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Byzantine Emperor: JOHN II, Comnenus – Reigned: 15 August
1118 – 8 April 1143
Bronze Half Tetarteron 16mm (1.78 grams) Thessalonica mint: 1118-1143 A.D.
Reference: Sear 1954
Christ standing facing on footstool, wearing nimbus crown, pallium and colobium,
and holding
book
of Gospels in left hand.
+ IW ΔЄСΠΟΤ – Bust of John II facing wearing crown and jeweled chlamys,
and
holding labarum
and globe cross.
You are bidding on the exact item pictured,
provided with a Certificate of Authenticity and Lifetime Guarantee of
Authenticity.
Labarum of Constantine I, displaying the “Chi-Rho” symbol above.
The labarum was a
vexillum
(military standard) that displayed
the “Chi-Rho”
symbol
☧
, formed from the first two
Greek letters
of the word “Christ”
—
Chi
and
Rho
. It was first used by the
Roman emperor
Constantine I
. Since the vexillum consisted of
a flag suspended from the crossbar of a cross, it was ideally suited to
symbolize the
crucifixion
of
Christ
.
Later usage has sometimes regarded the terms “labarum” and “Chi-Rho” as
synonyms. Ancient sources, however, draw an unambiguous distinction between the
two.
Etymology
Beyond its derivation from Latin labarum, the etymology of the word is
unclear. Some derive it from Latin /labāre/ ‘to totter, to waver’ (in the sense
of the “waving” of a flag in the breeze) or laureum [vexillum] (“laurel
standard”). According to the
Real Academia Española
, the related
lábaro
is also derived from Latin labărum
but offers no further derivation from within Latin, as does the Oxford English
Dictionary.[5]
An origin as a loan into Latin from a Celtic language or
Basque
has also been postulated. There is a
traditional Basque symbol called the
lauburu
; though the name is only attested from
the 19th century onwards the motif occurs in engravings dating as early as the
2nd century AD.
Vision of Constantine
A coin of Constantine (c.337) showing a depiction of his labarum
spearing a serpent.
On the evening of October 27, 312, with his army preparing for the
Battle of the Milvian Bridge
, the emperor
Constantine I
claimed to have had a vision
which led him to believe he was fighting under the protection of the
Christian God
.
Lactantius
states that, in the night before the
battle, Constantine was commanded in a dream to “delineate the heavenly sign on
the shields of his soldiers”. He obeyed and marked the shields with a sign
“denoting Christ”. Lactantius describes that sign as a “staurogram”, or a
Latin cross
with its upper end rounded in a
P-like fashion, rather than the better known
Chi-Rho
sign described by
Eusebius of Caesarea
. Thus, it had both the
form of a cross and the monogram of Christ’s name from the formed letters “X”
and “P”, the first letters of Christ’s name in Greek.
From Eusebius, two accounts of a battle survive. The first, shorter one in
the
Ecclesiastical History
leaves no doubt that
God helped Constantine but doesn’t mention any vision. In his later Life of
Constantine, Eusebius gives a detailed account of a vision and stresses that
he had heard the story from the emperor himself. According to this version,
Constantine with his army was marching somewhere (Eusebius doesn’t specify the
actual location of the event, but it clearly isn’t in the camp at Rome) when he
looked up to the sun and saw a cross of light above it, and with it the Greek
words
Ἐν Τούτῳ Νίκα
. The traditionally employed
Latin translation of the Greek is
in hoc signo vinces
— literally “In this
sign, you will conquer.” However, a direct translation from the original Greek
text of Eusebius into English gives the phrase “By this, conquer!”
At first he was unsure of the meaning of the apparition, but the following
night he had a dream in which Christ explained to him that he should use the
sign against his enemies. Eusebius then continues to describe the labarum, the
military standard used by Constantine in his later wars against
Licinius
, showing the Chi-Rho sign.
Those two accounts can hardly be reconciled with each other, though they have
been merged in popular notion into Constantine seeing the Chi-Rho sign on the
evening before the battle. Both authors agree that the sign was not readily
understandable as denoting Christ, which corresponds with the fact that there is
no certain evidence of the use of the letters chi and rho as a Christian sign
before Constantine. Its first appearance is on a Constantinian silver coin from
c. 317, which proves that Constantine did use the sign at that time, though not
very prominently. He made extensive use of the Chi-Rho and the labarum only
later in the conflict with Licinius.
The vision has been interpreted in a solar context (e.g. as a
solar halo
phenomenon), which would have been
reshaped to fit with the Christian beliefs of the later Constantine.
