Byzantine Empire: political history Bulgarians saw the Byzantines destroy their opponents at the battle of Kleidion on July 29, 1014 Basil II was succeeded by his younger brother, Constantine VIII, who reigned for only three years, being succeeded by Romanos III, a great-grandson of the usurper Romanos I As the first in a new dynasty Romanos III tried to change many aspects of Byzantine rule He financed many new buildings, including monasteries He abandoned plans by Constantine VII to curtail the privileges of the nobles but faced many conspiracies, which led to his overthrow after a reign of fewer than six years Michael IV, a friend of the daughter of Constantine VIII, ascended the throne Military reforms were pressing, with the Byzantines under attack from Serbs, Bulgarians, and, more menacingly, the Arabs It was also a period when the Normans were a rising military power Michael IV defeated the Bulgarians and died in 1041, succeeded by his nephew Michael V, who only ruled for four months Deposed, blinded, and castrated, Michael V was succeeded by Zoe, his adoptive mother Constantine IX, the son of a senior civil servant, ruled from 1042 until 1055 A patron of the arts, he was subject to scheming and internal revolts He was succeeded briefly by Michael VI and then by Isaac I Komnenos In 1059 Constantine X became emperor and inaugurated the Doukid dynasty After his reign of eight years, his son Michael VII ruled for 11 years For three of those years, Romanos IV, the second husband of Constantine X’s widow, was also emperor In 1081 Alexios Komnenos, nephew of Isaac I, restored the Komnenid dynasty Alexios was worried about the Turks controlling the Holy Land and decided to ask Pope Urban II for some military help from western Europe, resulting in the launching of the First Crusade Over the next two centuries, as battles with Turks continued over Asia Minor, the empire’s relationship to the West deteriorated During the Crusades the empire’s lands were meant to be used as a staging ground for the 65 war to “reclaim” the Christian holy lands, but bored, undisciplined crusaders frequently wound up sacking and pillaging Byzantine cities when they were too impatient to wait for their arrival in Muslim territories The Byzantine renaissance of the 12th century was an artistic and economic one—an inward-facing revival rather than a return to the sort of diplomatic fervor that had marked the empire’s earlier centuries At the turn of the very next century, the soldiers of the failed Fourth Crusade were hired by Alexios IV, the son of the deposed Byzantine emperor Isaac II, to restore his father’s throne Constantinople fell to the crusaders in 1204, and the Latin Empire was established to govern formerly Byzantine lands, with many territories apportioned to Venice The Byzantine Empire was officially dissolved, though its culture remained much the same for the next 200 years—through shifting governments, as the Latin Empire never stabilized and was followed by brief-lived successors—until 1453, when the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople and all its lands See also Byzantine Empire: architecture, culture, and the arts Further reading: Asimov, Isaac Constantinople: The Forgotten Empire Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1970; Holmes, Catherine Basil II and the Governance of Empire Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005; Norwich, John Julius History of Byzantium London: Viking, 1991; Obolensky, Dimitri The Byzantine Commonwealth: Eastern Europe 500–1453 London: Sphere Books, 1971; Olster, David Michael The Politics of Usurpation in the Seventh Century: Rhetoric and Revolution in Byzantium Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1993; Sevchenko, Nancy The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium New York: Oxford University Press, 1991 Justin Corfield Bill Kte’pi