John VI Kantakouzenos
1292 – 1383 · Generation XXXVII · Emperor (r. 1347–1354) · Kantakouzenos
John (AD 1292 – 1383). Emperor (r. 1347–1354). Married Irene around AD 1318. Senior co-emperor and regent for John V; abdicated and became a monk. A grand domestic who ran the administration for Andronikos III and repeatedly refused the crown, he was pushed into claiming it when rivals seized the regency, exiled his relatives, and mistreated his mother to her death. The six-year civil war that followed nearly ruined the empire; he won it with help from Umur of Aydin and from the Ottomans, to whom he gave his daughter Theodora. His reign brought a losing naval war with Genoa, the council of 1351 that vindicated Gregory Palamas, and — after an earthquake — the Ottoman annexation of Gallipoli, the first ground the Turks held in Europe. As the monk Joasaph he wrote a four-volume history of his times; no other Byzantine emperor’s account of his own reign survives. He died at ninety-one, having outlived every other Roman emperor.
One of 2 people of Kantakouzenos (from 1001) in this archive. A rival house raised by civil war, which ruled beside the Palaiologoi.
Partners
- Married Irene Asanina (1297 – ?) in 1318 — 2 children together
Children
- Matthew Kantakouzenos (1325 – 1383)
- Helena Kantakouzene (1333 – 1396)
Life
- 1292 — Born
- 1318 — Married Irene
- 1383 — Died