Isaac I Komnenos

Isaac I Komnenos (Greek Ἰσαάκιος Α ' Κομνηνός; * 1005, † 1061 in Constantinople Opel ) was Byzantine emperor from 1057 to 1059.

He was the son of an officer of the emperor Basil II named Manuel Comnenus, of his two sons Isaac and John entrusted the care of the emperor on his deathbed. Basil let her in the studio monastery educate carefully and brought them then in high positions. During the reign of Basil's seven immediate successors Isaac won by his clever acting confidence of the army, so that he is in 1057 with the nobility of the capital Constantinople Opel against the Emperor Michael VI. could ally. After his dismissal, he was crowned emperor and founded the dynasty of the Komnenos.

Isaac's first care was to provide for his noble allies with offices, which they would keep away from the capital. His second was the restoration of the financial strength of the empire. He recanted many pensions and aid which his predecessors had granted idle courtiers. He also secured a share of the income of the rich monasteries, where he forestalled the accusation of sacrilege by Michael I. Kerularios, the Patriarch of Constantinople, Opel, by a Verbannungsverfügung. Isaac's only military activity was the Hungarians and the Pechenegs, who had in 1059 begun to ravage the northern borders. Shortly after the successful campaign, he was afflicted with a disease which he considered fatal, whereupon he appointed as his successor Constantine Dukas, his own brother John temporarily.

Although Isaac recovered, he took the purple again not in itself, but retreated to the studio monastery, where he spent as a monk, the remaining two years of his life. His Scholia to the Iliad and other works on the poems of Homer have been preserved. Isaac's big goal was to restore the organization of the government and its reforms, unpopular though not understood by the nobility and the clergy and the people, sure some contributed to the downfall of the Byzantine Empire for a long time to stop.