Heraclius I

Early years, origin

Heraclius was born in 575. Born into an Armenian family from Cappadocia ^[2] , the son of the famous commander Heraclius , exarch of Africa .

The rise to power

There is a version that Heraclius the Younger was brought up in Constantinople in the imperial palace along with Khan Kubrat, who was baptized at age 12. After Kubrat united the Bulgarian tribes and created the state of Great Bulgaria , he signed a peace treaty with Byzantium and entered into a friendly alliance with her, according to which both states were to provide economic and military assistance to each other, freed the Bulgarian tribes from the power of the Avar Kaganate . Heraclius maintained close friendly relations with the Bulgarian Khan Kubrat even after the seizure of power.

In 608, a deep discontent with the emperor Fokoy swept the whole empire. Then the rulers of Africa and Libya, the brothers Heraclius and George, agreed to equip their armies and send them to the capital under the command of their sons. At the same time, Heraclius the Elder and his son Heraclius the Younger proclaimed themselves consuls. Two consuls were with the principal. In the years 609-610, the situation of Foki and his supporters was seriously complicated. The war against the Sassanid empire , launched by the son-in-law of the emperor Mauritius Khosrov under the pretext of revenge for the murder of the emperor of Mauritius , who at one time helped him come to power, ended in defeat. The Persian army invaded Mesopotamia, Armenia, Syria and the Anatolian provinces. In Africa and Egypt, revolts rose. The Slavs occupied northern Illyria . In Thessaloniki and the cities of Anatolia and Syria, a conflict broke out between the blue and green parties of the hippodrome . In Constantinople, people openly taunted Foki's addiction to alcohol.

In 610, the troops of the Persian commander Farrukhan Shahrvaraz approached the borders of Antioch. The Persian front, however, was not an immediate threat to the power of Foki; the African rebels posed a much greater danger to her. Having gained control of Egypt, they invaded Syria and Cyprus, while a large fleet under the command of Heraclius the Younger sailed to Constantinople. The campaign of Heraclius the Younger was joined by his Sicilian, Cretan and Thessalonian allies. In October 610, the rebels reached Constantinople. Foka could defend the city only with the help of excavators and irregular parts of blue and green, however, the commits of excavators Prisk and the green party took the side of Heraclius the Younger. By order of Heraclius, the symbol of the blue was burned after the establishment of his power to the joy of green. Mother Heraclius the Younger and his bride were imprisoned in the monastery of New Repentance in Constantinople on the orders of Emperor Foki , who held them hostage . In an atmosphere of general confusion, when Heraclius, at the head of the Carthaginian fleet, arrived at Constantinople, the mother and bride of Heraclius were freed by the Prasins who rebelled against Foki and were transferred to his camp. Constantinople passed to Heraclius with virtually no resistance. ^[3] .

The execution of Foki was the final moment of the coup. Heraclius the Younger was the first candidate for the vacant throne of the Roman emperor. But Irakli, on behalf of his father, stated that the purpose of his campaign was to overthrow the tyrant and restore the liberties of the Roman people, and suggested that the synclite be elected emperor worthy, pointing to Priscus, son-in-law of Foki, and he declared his readiness to return to his father. And “at ten o’clock” on the same day when Fock was executed, the patriarch Sergius , elected even under Foke , proclaimed the winner of the alternative elections and the emperor Heraclius. Heraclius immediately married his freed bride, Eudokia. Despite the promise to restore Roman valor, Heraclius began to introduce the principle of the dynasty, which was essentially alien to the idea of ​​the Roman emperor, although he did not plan to divide the empire between his sons - something that revolted the people in the will of Mauritius. Heraclius communicated the name of his son Constantine to his co-ruler in state acts. Simultaneously with the wedding to the kingdom, eight-month-old August was engaged to the young daughter of the cousin of the emperor, Nikita, Gregory, and 17 years later the wedding took place. Hope Heraclius to create a dynasty came true. His family ruled for a century. But Irakli himself created great and grave consequences for his second marriage. Empress Evdokia suffered from epilepsy and died in the year of the birth of her son (August 13, 612); and a year after that, Heraclius married his daughter, Mary's daughter, Martina, from her first husband, Martin. A marriage with such a close relative was forbidden by church canons. Heraclius began to seek to seize the church to exclude the recognition of his second marriage as illegal. The gifted, energetic and belligerent emperor, by reforms in administration and in the army, restored the power of Byzantium for a while. ^[four]

