Alexios IV Megas Komnenos or Alexius IV (
Greek: Αλέξιος Δ΄ Μέγας Κομνηνός,
Alexios IV Megas Komnēnos), (
1382 –
1429), Emperor of
Trebizond from
March 5, 1417 to October 1429. He was the son of Emperor
Manuel III and Gulkhan-Eudokia of Georgia.
Alexios IV had been associated in authority and given the title of
despotes by his father as early as 1395. Nevertheless, the two quarreled as Alexios was impatient to assume supreme power. When his father died in 1417, Alexios was accused by some of having expedited his death. He inherited a conflict with the
Genoese, who defeated the fleet of Trebizond and seized a local monastery, which they converted into a fortress. By 1418 he had signed a peace agreement and paid reparations to the Genoese until 1422. A new dispute arose over the emperor's obligations in 1425 and was not resolved until 1428. Relations with the
Republic of Venice were generally better.
After the death of
Tamerlane, most of
Asia Minor descended into chaos.
Kara Yusuf, ruler of the
Kara Koyunlu or "Black Sheep" Turks, devastated much of
Armenia and defeated the
Emir of
Arsinga and the chieftain of the
Ak Koyunlu or White Sheep Turks. Alexios sought to avoid hostility by marrying off daughters to his powerful Muslim neighbors. One married Kara Yusuf's son
Jihan Shah in c. 1420, and Alexios agreed to pay his son-in-law the same amount of tribute that had previously been due to Tamerlane. Another daughter perhaps married 'Ali, the son of 'Uthman Kara Iluk, the ruler of Ak Koyunlu.
Alexios' marital policy also extended to his Christian neighbors, and his daughter Maria was married off to the
Byzantine Emperor John VIII Palaiologos in 1428. Her sister Eudokia had married Niccolò Crispo, the Italian lord of
Syros - they became the maternal grandparents of
Catherine Cornaro.
According to George Finlay, Alexios IV spent much of his time in pursuit of pleasure and accomplished relatively little, but this like so many of that historian's passages is a figment of his imagination, for which there is no evidence in contemporary sources. Following tradition, he associated his eldest son, John IV, in power, and conferred on him the courtly title of
despotes in 1417. Bad relations between father and son were perhaps also becoming traditional, and in 1426 John murdered the Treasurer, alleging an affair between him and the Empress Theodora Kantakouzene, and attempted to eliminate his parents. The nobles prevented the attempt and John fled to
Georgia.
When Alexios IV's wife Theodora died in 1426, he was so distraught that Bessarion wrote him no less than three monodias, which help to shed some light on this otherwise dark period lacking in sources.
After his son John's lack of familiar affection, Alexios IV made his younger son Alexander
despotes and married him off to the daughter of the Genoese lord of Lesbos. Eventually John left Georgia for the Genoese colony at
Caffa, where he enlisted a galley and its crew to help him recover his position in Trebizond. Alexios IV marched out to resist his son, but was murdered during the night by nobles who had been won over by John, sometime in October 1429.
Alexander of Trebizond according to our source for the period
Laonicus Chalcondyles fled either to his father-in-law or Constantinople.
rss feed