Hellenic Net

ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ The battle fought on 15 March 1311, between Walter I, duke of Athens, supported by many of the leading knights of Frankish Greece, and the Catalan Company, the duke’s former mercenaries, whom he was trying to dismiss from his service and remove from his duchy. The battle was decisive in that many members of the French ruling element in central Greece were slaughtered and replaced by the victorious Catalans. Like other battles of the fourteenth century, it demonstrated how well-drilled foot soldiers with crossbow support could trounce an army of mounted knights. The site of the battle is not securely known. The medieval writers RamônMuntaner and Nikephoros Gregoras both located the battle on the marshy plain of the Kephissos in the region of Orchomenos; in this they were followed by all writers before 1940, who thus named the engagement the battle of the Kephissos. In 1940 a hitherto unknown letter of Marino Sanudo came to light; written in 1327, it referred to the battle takin...

ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ On February 27, 380, Emperor Theodosius I and co-emperors Gratian and Valentinian II declared their desire for all Roman citizens to embrace Trinitarian Christianity. The Edict of Thessalonica (also known as Cunctos populos) was a decree issued on February 27, 380 AD, by three Roman emperors, establishing Nicene Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire. Background In 313, Emperor Constantine I, along with his eastern counterpart Licinius, issued the Edict of Milan, granting religious tolerance and freedom to persecuted Christians. By 325, Arianism, a form of Christology that asserted Christ was created and thus a subordinate entity to God the Father, had become so popular and controversial that Constantine convened the Council of Nicaea in an attempt to end the dispute by establishing an "orthodoxy" throughout the empire. The Council formulated the original Nicene Creed, rejecting Arianism and affirming that Christ is "true God" and "c...

ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ Anastasioupoli - Peritheorio, Amaxades, Western Thrace, Rhodope, Greece. The Battle of Peritheorion on 7 July 1345 was between the forces of Momchil, the quasi-independent ruler of Rhodope, and an allied Byzantine-Turkish force headed by John VI Kantakouzenos and Umur Bey of Aydin. The two armies met in front of the walls of the city of Peritheorion (now in ruins), and the battle resulted in a crushing victory for the allied army, with Momchil himself falling in the field.[1] From 1341, a civil war had been going on in the Byzantine Empire between the regency for the infant John V Palaiologos and the former regent John VI Kantakouzenos. In this conflict, both sides called upon aid from neighbouring states. Kantakouzenos initially relied upon aid by Stefan Dushan of Serbia, but in 1343, the arrival of his old friend and ally, Umur Bey, greatly strengthened his position. In the same year, Momchil, a Bulgarian brigand active in the northern Rhodope mountains, pledged allegiance t...

ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ  The Battle of Levounion was the first Byzantine victory of the Komnenian revival. On April 29, 1091, a force of Pechenegs invading the empire's territories was crushed by the combined forces of the Byzantine Empire under Alexios I Comnenus and his Cuman allies. Background After the defeat of the Byzantine army by the Seljuk Turks in the battle of Manzikert, Duke Michael VII refused to honor the agreement signed by Romanos IV. In response the Turks began to move into Anatolia in 1073, meeting no resistance. Alexios Comnenus, a successful young general, ascended the throne on Easter Day, 1081. According to Norwich, his recovery to the throne was of great importance, as "...for the first time in about half a century the empire was in able hands". Alexios was determined to change the fortunes of the empire at any cost. In 1090 or 1091, Emir Tsaka of Smyrna allied with the Pechenegs in order to completely destroy the Byzantine Empire. Invasion of the Pechenegs In the...

  ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ Byzantium (Greek: Βυζάντιον Byzántion) was an ancient Greek colony on the site that later became Constantinople, and later still Istanbul. Byzantium was colonised by the Greeks from Megara in c. 657 BC. Byzantion name is of ancient greek origins, derived from the legendary king Byzas, the leader of the Megarian colonists and founder of the city. Coinage with idealized depiction of Byzas, founder of Byzantium. Struck in Byzantium, Thrace, around the time of Marcus Aurelius (161–180 CE). The form Byzantium is a Latinization of the original name. Much later, the name Byzantium became common in the West to refer to the Eastern Roman Empire, the "Byzantine" Empire, whose capital Constantinople stood on the site of ancient Byzantium. This usage was introduced only in 1555 by the historian Hieronymus Wolf, a century after the empire had ceased to exist. During the time of the empire, the term Byzantium was restricted to just the city, rather than the empire it ruled. Hist...