|
Michael II Asen
Michael II Asen (; 1239 – December 1256/January 1257) was emperor (tsar) of Bulgaria from 1246 to 1256 or 1257. He was the son of Ivan Asen II and Irene Komnene Doukaina. He succeeded his half-brother, Kaliman I Asen. His mother or other relative must have ruled Bulgaria during his minority. John III Doukas Vatatzes, Emperor of Nicaea, and Michael II of Epirus invaded Bulgaria shortly after Michael's ascension. Vatatzes captured the Bulgarian fortresses along the river Vardar; Michael of Epirus took possession of western Macedonia. In alliance with the Republic of Ragusa, Michael II Asen broke into Serbia in 1254, but he could not occupy Serbian territories. After Vatatzes died, he reconquered most territories lost to Nicea, but Vatatzes's son and successor, Theodore II Laskaris, launched a successful counter-offensive, forcing Michael to sign a peace treaty. Shortly after the treaty, discontented ''boyars'' (noblemen) murdered Michael. Early life Michael was the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Theodore II Laskaris
Theodore II Laskaris or Ducas Lascaris (; November 1221/1222 – 16 August 1258) was Emperor of Nicaea from 1254 to 1258. He was the only child of Emperor John III Doukas Vatatzes and Empress Irene Laskarina. His mother was the eldest daughter of Theodore I Laskaris, who had established the Empire of Nicaea as a successor state to the Byzantine Empire in Asia Minor after the crusaders captured the Byzantine capital, Constantinople, during the Fourth Crusade in 1204. Theodore received an excellent education from two renowned scholars, Nikephoros Blemmydes and George Akropolites. He made friends with young intellectuals, especially with a page of low birth, George Mouzalon. Theodore began to write treatises on theological, historical and philosophical themes in his youth. Emperor John III arranged for Theodore to marry Elena Asenina in 1235, to forge an alliance with her father, Ivan Asen II, Emperor of Bulgaria, against the Latin Empire of Constantin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
William Of Rubruck
William of Rubruck (; ; ) or Guillaume de Rubrouck was a Flemish Franciscan missionary and explorer. He is best known for his travels to various parts of the Middle East and Central Asia in the 13th century, including the Mongol Empire. His account of his travels is one of the masterpieces of medieval travel literature, comparable to those of Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta. Mission William was born in Rubrouck, Flanders. In 1248, he accompanied King Louis IX of France on the Seventh Crusade. On 7 May 1253, on Louis' orders, he set out on a missionary journey to convert the Tatars to Christianity. He first stopped in Constantinople to confer with Baldwin of Hainaut, who had recently returned from a trip to Karakorum, the capital of the Mongol Empire, on behalf of Baldwin II, Latin Emperor. There, William received letters to some of the Tatar chiefs from the emperor. William then followed the route of the first journey of the Hungarian Friar Julian, and in Asia that of the Italian F ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Knights Hospitaller
The Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, commonly known as the Knights Hospitaller (), is a Catholic military order. It was founded in the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem in the 12th century and had headquarters there until 1291, thereafter being based in Kolossi Castle in Cyprus (1302–1310), the island of Rhodes (1310–1522), Malta (1530–1798), and Saint Petersburg (1799–1801). The Hospitallers arose in the early 12th century at the height of the Cluniac movement, a reformist movement within the Benedictine monastic order that sought to strengthen religious devotion and charity for the poor. Earlier in the 11th century, merchants from Amalfi founded a hospital in Jerusalem dedicated to John the Baptist where Benedictine monks cared for sick, poor, or injured Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land. Blessed Gerard, a lay brother of the Benedictine order, became its head when it was established. After the Christian conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Banate Of Severin
The Banate of Severin or Banate of Szörény (; ; ; , ; , ) was a Hungarian political, military and administrative unit with a special role in the initially anti- Bulgarian, latterly anti- Ottoman defensive system of the medieval Kingdom of Hungary. It was founded by Prince Béla in 1228. Territory The Banate of Severin was a march (or a border province) of the medieval Kingdom of Hungary between the Lower Danube and the Olt River (in present-day Oltenia in Romania). A charter of grant, issued on 2 June 1247 to the Knights Hospitallers, mentioned the Olt as its eastern border. The Knights received the "Land of Severin" ''(Terra de Zeurino)'', along with the nearby mountains, from Béla IV of Hungary. The king had described the same region as a "deserted and depopulated" land in a letter to Pope Gregory IX on 7 June 1238. Modern scholars assume that either the Hungarian conquest of the territory or confrontations between Bulgaria and Hungary had forced the local population t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Béla IV Of Hungary
Béla IV (1206 – 3 May 1270) was King of Hungary and King of Croatia, Croatia between 1235 and 1270, and Duke of Styria from 1254 to 1258. As the oldest son of Andrew II of Hungary, King Andrew II, he was crowned upon the initiative of a group of influential noblemen in his father's lifetime in 1214. His father, who strongly opposed Béla's coronation, refused to give him a province to rule until 1220. In this year, Béla was appointed Duke of Slavonia, also with jurisdiction in Croatia and Dalmatia. Around the same time, Béla married Maria Laskarina, Maria, a daughter of Theodore I Laskaris, Emperor of Nicaea. From 1226, he governed Transylvania as Duke of Transylvania, duke. He supported Christian missions among the pagan Cumans who dwelled in the plains to the east of his province. Some Cuman chieftains acknowledged his suzerainty and he adopted the title of King of Cumania in 1233. King Andrew died on 21 September 1235 and Béla succeeded him. He attempted to restore royal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Latin Empire Of Constantinople
