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Chapter Nine: Out with the Old
John II Komnenos[1] had already been the power behind his father’s throne for over a decade before he came to the throne at the age of forty eight. The contrast between Manuel and Isaac II was marked. Whereas they had been large, domineering men, John was a slight figure, who spoke in a distinctly quiet voice and whose eyes, we are told[2], would often fill with tears at a particularly moving sermon. Any traces of the roughness of the “Italians” were nowhere to be seen in the figure of the new Emperor. Instead, John seemed to resemble closely his other grandfather, Alexios Komnenos, whom had doted on him as an infant. It need not have been a bad prognosis. John II had inherited much from his illustrious relatives; military talent, theological vigour, and an unusual, penetrating intelligence. Amongst the highly cultured courtiers of Constantinople, men raised by the Parakoimomenos Basilios, the death of John’s father Manuel must have seemed like a relief.
But Basilios did not have long to savour this new reign of bookish intellectualism. Up until the death of Manuel Komnenos he had remained active and energetic, imperiously dismissing the attempts by a younger protégé of his named Andronikos of Lakonia[3] to increase his own power. Time, though, could not be held off forever, even by the most permanent feature of the Imperial court. For Basilios had now long since passed his ninetieth birthday. He was magnificently, almost imposingly ancient, a landmark of court life who seemed as ancient as the Imperial Palace itself. Basilios, by 1152, was certainly the last man in a position of power in Constantinople to remember the days of the first Isaac Komnenos- he may even have been the last subject of that Isaac’s great-great-nephew to have been born in an age before the House of Komnenos had even come to supreme power.
It could not go on. For the first months of John’s reign, the eunuch was as indispensable as ever, organising the coronation of John’s wife Theodora of Hungary[4], and his son George, and so bringing the entire family onto the Imperial throne. Rumblings of discontent from Jordan of Aversa’s men in Antioch were dealt with promptly by Basilios, whose old alliance with the Norman generalissimo continued to hold firm into the new reign. It was while drafting a letter to Jordan in November 1152 that time finally caught up with the Parakoimomenos. According to his aghast personal secretary, a rather pallid young man by the name of David Bringas[5], the great eunuch had collapsed at his desk, sending bottles of outrageously expensive ink spilling across the marble floor of Basilios’ luxuriant palace. Frantic attempts to wake the old man eventually met with success, but the Parakoimomenos was now a broken man. Bound to bed, he quickly divested himself of his great offices of state, and hobbled off to monastic confinement, joining there the half forgotten figure of Theodosios Komnenos, John’s half-brother by Manuel’s second marriage[6]. By January 1153, Basilios was dead.
With him died the balance of power that had for so long kept the House of Komnenos in power unchallenged. Almost immediately, rumours began to circulate around Constantinople that Theodosios, despite his age and obscurity, was considering making a play for power; an outrageous rumour to be sure, and one that the bastardised monk was quick to dispute, but it continued to rumble. Basilios’ replacement as John’s most senior minister, a nobleman named David Angelos[7], attempted to restore calm by pointing out that Theodosios’ mother Yvantia had been a Lombard barbarian, but as things turned out this was wounding to the Emperor in more than one way. First, doubts were immediately cast onto the legitimacy of John II, the product of a dubious marriage between cousins. And more dangerously still, they opened the door to a new possibility. If someone like Theodosios could be considered a semi-legitimate monarch but still a “barbarian”, then it meant the path could potentially be clear to an altogether more threatening opponent. At Antioch, Jordan of Aversa lurked ominously, at the head of a superbly drilled army of thousands upon thousands of men, men who were more often than not hostile to the imperial pretensions of John Komnenos[8].
What began to emerge over the fevered summer of 1154 was an elaborate conspiracy theory, developed above all by John’s powerful Empress Theodora, who was not herself immune from accusations of barbarism[9]. According to Theodora, Basilios had in his dying days involved Theodosios in a fiendish plot, involving the old monk seizing the throne at the head of the armies of Jordan of Aversa, and accepting the hand in marriage of Jordan’s beloved daughter Pulcheria. The new regime would then promptly engage in an orgy of violence against what Theodora considered the legitimate ruling elite of Constantinople. The bad old days of provincial soldiers swaggering about the capital would be restored, and any veneer the Komnenoi had kept up of civilian pretensions would be swept away for good[10].
