Sebastokratōr was a senior court title in the late
Byzantine EmpireThe Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
. It was also used by other rulers whose states bordered the Empire or were within its sphere of influence. The word is a
compoundIn linguistics, a compound is a lexeme that consists of more than one stem. Compounding or composition is the word formation that creates compound lexemes...
of "
sebastosSebastos was an honorific used by the ancient Greeks to render the Roman imperial title of Augustus. From the late 11th century on, during the Komnenian period, it and variants derived from it formed the basis of a new system of court titles for the Byzantine Empire. The female form of the title...
" ("venerable", the Greek equivalent of the Latin
AugustusAugustus , Latin for "majestic," "the increaser," or "venerable", was an Ancient Roman title, which was first held by Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus , and subsequently came to be considered one of the titles of what are now known as the Roman Emperors...
and "
kratōr" ("ruler", the same element as is found in "
autokratōrAutokratōr is a Greek epithet applied to an individual who exercises absolute power, unrestrained by superiors. In a historical context, it has been applied to military commanders-in-chief, and to Roman and Byzantine emperors as the translation of the Latin title imperator. Its connection with...
", "emperor"). The wife of a
sebastokratōr was named
sebastokratorissa (Greek: σεβαστοκρατόρισσα) in Greek or
sebastokratitsa (Cyrillic: севастократица) in Serbian and Bulgarian.
History
The title was created by Emperor
Alexios I KomnenosAlexios I Komnenos, Latinized as Alexius I Comnenus , was Byzantine emperor from 1081 to 1118, and although he was not the founder of the Komnenian dynasty, it was during his reign that the Komnenos family came to full power. The title 'Nobilissimus' was given to senior army commanders,...
(r. 1081–1118) to honour his elder brother Isaac Komnenos. According to
Anna KomneneAnna Komnene, Latinized as Comnena was a Greek princess and scholar and the daughter of Emperor Alexios I Komnenos of Byzantium and Irene Doukaina...
, Alexios did this to raise Isaac above the rank of
CaesarCaesar is a title of imperial character. It derives from the cognomen of Julius Caesar, the Roman dictator...
, which he had already promised to his brother-in-law,
Nikephoros MelissenosNikephoros Melissenos , latinized as Nicephorus Melissenus, was a Byzantine general and aristocrat. Of distinguished lineage, he served as a governor and general in the Balkans and Asia Minor in the 1060s. In the turbulent period after the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, several generals tried to...
. Anna Komnene calls the rank of
sebastokratōr that of "a second Emperor", and also records that along with the
Caesar a
sebastokratōr was granted the right to wear a crown (but not the imperial diadem). During the Komnenian dynasty, the title continued to be the highest below that of Emperor until 1163, when Emperor
Manuel IManuel I Komnenos was a Byzantine Emperor of the 12th century who reigned over a crucial turning point in the history of Byzantium and the Mediterranean....
created the title of
despotēs. It was at that period given exclusively to members of the imperial family, chiefly younger sons of the Byzantine emperor.
After the occupation of the Byzantine Empire by the leaders of the
Fourth CrusadeThe Fourth Crusade was originally intended to conquer Muslim-controlled Jerusalem by means of an invasion through Egypt. Instead, in April 1204, the Crusaders of Western Europe invaded and conquered the Christian city of Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Roman Empire...
in 1204, the title was adopted in the
Latin EmpireThe Latin Empire or Latin Empire of Constantinople is the name given by historians to the feudal Crusader state founded by the leaders of the Fourth Crusade on lands captured from the Byzantine Empire. It was established after the capture of Constantinople in 1204 and lasted until 1261...
, the
Empire of NicaeaThe Empire of Nicaea was the largest of the three Byzantine Greek successor states founded by the aristocracy of the Byzantine Empire that fled after Constantinople was occupied by Western European and Venetian forces during the Fourth Crusade...
, and the
Bulgarian EmpireThe Second Bulgarian Empire was a medieval Bulgarian state which existed between 1185 and 1396 . A successor of the First Bulgarian Empire, it reached the peak of its power under Kaloyan and Ivan Asen II before gradually being conquered by the Ottomans in the late 14th-early 15th century...
. In Nicaea and the post-1261 restored Empire, the title remained one of the highest, and was almost always restricted to members of the imperial family. The last known holder of the title was Demetrios Kantakouzenos, a ruler in the
PeloponneseThe Peloponnese, Peloponnesos or Peloponnesus , is a large peninsula , located in a region of southern Greece, forming the part of the country south of the Gulf of Corinth...
in the late 14th century.
According to the sources, the distinctive colour associated with the title was blue: the
sebastokratōr ceremonial costumeByzantine dress changed considerably over the thousand years of the Empire, but was essentially conservative. The Byzantines liked colour and pattern, and made and exported very richly patterned cloth, especially Byzantine silk, woven and embroidered for the upper classes, and resist-dyed and...
included blue stockings and blue boots. In circa 1260, according to George Akropolites, the
sebastokratores who were members of the imperial family were distinguished from those who were not by having embroidered golden
eaglesThe Eagles are an American rock band formed in Los Angeles, California in 1971 by Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Bernie Leadon, and Randy Meisner.With five number one singles, six Grammys, five American Music Awards, and six number one albums, the Eagles were one of the most successful musical acts of the...
on their shoes. By the time of pseudo-Kodinos in the mid-14th century, the embroidered eagles on a red field were standard. According to Kodinos, the ceremonial costume also included a red
tunicA tunic is any of several types of clothing for the body, of various lengths reaching from the shoulders to somewhere between the hips and the ankles...
(
chlamysThe chlamys was an ancient Greek piece of clothing, a type of cloak....
) and crown (
stephanos, not the diadem) of red and gold. The
sebastokratōr also had the prerogative of signing documents with a special blue
inkInk is a liquid or paste that contains pigments and/or dyes and is used to color a surface to produce an image, text, or design. Ink is used for drawing and/or writing with a pen, brush, or quill...
.
This title was used in
SerbiaSerbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
during the
Kingdom of RaškaPrincipality of Serbia or Serbian Principality was an early medieval state of the Serbs ruled by the Vlastimirović dynasty, that existed from ca 768 to 969 in Southeastern Europe. It was established through an unification of several provincial chiefs under the supreme rule of a certain Višeslav,...
and during the
Serbian EmpireThe Serbian Empire was a short-lived medieval empire in the Balkans that emerged from the Serbian Kingdom. Stephen Uroš IV Dušan was crowned Emperor of Serbs and Greeks on 16 April, 1346, a title signifying a successorship to the Eastern Roman Empire...
.