Thomas the Slav
Thomas the Slav was a 9th-century Byzantine military commander, most notable for leading a wide-scale revolt in 821–23 against Emperor Michael II the Amorian.
An army officer of Slavic origin from the Pontus region, Thomas rose to prominence, along with the future emperors Michael II and Leo V the Armenian, under the protection of general Bardanes Tourkos. After Bardanes' failed rebellion in 803, Thomas fell into obscurity until Leo V's rise to the throne, when Thomas was raised to a senior military command in central Asia Minor. After the murder of Leo and usurpation of the throne by Michael the Amorian, Thomas revolted, claiming the throne for himself. Thomas quickly secured support from most of the themes and troops in Asia Minor, defeated Michael's initial counter-attack and concluded an alliance with the Abbasid Caliphate. After winning over the maritime themes and their ships as well, he crossed with his army to Europe and [|laid siege to Constantinople]. The imperial capital withstood Thomas's attacks by land and sea, while Michael II called for help from the Bulgarian Khan Omurtag. Omurtag attacked Thomas's army, but although repelled, the Bulgarians inflicted heavy casualties on Thomas's men, who broke and fled when Michael took to the field a few months later. Thomas and his supporters sought refuge in Arcadiopolis, where he was soon blockaded by Michael's troops. In the end, Thomas's supporters surrendered him in exchange for a pardon, and he was executed.
Thomas's rebellion was one of the largest in the Byzantine Empire's history, but its precise circumstances are unclear due to competing historical narratives, which have come to include claims fabricated by Michael to blacken his opponent's name. Consequently, various motives and driving forces have been attributed to Thomas and his followers. As summarized by the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, "Thomas's revolt has been variously attributed to a reaction against Iconoclasm, a social revolution and popular uprising, a revolt by the Empire's non-Greek ethnic groups, Thomas's personal ambitions, and his desire to avenge Leo V." Its effects on the military position of the Empire, particularly vis-à-vis the Arabs, are also disputed.
Early life and career
The 11th-century historical account Theophanes Continuatus states that Thomas was descended from South Slavs resettled in Asia Minor by successive Byzantine emperors, while the 10th-century chronicler Genesios calls him "Thomas from Lake Gouzourou, of Armenian race". Most modern scholars support his Slavic descent and believe his birthplace to have been near Gaziura in the Pontus. Hence his epithet of "the Slav", which has been applied to him in modern times, and not in medieval sources. Nothing is known about his family and early life, except that his parents were poor and that Thomas himself had received no education. Given that he was between 50 and 60 years old at the time of the rebellion, he was probably born around 760.Two different accounts of Thomas's life are recounted in both Genesios and Theophanes Continuatus. According to the first account, Thomas first appeared in 803 accompanying general Bardanes Tourkos, and pursued a military career until launching his revolt in late 820. In the second version, he came to Constantinople as a poor youth and entered the service of a man with the high court rank of. Then, discovered trying to commit adultery with his master's wife, Thomas fled to the Abbasid Caliphate in Syria, where he remained for 25 years. Pretending to be the murdered emperor Constantine VI, he then led an Arab-sponsored invasion of Asia Minor, but was defeated and punished. Classical and Byzantine scholar J.B. Bury tried to reconcile the two narratives, placing Thomas's flight to the Caliphate at around 788 and then having him return to Byzantine service before 803, while the Russian scholar Alexander Vasiliev interpreted the sources as implying that Thomas fled to the Caliphate at Constantine VI's deposition in 797, and that his participation in Bardanes's revolt must be discounted entirely. The second version of Thomas's story is explicitly preferred by Genesios and Theophanes Continuatus, and is the only one recorded in 9th-century sources, namely the chronicle of George the Monk and the Life of Saints David, Symeon, and George of Lesbos. Nevertheless, the French Byzantinist Paul Lemerle came to consider it an unreliable later tradition created by his rival Michael II to discredit Thomas, and rejected it altogether, preferring to rely on the first account alone. Most modern scholars follow him in this interpretation.
The first tradition relates that Thomas served as a to Bardanes Tourkos, the of the eastern themes, who in 803 rose in rebellion against Emperor Nikephoros I. Alongside Thomas were two other young in Bardanes's retinue, who formed a fraternal association: Leo the Armenian and Michael the Amorian. According to a later hagiographical tradition, before launching his revolt, Bardanes, in the company of his three young protégés, is said to have visited a monk near Philomelion who was reputed to foresee the future. The monk predicted what would indeed happen: that Bardanes's revolt would fail, that Leo and Michael would both become emperors, and that Thomas would be acclaimed emperor and killed. When Bardanes did in fact rise up, he failed to win any widespread support. Leo and Michael soon abandoned him and defected to the imperial camp and were rewarded with senior military posts. Thomas alone remained loyal to Bardanes until his surrender. In the aftermath of Bardanes's failure, Thomas disappears from the sources for ten years. Bury suggests that he fled to the Arabs, a view accepted by a number of other scholars, such as Romilly James Heald Jenkins. The historian Warren Treadgold, however, argues that Thomas stayed in the empire and that may have even remained in active military service, and explains his obscurity by Thomas's association with Bardanes, which hampered his career.