An alternate explanation of the intersecting celestial symbol has been
advanced by George Latura, which claims that Plato’s visible god in Timaeus
is in fact the intersection of the Milky Way and the Zodiacal Light, a rare
apparition important to pagan beliefs that Christian bishops reinvented as a
Christian symbol.
Eusebius’ description of the labarum
“A Description of the Standard of the Cross, which the Romans now call the
Labarum.” “Now it was made in the following manner. A long spear, overlaid with
gold, formed the figure of the cross by means of a transverse bar laid over it.
On the top of the whole was fixed a wreath of gold and precious stones; and
within this, the symbol of the Saviour’s name, two letters indicating the name
of Christ by means of its initial characters, the letter P being intersected by
X in its centre: and these letters the emperor was in the habit of wearing on
his helmet at a later period. From the cross-bar of the spear was suspended a
cloth, a royal piece, covered with a profuse embroidery of most brilliant
precious stones; and which, being also richly interlaced with gold, presented an
indescribable degree of beauty to the beholder. This banner was of a square
form, and the upright staff, whose lower section was of great length, of the
pious emperor and his children on its upper part, beneath the trophy of the
cross, and immediately above the embroidered banner.”
“The emperor constantly made use of this sign of salvation as a safeguard
against every adverse and hostile power, and commanded that others similar to it
should be carried at the head of all his armies.”
Iconographic career under Constantine
Coin of
Vetranio
, a soldier is holding two
labara. Interestingly they differ from the labarum of Constantine in
having the Chi-Rho depicted on the cloth rather than above it, and
in having their staves decorated with
phalerae
as were earlier Roman
military unit standards.
The emperor
Honorius
holding a variant of the
labarum – the Latin phrase on the cloth means “In the name of Christ
[rendered by the Greek letters XPI] be ever victorious.”
Among a number of standards depicted on the
Arch of Constantine
, which was erected, largely
with fragments from older monuments, just three years after the battle, the
labarum does not appear. A grand opportunity for just the kind of political
propaganda that the Arch otherwise was expressly built to present was missed.
That is if Eusebius’ oath-confirmed account of Constantine’s sudden,
vision-induced, conversion can be trusted. Many historians have argued that in
the early years after the battle the emperor had not yet decided to give clear
public support to Christianity, whether from a lack of personal faith or because
of fear of religious friction. The arch’s inscription does say that the Emperor
had saved the
res publica
INSTINCTV DIVINITATIS
MENTIS MAGNITVDINE (“by greatness of mind and by instinct [or impulse]
of divinity”). As with his predecessors, sun symbolism – interpreted as
representing
Sol Invictus
(the Unconquered Sun) or
Helios
,
Apollo
or
Mithras
– is inscribed on his coinage, but in
325 and thereafter the coinage ceases to be explicitly pagan, and Sol Invictus
disappears. In his
Historia Ecclesiae
Eusebius further reports
that, after his victorious entry into Rome, Constantine had a statue of himself
erected, “holding the sign of the Savior [the cross] in his right hand.” There
are no other reports to confirm such a monument.
Whether Constantine was the first
Christian
emperor supporting a peaceful
transition to Christianity during his rule, or an undecided pagan believer until
middle age, strongly influenced in his political-religious decisions by his
Christian mother
St. Helena
, is still in dispute among
historians.
As for the labarum itself, there is little evidence for its use before 317.In
the course of Constantine’s second war against Licinius in 324, the latter
developed a superstitious dread of Constantine’s standard. During the attack of
Constantine’s troops at the
Battle of Adrianople
the guard of the labarum
standard were directed to move it to any part of the field where his soldiers
seemed to be faltering. The appearance of this talismanic object appeared to
embolden Constantine’s troops and dismay those of Licinius.At the final battle
of the war, the
Battle of Chrysopolis
, Licinius, though
prominently displaying the images of Rome’s pagan pantheon on his own battle
line, forbade his troops from actively attacking the labarum, or even looking at
it directly.[16]
Constantine felt that both Licinius and
Arius
were agents of Satan, and associated them
with the serpent described in the
Book of Revelation
(12:9).
Constantine represented Licinius as a snake on his coins.
Eusebius stated that in addition to the singular labarum of Constantine,
other similar standards (labara) were issued to the Roman army. This is
confirmed by the two labara depicted being held by a soldier on a coin of
Vetranio
(illustrated) dating from 350.
Later usage
Modern ecclesiastical labara (Southern Germany).