As a piece of stage management, it worked wonders. The Empress found herself feted in the street by the ever-xenophobic Byzantines[11], and the marriage of her son George to Anastasia Angelina, (daughter of the same David Angelos who had caused much of the trouble in the first place) was a triumphant occasion that did much to silence the whispering campaign against John. Still, Jordan could not be ignored forever. The Domestikos himself sent a number of furious letters to Constantinople, demanding that the allegations against his good name be withdrawn, but these only served to inflame the situation still further[12]. John, under the influence of his wife, now started to indicate to David Angelos and others (notably Philotheos of Thebes) that Jordan’s term in military authority in the East was to be brought to an end soon.
For the army of the East, all this rumbling was deeply damaging to morale, and, sure enough, early in 1155, consequences were felt. Smbat, prince of Syunik[13], who had been placed on the throne as an infant by Manuel Komnenos twenty years earlier had survived a terrifying childhood to become a fearsome warlord, and, understandably, no friend of the Empire. An attempted invasion of Syunik by the Saljūq Sultan of Baghdad[14] in 1153 had been breezily defeated with astonishingly heavy Muslim casualties. The Sultan Maḥmūd[15], impressed by the Armenian prince, opted not to continue his war, but to assimilate young Smbat by friendship, sending the Armenians gold and men to build up their army. In 1154, Armenian raids began over the fertile Imperial territories of the upper Euphrates. Late in the year, an army caught Melitene unawares, and was able to extract huge amounts of ransom booty from the terrified city[16]. Jordan of Aversa, despite the threatening noises coming from Constantinople, immediately despatched an army of perhaps 10,000 men[17] to deal with the problem.
The Armenians, though, were tired of retreating. As the Imperial army approached their position around the town of Chozanon[18], Smbat’s men opted to set the stage for a devastating ambush. In open battle, the disciplined soldiers of the Tagmata had no real rivals, but, caught in rough terrain and unawares by a mixed force of light infantry and Turkish cavalry, they stood no chance. A chaotic retreat was called, led by Andreas Skleros[19], but still, the casualties were every bit as crippling as they had been for the Turks two years earlier. Harried all the way by horse archers, less than a fifth of Jordan’s army made it back to safety in one piece.
Jordan’s perilous position desperately required conclusive victory at Chozanon. The defeat, even if it was caused by factors well outside of his control, sent him sliding towards the edge. Andreas Skleros, that heroic commander who had brought back the remnants of the Imperial army found himself detained at Melitene en-route to Antioch by the young George Komnenos, who had sped to the East at all haste as soon as the news of the defeat had reached Constantinople[20]. Jordan, meanwhile, found himself isolated and friendless in Antioch, as his junior officers and eunuchs deserted him one by one. In the end, it was his new son-in-law[21] Constantine Nafpliotis who informed the Norman that the game was up. The Emperor John, who had advanced to Ikonion, was inclined to mercy for the “crimes” of his Domestikos. Jordan, accompanied by his fearsome Armenian wife Miriam of Kars, was stripped of his rank and titles, and retired in disgrace to a small portion of his estates in Sicily. The rest were forcibly confiscated and passed on to Pulcheria, adding through her to the already considerable portfolio of the House of Nafpliotis[22].
A new settlement was now hammered out in the East. Andreas Skleros, who had feared for his life, was instead made godfather to the newborn son of George Komnenos (in the event, the child died within a few weeks) and set up as Doux of Antioch, holding in actual fact many of the powers of the Domestikos of the East, an office entrusted by the Komnenoi to the ever present nonentity Constantine Nafpliotis[23]. A rare period of calm descended upon the East, with Smbat of Syunik being granted a generous tribute. To celebrate the moment, Constantine chose to call his daughter “Eirene”, after the peace. In time, of course, the baby girl would decisively eclipse her feeble father. The blood of the tragically wronged Jordan of Aversa flowed in her veins, and, soon enough, the Norman’s granddaughter would have her revenge on the House of Komnenos[24].
__________________________________________________
[1] Obviously not OTL’s John II Komnenos.
[2] Mostly by Jordan of Aversa.
[3] Lakonia is the region around Sparta in the Peloponnese, probably the richest area of Byzantine Greece.
[4] The daughter of King Solomon II, Theodora was born as Erzsébet (Elizabeth) and sent to Constantinople in 1131, at the age of seventeen, to marry John Komnenos as part of the peace treaty after the Serbian war discussed in the previous chapter.
[5] A name from IE 1.0. Perhaps this is just a coincidence?
[6] Manuel’s second wife and Theodosios’ mother, was a Lombard lady called Yvantia. She died in childbirth in 1100.
