Constantine IX Monomachos - Wikipedia Constantine IX Monomachos From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation Jump to search Byzantine emperor from 1042 to 1055 Emperor and Autocrat of the Romans Constantine IX Monomachos Emperor and Autocrat of the Romans Mosaic of Emperor Constantine IX at the Hagia Sophia Byzantine emperor Reign 11 June 1042 – 11 January 1055 Coronation 12 June 1042 Predecessor Zoë Porphyrogenita and Theodora Porphyrogenita Successor Theodora Porphyrogenita Co-empresses Zoë Porphyrogenita Theodora Porphyrogenita Born c. 1000 Antioch Died 11 January 1055 (aged 54–55) Constantinople Burial Monastery of Mangana, Constantinople Spouse Two unknown wives Zoë Porphyrogenita Dynasty Macedonian (by marriage) Monomachos family Father Theodosios Monomachos Constantine IX Monomachos, Latinized as Monomachus (Medieval Greek: Κωνσταντῖνος Θ΄ Μονομάχος, romanized: Kōnstantinos IX Monomachos; c. 1000 – 11 January 1055), reigned as Byzantine emperor from 11 June 1042 to 11 January 1055. He had been chosen by Zoë Porphyrogenita as a husband and co-emperor in 1042, although he had been exiled for conspiring against her previous husband, Emperor Michael IV the Paphlagonian. They ruled together until Zoë died in 1050. During Constantine's reign, the Byzantine Empire fought wars against groups which included the Kievan Rus' and the Seljuq Turks. In the year before his death, the split between the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches took place. Contents 1 Early life 2 Reign 3 Architecture and art 4 See also 5 References 6 Sources 6.1 Primary sources 6.2 Secondary sources Early life[edit] Constantine Monomachos was the son of Theodosios Monomachos, an important bureaucrat under Basil II and Constantine VIII.[1] At some point, Theodosios had been suspected of conspiracy and his son's career suffered accordingly.[2] Constantine's position improved after he married his second wife, a niece of Emperor Romanos III Argyros.[3] Catching the eye of Zoë Porphyrogenita, he was exiled to Mytilene on the island of Lesbos by her second husband, Michael IV.[4] Gold histamenon of Zoë and Theodora, 1042. The death of Michael IV and the overthrow of Michael V in 1042 led to Constantine being recalled from his place of exile and appointed as a judge in Greece.[5] However, prior to commencing his appointment, Constantine was summoned to Constantinople, where the fragile working relationship between Michael V's successors, the empresses Zoë and Theodora, was breaking down. After two months of increasing acrimony between the two, Zoë decided to search for a new husband, thereby hoping to prevent her sister from increasing her popularity and authority.[6] After her first preference displayed contempt for the empress and her second died under mysterious circumstances,[3] Zoë remembered the handsome and urbane Constantine. The pair were married on 11 June 1042, without the participation of Patriarch Alexius I of Constantinople, who refused to officiate over a third marriage (for both spouses).[2] On the following day, Constantine was formally proclaimed emperor together with Zoë and her sister Theodora. Reign[edit] Gold tetarteron of Constantine IX Monomachos. Reverse. Bust of Constantine IX with a beard; on his head is a crown with a cross; labarum in his right hand, globe with a cross in his left. Constantinople. Coronation of Constantine IX Constantine continued the purge instituted by Zoë and Theodora, removing the relatives of Michael V from the court.[7] The new emperor was pleasure-loving[8] and prone to violent outbursts on suspicion of conspiracy.[9] He was heavily influenced by his mistress Maria Skleraina, a relative of his second wife, and Maria's family. Constantine had another mistress, a certain "Alan princess", probably Irene, daughter of the Georgian Bagratid prince Demetrius.[10] Zoë (left), Constantine IX (centre), and Theodora (right) depicted on the Monomachus Crown In August 1042, the emperor relieved General George Maniakes from his command in Italy, and Maniakes rebelled, declaring himself emperor in September.