Michael I



         


Michael I Rhangabes, an obscure nobleman who had married Procopia, the daughter of Nicephorus I, and been made master of the palace. He was made Byzantine emperor in a revolution against his brother-in-law, Stauracius 811.

Elected with the support of the Orthodox party in the Church, Michael diligently persecuted the iconoclasts on the northern and eastern frontiers of the empire, but meanwhile allowed the Bulgars to ravage a great part of Macedonia and Thrace; having at last taken the field in the spring of 813, he was defeated near Bersinikia, and Leo the Armenian was saluted emperor in his stead in the following summer. Michael was relegated as a monk to the island of Prote, where he lived unmolested until his death in 845.

This is a list of Byzantine Emperors.

Note: It is difficult to determine when exactly the Roman Empire ends and the Byzantine Empire begins; Diocletian split the Roman Empire into eastern and western halves for administrative purposes in 284. Candidates for the "first" Byzantine emperor include Constantine I (the first Christian emperor, who moved the capital to Constantinople), Valens (the Battle of Adrianople (378) provides one of the traditional cut-off events to mark the start of the medieval period), Arcadius (treating Theodosius I as the last emperor of a single Roman Empire), and Zeno I (as the last western emperor Romulus Augustus was deposed during his reign). Others date the beginning of the Empire even as late as Heraclius (who replaced the traditional Roman imperial title of "Augustus" with "Basileus", the Greek word for "Emperor", and discontinued the use of Latin by making Greek the official language). Numismatists note the monetary reforms of Anastasius I in 498, which used the Greek numbering system. Of course, the Byzantines themselves continued to think of their empire as "Roman" for over a millennium.

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Constantinian dynasty

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Non-dynastic

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Valentinian-Theodosian dynasty

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Dynasty of Leo

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Justinian dynasty

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Non-dynastic

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Heraclian dynasty

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Non-dynastic

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Isaurian dynasty

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Non-dynastic

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Amorian (or Phrygian) dynasty

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Macedonian dynasty

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Non-dynastic

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Ducaian-Comnenan dynasty

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Angelan dynasty

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Lascaran dynasty (in exile in the Empire of Nicaea during the time of the Latin Empire)

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Palaeologan Dynasty (restored at Constantinople)

In 1453 Mehmed II overthrew the Byzantine Empire and claimed the title of Caesar; his successors continued this claim. See Osmanli for the complete list of Ottoman sultans.

See also:


This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.







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