John I Tzimiskes
John I Tzimiskes
(Τζιμισκής), emperor (969–76); born Chozana, Armenia, ca.925, died Constantinople 10 Jan. 976. John was a general of Armenian origin; according to Leo the Deacon (p.92.1–5), his name was an Armenian version of the Greek Mouzakites, meaning “of short stature.” He was related to the Kourkouas family; his mother was the sister of Nikephoros II Phokas; and his first wife Maria was the sister of the magistros Bardas Skleros.
John first distinguished himself under Constantine VII by capturing Samosata in 958. He was the staunchest supporter of Nikephoros II but later changed sides. Head of an aristocratic coup, he murdered the emperor on the night of 10/11 Dec. 969 with the help of Nikephoros's wife Theophano. Yielding to the demands of Patr. Polyeuktos, John banished Theophano; he then married Theodora, Constantine VII's daughter and the aunt of the legitimate emperors, Basil II and Constantine VIII. Acting in close concord with the church, John cancelled Nikephoros's legislation against church land ownership. Two rescripts (sigillia) of 974 and 975 manifest John's flexible policy toward monastic land ownership: although his fiscal functionaries proclaimed the necessity of restoring “to the emperor” state-controlled peasants who fled to the dynatoi and onto church property, they permitted a number of peasants to remain on monastic proasteia “by virtue of previous chrysobulls.”
John conducted an energetic foreign policy: he repelled Svjatoslav from Bulgaria (971), subduing part of this country; concluded an alliance with Otto I (972); and fought successfully in Syria. In 970/1 the patrikios Nicholas, a eunuch, defeated the Fāṭimid army near Antioch (P. Walker, Byzantion 42 [1972] 431–40), and in 975 John led a victorious campaign into Syria, forcing Damascus to pay tribute and capturing Beirut. The unsuccessful siege of Tripoli, however, was a setback, and John's claim of conquests in Palestine (in a letter to the Armenian king Ašot III) does not find support in Arabic sources (P. Walker, Byzantion 47 [1977] 301–27). Matthew of Edessa preserves a legend that at the end of his reign John returned the crown to Basil II and retired to a desert monastery (M. van Esbroeck, BK 41 [1983] 71); on the other hand, there were rumors that he had been poisoned by Basil the Nothos.
Apart from his coins, only one portrait of John is known. The Madrid Skylitzes MS, however, richly illustrates his career with 41 miniatures, including his conspiratorial arrival at the Boukoleon palace, arranged by Theophano, and her subsequent expulsion—both by boat. John's triumphal entry into Constantinople in 971 (Grabar-Manoussacas, Skylitzès, fig.221) shows him accompanied by a horse-drawn icon of the Virgin.
G. Schlumberger, L'épopée byzantine à la fin du dixième siècle2 (Paris 1925).Find this resource:
Ostrogorsky, Paysannerie, 11–19.Find this resource:
V. Tŭpkova-Zaimova, Les frontières occidentales des territoires conquis par Tzimiscès, Recherches de géographie historique, 2 (Sofia 1975) 113–18.Find this resource:
N. Thierry, Un portrait de Jean Tzimiskès en Cappadoce, TM 9 (1985) 477–84.Find this resource:
