Christopher Lekapenos

Christopher Lekapenos or Lecapenus (; died August 931) was the eldest son of Emperor Romanos I Lekapenos () and co-emperor of the Byzantine Empire from 921 until his death in 931. Christopher was given the position of (commander of the palace guard) in spring 919, after Romanos assumed guardianship of the underage Emperor Constantine VII. Romanos, who made himself co-emperor in 920, raised Christopher to co-emperor on 21 May 921 to give his family precedence over Constantine VII's Macedonian line. In 928 Christopher's father-in-law, Niketas, unsuccessfully attempted to incite Christopher to usurp his father, resulting in Niketas being banished. Christopher died in August 931, succeeded by his father and two brothers, Stephen Lekapenos and Constantine Lekapenos, and Constantine VII. In December 944 his brothers overthrew and exiled their father, but they themselves were exiled in January 945 after attempting to oust Constantine VII.

Early life

Christopher Lekapenos was the eldest son and the second-oldest child (after his sister Helena) of the Byzantine general Romanos Lekapenos and his wife Theodora. His younger siblings were Agatha, who married Byzantine aristocrat Romanos Argyros; Stephen and Constantine (co-emperors from 924 until 945); Theophylact (patriarch of Constantinople in 933–956); and two unnamed younger sisters. Christopher married , the daughter of Niketas, a wealthy Slav patrician from the Peloponnese, before Romanos became co-emperor in 920, but nothing else is known of Christopher's early life. He had a daughter of marriageable age in 927.

Co-emperor

In spring 919, Romanos—who by this point had assumed control of Boukoleon Palace in Constantinople by military force—had his daughter Helena Lekapene married to the 13-year-old emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos (who had been sole monarch since 913). Thereafter, he assumed the role of guardian of the Emperor. Christopher succeeded him in his post as , commander of the palace guard. Romanos soon facilitated his own coronation by Patriarch Nicholas of Constantinople in December 920, and eventually advanced himself before the young Constantine in precedence. Romanos crowned his wife, Theodora, as on 6 January 921. To further cement his position, and planning to advance his own family over the Macedonian line to which Constantine VII belonged, Romanos crowned Christopher as co-emperor on 20 May 921. When Christopher's mother, Theodora, died on 20 February 922, his wife Sophia was raised to the dignity of alongside Helena Lekapene. Some '' solidi'' (gold coins used in Byzantine currency) dating from Christopher's time as emperor depict both him and Constantine Porphyrogennetos bearded, which the numismatist Philip Grierson explains as originating "...presumably from a wish to conciliate the formal precedence of Constantine orphyrogennetoswith Christopher's greater age and Romanus' desire to favor his own son." Other coins exclude Constantine altogether, instead showing only Romanos and Christopher; on these issues, Christopher appears beardless and shorter than his father.

In 924, Christopher's younger brothers Stephen and Constantine were crowned as co-emperors. The popular historian John Julius Norwich comments that the two were immoral and corrupt, and summarises them as "worthless". He states that Christopher, in comparison, "showed some degree of promise and might have proved worthy of his father had he lived to succeed him". On 8 October 927, as part of a peace agreement, Christopher's daughter Maria, renamed Irene (meaning "peace") for the occasion, was married to the Bulgarian emperor Peter I (). The marriage of a Byzantine princess to a foreign ruler was highly unusual at the time. On 10 October, the third day of the feast held in Pegae, Christopher was advanced before Constantine Porphyrogennetos. This was done at the insistence of the Bulgarians, and perhaps engineered by Romanos.

In 928, his father-in-law Niketas unsuccessfully tried to incite Christopher to depose his father, but was banished. The motive behind the attempted coup was perhaps Christopher's poor health, and fears by his wife and her father that, should he die prematurely, they would lose their status. In 929, or later, Christopher served as a best man for the wedding of the Bulgarian prince Ivan, who had fled from Bulgaria to Constantinople after conspiring to seize the Bulgarian throne. Christopher died in August 931; several anacreontic poems by an anonymous writer were composed sometime between 931 and 944 in mourning of him. Christopher was buried Myrelaion, breaking from the longstanding tradition of interring emperors at the Church of the Holy Apostles. As Romanos' favourite son, he was much mourned by his father, who shed tears " more than the Egyptians" according to Theophanes Continuatus, and thereafter increasingly became devoted to religious pursuits. Soon after Christopher's death, Sophia too retired from the court and entered a monastery, where she died. Christopher's death resulted in the weakening of the alliance between the Byzantine and Bulgarian empires. Irene, the Empress of Bulgaria, ceased making her frequent visits to her homeland in the years following her father's passing, and only visited it once.

Christopher's death left his father and his two brothers, Stephen Lekapenos and Constantine Lekapenos; as well as Constantine VII as the remaining co-emperors. In December 944 Stephen and Constantine deposed their father, forcing him to live in a monastery on Prote in the Princes' Islands. However, when they attempted to depose Constantine VII also, the people of Constantinople revolted; after a tenuous triumvirate lasting roughly 40 days, they were themselves exiled in January 945 by order of Constantine VII.

Family

Through his marriage to Sophia, Christopher had three children:
# Maria-Irene, the empress-consort of Peter I of Bulgaria.
# Romanos, who died in infancy. According to the chronicler Joannes Zonaras, he was favoured by his grandfather, who considered promoting the infant to his father's position as senior co-emperor, which ultimately failed due to his death shortly before his father's. Zonaras states that he was also crowned co-emperor, while Michael Psellos says he was only "regarded worthy of the empire" without mentioning any coronation.Psellos,
Historia Syntomos
' 102. The '' Prosopography of the Byzantine World'' refers to him as a co-emperor, but most scholars do not.
# Michael, an infant at the time of Christopher's death, was made a cleric at the time of the family's fall from power in 945. He eventually garnered several high-ranking positions at the Byzantine court, but nothing further is known of his later life.

References

Sources

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Lekapenos, Christopher
Macedonian dynasty
931 deaths
Armenian Byzantine emperors
Burials at Myrelaion Monastery (Constantinople)
Christopher
Christopher
Byzantine junior emperors
Year of birth unknown
Constantine VII
Sons of Byzantine emperors
Sons of emperors
Megaloi hetaireiarchai