Isaac I Komnenos

Isaac I Komnenos or Comnenus (Ancient Greek: Ἰσαάκιος Κομνηνός, romanized: Isaákios Komnēnós; c. 1007 – 1 June 1060) was Byzantine emperor from 1057 to 1059, the first reigning member of the Komnenian dynasty.

The son of the general Manuel Erotikos Komnenos, he was orphaned at an early age, and was raised under the care of Emperor Basil II. He made his name as a successful military commander, serving as commander-in-chief of the eastern armies between c. 1042 and 1054. In 1057 he became the head of a conspiracy of the dissatisfied eastern generals against the newly crowned Michael VI Bringas. Proclaimed emperor by his followers on 8 June 1057, he rallied sufficient military forces to defeat the loyalist army at the Battle of Hades. While Isaac was willing to accept a compromise solution by being appointed Michael's heir, a powerful faction in Constantinople, led by the ambitious Patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Keroularios, pressured Michael to abdicate. After Michael abdicated on 30 August 1057, Isaac was crowned emperor in the Hagia Sophia on 1 September.

As emperor, he rewarded his supporters, but also embarked on a series of fiscal measures designed to shore up revenue and eliminate the excesses allowed to flourish under his predecessors. His aim was to fill the treasury and restore the Byzantine army's effectiveness to preserve the empire. The reduction of salaries, harsh tax measures and confiscation of Church properties aroused much opposition, particularly from Patriarch Keroularios, who had come to think of himself as a king-maker. In November 1058, Keroularios was arrested and exiled, and died before a synod to depose him could be convened.

The eastern frontier held firm during Isaac's reign, Hungarian raids were resolved by a treaty in 1059, while the restive Pechenegs were subdued by Isaac in person in summer 1059. Shortly after, Isaac fell ill, and on the advice and pressure of Michael Psellos, he abdicated his throne in favour of Constantine X Doukas, retiring to the Stoudion monastery where he died later in 1060.

Isaac was the son of Manuel Erotikos Komnenos, who reportedly served as strategos autokrator of the East under Emperor Basil II and defended Nicaea against the rebel Bardas Skleros in 978. His mother's name was Maria, about whom nothing else is known. Manuel's native language was Greek and modern scholarship considers the family to have been of Greek origin. It is said that the family name was derived from the city of Komne, near Philippopolis in Thrace. Isaac was born c. 1007.

As Maria had died early, on his deathbed in 1020, Isaac's father commended his two surviving sons Isaac and John to the care of Emperor Basil II. According to Nikephoros Bryennios the Younger, the two children were raised with the utmost solicitude and the best tutors at the Stoudion monastery, with care taken to teach them military exercises and hunting. As soon as they came of age, Isaac and his brother joined the imperial bodyguard, the Hetaireia.

At a young age, perhaps as early as 1025, Isaac married Catherine of Bulgaria (born c. 1010), a daughter of Ivan Vladislav (r. 1015–1018), the last Tsar of the First Bulgarian Empire. From c. 1042 he held the post of stratopedarches of the East—likely denoting that he was domestikos ton scholon, commander-in-chief, of the eastern field army, but this title is not explicitly attested—and the ranks of magistros and vestes. He was dismissed by Empress Theodora in 1054, and replaced by her eunuch confidant, the proedros Theodore.

When Michael VI Bringas came to the throne in 1056, Isaac was chosen to lead a deputation of eastern generals to the new emperor. Michael VI engaged in mass promotions of individuals—in the eyes of the contemporary courtier Michael Psellos, to an excessive degree—and the military sought to partake in the emperor's bounty. This was not a trivial matter: the debasement of the Byzantine currency under Constantine IX Monomachos (r. 1042–1054) had affected military pay—not coincidentally presided over by none other than Michael Bringas, who was then military logothete—and while civil officials were compensated by being raised to higher dignities (which commanded higher salaries, rogai), the army was not. This exacerbated the already simmering dislike of the military aristocracy for the "regime of eunuchs and civilian politicians" that had dominated the empire during the last decades of the Macedonian dynasty.