Philippicus Bardanes
Philippicus ruled Byzantium for nineteen months, reopened a settled religious question, and was blinded at lunch. He was Bardanes, an Armenian officer, and had been exiled by Justinian II to Cephalonia for a dream — a monk had told him he would be emperor, and reporting the story was itself the offence. Justinian, restored in 705, sent an expedition to Cherson in the Crimea in 711 to punish the town that had once sheltered him. The force mutinied instead, proclaimed Bardanes, and returned with Khazar backing. Justinian was caught and beheaded, and his six-year-old son killed with him, ending the Heraclian dynasty after a century. Philippicus took the throne and immediately reopened the question of Christ's wills. He was a monothelite — a believer in the single divine will that the Sixth Ecumenical Council had condemned in 681 — and he deposed the patriarch, convened a synod to annul the council, had the tablets recording it removed from the palace, and destroyed its portrait. Rome refused to recognise him and struck his name from the diptychs, and the argument he restarted served no purpose in an empire that no longer held the provinces it had been designed to reconcile. The Bulgars raided to the walls of Constantinople and the Arabs took fortresses in Asia Minor while this was going on. Officers of the Opsikion theme seized him during a meal in the palace in June 713, blinded him, and put the imperial secretary on the throne. He lived out his life blind in a monastery, and his successor restored the orthodoxy within weeks.
- Lived: 700 CE – 713 CE
- Nationality: Byzantine
- Roles: emperor, head_of_state, military_leader