In July 813, Leo the Armenian became emperor and quickly rewarded his old companions, giving them command over elite military forces. Michael received the of the Excubitors, and Thomas the of the Foederati, stationed in the Anatolic Theme.
Rebellion
Background and motives
On Christmas Day 820, Leo was murdered in the palace chapel by officials under the direction of Michael the Amorian, who was quickly crowned emperor. At about the same time, Thomas launched a rebellion in the Anatolic Theme. Sources are divided on the exact chronology and motives of the revolt. George the Monk, the hagiographic sources, and a letter from Michael II to the western emperor Louis the Pious claim that Thomas had risen up against Leo before Michael's usurpation. This chronology is followed by almost all later Byzantine chroniclers like Genesios, Theophanes Continuatus, and Skylitzes, as well as a number of modern scholars like J. B. Bury and Alexander Kazhdan. In his study of Thomas and the revolt, Paul Lemerle dismisses this timeline as a later attempt by Michael to justify his revolt as a response to Leo's failure to suppress the rebellion, and to exculpate himself of the early defeats suffered by the imperial forces. Some recent studies follow Lemerle and prefer the account of Symeon Logothetes—generally considered the most accurate of the 10th-century sources—according to which Thomas rebelled a few days after the murder of Leo and in reaction to it.Consequently, the empire became divided in a struggle that was less a rebellion against the established government and more a contest for the throne between equal contenders. Michael held Constantinople and the European provinces, controlled the imperial bureaucracy, and had been properly crowned by the Patriarch of Constantinople, but he had come to the throne through murder, while Thomas gained support and legitimacy through his claim to avenge the fallen Leo, and he won the backing of themes both in Asia and later in Europe. Thomas was a well-known, popular, and respected figure in Asia Minor, where Leo V had enjoyed considerable support. Michael, on the other hand, was virtually unknown outside the capital; his military record was unremarkable, he was uneducated and coarse of manner, his stutter earned him ridicule, and he was reputed to sympathize with the heretical religious sect of the Athinganoi, to which his family had belonged.
Byzantine accounts of Thomas's rebellion state that he did not in fact claim the throne under his own name but assumed the identity of Emperor Constantine VI, who had been deposed and murdered by his mother, Irene of Athens, in 797. Most modern scholars follow Lemerle, who dismisses this as yet another later fabrication. If it contains any truth, it is possible that this story may originate from Thomas choosing to be crowned under the regnal name of "Constantine", but there is no evidence for such an act. The possible appropriation of Constantine VI's identity is linked in some Byzantine sources with the statement that Thomas was a rumoured supporter of iconolatry, as opposed to Michael's support for iconoclasm: it was under Constantine VI that veneration of the icons was restored. Nevertheless, the ambiguous phrasing of the sources, the iconoclast leanings of many themes in Asia Minor, and Thomas's alliance with the Arabs seem to speak against any open commitment to icon veneration on his part. Indeed, given Michael II's conciliatory approach during his early reign, the icon veneration controversy does not seem to have been a major issue at the time, and in the view of modern scholars most probably did not play a major role in Thomas's revolt. The image of Thomas as an iconophile champion opposed to the iconoclast Michael II in later, Macedonian-era sources was probably the result of their own anti-iconoclast bias. Warren Treadgold furthermore suggests that if true, Thomas's claim to be Constantine VI may have been little more than a tale circulated to win support, and that Thomas pursued a "studied ambiguity" towards icons, designed to attract support from iconophiles. In Treadgold's words, "Thomas could be all things to all men until he had conquered the whole empire, and then he would have time enough to disappoint some of his followers".
The account of Theophanes Continuatus on Thomas's revolt states that in this time, "the servant raised his hand against his master, the soldier against his officer, the captain against his general". This has led some scholars, chiefly Alexander Vasiliev and George Ostrogorsky, to regard Thomas's revolt as an expression of widespread discontent among the rural population, which suffered under heavy taxation. Other Byzantinists, notably Lemerle, dismiss rural discontent as a primary factor during the revolt.
Genesios and other chroniclers further state that Thomas won the support of "Hagarenes, Indians, Egyptians, Assyrians, Medians, Abasgians, Zichs, Iberians, Kabirs, Slavs, Huns, Vandals, Getae, the sectarians of Manes, Laz, Alanians, Chaldians, Armenians and every kind of other peoples". This has led to modern claims that Thomas's rebellion represented an uprising of the empire's non-Greek ethnic groups, but according to Lemerle, this exaggerated account is yet another piece of hostile disinformation. It is almost certain, however, that Thomas could count on support among the empire's Caucasian neighbours, for the presence of Abasgians, Armenians, and Iberians in his army is mentioned in the near-contemporary letter of Michael II to Louis the Pious. The reasons for this support are unclear; Thomas may have made unspecified promises to their rulers, but Lemerle suggests that the Armenians might have in part been motivated by revenge for Leo, their murdered kinsman.