Paul Magdalino

Manuel Komnenos and the Great Palace

That the emperor Manuel I Komnenos (1143–80) was responsible for some building activity in the Great Palace of Constantinople is a fact well attested by published sources and not entirely unknown to modern scholarship. However, the armchair archaeology of this work remains confused and obscure, and can benefit from a fresh review of the evidence.

The Empire of the Komnenoi (1118–1204)

Between the death of Alexios I Komnenos and the establishment of the Latin empire of Constantinople, eight emperors ruled in the eastern Roman capital. Their reigns were as successful as they were long: under John II Komnenos (1118–43) and Manuel I Komnenos (1143–80) Byzantium remained a wealthy and expansionist power, maintaining the internal structures and external initiatives which were necessary to sustain a traditional imperial identity in a changing Mediterranean world of crusaders, Turks and Italian merchants. But the minority of Manuel’s son Alexios II Komnenos (1180–83) exposed the fragility of the regime inaugurated by Alexios I. Lateral branches of the reigning dynasty seized power in a series of violent usurpations that progressively undermined the security of each usurper, inviting foreign intervention, provincial revolts and attempted coups d’etat . Under Andronikos I Komnenos (1183–5), Isaac II Angelos (1185–95), Alexios III Angelos (1195–1203), Alexios IV Angelos (1203–4) and Alexios V Doukas (1204), the structural features which had been the strengths of the state in the previous hundred years became liabilities. The empire’s international web of clients and marriage alliances, its reputation for fabulous wealth, the overwhelming concentration of people and resources in Constantinople, the privileged status of the ‘blood-royal’, the cultural self-confidence of the administrative and religious elite: under strong leadership, these factors had come together to make the empire dynamic and great; out of control, they and the reactions they set up combined to make the Fourth Crusade a recipe for disaster.

Isaac sebastokrator (III), John Axouch, and a case of mistaken identity

AbstractIn his history of the reigns of John II and Manuel I Komnenos (1118–1180), John Kinnamos recounts an episode which gives a vivid sense of the heavy atmosphere of family intimacy and family tension which surrounded the Comnenian emperors and conditioned their internal and, ultimately, their external policies. Describing the first treacherous intrigues of Andronikos Komnenos, the emperor Manuels notorious and colourful cousin and eventual successor, the author relates how Andronikos was foiled in an attempt to assassinate Manuel at Pelagonia in 1154, when the emperor went on one of his nocturnal hunting expeditions. In the context of this narrative, he digresses to explain that Manuels passion for hunting was not the only reason why he went about armed. The text of the digression, which is what concerns us here, has been misunderstood and mistranslated, so a new translation of it will be a useful preliminary to its discussion.

The Byzantine Empire, 1118–1204

Under John II and Manuel I Byzantium remained a wealthy and expansionist power, maintaining the internal structures and external initiatives which were necessary to sustain a traditional imperial identity in a changing Mediterranean world of crusaders, Turks and Italian merchants. The revival of imperial interest in the crusader states had permanent consequences in that it led to a renewal of Byzantine links with Western Europe. Yet the period following Manuels death and the overthrow of the regency government of Alexios II saw reversion to something like the isolationism of John IIs early years. The Byzantine state was one of the most centralized in the medieval world, and never more so than in the period 1081-1180, when the loss of central and eastern Anatolia forced the empires military elite, as well as its bureaucratic elite, to identify with the capital as never before. Under the successors of Manuel I, the Comnenian system, centred on Constantinople, was programmed for self-destruction.