Isaac I Komnenos
1007 – 1060 · Generation XXVII · Emperor (r. 1057–1059) · Komnenos
Isaac (AD 1007 – 1060). Emperor (r. 1057–1059). First Komnenos emperor. The son of the general Manuel Erotikos Komnenos, he lost his parents young and grew up under Basil II’s protection, going on to command the empire’s eastern field armies. When the eastern generals turned on Michael VI in 1057 they made Isaac their leader: proclaimed emperor at his Paphlagonian estates, he beat the loyalist army at the Battle of Hades, and once the patriarch Michael Keroularios had engineered Michael’s abdication he received the crown in Hagia Sophia. His short reign was an austerity drive — court salaries cut, taxes collected without mercy, Church lands taken back — to refill the treasury and rebuild the army. When Keroularios, grown imperious in his role of emperor-maker, defied him, Isaac had the patriarch seized and sent into exile. He campaigned in person against the Pechenegs in 1059; then, falling ill, he abdicated on Psellos’s advice in favour of Constantine X and ended his days in the Stoudion monastery.
One of 14 people of Komnenos (1081–1185) in this archive. The house of the Komnenian restoration, ruling through a web of marriages to its own kin.
Parents
- Manuel Komnenos (1000 – 1020)
Siblings
- John Komnenos (1015 – 1067)