[11] He transferred his troops into the Balkans and was about to defeat Constantine's army in battle, when he was wounded and died on the field, ending the crisis in 1043.[12] Immediately after the victory, Constantine was attacked by a fleet from Kievan Rus';[12] it is "incontrovertible that a Rus' detachment took part in the Maniakes rebellion".[13] They too were defeated, with the help of Greek fire.[14] Constantine married his relative Anastasia to the future Prince Vsevolod I of Kiev, the son of his opponent Yaroslav I the Wise. Constantine's family name Monomachos ("one who fights alone") was inherited by Vsevolod and Anastasia's son, Vladimir II Monomakh.[1] Constantine IX's preferential treatment of Maria Skleraina in the early part of his reign led to rumors that she was planning to murder Zoë and Theodora.[15] This led to a popular uprising by the citizens of Constantinople in 1044, which came dangerously close to actually harming Constantine who was participating in a religious procession along the streets of Constantinople. The mob was only quieted by the appearance at a balcony of Zoë and Theodora, who reassured the people that they were not in any danger of assassination.[16] In 1045 Constantine annexed the Armenian kingdom of Ani,[17] but this expansion merely exposed the empire to new enemies. In 1046 the Byzantines came into contact for the first time with the Seljuk Turks.[18] They met in battle in Armenia in 1048 and settled a truce the following year.[19] Even if the Seljuk rulers were willing to abide by the treaty, their unruly Turcoman allies showed much less restraint. The Byzantine forces would suffer a cataclysmic defeat at the battle of Manzikert in 1071.[20] Constantine began persecuting the Armenian Church, trying to force it into union with the Orthodox Church.[18] In 1046,[21] he refounded the University of Constantinople by creating the Departments of Law and Philosophy.[22] Leo Tornikios attacks Constantinople, Skylitzes chronicle. In 1047 Constantine was faced by the rebellion of his nephew Leo Tornikios, who gathered supporters in Adrianople and was proclaimed emperor by the army.[23][24] Tornikios was forced to retreat, failed in another siege, and was captured during his flight.[20] The revolt had weakened Byzantine defenses in the Balkans, and in 1048 the area was raided by the Pechenegs,[25] who continued to plunder it for the next five years. The emperor's efforts to contain the enemy through diplomacy merely exacerbated the situation, as rival Pecheneg leaders clashed on Byzantine ground, and Pecheneg settlers were allowed to live in compact settlement in the Balkans, making it difficult to suppress their rebellion.[26] Constantine seems to have taken recourse to the pronoia system, a sort of Byzantine feudal contract in which tracts of land (or the tax revenue from it) were granted to particular individuals in exchange for contributing to and maintaining military forces.[4][27] Constantine could be wasteful with the imperial treasury. On one occasion he is said to have sent an Arab leader 500,000 gold coins, over two tons of gold.[28] Dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre In 1054 the centuries-old differences between the Eastern and Western churches led to their final separation. Legates from Pope Leo IX excommunicated the Patriarch of Constantinople Michael Keroularios when Keroularios would not agree to adopt western church practices, and in return Keroularios excommunicated the legates.[29] This sabotaged Constantine's attempts to ally with the Pope against the Normans, who had taken advantage of the disappearance of Maniakes to take over Southern Italy.[30] Constantine tried to intervene, but he fell ill and died on 11 January of the following year.[31] He was persuaded by his councillors, chiefly the logothetes tou dromou John, to ignore the rights of the elderly Theodora, daughter of Constantine VIII, and to pass the throne to the doux of Bulgaria, Nikephoros Proteuon.[32] However, Theodora was recalled from her retirement and named empress.