Michael IV the Paphlagonian
Michael IV came from a family of provincial moneychangers, married the empress on the day her husband died, and reigned for seven years while epileptic. His brother John the Orphanotrophos was a eunuch who had risen high in the palace administration and brought the family with him, and it was John who arranged Michael's introduction to the empress Zoe. Romanos III was found dead in his bath in April 1034, and Zoe married Michael the same evening; the patriarch was summoned and objected and then performed the ceremony. Michael was perhaps twenty-five and she about fifty-six. The reign was competent and was mostly John's work. The finances were restored by rigorous and unpopular taxation, including the reversal of remissions granted earlier, and the administration was staffed with the brothers' own relatives. Michael himself grew steadily more ill — the sources describe seizures that could be predicted, curtains drawn around the throne, and an increasing religious anxiety about how he had come by his position, expressed in building hospitals and a monastery for reformed prostitutes. He also kept Zoe confined and away from the government. A serious Bulgarian revolt broke out in 1040 under Peter Delyan, and Michael, by then barely able to sit a horse, took the field himself and put it down, which is the most creditable thing recorded of him. He returned to Constantinople dying of dropsy, was tonsured as a monk, and died in December 1041. His brother John then arranged the adoption that produced Michael V, and lost everything within a year when the nephew turned on him and on Zoe. The family had risen from a provincial counting house to the throne in one generation and fell in rather less.
- Lived: 1010 CE – 1041 CE
- Nationality: Byzantine
- Roles: emperor, head_of_state
