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Comnenian Dynasty - 1081-1204

By the later part of the 11th century the Empire seemed through incompetence and frivolity to have been brought to the verge of dissolution. The disorder was terminated by the accession of the extraordinarily able statesman Alexius Comnenus (1081), who effected a reconciliation with the rival family of Ducas, established a strong government and founded a dynasty. He had to deal with three great dangers - the Seljuks, the Petchenegs, and in the west the Normans. The Normans had wrested from East Rome its possessions in South Italy (1041-71) - succeeding where German emperors had failed - and throughout the Comnenian period the Empire was threatened by their projects of conquest beyond the Adriatic, projects which aimed at Constantinople itself.

Four great attempts against the Empire were made by the Normans; they were unsuccessful, but they heralded the Western conquest of 1204.

1. Expedition of Robert Guiscard, 1081-85, repelled by Alexius with help of Venice
2. Bohemond's expedition, 1105-7, foiled by the able strategy of Alexius;
3. the invasion of Greece by Roger of Sicily, 1147; Venice supported Manuel Comnenus, and the Normans were driven from Corfu, 1140;
4. the expedition of William of Sicily, 1185, who succeeded in capturing Thcssalonica; the invaders were defeated at Demetritsa, but they gained the islands of Cephallenia and Zacynthus.

The two most important events in the reign of Alexius were the prices which he paid for help against his enemies. He was obliged (1084) to grant to Venice (which had become independent of the Empire in the 9th century; sec Venice), in return for her naval aid against the Normans, commercial privileges which practically made the Empire commercially dependent on the Republic. And he sought auxiliary forces in western Europe to help him against the Seljuks; the answer of the Pope and Latin Christendom was the First Crusade - a succour very different from that which he desired. Through his tact and discretion, the state was safely steered through the dangers with which the disorderly hosts of barbarous allies menaced it, and the immediate results were salutary; large parts of Asia Minor, including Nicaca, were restored to the Empire, which was thus greatly strengthened in the East while the Turks were weakened. But for this help Byzantium might not have recovered the transient strength and brilliance which it displayed under Manuel.

In Asia Minor the crusaders kept the terms of their agreement to restore to the emperor what had belonged to him; but on capturing Antioch (1098) they permitted the Norman Bohemond to retain it, in flagrant violation of their oaths; for to Antioch if to any place the emperor had a right, as it had been his a few years before. This was in itself sufficient to cause a breach between Byzantium and the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem (founded 1099). But otherwise the new political situation created by the Crusade was dangerous, ultimately fatal, to the Empire. For its lands and seas became a highway from western Europe to the Latin colonies in Syria; the Byzantine government was forced to take precautions to protect itself against the crusading expeditions which travelled to the Holy Land; and these precautions were regarded by the western powers as a hindrance to the sacred objects of the crusades. The bitter religious antagonism between the Greek and Latin Christians increased the mutual distrust and the danger.

The history of the new relations between East and West dating from the First Crusade is closely connected with the history of the futile attempts at bringing about a reunion between the Greek and Latin Churches, which had severed communion in 1054. To heal the schism and bring the Greek Church under the domination of Rome was a principal object of papal policy from Gregory VII forward. The popes alternated between two methods for attaining this, as circumstances dictated: namely, a peaceful agreement - the policy of union; or an armed occupation of the Empire by some western power (the Normans) - the policy of conquest. Their views varied according to the vicissitudes of their political situation and their struggles with the western emperors.

The eastern emperors were also constantly preoccupied with the idea of reconciliation, constantly negotiating with a view to union; but they did not care about it for its own sake, but only for political advantages which it might bring, and their subjects were bitterly opposed to it. Manuel Comnenus during the first part of his reign was the close friend and ally of the western emperor Konrad III, but after Conrad's death, he formed the ambitious plan of realizing in Europe a sovereignty like that of Justinian, and hoped to compass it in conjunction with Rome, the enemy of the Hohenstaufen.

His forward policy carried war into Italy; he seized Ancona. But his strength was unequal to such designs. His Latin sympathies, no less than his financial extravagance, made him highly unpopular at home; and the national lack of sympathy with his Western policy was exhibited after the revolution which overthrew his son Alexius and raised his cousin Andronicus I to the throne - by the awful massacre of the Latin residents at Constantinople in 1182, for which the expedition of William of Sicily and the massacre of the people of Thessalonica was the revenge. The short reign of the wicked and brilliant Andronicus was in all respects a reaction, prudent, economical and popular. His fall was due to the aristocracy against whom his policy was directed, and the reign of Isaac Angelus undid his efforts and completed the ruin of the state. Oppressive taxation caused a revolt of the Bulgarian and Walachian population in the European provinces; the work of Zimisecs and Basil was undone, and a new Bulgarian kingdom was founded by John Asen-a decisive blow to the Greek predominance which the Macedonian emperors seemed to have established.