[33] Architecture and art[edit] The literary circle at the court of Constantine IX included the philosopher and historian Michael Psellos,[34] whose Chronographia records the history of Constantine's reign. Psellos left a physical description of Constantine in his Chronographia: he was "ruddy as the sun, but all his breast, and down to his feet... [were] colored the purest white all over, with exquisite accuracy. When he was in his prime, before his limbs lost their virility, anyone who cared to look at him closely would surely have likened his head to the sun in its glory, so radiant was it, and his hair to the rays of the sun, while in the rest of his body he would have seen the purest and most translucent crystal."[35] This description is a very clear depiction of a severe lifelong case of rosacea. Immediately upon ascending to the throne in 1042, Constantine IX set about restoring the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, which had been substantially destroyed in 1009 by Caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah.[36] Permitted by a treaty between al-Hakim's son al-Zahir and Byzantine Emperor Romanos III, it was Constantine IX who finally funded the reconstruction of the Church and other Christian establishments in the Holy Land.[37] See also[edit] Byzantine Empire portal List of Byzantine emperors References[edit] ^ a b Kazhdan, pg. 1398 ^ a b Norwich, pg. 307 ^ a b Norwich, pg. 306 ^ a b Kazhdan, pg. 504 ^ Finlay, pg. 500 ^ Finlay, pg. 499 ^ Finlay, pg. 505 ^ Norwich, pg. 308 ^ Finlay, pg, 510 ^ Lynda Garland with Stephen H. Rapp Jr. (2006). 'of Alania'[permanent dead link]. An Online Encyclopedia of Roman Emperors. Retrieved on 3 April 2011. ^ Norwich, pg. 310 ^ a b Norwich, pg. 311 ^ Quoted from: Litavrin, Grigory. Rus'-Byzantine Relations in the 11th and 12th Centuries. // History of Byzantium, vol. 2, chapter 15, p. 347-352. Moscow: Nauka, 1967 (online) ^ Finlay, pg. 514 ^ Norwich, pg. 309 ^ Finlay, pg. 503 ^ Norwich, pg. 340 ^ a b Norwich, pg. 341 ^ Finlay, pg. 520 ^ a b Norwich, pg. 314 ^ John H. Rosser, Historical Dictionary of Byzantium, Scarecrow Press, 2001, p. xxx. ^ Aleksandr Petrovich Kazhdan, Annabel Jane Wharton, Change in Byzantine Culture in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries, University of California Press, 1985, p. 122. ^ Bréhier, pg. 325 ^ Norwich, pg. 312 ^ Finlay, pg. 515 ^ Norwich, pg. 315 ^ Finlay, pg. 504 ^ Laiou, pg. 3 ^ Norwich, pg. 321 ^ Norwich, pg. 316 ^ Norwich, pg. 324 ^ Finlay, pg. 527 ^ Treadgold, pg. 596 ^ Garland, pg. 246 ^ Psellos, 126:2–5 ^ Finlay, pg. 468 ^ Ousterhout, Robert (1989). "Rebuilding the Temple: Constantine Monomachus and the Holy Sepulchre". Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. 48 (1): 66–78. doi:10.2307/990407. Sources[edit] Primary sources[edit] Michael Psellus, Fourteen Byzantine Rulers, trans. E.R.A. Sewter (Penguin, 1966). ISBN 0-14-044169-7 Thurn, Hans, ed. (1973). Ioannis Scylitzae Synopsis historiarum. Berlin-New York: De Gruyter. Secondary sources[edit] Blaum, Paul A. (2004). "Diplomacy Gone to Seed: A History of Byzantine Foreign Relations, A.D. 1047-57". International Journal of Kurdish Studies. 18 (1): 1–56. Bréhier, Louis (1946). Le monde byzantin: Vie et mort de Byzance (PDF) (in French). Paris, France: Éditions Albin Michel. OCLC 490176081. Kaldellis, Anthony (2017). Streams of Gold, Rivers of Blood: The Rise and Fall of Byzantium, 955 A.D. to the First Crusade. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-1902-5322-6. Kazhdan, Alexander, ed. (1991), Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-504652-6 Laiou, Angeliki E (2002). Economic History of Byzantium. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks. ISBN 0-88402-288-9. Norwich, John Julius (1993), Byzantium: The Apogee, Penguin, ISBN 0-14-011448-3 Treadgold, Warren T. (1997), A History of the Byzantine State and Society, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, ISBN 0-8047-2630-2 Angold, Michael. The Byzantine empire 1025–1204 (Longman, 2nd edition, 1997). ISBN 0-582-29468-1 Harris, Jonathan. Constantinople: Capital of Byzantium (Hambledon/Continuum, 2007). ISBN 978-1-84725-179-4 Finlay, George. History of the Byzantine Empire from 716 – 1057, William Blackwood & Sons, 1853. Garland, Lynda. Conformity and Non-conformity in