Manuel I of Trebizond

Manuel I Komnenos (* 1218, † in March 1263 ) was from 1238 to 1263 and Emperor of Trebizond Großkomnene.

Life

Manuel was the second son Alexius I, the first emperor of Trebizond, and his wife Theodora Axuchina. In 1238 he followed his older brother John I to the throne. During his reign, Trebizond was initially a vassal state of the Seljuk Sultanate of Iconium, and then from 1243 after its temporary collapse in the wake of the Battle of Köse Dağ in the trapezuntische troops the Seljuk units had supported against the victorious Mongols, depending on the Mongols.

In 1253, Manuel tried dynastic ties with the French royal house to socialize, because he promised to help the Crusaders against the Seljuks and the Laskariden of Nicaea of such a compound. However, his request was by King Louis IX. rejected, the Manuel suggesting rather to seek to a bride at the court of the Latin Empire of Constantinople Opel. In this context describes the witness Jean de Joinville, that Manuel many precious gifts sent on the occasion of his promotion to Ludwig, suggesting some wealth.

Had the capture of Baghdad by the Mongols under Hulagu in 1258 and the consequent final destruction of the Caliphate of the Abbasids, the revival of a northern trade route to the sequence that led from Armenia and the upper Euphrates valley to Erzurum and then over the Zigana pass directly to Trebizond. This led to an economic boom in the city after himself, as from the East via the Silk Road pilfered goods now brought here for shipment to the Black Sea and were not, as previously passed over the port cities of the eastern Mediterranean on the west. The consequent increasing prosperity Trebizond can be seen, the minting Manuel also to the many silver and bronze coins. These circulated in large numbers outside the Trebizond area and here especially in Georgia. Although some of the found from this period bronze coins still likely to come from Alexius I and various Silberasper must have already been minted under John I, but the vast majority comes from Manuel.

He is also the restoration of the Hagia Sophia of Trebizond owe. That in the years 1250-1260 at his instigation renewed monk pen, now a museum, is one of the most beautiful in the preserved from this period imperial splendor buildings in the style of Constantine Opel.

As in 1261, the reconquest of the city of Constantinople Michael VIII Palaeologus succeeded Opel of Nicaea from the Latin Empire, he demanded that Manuel the task of the imperial title and the associated claims on the succession of the Eastern Roman Emperor. That request was not the trapezuntische ruler after, however.

Manuel died 1263rd He left behind four children, who ascended the throne all later. His first wife Anna Xylaloe, a noblewoman from Trebizond, bore him a son, his immediate successor Andronikos II with his second wife, an Iberian princess named Rusudan, he had the daughter and later Empress Theodora. From his third marriage with Irene Syrikaina, another Trebizond noblewoman, finally came the two sons and later Emperor George and John II

Swell

  • Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, Oxford University Press, 1991.
  • W. Miller, Trebizond: The Last Greek Empire of the Byzantine Era, Chicago, 1926.
  • Art and identity in thirteenth -century Byzantium: Hagia Sophia and the empire of Trebizond / Antony Eastmond, Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004
  • Kaiser ( Trebizond )
  • Born in the 13th century
  • Died in 1263
  • Man
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