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John IV Laskaris

Συγγραφή : Giarenis Ilias (29/9/2006)
Μετάφραση : Velentzas Georgios

Για παραπομπή: Giarenis Ilias, "John IV Laskaris",
Εγκυκλοπαίδεια Μείζονος Ελληνισμού, Μ. Ασία
URL: <http://www.ehw.gr/l.aspx?id=11712>
Ιωάννης Δ΄ Λάσκαρις (6/2/2007 v.1) John IV Laskaris (14/6/2007 v.1) 
 

1. Biography

John IV Laskaris (1258‑1261) was son of the emperor of Nicaea Theodore II Doukas Laskaris (1254‑1258) and Helen, daughter of the tsar of Bulgaria Ivan Asen II (1218‑1241). He was born towards the late 1250 (or early 1251) and had four sisters, Eirene, Maria, Theodora and Eudokia. John IV Laskaris was supposed to succeed Theodore II Laskaris to the throne of the empire. He must have died after 1285.1

2. Succession to the Throne and Reactions

In the summer of 1258, Theodore II Laskaris fell extremely sick and appointed, a few days before he died, the protovestiarios and trusty associate George Mouzalon and Patriarch Arsenios as regents of his eight-year underage son, John IV Laskaris. Young John was the legal heir to the throne of the Empire of Nicaea after his father’s death. When he was proclaimed emperor, he was taken to Magnesia, where he remained under restraint for reasons of safety.

This succession was promoted mainly by the scholar Nikephoros Blemmydes, who commented that John had been nominated already from his birth. This was a clear expression of the philosophy of succession, which was mainly based on nomination and nominees.

However, the succession encountered serious obstacles.2 The fact that the regent Mouzalon was not an aristocrat fuelled discontent and the violent reaction of aristocracy. Nine days after the death of Theodore II, a conspiracy was organised.


On 24 August 1258, John IV Laskaris and George Mouzalon went to the Monastery of Sosandra for the memorial service of Theodore II. The appearance of the regent made the soldiers and aristocrats attending the service protest vigorously. In order to assuage the excited people, George Mouzalon invited underage John IV Laskaris on the balcony of the monastery, but his action provoked the revolt. The army, which consisted of Latin mercenaries, invaded the monastery and killed George Mouzalon and his brothers. It was a movement approved –probably even inspired– by Michael Palaiologos.3 The assassination of the regent created a vacancy in power and John IV Laskaris was left without regent. Michael Palaiologos replaced him in power and became regent of young John IV Laskaris.

Under the pressure of the aristocracy, Michael Palaiologos was assigned the regency towards the late 1258; he was also awarded the title of despotes in November. Underage John IV Laskaris formally remained the legal emperor. Patriarch Arsenios Autoreianos made a big effort to secure John’s legal rights against the rapacity of Michael Palaiologos.4 However, the power and influence of Michael gradually increased and the weak –socially and politically– young John was elbowed.

Thus, on 1 January 1259 at Nymphaion, Michael Palaiologos was proclaimed emperor, wore the red shoes, was hoisted on a shield and was applauded.5 Before the ceremony, John and Michael Palaiologos took oaths of mutual loyalty. The oaths were broken following the insistence of Patriarch Arsenios so that young John could fully establish his rights. According to them, neither of the two emperors could conspire against the other.

Despite his declared intentions of strongly defending the rights of John IV, Patriarch Arsenios crowned Michael Palaiologos emperor in Nicaea in 1259.6 Young John received a special coronet after Michael. That ceremony left underage John without any ideological foothold and deprived him of his future reign. Finally, John followed the actual sovereign, Michael, to Nymphaion.

3. Supersession of John IV Laskaris

Despite his statutory rights to the throne, John was superseded under the pretence of his young age. His age, according to the relative argumentation, did not allow him to practically and effectively exercise the demanding duties of the ‘Basileus of the Romans’. As a result, Michael Palaiologos assumed power and continued the efforts to recapture Constantinople from the Latins, which the forces of Nicaea finally achieved in the summer of 1261. In the autumn of the same year, Arsenios, who had regained the patriarchal throne, crowned Michael Palaiologos emperor for the second time in Hagia Sophia of Constantinople.