Foreign Policy

Sassanid Wars

The main focus in the foreign policy of Heraclius was turned to the East, where under the rule of Khosrov II Parviz, the Persian Empire turned into a powerful military power. In the initial period of the reign of Heraclius, Asia Minor and Syria remained virtually unprotected, which allowed the Persians, under the pretext of revenge for the murder of the emperor of Mauritius and the non-punishment of murderers Heraclius, whom they considered an impostor, as they carried with them an impostor, who called himself the son of Mauritius, in a short time to conquer large territories in this region. In 611, they conquered Syria and its main city, Antioch , in 612, Asia Minor, where the Persians captured Caesarea of ​​Cappadocia, captured tens of thousands of captives and sent them to Persia. In 613, Irakli himself was defeated at the walls of Antioch, retreated to Cilicia, defeated enemy units there, but the Persians received reinforcements, and the emperor's troops fled in horror from them. In 614, the Persians occupied Jerusalem. After the first Persian siege, the governor was appointed head of the cultural and national autonomy of the Babylonian Jews of Persia - the exilarch , who offended the religious feelings of Christians and Byzantine Jews by establishing services of Babylonian Jews on the Temple Mount. After the revolt of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, a new siege lasted 3 weeks. When, finally, the Persians managed to destroy a part of the wall and break into the city, they, according to some reports, brutally exterminated the rebels, including Christians, and also for 1300 years almost eliminated the presence of Byzantine Jews in Jerusalem. ^{[5] [6] [7]}

Having conquered Syria in 611 and Egypt in 616 , the source of bread supply for Constantinople, the Persians established themselves in Chalkidon in 617. Called by the Slavs, Avars after the siege of Thessaloniki in 619 reached the vicinity of Constantinople . Under these conditions, Heraclius was unable to transfer the capital of the empire to Carthage in Africa, as the patriarch convinced him. After the Visigoths captured many cities in Spain, and the Visigoth king Sisebut bought the captured legionnaires from his army, he had to actually abandon most of the Spanish possessions in favor of the vizigote vassals, withdrawing the troops that he needed for the war with the Persians, and buy the Avars have a world ( 620 ). By 625, the Visigoths, led by Svintila, had captured New Carthage and all Byzantine possessions in Spain. Heraclius entered into negotiations with the Bulgarians who settled between the Dniester and the Danube , looking for a counterweight to the Avars in them. Heraclius agreed to a settlement of Croats and Serbs between the coast of Dalmatia and the western Balkans. Heraclius understood that the empire should not spend energy on the struggle with the Slavic peoples and proto-Bulgarians and refused to fight for the areas occupied by them until the empire stopped the main enemy - Persia . Since 622 , he managed in a number of brilliant campaigns to repel the invasion of the Persians and throw them away (despite a new attack of Avars in 626 on Constantinople , which ended in complete defeat for them). The Persians at this time occupied the Asian coast of the Bosphorus, but the Byzantines managed to destroy the Slavic fleet of Avars in the Bosphorus, and the Persians did not connect with the Avars. In 628, Heraclius won victories in Mesopotamia , and together with the Khazar allies in Transcaucasia. (Read more: Capture of Tbilisi (627) , Battle of Nineveh ).

In 629, Emperor Heraclius returned to Constantinople and returned to Jerusalem the Life-giving Cross , one of the main shrines of Christianity, which was captured by the Persian king Khosrov II and returned to the Persian embassy. Then Heraclius officially accepted the title of Vasileus , which in Greek until then was called the king of Persia, but called himself "Vasileus in Christ."

Then there was an unsuccessful struggle with the Arabs: in the period 632 - 641, the Arabs conquered many areas of the empire: Syria, Palestine , Mesopotamia and Egypt . The migration of the Slavs to the Balkan Peninsula continued.

Church policy Heraclius

In church politics, Emperor Heraclius is known for using the Patriarch of Constantinople, Sergius, to seek to subjugate a church to himself and his heirs, which would otherwise sooner or later declare his second marriage illegal, and overcome the fragmentation of the local regional Churches of the empire, as well as churches outside it, generated by the theological confrontation of various Christologies since the time of the Council of Chalcedon . At first, he improved relations with the Theodosians of Egypt, eliminating the opposing party of Guillian Julianites on the eve of the Persian occupation. The meaning of his subsequent reform, after being liberated from the Persian occupation (from 630 ), was to find a theological compromise between supporters and opponents of the Council of Chalcedon, that is, Chalcedonite diophysites and anti-Chalkidonite myaphysites, intensified during Persian occupation when Chalcedonism except Palestine, was banned by the Persians. Miafizitka was the beloved wife of Khosrov II Shirin , so Khosrov patronized not only the Nestorians, but also the myafizites. But his first wife was the Chalcedonian daughter of the Emperor of Mauritius. In the theological compromise, Heraclius primarily involved the Diophysites of the Syro-Persian ( Nestorian ) tradition of the Church of the East , with the help of which Heraclius, who took the title of the Persian king “Vasileus” “Vasileus in Christ”, was going to control the conquered Iran and the countryside of Syria. ^[8]