The emperor
Constantine Monomachos
(centre
panel of a Byzantine enamelled crown) holding a miniature labarum
John II Komnenos (or Comnenus) (Greek:
Ίωάννης Β΄ Κομνηνός, Iōannēs II
Komnēnos) (September 13, 1087 – April 8, 1143) was
Byzantine emperor
from 1118 to 1143. Also known
as Kaloïōannēs (“John the
Beautiful”),
he was the eldest son of emperor
Alexios I Komnenos
and
Irene Doukaina
. The second emperor of the
Komnenian restoration
of the Byzantine Empire,
John was a pious and dedicated emperor who was determined to undo the damage his
empire had suffered at the
battle of Manzikert
, half a century earlier.
In the course of his twenty-five year reign, John made alliances with the
Holy Roman Empire
in the west, decisively
defeated the Pechenegs
in the
Balkans
, and personally led numerous campaigns
against the
Turks
in
Asia Minor
. John’s campaigns fundamentally
changed the balance of power in the east, forcing the Turks onto the defensive
and restoring to the Byzantines many towns, fortresses and cities right across
the peninsula. In the southeast, John extended Byzantine control from the
Maeander
in the west all the way to
Cilicia
and
Tarsus
in the east. In an effort to demonstrate
the Byzantine emperor’s role as the leader of the
Christian
world, John marched into the
Holy Land
at the head of the combined forces of
Byzantium and the
Crusader
states; yet despite the great vigour
with which he pressed the campaign, John’s hopes were disappointed by the
treachery of his Crusader allies, who deliberately failed to fight against the
Muslim
enemy at the crucial moment. Also under
John, the empire’s population recovered to about 10 million people.
The Latin
historian
William of Tyre
described John as short and
unusually ugly, with eyes, hair and complexion so dark he was known as ‘the
Moor
‘. Yet despite his physical appearance,
John was known as Kaloïōannēs, “John the Handsome” or “John the
Beautiful”. The epithet referred not to his body but to his soul. Both his
parents had been unusually pious and John surpassed them. Members of his court
were expected to restrict their conversation to serious subjects only. The food
served at the emperor’s table was very frugal and John lectured courtiers who
lived in excessive luxury. Despite his austerity, John was loved. His principles
were sincerely held and his integrity great.
John was famed for his piety and his remarkably mild and just reign. He is an
exceptional example of a moral ruler, at a time when cruelty was the norm. He
never condemned anyone to death or mutilation. Charity was dispensed lavishly.
For this reason, he has been called the Byzantine
Marcus Aurelius
. By the personal purity and
piety of his character he effected a notable improvement in the manners of his
age. Gifted with great self control and personal courage, John was an excellent
strategist and an expert imperator in the field, and through his many
campaigns he devoted himself to the preservation of his empire.
//
Succession
He succeeded his father in 1118, but had already been proclaimed co-emperor
by Alexios I on September 1, 1092.
Niketas Choniates
alone tells of the actions by
which John II secured his own succession. Alexios I had favoured John to succeed
him over his wife Irene’s favourite, the
Caesar
Nikephoros Bryennios
, who was married to their
daughter
Anna Komnena
. Alexios resorted to dissimulation
in order to avert Irene’s criticism of his choice and her demands that
Nikephoros should succeed. As Alexios lay on his deathbed in the monastery of
the Mangana on 15 August 1118, John, consorting with relatives whom he could
trust, among whom was his brother, the
sebastokratōr
Isaac Komnenos
, stole into the monastery and
removed the imperial signet ring from his dying father. Then, taking up arms, he
rode to the Great Palace, gathering the support of the citizenry who acclaimed
him emperor. Irene was taken by surprise and was unable either to persuade her
son to desist, or to induce Nikephoros to act against him. Although the palace
guard at first refused to admit John without proof of his father’s wishes, the
mob surrounding the new emperor simply forced entry.
Alexios died the following night. John refused to join the funeral
procession, in spite of his mother’s urging, because his hold on power was so
tenuous. However, in the space of a few days, his position was secure. In 1119,
John II uncovered a conspiracy to overthrow him which implicated his mother and
sister, who were duly relegated to monasteries. To safeguard his own succession,
John crowned his own young son
Alexios
co-emperor in 1122.
John’s
government
These political intrigues probably contributed to John’s style of rule, which
was to appoint men from outside the imperial family to help him govern the
empire. John’s closest adviser was his closest friend,
John Axuch
, a Turk who had been given as a gift
to John’s father. Alexios had thought him a good companion for John, and so he
had been brought up alongside John, who immediately appointed him as
Grand Domestic
upon his accession. The Grand
Domestic was the commander in chief of the Byzantine armies. This was an
extraordinary move, and a departure from the nepotism that had characterised the
reign of his father Alexios. The imperial family harboured some degree of
resentment at this decision, which was reinforced by the fact that they were
required to make
obeisance
to John Axouch whenever they met him.
