Michael III
840 – 867 · Generation XXI · Emperor (r. 842–867) · Amorian
Michael III was born to the emperor Theophilos and the empress Theodora, the youngest of their children, born in January 840 and crowned co-emperor within months. He was two when his father died in January 842, which made him the youngest person ever to succeed as senior Roman emperor. Historians of the later Macedonian dynasty, whose founder murdered him, called him the Drunkard, but modern research has rehabilitated him in part and credits his reign with a real revival of Byzantine power.
During his childhood a regency led by his mother and the eunuch Theoktistos governed. In March 843 it restored the veneration of icons, ending the second period of iconoclasm in what came to be known as the Triumph of Orthodoxy. As Michael grew up, his uncle Bardas won his favour against the regents. Theoktistos was murdered in the palace in 855, and in 857 Theodora and her daughters were sent to a monastery.
Bardas and the scholar Photios, whom Michael made patriarch, presided over a lively revival of learning, including a reorganised imperial school at the Magnaura palace. Abroad, the Rus’ attacked Constantinople in 860, and in 863 the emperor sent Cyril and Methodius to Moravia, where they created the first Slavic alphabet. The same year his uncle Petronas destroyed the army of the emir of Melitene at Lalakaon, a turning point after which Byzantium went on the offensive in the east.
His private life was a tangle. Married to Eudokia Dekapolitissa, he kept Eudokia Ingerina as his mistress and had her married to his favourite, Basil the Macedonian. Basil persuaded him in 866 that Bardas was plotting and was allowed to murder him, and that May he was crowned co-emperor. When Michael began to favour another courtier, Basil had him killed in his bedchamber after a drinking bout on 24 September 867 and took the throne as Basil I.
One of 3 people of Amorian (770–867) in this archive. A short house from Amorium, under which the icons were restored.
Line of descent: Bardanes Tourkos → Thekla → Theophilos → Michael III.
Parents
- Theophilos (813 – 842)
- Theodora II (815 – 867)
Siblings
- Thekla (831 – ?)
- Constantine (833 – 835)
Sources
- Michael III · Wikipedia
- Basil I · Wikipedia