[7] The rise to power of the OTL House of Angelos was wrapped up with the success of Alexios Komnenos- their founder, Constantine, married Alexios’ daughter Theodora. Here, I’m assuming they still succeed, but later than IOTL.
[8] John’s provocative behaviour in the East in the early 1140s has not been forgotten by the largely Monophysite armies under Jordan’s command.
[9] She is after all, horror of horrors, the descendent of steppe nomads.
[10] A bit hypocritical, as the Komnenoi are themselves at heart “provincial soldiers” and Theodora is of course even worse, but that’s medieval politics. Anyway, the regime of John II is very “civilian”, at least at this stage.
[11] This is the only strictly legitimate use of the term “Byzantine”, for the inhabitants of Constantinople. These were the only inhabitants of the Empire who called themselves Byzantine.
[12] Jordan is unable to resist being rather... threatening. The claim that Alexios Komnenos viewed him as a son is trotted out, which doesn’t please John, as the Emperor identifies very closely with his grandfather.
[13] See Chapter Eight.
[14] After the doldrums of the later eleventh and early twelfth centuries, the Saljūqs have been able to consolidate Mesopotamia and Iran, and are now eyeing expansion again.
[15] A very effective ruler who’s ruled his empire for the past twenty years with all the pomp and grandeur of a Sasanian king of kings.
[16] This was quite common- rather than going to the trouble of capturing and sacking a city, invading armies would simply demand treasure from it. See, for example, the treatment of Edessa at the hands of John Kourkouas in 944.
[17] Numbers are difficult to estimate. 10,000 men is probably a good guess for a large-ish Byzantine army in the field in our period.
[18] Modern Hozat, in Turkey.
[19] Last of an illustrious line, the noble name will die with Andreas.
[20] George really has moved very, very quickly. Then again, Andreas Skleros’ progress has been burdened by his battered rump of an army.
[21] Jordan married Pulcheria to Nafpliotis as soon as he heard the accusations against his daughter, thinking that marrying her to a man favoured by the Komnenoi would protect her. By and large, the gambit works.
[22] They’re now amongst the Empire’s largest landowning families.
[23] Nafpliotis too is busy living the good life on his favourite estates in Thrace to actually command.
[24] And how!
Chapter Eight: Out with the Old
"I, Basilios, servant of Emperors, place my tomb at my Palace of the Ox. I served the Empire without rest, and so, reader, reward my exertions with your prayers"
Inscription on the tomb of the Parakoimomenos Basilios
John II Komnenos[1] had already been the power behind his father’s throne for over a decade before he came to the throne at the age of forty eight. The contrast between Manuel and Isaac II was marked. Whereas they had been large, domineering men, John was a slight figure, who spoke in a distinctly quiet voice and whose eyes, we are told[2], would often fill with tears at a particularly moving sermon. Any traces of the roughness of the “Italians” were nowhere to be seen in the figure of the new Emperor. Instead, John seemed to resemble closely his other grandfather, Alexios Komnenos, whom had doted on him as an infant. It need not have been a bad prognosis. John II had inherited much from his illustrious relatives; military talent, theological vigour, and an unusual, penetrating intelligence. Amongst the highly cultured courtiers of Constantinople, men raised by the Parakoimomenos Basilios, the death of John’s father Manuel must have seemed like a relief.
But Basilios did not have long to savour this new reign of bookish intellectualism. Up until the death of Manuel Komnenos he had remained active and energetic, imperiously dismissing the attempts by a younger protégé of his named Andronikos of Lakonia[3] to increase his own power. Time, though, could not be held off forever, even by the most permanent feature of the Imperial court. For Basilios had now long since passed his ninetieth birthday. He was magnificently, almost imposingly ancient, a landmark of court life who seemed as ancient as the Imperial Palace itself. Basilios, by 1152, was certainly the last man in a position of power in Constantinople to remember the days of the first Isaac Komnenos- he may even have been the last subject of that Isaac’s great-great-nephew to have been born in an age before the House of Komnenos had even come to supreme power.
It could not go on. For the first months of John’s reign, the eunuch was as indispensable as ever, organising the coronation of John’s wife Theodora of Hungary[4], and his son George, and so bringing the entire family onto the Imperial throne. Rumblings of discontent from Jordan of Aversa’s men in Antioch were dealt with promptly by Basilios, whose old alliance with the Norman generalissimo continued to hold firm into the new reign. It was while drafting a letter to Jordan in November 1152 that time finally caught up with the Parakoimomenos. According to his aghast personal secretary, a rather pallid young man by the name of David Bringas[5], the great eunuch had collapsed at his desk, sending bottles of outrageously expensive ink spilling across the marble floor of Basilios’ luxuriant palace. Frantic attempts to wake the old man eventually met with success, but the Parakoimomenos was now a broken man. Bound to bed, he quickly divested himself of his great offices of state, and hobbled off to monastic confinement, joining there the half forgotten figure of Theodosios Komnenos, John’s half-brother by Manuel’s second marriage[6]. By January 1153, Basilios was dead.