By professing a formula about two natures in Christ and a single God- will, known as monotheelism , and earlier by professing a formula about a single action, Heraclius managed to bring all the churches (their top) to unity. At the same time, the unity consisted of the communion of the Chalcedonite clergyman, which the Miaphizites could understand in their own way, or, for example, the communion of Emperor Heraclius and his court by the Nestorian patriarch Ishoyab II , who headed the Persian embassy. Upon his return to Iran, Ishoyab said: “Despite the fact that those gathered at the Council in Chalcedon were vested with the authority to restore faith, they, however, moved very far from the right faith. Because of their weak phraseology, they put a stumbling block for many. no less in their own way they preserved the right faith by the confession of two natures, but with their formula of qnoma (hypostasis) they seemed to seduce weak minds, so they found themselves at a crossroads, hesitated and turned away from the blessed ranks of the Orthodox, although they did not join hostess heretics ... "But the Chalcedonites were not anathematized by the Nestorians even before the reforms of Heraclius. The only exception is the cathedral of the Armenian church, led by Catholicos Ezr, where the council decided on unity, but its documents were not preserved, and joining Chalcedonism was also in the form of a joint communion with the Chalcedon emperor Heraclius. The Antiochian theological school did formulate its Christology on the grounds that it was precisely the two natures or hypostases of Christ that were united by the single action (ἐνέργεια) of their single “prosopon unity”, therefore the Maronites , whose theological school were active and staunch supporters of monoenergy “at the level of grass roots” was founded by Theodorite of Cyrus . The rest of the common people, especially the myafizites, did not understand the reform. In 629 or between 629-634 the emperor visited Hierapolis of Syria (Mabug (modern Manbid Well in Syria), where he meets with the Syrian Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch Athanasius and twelve bishops to discuss issues of faith. He hoped to convince them that the new formula of worship (two natures and one action in Christ) is fully consistent with the doctrine of St. Cyril of Alexandria. After a twelve-day discussion The Patriarch and the bishops rejected the imperial proposals on the grounds that they did not differ, in their opinion, from the position of Nestorius (two different natures and Persons in Christ) or Pope Leo I (two natures s in one Person). The emperor’s reaction to the refusal was sharp. The result of serious persecution, according to the Patriarch of the Jacobites Dionysius in 727, was that “many monks accepted the Council of Chalcedon, including the monks of Beit Marun [Maron Monastery] along with the inhabitants of Mabug, Homs and most of the people in southern Syria who, defending themselves against cruelties, took Chalcedon Cathedral and captured several of our churches and monasteries. ” But earlier, Patriarch Athanasius Yamal (595-631) himself tried in 620 during the Persian occupation to extend his power to the Chalcedonian church and therefore considered the Chalcedonian monasteries to be Jacobite. But one can understand this even so that the Maronites themselves were already Chalcedonites, who were considered converted to Miaphysitism during the Persian occupation, and Heraclius annexed many Jacobite communities to them by force. In addition, there were several monasteries of St. Maron. Unlike the monastery, where there was a school of Theodorite of Cyrus, there could have been a monastery of Maron and among the Yakovites. At the same time, it is known that surrounded by Heraclius in Constantinople there were many chalcedonites from the monastery of St. Maron. Therefore, monoenergy could be prompted by them as followers of Theodorite of Cyrus, not only by Patriarch Sergius, although Irakli himself, at the end of his life, renouncing heresies, accused them of creating only the already dead Sergius, and not faithful Maronites. Modern Maronites either completely reject the fact that they were previously monoenergists and Monofelites, or some of them claim that they were only against the concept of a conflict between divine and human wills, like Maximus the Confessor, who believed that human will and divine were in agreement without conflict. But at the VI Ecumenical Council, it was the Maronite patriarch of Antioch who was an opponent of Diophelism. It is the question of monothelitism that is the most painful for the Maronite Church, since its history is associated with this doctrine and not only Orthodox and Myaphysitic Churches, but also the Roman Catholic Church, are accused of monothelitism. ^[9] Heraclius was not helped by the fact that unity of will was recognized by Sevir of Antioch , which could attract the top of the Theodosians, which was previously blessed by Heraclius by the elimination of their opponents. Sevir is not recognized as a holy Armenian church, which is why it later dogmatized its doctrine of the will. Even Maxim the Confessor at that time, in a sense, trusted the monoenergy of Heraclius and Sergius, diplomatically stating that the correctness of Psefos depends on what is meant by energy. But at the same time, all the Miaphizite churches, except the Armenian one, which recognized the Council of Chalcedon, but apparently not as Ecumenical, but as the cathedral of the neighboring local church, which was subsequently confirmed by Nerses Schnorali , accepted Chalcedonism, and their regular believers who did not accept it for the most part were repressed . The Miaphysites of Egypt in their annals generally do not remember any unity under Heraclius. They consider this a violent conversion to Chalcedonism. Therefore, the efforts of Heraclius turned out to be in vain, and at the end of his life he renounced monothelitism and monoenergy, which confirms his assertion of John IV , therefore he is not anathematized by the Orthodox and Catholic churches. With the adoption of Diophelism in the Roman and Orthodox churches of the Byzantine rite at the Sixth Ecumenical Council , where Monophilia was declared heresy , the gap was confirmed not so much with the Myafisites, except for the Armenian Church, as with the Nestorians of Syria and the Persian Church, since the Antiochian theological school dogmatized. Heraclius used the Persian church to keep Iran as a vassal country after his victory in the war against the Persians. After the Council of Thrull ^[10] , which attempted to unify the rite of the Armenian Church with the Byzantine and thereby actually recognize Chalcedon and subsequent cathedrals of the Byzantine church as ecumenical, there was a break with the Armenian Church. Towards the end of his life, Heraclius and most of Iran, and the empire's territories inhabited mainly by myaphysites and Nestorians, were captured by Arabs. Political meaning in the monotheelite heresy, officially proclaimed by the emperor only in 638 (Psiphos wrote in 633, forbidding to talk about whether there is one or two acts, and the Ekfesis ordering to believe in unanimity) after the loss of Jerusalem and shortly before the fall of Antioch, as he believed it was no longer there, as in monoenergism, and many attributed the defeat from the Arabs to monotheelism. But for various reasons, both the widow of Heraclius Martin (Empress of Byzantium) and her adversary, the grandson of Heraclius Constant II, remained supporters of monothelitism as Caesarepapism beneficial to them. ^[eleven]

