Constantine IX Monomachos
Constantine IX. Monomachos ( Κωνσταντῖνος Θ ' ὁ Μονομάχος; * 1000, † January 11, 1055 ) reigned as Byzantine emperor from June 11 1042 until his death.
Life
His second wife Constantine was a niece of the Emperor Romanos III. married, who died around 1035/1036.
He had been determined by Empress Zoë 1042 for husband and co-emperor, although he had been banished IV for conspiring against her former husband Michael. They ruled jointly until Zoë's death 1050.
In 1043 he gave birth to General George Maniakes from his command in Italy, whereupon Maniaces himself proclaimed emperor. His troops had victory over Constantine before his eyes, was wounded as Maniakes and died on the battlefield in the final battle. Immediately after the victory of Constantine was attacked by a fleet of Kievan Rus, who were believed to have been hired by Maniakes. They were also - beaten - with the help of Greek fire.
The Emperor John Tzimiskes and Basil II had moved after the fighting against the Bulgarians, the Byzantine dominion in Europe, between the Danube and Adriatic Sea back to the approximate boundaries of the division of the Empire of 395 AD to the west. Due to the incursions of the nomadic Pechenegs, Cumans and Usen in the Subjects Paris Trion, Macedonia and Thrace ( 1027, 1032 and 1034-1036 ) these possessions were threatened and caused great destruction. The worst year was 1048, when hundreds of thousands Pechenegs came into the country, the Byzantine- Slavic settlements destroyed and settled in the Balkans. The imperial troops were defeated at Marcianopolis ( Devnya ) Hadrianopolis ( Edirne ) and Preslav, the former capital of the Bulgarian Empire. Constantine IX. was finally able to negotiate a thirty-year peace treaty. The aim was to locate the Pechenegs in the area of Paris Trion.
In 1046, the Byzantines had contact with the Seljuks first time. They met each other in a battle in Armenia in 1048, but closed in the following year a truce. In 1053, Constantine looked for financial reasons forced to dismiss his Armenian troops, so that he could leave the eastern border of the empire only under weak protection.
1054 ended the century- old dispute between the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholicism with the final separation of the two faiths. Legate of Pope Leo IX. excommunicated the Patriarch of Constantinople Opel Michael I. Kerularius when he disagreed with the adoption of Western ceremonies; in return, excommunicated the legates Kerularius. Constantine's attempts to forge an alliance with the Pope against the Normans were so obsolete.
Constantine tried to intervene yet, but he fell ill and died on 11 January of the following year. Theodora III. , The elder daughter of Constantine VIII, who had already once ruled with her sister Zoë, climbed for the second time the Byzantine throne.
Constantine was the patron of the scholar Michael Psellos, whose Chronographica records the history of Constantine's reign. During the reign of Constantine the monastery of St. George was built by Mangana, on the construction of the emperor took large proportion. Psellos reported with silent scorn of his landscaping companies.