Yet the emperor had complete confidence in his appointees, many of whom had been
chosen on merit rather than their relation to him by blood. John’s unwillingness
to allow his family to interfere too much in his government was to remain
constant for the rest of his reign.
Reign
Conflict
with Venice
After his accession, John II had refused to confirm his father’s 1082 treaty
with the
Republic of Venice
, which had given the Italian
republic unique and generous trading rights within the Byzantine Empire. Yet the
change in policy was not motivated by financial concerns. An incident involving
the abuse of a member of the imperial family by Venetians led to a dangerous
conflict, especially as Byzantium had depended on Venice for its naval strength.
After a Byzantine retaliatory attack on
Kerkyra
, John exiled the Venetian merchants
from Constantinople. But this produced further retaliation, and a Venetian fleet
of 72 ships plundered
Rhodes
,
Chios
,
Samos
,
Lesbos
,
Andros
and captured
Kefalonia
in the
Ionian Sea
. Eventually John was forced to come
to terms; the war was costing him more than it was worth, and he was not
prepared to transfer funds from the imperial land forces to the navy for the
construction of new ships. John re-confirmed the treaty of 1082. Nevertheless,
this embarrassment was not entirely forgotten, and it seems likely that it
played a part in inspiring John’s successor (Manuel
I Komnenos) to re-establish a powerful Byzantine fleet some years
later.
Successes
against the Pechenegs and Hungarians
In 1119–1121 John defeated the
Seljuk Turks
, establishing his control over
southwestern Anatolia
. However, immediately afterwards, in
1122, John quickly transferred his troops to Europe to fight off a
Pecheneg
invasion into
Moesia
. These invaders had been auxiliaries of
the Prince of Kiev
. John surrounded the Pechenegs as they
burst into Thrace
, tricked them into believing that he
would grant them a favourable treaty, and then launched a devastating surprise
attack upon their larger camp. The ensuing
Battle of Beroia
was hard fought, but by the
end of the day John’s army had won a crushing victory. This put an end to
Pecheneg incursions into Byzantine territory, and many of the captives were
settled as foederati
within the Byzantine frontier.
John then launched a punitive raid against the
Serbs
, many of whom were rounded up and
transported to
Nicomedia
in Asia Minor to serve as military
colonists. This was done partly to cow the Serbs into submission (Serbia was, at
least nominally, a Byzantine protectorate), and partly to strengthen the
Byzantine frontier in the east against the Turks. However, John’s marriage to
the Hungarian princess
Piroska
involved him in the dynastic struggles
of the
Kingdom of Hungary
. Giving asylum to a blinded
claimant to the Hungarian throne (called Álmos), John aroused the suspicion of
the Hungarians, and was faced with an invasion in 1128. The Hungarians attacked
Belgrade
,
Braničevo
,
Nish
,
Sofia
, and penetrated south as far as the
outskirts of
Philippopolis
. After a challenging campaign
lasting two years, the emperor managed to defeat the Hungarians and their
Serbian
allies at the fortress of
Haram
which is located in
Nova Palanka
, and peace was restored.
Campaigns
against the Turks
John was then able to concentrate on Asia Minor, which became the focus of
his attention for most of his remaining years. The Turks were pressing forward
against the Byzantine frontier in western Asia Minor, and John was determined to
drive them back. In 1119, the Seljuks had cut off
Antalya
from the empire, John II led an army to
capture
Laodicea
and
Sozopolis
, therefore reestablishing the land
links to the city. He undertook a campaign against the
Danishmendid
emirate in
Malatya
on the upper
Euphrates
from 1130 to 1135. Thanks to John’s
energetic campaigning, Turkish attempts at expansion in Asia Minor were halted,
and John prepared to take the fight to the enemy. In order to restore the region
to Byzantine control, John led a series of well planned and executed campaigns
against the Turks, one of which resulted in the reconquest of the ancestral home
of the Komneni at
Kastamonu
, then he left a garrison of 2,000 men
at
Gangra
. John quickly earned a formidable
reputation as a wall-breaker, taking stronghold after stronghold from his
enemies. Regions which had been lost to the empire ever since the
Battle of Manzikert
were recovered and
garrisoned. Yet resistance, particularly from the Danishmends of the north-east,
was strong, and the difficult nature of holding down the new conquests is
illustrated by the fact that Kastamonu was recaptured by the Turks even as John
was in Constantinople celebrating its return to Byzantine rule. John persevered,
however, and Kastamonu soon changed hands once more. John advanced into north
eastern Anatolia, provoking the Turks to attack his army. Yet once again John’s
forces were able to maintain their cohesion, and the Turkish attempt to inflict
a second Manzikert on the emperor’s army backfired when the Sultan, discredited
by his failure to defeat John, was murdered by his own people. In 1139, the
Emperor marched one final time against the
Danishmend Turks
, his army marched along the
southern coast of the
Black Sea
through
Bithynia
, and
Paphlagonia
. Turning south at
Trebizond
, he besieged but failed to take the
city of
Neocaesarea
.