Heraclius in Literature

Heraclius became a hero of literary works and legends in various countries of the world.

Knightly novel

The medieval knightly novel " Heraclius " appeared in France in the XII century, its author was Gauthier from Arras . The details of the emperor’s biography are almost completely fictitious.

African Epic

Written in the beginning of the 18th century on the territory of modern Kenya, an epic poem in Swahili, The Book of Heraclius , depicts the battle of the Byzantines with Muslim Arabs at Tabuk and has become one of the largest works of literature in Black Africa.

The Legend of the Casket of Heraclius

В арабских и византийских источниках сохранилась история об арабском посольстве ко двору Ираклия, в ходе которого на тайной аудиенции Ираклий продемонстрировал мусульманским послам шкатулку с изображениями пророков со времён библейского пророка Даниила , вышитых белыми нитками на тёмных шёлковых лоскутках. В последующие времена шкатулка больше нигде не появлялась и её судьба не известна.

В кино

• « Послание » (1976) — в роли Ираклия — Роналд Ли Хант .
• « Добрый король Дагоберт » / Le bon roi Dagobert ( Франция , Италия ; 1984 ) режиссёр Дино Ризи , в роли Ираклия — Марчелло Бонини Олас .
• « Умар » — реж. Хатем Али (Саудовская Аравия — Марокко, 2012). В роли Ираклия — Мухаммед Кури'а.

In Russian

• Гераклий // Энциклопедический словарь Брокгауза и Ефрона : в 86 т. (82 т. и 4 доп.). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
• Нашёл совершенный упадок в ромейском государстве // Дашков С. Б. Императоры Византии. — М. , 1997. — С. 96—104.
• Ираклий I // Византийский словарь: в 2 т. / Сост. и общ. ed. К. А. Филатова. - SPb. : Амфора . ТИД Амфора: РХГА : Издательство Олега Абышко , 2011. — Т. 1. — С. 419—420.
• Ираклий I // Рыжов К. Все монархи мира. Древняя Греция. Древний Рим. Византия. — М. , 2001.
• Каплан М. Византия. — М. : Вече, 2011. — С. 396—397.
• Кулаковский Ю. А. История Византии. — Алетейя , 1996. — Т. 3. 602—717 годы. — (Византийская библиотека). — ISBN 5-89329-005-4 .
• Погосян /Хахбакян/ Г. Г. К изучению роли армян в управлении византийскими экзархатами. Page 27—33. // Научно-аналитический журнал «Регион и Мир». № 1—2. — Ер. 2015.
• Assumption F.I. History of the Byzantine Empire. — М. : Астрель , 2005. — Т. 2. — ISBN 5-271-03363-5 .

In other languages

• Drapeyron. L'empereur Héraclius et l'empire byzantinau VII siècle . — P. , 1869.

• Ираклий I (Византийский император)