With him died the balance of power that had for so long kept the House of Komnenos in power unchallenged. Almost immediately, rumours began to circulate around Constantinople that Theodosios, despite his age and obscurity, was considering making a play for power; an outrageous rumour to be sure, and one that the bastardised monk was quick to dispute, but it continued to rumble. Basilios’ replacement as John’s most senior minister, a nobleman named David Angelos[7], attempted to restore calm by pointing out that Theodosios’ mother Yvantia had been a Lombard barbarian, but as things turned out this was wounding to the Emperor in more than one way. First, doubts were immediately cast onto the legitimacy of John II, the product of a dubious marriage between cousins. And more dangerously still, they opened the door to a new possibility. If someone like Theodosios could be considered a semi-legitimate monarch but still a “barbarian”, then it meant the path could potentially be clear to an altogether more threatening opponent. At Antioch, Jordan of Aversa lurked ominously, at the head of a superbly drilled army of thousands upon thousands of men, men who were more often than not hostile to the imperial pretensions of John Komnenos[8].
What began to emerge over the fevered summer of 1154 was an elaborate conspiracy theory, developed above all by John’s powerful Empress Theodora, who was not herself immune from accusations of barbarism[9]. According to Theodora, Basilios had in his dying days involved Theodosios in a fiendish plot, involving the old monk seizing the throne at the head of the armies of Jordan of Aversa, and accepting the hand in marriage of Jordan’s beloved daughter Pulcheria. The new regime would then promptly engage in an orgy of violence against what Theodora considered the legitimate ruling elite of Constantinople. The bad old days of provincial soldiers swaggering about the capital would be restored, and any veneer the Komnenoi had kept up of civilian pretensions would be swept away for good[10].
As a piece of stage management, it worked wonders. The Empress found herself feted in the street by the ever-xenophobic Byzantines[11], and the marriage of her son George to Anastasia Angelina, (daughter of the same David Angelos who had caused much of the trouble in the first place) was a triumphant occasion that did much to silence the whispering campaign against John. Still, Jordan could not be ignored forever. The Domestikos himself sent a number of furious letters to Constantinople, demanding that the allegations against his good name be withdrawn, but these only served to inflame the situation still further[12]. John, under the influence of his wife, now started to indicate to David Angelos and others (notably Philotheos of Thebes) that Jordan’s term in military authority in the East was to be brought to an end soon.
For the army of the East, all this rumbling was deeply damaging to morale, and, sure enough, early in 1155, consequences were felt. Smbat, prince of Syunik[13], who had been placed on the throne as an infant by Manuel Komnenos twenty years earlier had survived a terrifying childhood to become a fearsome warlord, and, understandably, no friend of the Empire. An attempted invasion of Syunik by the Saljūq Sultan of Baghdad[14] in 1153 had been breezily defeated with astonishingly heavy Muslim casualties. The Sultan Maḥmūd[15], impressed by the Armenian prince, opted not to continue his war, but to assimilate young Smbat by friendship, sending the Armenians gold and men to build up their army. In 1154, Armenian raids began over the fertile Imperial territories of the upper Euphrates. Late in the year, an army caught Melitene unawares, and was able to extract huge amounts of ransom booty from the terrified city[16]. Jordan of Aversa, despite the threatening noises coming from Constantinople, immediately despatched an army of perhaps 10,000 men[17] to deal with the problem.
The Armenians, though, were tired of retreating. As the Imperial army approached their position around the town of Chozanon[18], Smbat’s men opted to set the stage for a devastating ambush. In open battle, the disciplined soldiers of the Tagmata had no real rivals, but, caught in rough terrain and unawares by a mixed force of light infantry and Turkish cavalry, they stood no chance. A chaotic retreat was called, led by Andreas Skleros[19], but still, the casualties were every bit as crippling as they had been for the Turks two years earlier. Harried all the way by horse archers, less than a fifth of Jordan’s army made it back to safety in one piece.
