Skip to main content

Isaac II Angelo Biography

Isaac II Angelo

(Isaac II Angelo or the Angel;?, 1155-Constantinople, 1204).Emperor of Byzantium (1185-1195 and 1203-1204).He was the first representative of the Angel dynasty.During his years of reign he overcame the many complications that arose, but despite his ability as a ruler, at his death, the Empire was more weakened, mainly due to the problems in the Balkans.

Son From Andronicus the Angel, he occupied the throne of Byzantium on September 12, 1185, after a revolution dethroned Alexius I Komnenos, the last of the Komnenos emperors.It was the harshness of the rule of Alexios and the fear of the Normans, who had recently conquered Thessalonica, the causes that elevated the Angels to the imperial throne.

Isaac II Angelo and his son Alexius IV

The same year as Isaac's coronation, his leader, Alexius Dranas, defeated Norman William II and he put to flight the Norman army that was heading towards Constantinople.After expelling the Normans in the Balkans, an insurrection broke out there against the Empire, led by the Wallachian-Bulgarian brothers Peter and Asen.The basileo commanded his generals against the brothers, but eventually led the troops in person during the campaigns of the next two years, in order to prevent rebellions within the army.

Internal problems forced Isaac to make peace with Peter and Asen in the autumn of 1188 and the Bulgarians declared themselves independent.To ensure peace with the Normans, Isaac allied himself with the King of Sicily, Tancredo di Lecce, and married his daughter Irene to Roger, Tancredo's first-born.

Isaac II signed a pact with the German emperor.Frederick I Barbarossa, for whom he promised to collaborate with him in the Crusade and to supply the German troops on their way to Constantinople.However, aware that Barbarossa had also made an agreement with the Sultan of Iconium, enemy of Byzantium, he in turn established an alliance with Saladin against the Sultan of Iconium and hindered the expedition of the Germans as much as possible.

The ineptitude of Isaac II in negotiations led the Germans to seize Adrianople and Philippopolis and march against Constantinople in early 1190.But faced with the impossibility of taking Constantinople, the two emperors signed the peace and the crusaders crossed the Dardanelles.

Meanwhile, the problem in the Balkans was getting worse.Isaac II organized annual expeditions between 1191 and 1194, which were defeated on all occasions.The campaign of 1194 was especially disastrous, and in 1195 the Basel went to war in person.In April, when Isaac was camped in Kypsella, in southern Thrace, a conspiracy emerged within the royal family, led by Alexios, the emperor's brother.He led an army insurrection, assumed the throne (Alexios III the Angel) and ordered the capture of Isaac, whose eyes were gouged out and held captive in Constantinople.

His reign was plagued with conspiracies.and rebellions.To diminish the power of the nobility, he avoided granting important administrative positions to members of the main families, to whom he assigned a merely military function.Isaac, consequently, relied on the bureaucracy created by him in Constantinople.The emperor showed special attention to administrative, military and diplomatic affairs.

In 1203 Isaac II was restored to the throne, thanks to the efforts of his son, Alexios IV, who reigned together with his father and with the support of the Christians of the IV Crusade.A year later he was assassinated in jail, following the success of a conspiracy by the palace steward, Alejo Ducas Murzuflo, who reigned as Alejo V.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Johann Tobias Beck Biography

Johann Tobias Beck (Balingen, 1804-Tübingen, 1878) German Protestant theologian.Professor in Basel and preacher in Tübingen (1843), he opposed Baur's school a realistic inspiration more in line with the text of the Scriptures.
Post a Comment
Read more

Godfrey of Bouillon Biography

Godfrey de Bouillon Knight of the First Crusade, creator of the Kingdom of Jerusalem (Baisy, Brabant, c.1061-Jerusalem, 1100).He was Duke of Lower Lorraine (Netherlands) and a faithful ally of the Emperor Henry IV, whom he had helped in his struggles against Rudolph of Swabia and against Pope Gregory VII.When Pope Urban II appealed to Christendom for a Crusade to liberate the "Holy Places" from the hands of Islam, Godfrey was one of the first to go (1095).He sold most of his domains to finance his own army, with which he arrived in Constantinople in 1096.He loaned vassal to the Byzantine emperor in exchange for food and troops.And, after his outstanding participation in several victorious battles against the Muslims (Nicaea, Dorilea, Antioch), he became head of the crusaders.These named him king of Jerusalem once the city was taken in 1099; but Godfrey did not admit the title, claiming Christian humility, and changed it to "protector of the Holy Sepulcher." He or...
Post a Comment
Read more

