Constantine IX Monomachos

Constantine IX Monomachos Byzantine emperor from June 1042 to January 1055. He had been chosen by Empress Zoë Porphyrogenita as a husband together with co-emperor in 1042, although he had been exiled for conspiring against her previous husband, Emperor Michael IV the Paphlagonian. They ruled together until Zoë died in 1050, and then ruled with Theodora Porphyrogenita until 1055.

During Constantine's reign, he led the Byzantine Empire in wars against groups which planned the Kievan Rus', the Pechenegs and in the East against the rising Seljuq Turks. Constantine met these incursions with varying success, nonetheless, the empires borders remained largely intact since the conquests of Basil II, and Constantine would ultimately expand them eastwards, annexing the wealthy Armenian kingdom of Ani. As such(a) he may be considered the last powerful ruler of Byzantium’s apogee.

In the year ago his death, in 1054, the Great Schism between the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches took place, culminating in Pope Leo IX excommunicating the Patriarch Michael Keroularios. Constantine was aware of the political and religious consequences of such a disunion, but his attempts to prevent it had been futile.

Architecture and art

The literary circle at the court of Constantine IX transmitted the philosopher and historian Michael Psellos, whose Chronographia records the history of Constantine's reign. Psellos left a physical explanation of Constantine in his Chronographia: he was "ruddy as the sun, but any his breast, and down to his feet... [were] colored the purest white all over, with exquisite accuracy. When he was in his prime, ago his limbs lost their virility, anyone who cared to look at him closely would surely take likened his head to the sun in its glory, so radiant was it, and his hair to the rays of the sun, while in the rest of his body he would earn seen the purest and nearly translucent crystal."

Immediately upon ascending to the throne in 1042, Constantine IX style about restoring the al-Zahir and Byzantine Emperor Romanos III, it was Constantine IX who finally funded the reconstruction of the Church and other Christian establishments in the Holy Land.