Nicholas Kanabos
Nicholas Kanabos was proclaimed Byzantine emperor by a mob in January 1204 and lasted about a week. The Fourth Crusade had been sitting outside Constantinople since the previous summer. It had been diverted there by a Venetian debt and by a claimant — Alexios IV, son of a deposed emperor — who had promised the crusaders enormous sums, the submission of the Greek church to Rome, and an army for Egypt if they restored his father. They did, in July 1203, and Alexios IV found that the treasury could not pay a fraction of what he had promised. He melted down church plate and imperial tombs to raise part of it, which turned the city against him. By January 1204 the population had had enough of an emperor visibly taking orders from a foreign army camped across the harbour. A crowd filled Hagia Sophia and demanded a new emperor from the senate and the clergy, who spent three days trying to find anyone willing. Kanabos, a young nobleman, was seized and crowned essentially against his will, and refused to leave the church. Alexios Doukas — nicknamed Mourtzouphlos for his heavy eyebrows — took the palace within days, had Alexios IV strangled, took the throne himself, and had Kanabos killed or imprisoned. The crusaders stormed the city in April, sacked it for three days, and installed a Latin emperor. Byzantium recovered the city in 1261 and never recovered from it. He is the last man the people of Constantinople chose as their own emperor. Every emperor after 1204 was raised in exile or restored by an army.
- Lived: 1180 CE – 1204 CE
- Nationality: Byzantine
- Roles: emperor, head_of_state
