Spoke 10: The Biblewheel and The 10th Century - Romanos I Lekapenos Resigns Over His Sons Death

Spoke 10: The Biblewheel and The 10th Century



Romanos I Lekapenos Resigns Over His Son's Death

Emperor Romanos I Lekapenos like king David, lost his son Christopher. This made him resign from his throne and give access to Constantine VII his co-emperor who had come to age to rule. David had lost one son, the first son of him and Bathsheba. He also had to flee from his son Absalom as he rebelled against his father. On the other hand Romanos was a general who coveted the throne and succeeded for a while. Joab was a general/captain and was David's nephew who wanted to rule a portion of David's kingdom if not all of it:

Romanos I Lekapenos

Romanos I Lekapenos or Lakapenos (Greek: Ρωμανός Α΄ Λακαπηνός, Rōmanos I Lakapēnos; c. 870 – June 15, 948), Latinized as Romanus I Lecapenus, was an Armenian who became a Byzantine naval commander and reigned as Byzantine Emperor from 920 until his deposition on December 16, 944.

Origin

Romanos Lekapenos, born in Lakape (later Laqabin) between Melitene and Samosata (hence the name), was the son of an Armenian peasant^[1][2][3] with the remarkable name of Theophylact the Unbearable (Theophylaktos Abastaktos). Theophylact, as a soldier, had rescued the Emperor Basil I from the enemy in battle at Tephrike and had been rewarded by a place in the Imperial Guard.^[4]

Although he did not receive any refined education (for which he was later abused by his son-in-law Constantine VII), Romanos advanced through the ranks of the army during the reign of Emperor Leo VI the Wise. In 911 he was general of the naval theme of Samos and later served as admiral of the fleet (droungarios tou ploimou). In this capacity he was supposed to participate in the Byzantine operations against Bulgaria on the Danube in 917, but he was unable to carry out his mission. In the aftermath of the disastrous Byzantine defeat at the Battle of Acheloos in 917 by the Bulgarians, Romanos sailed to Constantinople, where he gradually overcame the discredited regency of Empress Zoe Karvounopsina and her supporter Leo Phokas.

End of the reign

Romanos' later reign was marked by the old emperor's heightened interest in divine judgment and his increasing sense of guilt for his role in the usurpation of the throne from Constantine VII. On the death of Christopher, by far his most competent son, in 931, Romanos did not advance his younger sons in precedence over Constantine VII. Fearing that Romanos would allow Constantine VII to succeed him instead of them, his younger sons Stephen and Constantine arrested their father in December 944, carried him off to the Prince's Islands and compelled him to become a monk. When they threatened the position of Constantine VII, however, the people of Constantinople revolted, and Stephen and Constantine were likewise stripped of their imperial rank and sent into exile to their father. Romanos died in June 948, and was buried as the other members of his family in the church of Myrelaion. Having lived long under constant threat of deposition -or worse- by the Lekapenoi family, Constantine VII was extremely resentful of them. In his De Administrando Imperio manual written for his son and successor, Romanus II, he minces no words about his late father-in-law: "the lord Romanus the Emperor was an idiot and an illiterate man, neither bred in the high imperial manner, nor following Roman custom from the beginning, nor of imperial or noble descent, and therefore the more rude and authoritarian in doing most things ... for his beliefs were uncouth, obstinate, ignorant of what is good, and unwilling to adhere to what is right and proper."^[7]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanos_I_Lekapenos