John VI Kantakouzenos
John VI Kantakouzenos won a civil war, ruled for six years, abdicated, and then wrote the history of it. He was the richest landowner in the empire and the closest friend and chief minister of Andronikos III, and when Andronikos died in 1341 leaving a nine-year-old son, Kantakouzenos expected the regency and the empress Anna of Savoy and the patriarch did not intend him to have it. He was declared a traitor while away with the army and proclaimed himself emperor in October 1341, at a ceremony where he was careful to have the boy's name acclaimed first. The war ran six years and destroyed what was left of the state. Both sides hired Turks — Kantakouzenos married his daughter to the Ottoman emir Orhan and used his troops repeatedly — the Serbs under Dušan took Macedonia and Albania, the empress pawned the crown jewels to Venice, and a popular movement called the Zealots held Thessalonica against both parties for seven years. The Black Death arrived in 1347, the year he entered Constantinople. He then reigned as senior emperor with the boy as junior, tried to rebuild a fleet and a customs revenue against Genoese resistance and failed, and was overthrown in 1354 by his ward. He became a monk and lived another thirty years, writing four books of history that are the main source for the period and are entirely concerned with justifying himself. The Ottomans took Gallipoli in the year he fell. His other legacy is theological. He backed Gregory Palamas and the hesychast monks against their critics, and the councils of the 1340s and 1350s settled Orthodox doctrine on the question in their favour, which is the last major doctrinal decision the Byzantine church made.
- Lived: 1292 CE – 1383 CE
- Nationality: Byzantine
- Roles: emperor, head_of_state, military_leader, writer