Jordan’s perilous position desperately required conclusive victory at Chozanon. The defeat, even if it was caused by factors well outside of his control, sent him sliding towards the edge. Andreas Skleros, that heroic commander who had brought back the remnants of the Imperial army found himself detained at Melitene en-route to Antioch by the young George Komnenos, who had sped to the East at all haste as soon as the news of the defeat had reached Constantinople[20]. Jordan, meanwhile, found himself isolated and friendless in Antioch, as his junior officers and eunuchs deserted him one by one. In the end, it was his new son-in-law[21] Constantine Nafpliotis who informed the Norman that the game was up. The Emperor John, who had advanced to Ikonion, was inclined to mercy for the “crimes” of his Domestikos. Jordan, accompanied by his fearsome Armenian wife Miriam of Kars, was stripped of his rank and titles, and retired in disgrace to a small portion of his estates in Sicily. The rest were forcibly confiscated and passed on to Pulcheria, adding through her to the already considerable portfolio of the House of Nafpliotis[22].
A new settlement was now hammered out in the East. Andreas Skleros, who had feared for his life, was instead made godfather to the newborn son of George Komnenos (in the event, the child died within a few weeks) and set up as Doux of Antioch, holding in actual fact many of the powers of the Domestikos of the East, an office entrusted by the Komnenoi to the ever present nonentity Constantine Nafpliotis[23]. A rare period of calm descended upon the East, with Smbat of Syunik being granted a generous tribute. To celebrate the moment, Constantine chose to call his daughter “Eirene”, after the peace. In time, of course, the baby girl would decisively eclipse her feeble father. The blood of the tragically wronged Jordan of Aversa flowed in her veins, and, soon enough, the Norman’s granddaughter would have her revenge on the House of Komnenos[24].
__________________________________________________
[1] Obviously not OTL’s John II Komnenos.
[2] Mostly by Jordan of Aversa.
[3] Lakonia is the region around Sparta in the Peloponnese, probably the richest area of Byzantine Greece.
[4] The daughter of King Solomon II, Theodora was born as Erzsébet (Elizabeth) and sent to Constantinople in 1131, at the age of seventeen, to marry John Komnenos as part of the peace treaty after the Serbian war discussed in the previous chapter.
[5] A name from IE 1.0. Perhaps this is just a coincidence?
[6] Manuel’s second wife and Theodosios’ mother, was a Lombard lady called Yvantia. She died in childbirth in 1100.
[7] The rise to power of the OTL House of Angelos was wrapped up with the success of Alexios Komnenos- their founder, Constantine, married Alexios’ daughter Theodora. Here, I’m assuming they still succeed, but later than IOTL.
[8] John’s provocative behaviour in the East in the early 1140s has not been forgotten by the largely Monophysite armies under Jordan’s command.
[9] She is after all, horror of horrors, the descendent of steppe nomads.
[10] A bit hypocritical, as the Komnenoi are themselves at heart “provincial soldiers” and Theodora is of course even worse, but that’s medieval politics. Anyway, the regime of John II is very “civilian”, at least at this stage.
[11] This is the only strictly legitimate use of the term “Byzantine”, for the inhabitants of Constantinople. These were the only inhabitants of the Empire who called themselves Byzantine.
[12] Jordan is unable to resist being rather... threatening. The claim that Alexios Komnenos viewed him as a son is trotted out, which doesn’t please John, as the Emperor identifies very closely with his grandfather.
[13] See Chapter Eight.
[14] After the doldrums of the later eleventh and early twelfth centuries, the Saljūqs have been able to consolidate Mesopotamia and Iran, and are now eyeing expansion again.
[15] A very effective ruler who’s ruled his empire for the past twenty years with all the pomp and grandeur of a Sasanian king of kings.
[16] This was quite common- rather than going to the trouble of capturing and sacking a city, invading armies would simply demand treasure from it. See, for example, the treatment of Edessa at the hands of John Kourkouas in 944.
[17] Numbers are difficult to estimate. 10,000 men is probably a good guess for a large-ish Byzantine army in the field in our period.
[18] Modern Hozat, in Turkey.
[19] Last of an illustrious line, the noble name will die with Andreas.
[20] George really has moved very, very quickly. Then again, Andreas Skleros’ progress has been burdened by his battered rump of an army.
[21] Jordan married Pulcheria to Nafpliotis as soon as he heard the accusations against his daughter, thinking that marrying her to a man favoured by the Komnenoi would protect her. By and large, the gambit works.
[22] They’re now amongst the Empire’s largest landowning families.
[23] Nafpliotis too is busy living the good life on his favourite estates in Thrace to actually command.
[24] And how!
- Basileus Giorgios
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