Theodore Komnenos Doukas (, Theodōros Komnēnos Doukas; Latinized as Theodore Comnenus Ducas; died 1253) or Theodore Angelos Komnenos was the ruler of Epirus and Thessaly from 1215 to 1230 and of Thessalonica and most of Macedonia and western Thrace from 1224 to 1230. He was also the power behind the rule of his sons John and Demetrios over Thessalonica in 1237–1246.
Theodore was the scion of a distinguished Byzantine aristocratic family related to the imperial Komnenos, Doukas, and Angelos dynasties. Nevertheless, nothing is known about Theodore's life before the conquest of Constantinople and dissolution of the Byzantine Empire by the Fourth Crusade in 1204. Following the fall of Constantinople, he served Theodore I Laskaris, founder of the Empire of Nicaea, for a few years before being called to Epirus, where his half-brother Michael I Komnenos Doukas had founded an independent principality. When Michael died in 1215, Theodore sidelined his brother's underage and illegitimate son Michael II and assumed the governance of the Epirote state. Theodore continued his brother's policy of territorial expansion. Allied with Serbia, he expanded into Macedonia, threatening the Latin Kingdom of Thessalonica. The capture of the Latin Emperor Peter II of Courtenay in 1217 opened the way to the gradual envelopment of Thessalonica, culminating in the city's fall in 1224.
As ruler of Thessalonica, Theodore quickly declared himself emperor, challenging the Nicaean emperor John III Doukas Vatatzes's claims to the Byzantine imperial throne. In 1225, he advanced to the outskirts of Constantinople, but his final attack against the seat of the much-reduced Latin Empire was delayed until 1230. In that year, Theodore amassed an army to besiege Constantinople, but then diverted it against Bulgaria, an ambivalent ally which threatened his northern flank. Theodore was defeated and captured at the Battle of Klokotnitsa, and spent the next seven years in captivity. In the meantime, he was succeeded by his brother Manuel. Manuel quickly lost Thrace, most of Macedonia, and Albania to the Bulgarian Emperor John Asen II. Thessalonica itself became a Bulgarian vassal, while in Epirus proper power was seized by Michael II, returning from exile.
Theodore was released in 1237 when his daughter Irene married John Asen II, and quickly managed to regain control of Thessalonica, ousting Manuel. Having been blinded during his captivity and thus disqualified from occupying the throne again, he installed his eldest son John as emperor, but remained the de facto regent of the state. Manuel tried to regain Thessalonica with Nicaean support, but a negotiated settlement was reached which gave him Thessaly and left Thessalonica and its environs to Theodore and John. In 1241, John III Vatatzes invited Theodore to visit Nicaea. He was welcomed and treated with great honour, but was effectively detained there until the spring of next year, when Vatatzes marched on Thessalonica with Theodore in tow. Theodore was sent in to negotiate with his son and convince him to accept demotion to the rank of Despot and to recognize the suzerainty of Nicaea. John died in 1244 and was succeeded by Theodore's younger son Demetrios. In 1246, Vatatzes overthrew the unpopular Demetrios and annexed Thessalonica. Theodore influenced his nephew Michael II to launch an attack on Thessalonica in 1251, but in 1252, Vatatzes campaigned against them and forced Michael to come to terms. Theodore was taken prisoner and sent into exile in Nicaea, where he died around 1253.
Early life and career Born between 1180 and 1185, Theodore was a son of the sebastokrator John Doukas and of Zoe Doukaina. His paternal grandparents were Constantine Angelos and Theodora, a daughter of the Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos (). Theodore's uncle, Andronikos, was the father of the emperors Isaac II Angelos () and Alexios III Angelos (), who were Theodore's first cousins. As with most members of his family, he preferred to use the surname of "Doukas" or "Komnenos Doukas" (Κομνηνὸς ὁ Δούκας); contemporaries variously called him "Doukas", "Komnenos", or even "Grand Komnenos" (μέγας Κομνηνός), an appellation more usually found among the ruling family of the Empire of Trebizond. Theodore evidently preferred to be associated with the more successful dynasties of the Doukai and the Komnenoi, rather than the disastrous reign of the Angeloi; indeed the only medieval writers to call him "Angelos" were the later, hostile pro-Palaiologos historians Nikephoros Gregoras and Theodore Skoutariotes, while George Akropolites refers to him as "Komnenos" until his defeat at Klokotnitsa in 1230 and as "Angelos" after.
Theodore's early life is obscure. After the Fourth Crusade captured Constantinople in 1204, he followed Theodore Laskaris to Asia Minor, where Laskaris founded the Empire of Nicaea. Theodore's service under Laskaris is relatively unknown except for a brief reference in a letter written by the Metropolitan of Corfu, George Bardanes, one of Theodore's apologists. Bardanes writes that Theodore "took many dangers for his sake and wrested many fortresses from the enemies and subdued them to Laskaris' rule", distinguishing himself through his valour and receiving many rewards from the Nicaean ruler. Some modern scholars, such as Karl Hopf and Antoine Bon, have identified a certain Theodore, who appears as "lord of Argos" and was the successor of Leo Sgouros in leading the resistance against the Crusaders in the northwestern Peloponnese after Sgouros' death in 1208, with Theodore Komnenos Doukas. This view has been questioned by Raymond-Joseph Loenertz, who argues that there is no evidence for such an assumption, and that conversely it is well established that Theodore was in Nicaean service at the time.
