ABSTRACT
The year 1054 was an ominous one for the Byzantine empire. During the summer, a terrifying hailstorm struck the empire’s capital city, Constantinople, killing several people, and there was an outbreak of plague so severe that, according to the chronicler John Skylitzes, “the living were unequal to the task of carrying away the dead.” In the corridors of power, tensions were rising. The emperor, Constantine IX Monomachos (1042-55), was visibly ailing and his increasingly erratic behaviour led two of his closest advisers, Michael Psellos and John Xiphilinos, to resign and retire to a monastery. To make matters worse, there was no obvious successor to the childless Constantine and it would not have been difficult to predict the instability that would follow once he died. Out on the frontiers, the empire was under attack. In southern Italy, Byzantine hopes of stemming the encroachments of the Normans were in disarray following the Norman victory at Civitate the previous year. Henceforth there was little that could be done to save the Byzantine footholds in the area, the last of which, Bari, was to fall in 1071. In the east, the Seljuk sultan Tuğrul (ca. 1016-63) led his forces into Byzantine-ruled Armenia. The danger was averted when the Turks suffered a minor reverse but ironically the engagement took place outside the town of Manzikert where the Byzantines were to suffer a humiliating defeat at the hands of Tuğrul’s successor, Alp Arslan (1064-72), sixteen years later.1