Byzantium, Verlag Adolf M. Hakkert, 1997. ISBN 978-9-02560-619-0 Constantine IX Monomachos Macedonian dynasty Born: c. 1000 Died: 11 January 1055 Regnal titles Preceded by Zoë Porphyrogenita and Theodora Byzantine emperor 1042–1055 with Zoë Porphyrogenita (1042-1050) and Theodora (1042-1055) Succeeded by Theodora v t e Roman and Byzantine emperors and ruling empresses Principate 27 BC – AD 235 Augustus Tiberius Caligula Claudius Nero Galba Otho Vitellius Vespasian Titus Domitian Nerva Trajan Hadrian Antoninus Pius Marcus Aurelius Lucius Verus Commodus Pertinax Didius Julianus (Pescennius Niger) (Clodius Albinus) Septimius Severus Caracalla Geta Macrinus Diadumenian Elagabalus Severus Alexander Crisis 235–285 Maximinus Thrax Gordian I Gordian II Pupienus Balbinus Gordian III Philip the Arab Philip II Decius Herennius Etruscus Hostilian Trebonianus Gallus Volusianus Aemilianus Valerian Gallienus Saloninus Claudius Gothicus Quintillus Aurelian Ulpia Severina Tacitus Florian Probus Carus Carinus Numerian Gallic emperors Postumus (Laelianus) Marius Victorinus (Domitianus II) Tetricus I with Tetricus II as caesar Palmyrene emperors Vaballathus Zenobia Septimius Antiochus Dominate 284–395 Diocletian Maximian Galerius Constantius I Severus Constantine the Great Maxentius Licinius Maximinus Daza (Valerius Valens) (Martinian) Constantine II Constantius II Constans I Magnentius Vetranio Julian Jovian Valentinian I (west) Valens (east) Gratian (west) Valentinian II (west) Theodosius I Magnus Maximus Victor (Eugenius) Western Empire 395–480 Honorius Constantine III with son Constans II Constantius III Joannes Valentinian III Petronius Maximus Avitus Majorian Libius Severus Anthemius Olybrius Glycerius Julius Nepos Romulus Augustulus Eastern/ Byzantine Empire 395–1204 Arcadius Theodosius II Marcian Leo I Leo II Zeno Basiliscus Marcus Anastasius I Dicorus Justin I Justinian I Justin II Tiberius II Constantine Maurice with son Theodosius as co-emperor Phocas Heraclius Constantine III Heraklonas Constans II Constantine IV with brothers Heraclius and Tiberius and then Justinian II as co-emperors Justinian II (first reign) Leontios Tiberius III Justinian II (second reign) with son Tiberius as co-emperor Philippikos Anastasios II Theodosius III Leo III the Isaurian Constantine V Artabasdos Leo IV the Khazar Constantine VI Irene Nikephoros I Staurakios Michael I Rangabe with son Theophylact as co-emperor Leo V the Armenian with Symbatios-Constantine as junior emperor Michael II the Amorian Theophilos Michael III Basil I the Macedonian Leo VI the Wise Alexander Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos Romanos I Lekapenos with sons Christopher, Stephen and Constantine as junior co-emperors Romanos II Nikephoros II Phokas John I Tzimiskes Basil II Constantine VIII Zoë (first reign) and Romanos III Argyros Zoë (first reign) and Michael IV the Paphlagonian Michael V Kalaphates Zoë (second reign) with Theodora Zoë (second reign) and Constantine IX Monomachos Constantine IX Monomachos (sole emperor) Theodora Michael VI Bringas Isaac I Komnenos Constantine X Doukas Romanos IV Diogenes Michael VII Doukas with brothers Andronikos and Konstantios and son Constantine Nikephoros III Botaneiates Alexios I Komnenos John II Komnenos with Alexios Komnenos as co-emperor Manuel I Komnenos Alexios II Komnenos Andronikos I Komnenos with John Komnenos as co-emperor Isaac II Angelos Alexios III Angelos Alexios IV Angelos Nicholas Kanabos (chosen by the Senate) Alexios V Doukas Empire of Nicaea 1204–1261 Constantine Laskaris Theodore I Laskaris John III Doukas Vatatzes Theodore II Laskaris John IV Laskaris Byzantine Empire 1261–1453 Michael VIII Palaiologos Andronikos II Palaiologos with Michael IX Palaiologos as co-emperor Andronikos III Palaiologos John V Palaiologos John VI Kantakouzenos with John V Palaiologos and Matthew Kantakouzenos as co-emperors John V Palaiologos Andronikos IV Palaiologos John VII Palaiologos Andronikos V Palaiologos Manuel II Palaiologos John VIII Palaiologos Constantine XI Palaiologos Italics indicates a junior co-emperor, while underlining indicates a usurper. 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