European Kingdoms

Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire
Prelude to the Comnenian / Komnenian Dynasty (AD 1057-1059)

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From the start, the capital of the newly-created Eastern Roman empire was based at Constantinople, dedicated by Emperor Constantine 'the Great' in AD 330. In AD 395, the Roman empire finally suffered a permanent split, creating formal Eastern Roman and Western Roman empires within Europe and beyond, acknowledging what had existed in practise for many years.

The successful two hundred-year reign of the 'Macedonian Dynasty' by 1025 had restored Constantinople as the dominant power in the Balkans and Near East, with apparently secure frontiers along the Danube, in the Armenian highlands, and beyond the Euphrates. The Romans had also succeeded in exporting Christianity to the Rus.

These success were though a last 'hurrah' for the empire. It had managed to double its shrunken territory under the Macedonians, but the successor 'Non-Dynastic' ruler and then the brief 'Comnenian Prelude' and the 'Dynasty of the Ducas' entirely reversed that positive trend.

Constantinople was soon struggling for its existence. All of its frontiers were breached, nomads began entering Anatolia and the Danube provinces, and the Normans had already seized the empire's Italian territories in Apulia and elsewhere. Unfortunately, the best days of Emperor Michael VI were far behind him by the time he gained the imperial throne in 1056.

The empire was now full of ambitious generals who had tasted military victory and who would not tolerate his inefficiency. Before a year had passed a band of Anatolian nobles had entered into a conspiracy to overturn him and replace him with Isaac Comnenus, head of one of the ancient Cappadocian houses and the most popular general of the east. This heralded the brief Comnenian prelude.

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(Information by Peter Kessler, with additional information from the World Heritage Encyclopaedia, from Encyclopaedia of the Roman Empire, Matthew Bunson (1994), and from External Links: History of the Byzantine Empire (Live Science), and The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire, Jonathan Shepard (Ed, Revised Edition, Cambridge University Press, 2008, and available via the Internet Archive), and Encyclopaedia Britannica, and Byzantine Empire, CWC Oman (Fisher Unwin, 1892, and available via Heritage History).)

1057 - 1059

Succeeded Non-Dynastic ruler. Abdicated due to illness.

1057

As the orphaned son of the late General Manuel Erotikos Komnenos, Isaac I had been raised under the care of the 'Macedonian Dynasty' Emperor Basil II. As emperor he rewards his supporters but also embarks on a series of fiscal measures which are designed to shore up revenue and eliminate recent excesses.

This lead seal carries the likeness of Emperor Isaac I Comnenos, whose brief reign during a renewed period of unsettled imperial discord signalled the prelude to the full-blown Comnenian dynasty

late 1050s

Having been harried by the Cumans, the reduced Pechenegs lose control of the entire left-bank steppe in the late 1050s, and later the right bank after which their remnant seems to migrate westwards into Danubian Eastern Roman territory or across the Carpathians into Hungary. Isaac subdues those who venture into the empire.

1059

Having only just secured the throne, Isaac I is stricken by disease. He retires to a monastery to die. His crown is transferred to Constantine Ducas, another Cappadocian noble who is supposed to be second only to Isaac in competence and popularity. As Constantine X he founds the Ducas dynasty.

The Pechenegs, mounted, are shown slaughtering the 'skyths' of Svyatoslav I, during the dangerous early years of the Rus when their power was limited - Svyatoslav himself was killed by Pechenegs