Jose Maria de Aguirre Biography

José María de Aguirre (Tolosa, 1896- id ., 1933) Spanish writer in the Basque language.Under the pseudonym Xabier de Lizardi , he wrote books of poems ( En el corazón y en los ojos , 1932), a play ( The boy who did not could marry ) and a volume of prose ( Plain Word , 1934).
Post a Comment
Read more

Elijah Querejeta Biography

Elías Querejeta (Elías Querejeta Gárate; Hernani, 1930-Madrid, 2013) Spanish film producer.He studied chemistry and law, while at the same time he was part of the Real Sociedad de San Sebastián football team, a career he abandoned at the age of 24.He was a regular at the screenings held by the city's film clubs, where he met other young people-Víctor Erice, Antonio Eceiza-who would study at the Official Film School of Madrid. Elías Querejeta In 1961 he founded his first company, Laponia Films, at the same time that he collaborated with other production companies on his first films.After directing several short films, in 1964 he decided to found Elías Querejeta P.C.From his first films, he defined the style he wanted to print in his works, intervening in almost all of them as co-screenwriter, while gathering around him a group of professionals who would guarantee the finish of each film (Luis Cuadrado and Teo Escamilla as directors photography; Primitivo Álvaro, in the produc...
Post a Comment
Read more

Higuchi Ichiyo Biography

Higuchi Ichiyo (Higuchi Natsuko, Tokyo, 1872- id ., 1896) Japanese poet and novelist.He demonstrated his talent with Rivalry (1895-1896), a work that describes the miserable Tokyo of the suburbs; Also notable are Turbid Images (1895) and The Moon of the Thirteenth Night (1895).
Post a Comment
Read more

István Széchenyi Biography

István Széchenyi (István Széchenyi, count of Sárvár, called The Great Magyar; Vienna, 1791-Döbling, 1860) Hungarian politician.Austrian army officer (1809-1815), as a deputy in the Diet, he advocated a series of reformist measures: abolition of serfdom and guilds, creation of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1825), construction of the suspension bridge of Budapest, founding of a Danube steam navigation company, etc.A supporter of the link with Austria, he was Minister of Works and Communications in the first Batthyány Government.In his book El Crédito (1830) he set out his program of economic development.
Post a Comment
Read more

Blas Roca Biography

Blas Roca (Manzanillo, Oriente, 1909-Havana, 1987) Cuban politician.Secretary General of the Communist Party of Cuba (1934-1939) and of its successor the Popular Socialist Party (1942-1960), participated in the Cuban revolution.Together with other Castro leaders, he founded the Revolutionary Organizations (1961), which later became the Single Party of the Socialist Revolution (1962) and later the Communist Party of Cuba (1965).He directed the newspaper Hoy (1962-1965) and was president of the National Assembly of People's Power (1976-1979).He is the author of Martí, Radical Revolutionary (1948) and The Foundations of Socialism in Cuba.Clarifications (3 vols.).
Post a Comment
Read more

green Day Biography

Green Day American rock music group reminiscent of punk, formed in 1988 in Berkeley and made up of Billie Joe Armstrong (vocals, guitar), Mike Dirnt (bass) and Tre Cool (drums).Billie Joe Armstrong (born 1972 in California) and Mike Dirnt (whose real name is Mike Pritchard, born 1972), residents of the Californian town of Rodeo, formed the band in the late 1980s. Green Day Billie Joe Armstrong had grown up in a family of six siblings, whose father, a trucker and jazz musician, passed away when Billie Joe was ten years; Her mother, a waitress and country fanatic, gave her a year later a guitar that she still owns and plays.For her part, Mike Pritchard was the son of a heroin addict, which led to her being adopted by a couple who, in turn, divorced when Mike was seven.At the age of fifteen, Mike rented a room in Billie Joe's house. Tre Cool, whose real name was Frank Edwin Wright III, was born in 1972 in Germany, and grew up in Wilitis, a town north of San Francisco.Soon he ...
Post a Comment
Read more

James Ramsay MacDonald Biography

James Ramsay MacDonald (Lossiemouth, Scotland, 1866-at sea, 1937) British politician who was Prime Minister between 1929 and 1935.Of humble origins, he joined the Independent Labor Party in 1894, of the one who would become president.In 1900 he participated in the formation of the Labor Representation Committee, an organization designed to ensure the presence in Parliament of an autonomous group that defended the reformist and egalitarian ideas of the trade union movement. Ramsay MacDonald In 1906 he was elected deputy in the midst of a great electoral success for his party, which changed its name to the Labor Party.He led the parliamentary group from 1911 to 1914, the year in which he did not get re-election due to his pacifist stance in the face of the imminent outbreak of the First World War.Re-elected in 1922 by a Welsh mining district, he became leader of the opposition. In 1924 he became Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of a brief minority government, from ...
Post a Comment
Read more