European Kingdoms

Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire
Non-Dynastic (AD 1056-1057)

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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 eastern empire actually thrived under the 'Dynasty of Justinian'. Justinian's empire enjoyed a 'golden age' of imperial resurgence, learning, and architectural achievement. The period afterwards saw significant destabilisation and territorial loss, in the north to Slavs and a first wave of Turkic tribal states, and in the south and east to the Islamic empire.

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' would entirely reverse that positive trend.

Constantinople would soon be struggling for its existence. All of its frontiers would be breached, nomads would be entering Anatolia and the Danube provinces, while the Normans had already seized the empire's Italian territories in Apulia and elsewhere.

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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).)

1056 - 1057

Former soldier & administrator. Succeeded Macedonian dynasty.

1056

Court administrator Michael Bringas has previously lacked the charisma and oratory to be able to claim the top seat in Constantinople's power structure. He has, though, often remained an important figure in policy decisions.

In Eastern Roman Emperor Basil II the Bulgarians had found themselves an implacable, unrelenting enemy and the empire had reached the apogee of its recovery and renewed expansion, after which seemingly irrecoverable decline would set in

The seventy-four year-old Empress Theodora falls gravely ill and sees that a successor is required. Before she passes away and the Macedonian dynasty ends with her, she selects Michael. Seizing his chance at last, he ascends the throne as Michael VI.

Unfortunately his best days are far behind him. He has grown aged and incompetent, and the empire is full of ambitious generals who will not tolerate inefficiency from their throne. Sparks of civil war are lit and the empire undergoes the start of a fresh period of anarchy and internal collapse.

1057

Before a year has passed a band of Anatolian nobles has entered into a conspiracy to overturn Michael, and replace him with Isaac Comnenus, head of one of the ancient Cappadocian houses and the most popular general of the east. Michael VI is removed, to be succeeded by Isaac I who ushers in the Comnenian Prelude.

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