Campaigns
in the Holy Land
The emperor then directed his attention to the Levant, where he sought to re-inforce
Byzantium’s suzerainty over the
Crusader States
. In 1137 he conquered
Tarsus
,
Adana
, and
Mopsuestia
from the
Principality of Armenian Cilicia
, and in 1138
Prince
Levon I of Armenia
and most of his family were
brought as captives to Constantinople. This opened the route to the
Principality of Antioch
, where Prince
Raymond of Poitiers
recognized himself the
emperor’s vassal in 1137, and John arrived there in triumph in 1138. There
followed a joint campaign as John led the armies of Byzantium, Antioch and
Edessa
against Muslim Syria. Although John
fought hard for the Christian cause in the campaign in Syria, his allies Prince
Raymond of Antioch and Count
Joscelin II of Edessa
sat around playing dice
instead of helping John to press the siege of
Shaizar
. These Crusader Princes were suspicious
of each other and of John, and neither wanted the other to gain from
participating in the campaign, while Raymond also wanted to hold on to Antioch,
which he had agreed to hand over to John if the campaign was successful in
capturing Aleppo
,
Shaizar
,
Homs, and Hama
. While the emperor was distracted by his
attempts to secure a
German
alliance against the
Normans
of
Sicily
, Joscelin and Raymond conspired to delay
the promised handover of Antioch’s citadel to the emperor.
Premature
death
John planned a new expedition to the East, including a pilgrimage to
Jerusalem on which he planned to take his army with him. King
Fulk of Jerusalem
, fearing an invasion, begged
the emperor to only bring an army of 10,000 men with him. This resulted in John
II deciding not to go. However, on
Mount Taurus
in
Cilicia
, on April 8, 1143, he was accidentally
infected by a poisoned arrow while out hunting. The poison set in, and shortly
afterwards he died. John’s final action as emperor was to choose his youngest
son
Manuel Komnenos
to be his successor. John cited
two main reasons for choosing Manuel over his older surviving son Isaac Komnenos:
these were Isaac’s irascibility, and the courage that Manuel had shown on
campaign at
Neocaesareia
. Another theory alleges that the
reason for this choice was the
AIMA prophecy
which foretold that John’s
successor should be one whose name began with an “M”. John’s eldest son, the
co-emperor
Alexios
, had died in the summer of 1142.
John’s
achievement
Historian J. Birkenmeier has recently argued that John’s reign was the most
successful of the Komnenian period. In The development of the Komnenian army
1081–1180, he stresses the wisdom of John’s approach to warfare, which
focused on siege warfare rather than risky pitched battles. Birkenmeier argues
that John’s strategy of launching annual campaigns with limited, realistic
objectives was a more sensible one than that followed by his son
Manuel I
. According to this view, John’s
campaigns benefited the Byzantine Empire because they protected the empire’s
heartland from attack while gradually extending its territory in Asia Minor. The
Turks were forced onto the defensive, while John kept his diplomatic situation
relatively simple by allying with the Holy Roman Emperor against the Normans of
Sicily.
Overall, what is clear is that John II Komnenos left the empire a great deal
better off than he had found it. Substantial territories had been recovered, and
his successes against the invading Pechenegs, Serbians and Seljuk Turks, along
with his attempts to establish Byzantine suzerainty over the Crusader States in
Antioch
and
Edessa
, did much to restore the reputation of
his empire. His careful, methodical approach to warfare had protected the empire
from the risk of sudden defeats, while his determination and skill had allowed
him to rack up a long list of successful sieges and assaults against enemy
strongholds. By the time of his death he had earned near universal respect, even
from the Crusaders, for his courage, dedication and piety. His early death meant
his work went unfinished — his last campaign might well have resulted in real
gains for Byzantium and the Christian cause.
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