COMNENUS  , the name of a

Byzantine family which from 1o81 to 1185 occupied the throne of Constantinople . It claimed a Roman origin, but its earliest representatives appear as landed proprietors in the district of Castamon (mod . Kastamuni) in Paphlagonia . Its first member known in Byzantine history is MANUEL EROTICUS COMNENUS, an able general who rendered great services to Basil II . (976—1025 ) in the East . At his death he left his two sons Isaac and John in the care of Basil, who gave them a careful education and advanced them to high official positions . The increasing unpopularity of the Macedonian dynasty culminated in a revolt of the nobles and the soldiery of Asia against its feeble representative Michael VI . Stratioticus, who abdicated after a brief resistance . Isaac was declared emperor, and crowned in St Sophia on the 2nd of September 1057 . For the rulers of this dynasty see ROMAN EMPIRE, LATER, and separate articles . With Andronicus I . (1183—1185) the rule of the Comneni proper at Constantinople came to an end .

A younger

line of the original house, after the establishment of the Latins at Constantinople in 1204, secured possession of a fragment of the empire in Asia Minor, and founded the empire of Trebizond (q.v.), which lasted till 1461, when David Comnenus, the last emperor, was deposed by Mahommed II . For a general account of the family and its alleged survivors see article " Komnenen," by G . F . Hertzberg, in Ersch and Gruber's Allgemeine Encyklopddie, and an anonymous monograph, Precis historique de la maison imperiale des Comnenes (Amsterdam, 1784); and, for the history of the period, the works referred to under ROMAN EMPIRE, LATER .