ALEXIUS I. (1048-1118), emperor of the East, was the third
son of John Comnenus, nephew of Isaac Comnenus, emperor
1057-1059. His father declined the throne on the abdication
of Isaac, who was accordingly succeeded by four emperors
of other families between that date and 1081. Under one
of these emperors, Romanus Diogenes (1067-1071), he served
with distinction against the Seljuk Turks. Under Michael
Parapinaces (1071-1078) and Nicephorus Botaniates (1078-1081)
he was also employed, along with his elder brother Isaac,
against rebels in Asia Minor, Thrace and in Epirus (1071).
The success of the Comneni roused the jealousy of Botaniates
and his ministers, and the Comneni were almost compelled
to take up arms in self-defence. Botaniates was forced to
abdicate and retire to a monastery, and Isaac declined the
crown in favour of his younger brother Alexius, who then
became emperor in the 33rd year of his age. His long reign of
nearly 37 years was full of difficulties (see ROMAN EMPIRE,
LATER). At the very outset he had to meet the formidable
attack of the Normans (Robert Guiscard and his son Bohemund),
who took Dyrrhachium and Corfu, and laid siege to Larissa in
Thessaly. The Norman danger ended for the time with Robert
Guiscard's death (1085) and the conquests were recovered.
He had next to repel the invasions of Patzinaks (Petchenegs)
and Kumans in Thrace, with whom the Manichaean sects of the
Paulicians and Bogomilians made Common cause; and thirdly, he
had to cope with the fast-growing power of the Turks in Asia
Minor. Above all he had to meet the difficulties caused by
the arrival of the warriors of the First Crusade, which had
been in a great degree initiated owing to the representations
of his own ambassadors, though the help which he wanted from
the West was simply mercenary forces and not the immense hosts
which arrived to his consternation and embarrassment. The
first part, under Peter the Hermit, he got rid of by sending
them on to Asia Minor, where they were massacred by the Turks
(1096). The second and much more serious host of warriors,
led by Godfrey of Bouillon, he conducted also into Asia,
promising to supply them with provisions in return for an oath
of homage, and by their victories recovered for the Empire
a number of important cities and islands--Nicaea, Chics,
Rhodes, Smyrna, Ephesus, Philadelphia, Sardis, and in fact
most of Asia Minor (1097-1099). This is ascribed as a credit
to his policy and diplomacy by his daughter, by the Latin
historians of the crusade to his treachery and falseness, but
during the last twenty years of his life he lost much of his
popularity. They were marked by persecution of the followers
of the Paulician and Bogomilian heresies (one of his last
acts was to burn Basilius, a Bogomilian leader, with whom
he had engaged in a theological controversy), by renewed
struggles with the Turks (1110-1117), by anxieties as to the
succession, which his wife Irene wished to alter in favour of
her daughter Anne's husband, Nicephorus Bryennius for whose
benefit the special title panhypersebastos (i.e. as it were
dugustissimus si quis ahus) was created. This intrigue
disturbed even his dying hours. He deserves the credit of
having raised the Empire from a condition of anarchy and
decay at a time when it was threatened on all sides by new
dangers. No emperor devoted himself more laboriously
or with a greater sense of duty to the task of ruling.
AUTHORITIES.
Zonaras xviii. 27-29
Anna Comnena's Life
see also Du Cange, Familiae Byzantinae
Friedrich Wilken,
Rerum ab Alexio I., Joanne, Manuele et Alexio II. Comnenis
Romanorum, Byzantinorum imperatoribus gestarum, tibri iv.
Commentatio (Heidelberg, 1811)
Finlay, History of Greece
(vol. iii., Oxford, 1877)
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire, edited with notes, &c., by Prof. J. B. Bury (London,
1898), where further authorities are cited
F. Chalandon, Essai
sur le regne d'Alexis Ier, Comnene (1900). (J. B. B.)
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