A few months later, at Christmas of 1261, Michael VIII Palaiologos ordered that young John be blinded. John was blinded in the stronghold of Chele, near Nicomedia, and was then imprisoned in the nearby fortress of Dakibyza. As a result, the young emperor was incapable of exercising his imperial authority, while Michael once again violated his solemn oaths to hand over the throne as soon as he came of age.

The order to blind John provoked general reactions. Patriarch Arsenios I, who considered himself the sole regent of the underage emperor, excommunicated immediately Michael Palaiologos, early in 1262. The attitude of Michael Palaiologos towards young John Laskaris signalled the onset of the Arsenite schisma (1261‑1290/1310).

Reactions also came from some followers of the ‘Laskarides policy’ in the capital. However, the strongest reactions were triggered in Asia Minor, where the imperial Laskaris family was very popular among the people.7 A typical example was the revolt in the mountainous region of Nicaea Trikokkia and in Zygos, in the name of the blinded John. That provincial rebellious act was centred around a certain blind pseudo-John.

4. The Last Period of His Life

The real John IV Laskaris must have been under restraint at least until the second half of the 1280s. He was last reported by the sources in 1284, when Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos (1282‑1328) visited him. Probably he died shortly later, circa 1305.8 Unfortunately there is no other evidence about his activity. He must have died under restraint in Asia Minor, when Constantinople was at the centre of interest.

5. Sanctification of John IV Laskaris

It is said that in the years of Patriarch Arsenios I (1261‑1266), John IV Laskaris became a monk at the monastery of St. Demetrios in Constantinople under the name Joasaph. When he died, he was buried in the same monastery. According to information provided by the pilgrim Stephen from Novgorod, John IV Laskaris was worshipped as a saint at the monastery of St. Demetrios in the mid-14th century.9

1. Polemis, D., The Doukai. A Contribution to Byzantine Prosopography (London 1968), p. 111, l. 76; Angold, M., ‘John IV Laskaris’, The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium 2 (Oxford – New York 1991), p. 1049; Angold, M., A Byzantine Government in Exile. Government and Society under the Lascarids of Nicaea (1204-1261) (Oxford 1975), pp. 26, 41, 42, 45, 79, 80-92, 151, 160.

2. Γιαρένης, Η., ‘Η “δυναστεία των Λασκάρεων”: Απόπειρες και ακυρώσεις. Ζητήματα εξουσίας και διαδοχής στην λεγόμενη αυτοκρατορία της Νίκαιας (1204-1261)’, Βυζαντιακά 23 (2003), mainly pp. 225-228.

3. Geanakoplos, D., Εmperor Michael Palaeologus and the West, 1258-1282. A Study in Byzantine-Latin Relations (Cambridge, Mass. 1959), pp. 33-46.

4. Γουναρίδης, Π., Το κίνημα των Αρσενιατών (1261-1310). Ιδεολογικές διαμάχες την εποχή των πρώτων Παλαιολόγων (Athens 1999), mainly pp. 35-37, 221-223.

5. Foss, C., Nicaea. A Byzantine Capital and Its Praises (Brookline 1996), pp. 75-77.

6. In a manuscript of Palatinus graecus 328, it is said that John IV Laskaris reigned for only four months and 15 days.

7. Gardner, Alice, The Lascarids of Nicaea. The Story of an Empire in Exile, (London 1912, reprint., Amsterdam 1964), pp. 231-240, 260-261.

8. Ševčenko, I., ‘The imprisonment of Manuel Moschopulus in the yer 1305 or 1306’, Speculum 27 (1962) p. 156, note 93.

9. Ševčenko, I., ‘Notes on Stephen, The Novgorodian Pilgrim to Constantinople in the XIV Century’, Südost-Forschungen 12 (1953), pp. 173-175.
     
 
 
 
 
 

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