to flourish under his predecessors. His aim was to fill the treasury and restore the Byzantine army's effectiveness to preserve the empire. The reduction of salaries, harsh tax measures and confiscation of Church properties aroused much opposition, particularly from Patriarch Keroularios, who had come to think of himself as a king-maker. In November 1058, Keroularios was arrested and exiled, and died before a synod to depose him could be convened.
The eastern frontier held firm during Isaac's reign, Hungarian raids were resolved by a treaty in 1059, while the restive Pechenegs were subdued by Isaac in person in summer 1059. Shortly after, Isaac fell ill, and on the advice and pressure of Michael Psellos, he abdicated his throne in favour of Constantine X Doukas, retiring to the Stoudion monastery where he died later in 1060.
Contents
Biography
Origin and early career
Isaac was the son of Manuel Erotikos Komnenos, who reportedly served as strategos autokrator of the East under Emperor Basil II and defended Nicaea against the rebel Bardas Skleros in 978. His mother's name was Maria, about whom nothing else is known. Manuel's native language was Greek and modern scholarship considers the family to have been of Greek origin. It is said that the family name was derived from the city of Komne, near Adrianople in Thrace (theme). Isaac was born c. 1007.
As Maria had died early, on his deathbed in 1020, Isaac's father commended his two surviving sons Isaac and John to the care of Emperor Basil II. According to Nikephoros Bryennios the Younger, the two children were raised with the utmost solicitude and the best tutors at the Stoudion monastery, with care taken to teach them military exercises and hunting. As soon as they came of age, Isaac and his brother joined the imperial bodyguard, the Hetaireia.
At a young age, perhaps as early as 1025, Isaac married Catherine of Bulgaria (born c. 1010), a daughter of Ivan Vladislav (r. 1015–1018), the last Tsar of the First Bulgarian Empire. From c. 1042 he held the post of stratopedarches of the East—likely denoting that he was domestikos ton scholon, commander-in-chief, of the eastern field army, but this title is not explicitly attested—and the ranks of magistros and vestes. He was dismissed by Empress Theodora in 1054, and replaced by her eunuch confidant, the proedros Theodore.
Revolt of the eastern generals
When Michael VI Bringas came to the throne in 1056, Isaac was chosen to lead a deputation of eastern generals to the new emperor. Michael VI engaged in mass promotions of individuals—in the eyes of the contemporary courtier Michael Psellos, to an excessive degree—and the military sought to partake in the emperor's bounty. This was not a trivial matter: the debasement of the Byzantine currency under Constantine IX Monomachos (r. 1042–1054) had affected military pay—not coincidentally presided over by none other than Michael Bringas, who was then military logothete—and while civil officials were compensated by being raised to higher dignities (which commanded higher salaries, rogai), the army was not. This exacerbated the already simmering dislike of the military aristocracy for the "regime of eunuchs and civilian politicians" that had dominated the empire during the last decades of the Macedonian dynasty.
At Easter 1057, the traditional time when the emperor paid title holders their stipends, the delegation presented itself before the emperor. Along with Isaac, the delegation included the magistros Katakalon Kekaumenos, who had just been dismissed as doux of Antioch; the vestarches Michael Bourtzes, whose namesake grandfather had captured Antioch for Byzantium a century earlier; Constantine Doukas, married to a niece of the Patriarch of Constantinople Michael Keroularios; his brother John Doukas, a friend of Psellos; and others not explicitly named. As the historian Anthony Kaldellis comments, this was a formidable assemblage, as the families represented in it, all of them descended from military men promoted by the warrior-emperor Basil II, would define "the future of the empire for the next thirty years, indeed for the next century and more".
Psellos himself was an eyewitness at the reception of the generals' delegation, and claims that the emperor began abusing them at once; he then made Isaac, as the leader of the deputation, and his second, Kekaumenos, stand forth, and proceeded to denounce him, claiming that he was responsible for "all but losing Antioch" and "corrupting his army", being a coward and incompetent, and of having misappropriated army funds for his own use. John Skylitzes, who wrote later in the century, reports that the emperor treated the generals courteously, but agrees that he refused outright to consider the honours they claimed for themselves, notably the promotion of Isaac and Kekaumenos to the rank of proedros.
The effect of the emperor's attitude on the army leadership was profound, and turned them against Michael. A second delegation to the chief minister, the protosynkellos Leo Paraspondylos, was received in similar manner, and according to Psellos Isaac could barely restrain his colleagues from attacking the emperor then and there, in his own throne room. At length, a plot was formed against the emperor, and despite Isaac's own reluctance, according to Psellos, he was nominated as its leader.
Reign
The first act of the new emperor was to reward his partisans: his fellow conspirators were named to high offices—his own brother John was named domestikos ton scholon of the West and received the high title of kouropalates, which was also awarded to Kekaumenos and Bryennios. The troops that had followed him received a donative and were quickly sent back east, to avoid any trouble with the populace of Constantinople. Patriarch Michael Keroularios was also rewarded for his support, by receiving sole authority for all personnel and financial matters of the Church, which were previously under the purview of the emperor, while the Patriarch's nephews received high court titles.
Isaac's rise to power was a turning point in Byzantine history, marking the definitive end of the long-lived Macedonian dynasty. Although powerful generals had previously suborned power, they had ruled alongside the Macedonian emperors; Isaac was the first military strongman to usurp power outright since the 9th century. This was reflected in the coinage struck in his name, which uniquely showed him holding a drawn sword; while it may have simply indicated his intention to restore "capable military rule" (Kaldellis), it came to be understood as a claim to rule by right of conquest. Certainly it highlighted Isaac's determination to make reforms and restore the effectiveness of the army.
The task he faced was truly herculean, as the politically weak emperors of the previous thirty years had fostered corruption and inefficiency, handing out titles and their attendant state salaries (rogai) in exchange for support. The devaluation of the coinage under Constantine IX had been a first reaction to the brewing crisis, but Isaac was the first emperor in this period who certainly faced a budget deficit. To fund his cherished army, Isaac was therefore obliged to begin strict economies: he reduced or abolished the rogai of those who had been awarded titles, enforced a stricter and more efficient collection of taxes, reclaimed misappropriated imperial estates, and cancelled grants of such lands and tax exemptions made under Constantine IX and Michael VI, particularly those that had been granted to monasteries and churches, using a law of Nikephoros II Phokas. Even though salaries of officials, especially members of the Senate, were cut, Isaac's efforts were enthusiastically received even among some senior members of the civil bureaucracy, judging by the comments of Psellos and Michael Attaleiates.
[Isaac Komnenos] was eager to lose no time in cutting out the dead wood which had long been accumulating in the Roman Empire. We can liken it to a monstrous body, a body with a multitude of heads, an ugly bull-neck, hands so many that they were beyond counting, and just as many feet; its entrails were festering and diseased, in some parts swollen, in others wasting away, here afflicted with dropsy, there diminishing with consumption. Now Isaac tried to remedy this by wholesale surgery.
Family
Isaac was married to Catherine of Bulgaria, a daughter of Ivan Vladislav, the last ruler of the First Bulgarian Empire. Isaac raised her to the position of Augusta. The couple had at least two children:
Manuel Komnenos (c. 1030 – c. 1042/57), probably the "son of Komnenos" recorded as having been engaged to the daughter of the protospatharios Helios. He died sometime between 1042 and 1057.
Maria Komnene (born c. 1034), her beauty is remarked upon by Psellos but she remained unmarried and retired with her mother to the Myrelaion.