Philippicus

676 – 713 · Generation XVI · usurper (r. 711–713)

Philippicus (AD null – 713). usurper (r. 711–713). Born Bardanes; no blood link to Heraclians. Exiled to Cherson under Justinian II, he took the name Philippicus there and, with Khazar help, roused the town to revolt; the rebels drove Justinian from Constantinople and set their leader on the throne. A man of letters, tutored and eloquent in Greek, he threw his weight behind monothelitism — deposing the orthodox patriarch Cyrus in favour of John VI and summoning bishops who set aside the canons of the Sixth Ecumenical Council, at which Rome refused him recognition. Meanwhile Tervel’s Bulgarians raided to the very gates of Constantinople, and when he moved the Opsikion army to the Balkans the Umayyads broke through an Asian frontier stripped of its defenders. The Opsikion troops rebelled, and their officers blinded him in the hippodrome; his own secretary Artemius succeeded him.