Artabasdos

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Artavasdos (erroneously Artabasdos or Artabasdus), (Greek: Αρταύασδος, Artauasdos, from Armenian: Artavazd ), was Byzantine Emperor from June 741 or 742 until November 743. His reign constitutes a usurpation against Constantine V, who had retained control of several themes in Asia Minor.

[edit] Life

The Armenian Artabasdos was appointed governor (stratēgos of the Armeniac theme by Emperor Anastasios II in c. 713. After Anastasios' fall, Artabasdos made an agreement with his colleague Leo, the governor of the Anatolic theme, to overthrow the new Emperor Theodosios III. This agreement was sealed with the engagement of Leo's daughter Anna to Artabasdos, and the marriage took place after Leo III ascended the throne in March 717.

Artabasdos was awarded the rank of kouropalates ("master of the palace") and became commander (count, komēs) of the Opsikion theme, while retaining control of his original command. In June 741 or 742, after the accession of Leo's son Constantine V on the throne, Artabasdos resolved to seize the throne and attacked his brother-in-law while the latter was traversing Asia Minor to fight the Arabs on the eastern frontier. While Constantine fled to Amorion, Artabasdos seized Constantinople amid popular support and was crowned emperor.

Artabasdos abandoned his predecessor's religious policy of Iconoclasm and restored Orthodoxy with some support, including that of Pope Zacharias. Soon after his accession, Artabasdos crowned his wife Anna as Augusta and his eldest son Nikephoros as co-emeperor, while putting his younger son Niketas in charge of the Armeniac theme. But while Artabasdos could rely also on the support of the themes of Thrace and Opsikion, Constantine secured for himself the support of the Anatolic and Thracesian themes.

The inevitable clash came in May 743, when Artabasdos led the offensive against Constantine but was defeated. Later the same year Constantine defeated Niketas, and on November 2, 743 Artabsdos' reign came to an end as Constantine V entered Constantinople and apprehended his rival. Artabasdos and his sons were publicly blinded and relegated to the monastey of Chora on the outskirts of Constantinople. The date of his death is unknown.

Theophanes the Confessor reports that, thirty years after the suppression of the rebellion, still incensed presumably at Anna's support of the ambitions of her husband and sons, Constantine V forced his sister to proceed to the monastery of Chora, where Artabasdus was buried, dig up his bones, place them in her cloak (pallium), and throw them into the so-called tombs of Pelagius, charnel pits, among the bodies of executed criminals.