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.

Comments

Phoenician numbers

In History Today Online we explained in a previous post which were the Arabic numerals, but the truth is that they are not the only ones, and although somewhat complicated to understand, the truth is that the Phoenician numbers are perhaps much more difficult.In History Today Online we talk to you now of which are the Phoenician numbers. The Phoenicians also known as Canaanites, although they were a civilization that occupied a region called Canaan and was a territory that currently encompasses Israel, Syria and Lebanon.They always stood out for their art, closely linked to the different Mediterranean influences and as not for an alphabet that they created and that is in fact the origin of the alphabet that we know today, they also had a numerical system and that we tried to decipher below. The Phoenician Numbers: The main basis of the Phoenician numbers, are the angles and the stripes since these are the base they used to create the different numbers.Depending on how e...

Humberto Fernández Morán Biography

Humberto Fernández Morán (Maracaibo, Venezuela, 1924-Stockholm, Sweden, 1999) Venezuelan scientist.Inventor of the diamond blade, he was a pioneer in electron microscopy techniques and decisive in the process of scientific modernization of his country, in which he founded the Venezuelan Institute of Neurology and Brain Research (IVNIC). Humberto Fernández carried out his first studies between the capital of Zulia, Curaçao and New York.In 1936 he entered the German School of Maracaibo and the following year he left for Germany, where he finished high school at the Schulgemeinde Wichersdorf high school in Sallfeld.At the age of fifteen, he began his medical studies at the University of Munich.During the Second World War, six days before the Normandy landing (1944), in a basement and under low aerial bombardment, he graduated in medicine with Summa cum laude . Humberto Fernández Morán The following year he revalidated his degree at the Central University of Venezuela and worked ...

Heinrich maier Biography

Heinrich Maier (Heidenheim, 1867-Berlin, 1933) German philosopher.He produced a "critical realism", along the lines of H.Driesch.He is the author, among other works, of Aristotle's syllogistics (1896-1900) and of The philosophy of reality (1926-1935).

X-ray history

The X-rays were discovered in 1895 and from there they became a very revolutionary application in many branches of science, from astronomy to radiographs that we have not done so many times.the 120th anniversary of the X-rays knowing his inventor and the research that led him to such an important scientific advance. Article index Who invented the X-rays? The inventor or, rather, the person who discovered the X-rays was Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen , a German physicist who was focused on the field of electromagnetics Nothing else to present his discovery, Rontgen's theory received great attention from critics and public, and was translated into French, English or Russian. Although it is not a name as well known today as that of others you celebrate writers, the name of Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen is written in gold letters in the medical field, where he has had and has and numerous applications.The importance of his discovery was such in his day that he was the first Nobel Prize ...

Dwijendralal Ray Biography

Dwijendralal Ray (Also called Dwijendralal Roy, Dwijendra Lal Roy, D.L.Ray, Rèi Dvi-Endralal or Rai Dvigendralal; Krishnagar, 1863-1913) Indian poet and playwright.Born into a wealthy family (he was a member of the Brahmin caste, the first in the social ladder of India), he received a careful academic training. Dwijendralal Roy In his youth he became known as a writer through some satirical theatrical pieces; But his true recognition as a playwright came with the premiere of his historical dramas that, from a patriotic approach, seek to recover the main customs and customs of India, as well as its popular literary traditions. Part of its plot material comes from the Mahabharata , the huge epic poem that recounts, in Sanskrit, the confrontation between the forces of Good and Evil, embodied in the clans of the Pandavas and the Kauravas.His best-known plays are Mevarpatan , Durqadas and Candragupta . This love for the historical and cultural richness of India is also prese...

Jose Rizal Biography

José Rizal (José Rizal y Alonso; Calamba, Philippines, 1861-Manila, 1896) Filipino politician and writer.He began his university studies with the Jesuits in Manila, and in 1882 he entered the University of Madrid, from which he graduated in medicine and in philosophy and letters.During a trip to Europe he wrote Noli me tangere , an anti-colonial novel in which he denounced the abuses of the Spanish Administration in the Philippines, where its publication was prohibited.Rizal, whose political militancy had begun in the university cloister, was strongly opposed to the inordinate power of the Spanish Catholic Orders.In this sense, his work El filibusterismo summed up his nationalist ideology, which he later spread through the Philippine League, a secret society he founded in Hong Kong. Thanks to a government opening, in 1887 he was able to return to his homeland, but the close police surveillance to which he was subjected forced him to leave the following year.He returned in 1892,...

Corrado Alvaro Biography

Corrado Alvaro (San Luca di Calabria, 1895-Rome, 1956) Italian writer.Initially linked to costumbrismo, as the stories of La siepe e l'orto (1920) reveal, Corrado Alvaro ventured along other paths that relate him to the so-called "Italian magical realism".This way of understanding literature, lyrical and fantastic, expresses the opposition between the mythical past of the Calabrian lands and the present of misery and backwardness that shaped that Italian region in the first half of the 20th century.This primitive and uncontaminated world appears in the stories of The Beloved at the Window (1929) and in the short novel Gente en Aspromonte (1930), considered his best work. Corrado Alvaro Corrado Alvaro took part in the First World War as an infantry officer, and was wounded in the Carso battles in 1916.He worked as a journalist in Il Resto del Carlino and until 1920 in Il Corriere della Sera , the year in which he obtained his doctorate in Philosophy and Let...

Angel Zárraga and Argüelles Biography

Ángel Zárraga y Argüelles (Durango, 1886-Mexico, 1946) Mexican painter and poet.Very soon he began to combine his interest in the visual arts with his innate literary vocation, and the sum of both creative activities made him one of the great figures of Aztec culture of the first half of the 20th century. As a member of the Mexican diplomatic corps, for several years he was stationed in Paris as cultural attaché to the Aztec embassy.In the French capital, Ángel Zárraga y Argüelles had the opportunity to establish contact with the main artistic figures of the moment, to learn about the latest trends and currents in European art and to participate in different groups such as the Society of Decorating Artists of Paris, which provided the opportunity to extend the field of his artistic creations to the noblest spaces of old Europe. Thus, the Mexican painter was commissioned to execute the frescoes that decorate the crypt of the church of Suresnes, the Via Crucis of the church of Meu...

Camilo Torres Restrepo Biography

Camilo Torres Restrepo (Jorge Camilo Torres Restrepo; Bogotá, 1929-San Vicente de Chucurí, Santander, 1966) Priest and Colombian guerrilla.After being ordained a priest in 1954 and completing his training with sociology studies in Belgium (1954-1959), he participated in the founding of the Faculty of Sociology of the National University of Colombia, where he taught between 1959 and 1962. Camilo Torres Restrepo Worried since his youth about deep social inequalities, the charismatic personality of Camilo Torres Restrepo, the coherence of his progressive message and his initiatives in favor of the classes most disadvantaged had made him, since his return to the country, a figure of great relevance.The expulsion from the university (1962) increased its public projection and marked the beginning of an approach to revolutionary positions, which culminated in the abandonment of the priesthood and the incorporation of the National Liberation Army into the guerrilla (1965).Since then cal...

Jose Refugio Velasco Biography

José Refugio Velasco (Aguascalientes, 1851-Mexico, 1923) Mexican military.He evicted Pancho Villa de Torreón during the Huerta regime and, after the latter's fall, was part of the interim Carbajal government.Appointed commander-in-chief of the army, he signed the Teoloyucán Accords (1914) with the constitutionalists, which put an end to the Huerta period.

History Today Online

Search This Blog