Around 1210, Theodore was invited by his half-brother Michael I Komnenos Doukas to Epirus, where Michael had founded an independent Greek principality. Michael wanted Theodore's aid, as his only son, the future Michael II Komnenos Doukas, was underage and illegitimate, while Michael's other half-brothers were considered to lack the ability to rule. Laskaris allowed Theodore to leave, but bound him with an oath of allegiance to himself and his heirs. Before going to Epirus, Theodore had married Maria Petraliphaina, with whom he had four children.
Ruler of Epirus
From 1210 on, Michael I Komnenos Doukas was engaged in territorial expansion, chiefly at the expense of the Latin Kingdom of Thessalonica to his east; after initial reverses, much of Thessaly was conquered. By 1214, Dyrrhachium and Corfu had been recovered from the Latins as well. The traditional view of historians is that these events marked Michael I's repudiation of the allegiance he had sworn to the Latin Empire, but historian Filip Van Tricht argues that both Michael and later Theodore remained, at least in theory, vassals of the Latin Empire until 1217. Michael was assassinated by a servant in late 1214 or in 1215. As Michael II was illegitimate and too young, Theodore had no trouble in sidelining the boy. According to the hagiography of St. Theodora of Arta, the boy and his mother spent the duration of Theodore's reign exiled in the Peloponnese.
Relations with Serbia and Nicaea Theodore was capable and extremely ambitious. Notwithstanding his oath to Laskaris, he aspired not only to expand his state at the expense of Thessalonica, but to eventually recover Constantinople and revive the Byzantine Empire with himself as its ruler. To secure his northern flank, Theodore allied himself with Serbia and the Albanian clans. The Principality of Arbanon had already come in the Epirote political orbit under Michael I, and closer ties developed when its ruler, Demetrios, died in 1215, leaving his principality to his widow, who promptly remarried the next year to a Greek magnate, Gregory Kamonas. Against the Serbs, Theodore abandoned Michael I's attempt to pursue a northward expansion into Zeta, and instead pursued an alliance with the Serbian prince Stefan II Nemanjić () that was directed towards keeping the Bulgarians in check. The ties between Epirus and Serbia were solidified by the marriage of Theodore's brother Manuel Komnenos Doukas to one of Stefan II's sisters . Stefan II then sought to wed one of his sons—in all likelihood his eldest son and heir, Stefan Radoslav—to Michael I's second daughter Theodora. The Archbishop of Ohrid, Demetrios Chomatianos, refused to sanction the marriage due to consanguinity—Theodora was a second cousin of Stefan Radoslav's mother, Eudokia Angelina, a daughter of Alexios III Angelos. In 1217, Stefan II tried to circumvent this by suggesting himself as the groom to Theodora's half-sister Maria, but Chomatianos vetoed this proposal as well on similar grounds. Finally, Stefan Radoslav married Theodore's firstborn daughter Anna in winter 1219/20.
With his position thus strengthened, Theodore expanded his territory into northern Macedonia, although it is possible that at least part of this region had already been captured by Michael I after the death of the local Bulgarian ruler Strez in 1214. It is unclear to what extent Theodore's expansion involved direct conflict with the Bulgarian Tsar Boril (), but by 1217 he held Ohrid, Prilep, and most of the plain of Pelagonia, at least up to Strez's old capital at Prosek, and likely beyond, approaching the Strymon River. As the Greek historian Konstantinos Varzos has noted, the capture of Ohrid, seat of the eponymous archbishopric, was particularly important for the standing of the Epirote state and Theodore's aspirations. Theodore sponsored the election of the distinguished canonist Chomatianos to the archiepiscopal throne in 1217, and Chomatianos would repay that support with his steadfast championing of Epirote claims to the Byzantine imperial inheritance vis-à-vis the rival claims of Nicaea.
Following the Fourth Crusade, the Orthodox clergy in the two main Greek states, Epirus and Nicaea, had effectively become separated. In 1208, the Nicaeans had convened a synod and elected Michael Autoreianos as successor to the vacant see of the Patriarch of Constantinople. The election was uncanonical and therefore of questionable legitimacy. This in turn meant that Laskaris' imperial title was also open to challenge, as he had been crowned by the same Michael Autoreianos. Already under Michael I, two local synods of bishops had emerged in the Epirote domains to carry on administration of the Church, largely independent of the Patriarch, one at Naupaktos under John Apokaukos, and one at Ohrid under Chomatianos. The more ambitious Chomatianos soon became the pre-eminent "western" bishop, and sought to strengthen the de facto Epirote autonomy in ecclesiastical affairs, including the appointment of bishops for the local sees without the Patriarch's interference. This policy, which dovetailed with Theodore's own ambitions of independence from and rivalry towards Nicaea, brought the two branches of the Greek Church to an open quarrel, as the Nicaea-based patriarch Manuel I Sarantenos began appointing bishops of his own to Epirote sees, whom the Epirotes refused to accept. Despite his close ties to Epirus, Stefan II Nemanjić exploited the Epirote–Nicaean rivalry to his advantage to secure autocephaly for the Serbian Church, which traditionally had been under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Ohrid. Brushing aside Chomatianos' vehement objections, Stefan managed to have his brother Rastko, renamed Sava, consecrated by Manuel Sarantenos as autocephalous archbishop of Serbia in 1219. Theodore took care not to let the quarrels of the churchmen affect his cordial relations with the Serbian ruler.