The Latin Empire, also referred to as the Latin Empire of Constantinople, was a feudal Crusader state founded by the leaders of the Fourth Crusade on lands captured from the Byzantine Empire. The Latin Empire was intended to replace the Byzantine Empire as the Western-recognized Roman Empire in the east, with a Catholic emperor enthroned in place of the Eastern Orthodox Roman emperors. The main objective to form a Latin Empire was planned over the course of the Fourth Crusade, promoted by crusade leaders such as Boniface of Montferrat, as well as the Republic of Venice. The Fourth Crusade had originally been called to retake the Muslim-controlled city of Jerusalem, but a sequence of economic and political events culminated in the Crusader army sacking the city of Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire. Originally, the plan had been to restore the deposed Byzantine Emperor Isaac II Angelos, who had been usurped by Alexios III Angelos, to the throne. The crusaders ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Despotate Of Epirus
The Despotate of Epirus () was one of the Greek Rump state, successor states of the Byzantine Empire established in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade in 1204 by a branch of the Angelos dynasty. It claimed to be the legitimate successor of the Byzantine Empire during the subsequent struggle for Constantinople, along with the Empire of Nicaea and the Empire of Trebizond; its rulers briefly proclaiming themselves as Emperors in 1227–1242 (during which it is most often called the Empire of Thessalonica). The term "Despotate of Epirus" is, like "Byzantine Empire" itself, a modern historiographic convention and not a name in use at the time. The Despotate was centred on the region of Epirus, encompassing also Albania and the western portion of Greek Macedonia and also included Thessaly and western Greece as far south as Nafpaktos. Through a policy of aggressive expansion under Theodore Komnenos Doukas the Despotate of Epirus also briefly came to incorporate central Macedonia (regi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Melnik, Bulgaria
Melnik ( , , ''Meleniko'') List of cities and towns in Bulgaria, is a town in Blagoevgrad Province, Southwestern Bulgaria, in the Southwestern Pirin Mountains, about 440 m above sea level. The town is an architectural reserve and 96 of its buildings are cultural monuments. With a population of 385, it is the smallest town in Bulgaria, retaining its town status today for historical reasons. It is situated on the foothills of the Pirin mountain range and is overlooked by the Melnik Earth Pyramids. History According to archaeological evidence, the first to settle in the area were the Thracians, Thracian tribe ''Medi'' to which the famous rebel Spartacus belonged. Centuries later, the presence of the Ancient Rome, Romans left the town one of its landmarks — the Ancient Roman bridge, which is still preserved. The region was infused by Greek culture and later became part of the Byzantine Empire. The Slavs who later came in these parts named the settlement ''Melnik'' after the san ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Serres
Serres ( ) is a city in Macedonia, Greece, capital of the Serres regional unit and second largest city in the region of Central Macedonia, after Thessaloniki. Serres is one of the administrative and economic centers of Northern Greece. The city is situated in a fertile plain at an elevation of about , some northeast of the Strymon river and north-east of Thessaloniki, respectively. Serres' official municipal population was 70,703 in 2021. The city is home to the Department of Physical Education and Sport Science of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki () and the Serres Campus of the International Hellenic University (former " Technological Educational Institute of Central Macedonia"), composed of the Faculty of Engineering, the Faculty of Economics and Management, and the Department of Interior Architecture and Design. The head of the Faculty of Engineering of the International Hellenic University is located in Serres. Names The Ancient Greek historian Herodotus men ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Peter (sevastokrator)
Peter was a Bulgarian nobleman who held the high title of ''sevastokrator'' around 1253 and ruled significant territories in Bulgaria during the reign of his brother-in-law, Michael II Asen. He married Anna-Teodora a daughter of Ivan Asen II of Bulgaria with whom he had a daughter, who married ''despotes'' Shishman of Vidin Shishman (; 1270s/1280s — before 1308/1313) was a Second Bulgarian Empire, Bulgarian nobleman (boyar) who ruled a semi-independent realm based out of the Danube, Danubian fortress of Vidin in the late 13th and early 14th century. Shishm ... and founded the Shishman branch of the Asen dynasty. References Sources * * * Bulgarian nobility 13th-century Bulgarian people Sebastokrators {{Europe-noble-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Sebastokrator
''Sebastokrator'' (, ; ; ), was a senior court title in the late Byzantine Empire. It was also used by other rulers whose states bordered the Empire or were within its sphere of influence (Bulgarian Empire, Serbian Empire). The word is a compound of '' sebastós'' (, the Greek equivalent of the Latin ''Augustus'') and ''krátōr'' ('ruler', the same element as is found in '' autokrator'', 'emperor'). The wife of a ''Sebastokrator'' was named ''sebastokratorissa'' (, ''sevastokratórissa'') in Greek, ''sevastokratitsa'' () in Bulgarian and ''sevastokratorica'' in Serbian. Eastern Roman Empire The title was created by Emperor Alexios I Komnenos () to honour his elder brother Isaac Komnenos.. According to Anna Komnene, Alexios did this to raise Isaac above the rank of '' Caesar'', which he had already promised to his brother-in-law, Nikephoros Melissenos. Anna Komnene compares the rank of ''sebastokratōr'' to "a second emperor", and also records that along with the ''Caesar'' a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
