Philippikos Bardanes

Justinian's second reign is marked by a reconciliation with the papacy, cemented by the visit of Pope Constantine to Constantinople in 710-11.

The emperor is obsessed, however, with a desire for revenge against his opponents, and the resulting mass executions in turn have led to the alienation of many of his former supporters.

Bardanes is the son of the patrician Nicephorus, who was of Armenian extraction from an Armenian colony in Pergamon. (His original name, Vardan, may have been derived from that of his mother).

Relying on the support of the Monothelite party, he had made some pretensions to the throne on the outbreak of the first great rebellion against Emperor Justinian II; these had led to his relegation to Cephalonia by Tiberios Apsimarus, and subsequently to his banishment to Cherson by order of Justinian.

Here Bardanes, taking the name of Philippikos, has successfully incited the inhabitants to revolt with the help of the Khazars.

The successful rebels seize Constantinople, and Justinian flees.

Tervel gives the deposed emperor only three thousand soldiers who, after several skirmishes, are given safe conduct to Bulgaria by the new emperor and Justinian II, unable to rally substantial support in the provinces, is executed, together with his family, in December 711.

After resuming rule, Justininian had wreaked a vengeance so terrible that the fact of his second deposition and death is surprising only in it having been delayed for six years.

Philippikos takes the throne.

Emperor Philippikos Bardanes is an advocate of the Monothelite heresy, the belief in a single will of Christ.

Even before entering Constantinople, he had ordered the picture of the Third Council of Constantinople (which had condemned Monothelitism in 680) to be removed from the palace and the names of those the council had condemned restored.

Patriarch Cyrus refuses to support the new policy and is deposed and replaced by the more compliant deacon John VI, a member of his own sect, early in 712.

Among the first acts of the new emperor is the summoning of a conciliabulum of Eastern bishops, which abolishes the canons of the Sixth Ecumenical Council.

In response, the Roman Church refuses to recognize the new Emperor and his patriarch.

In foreign policy, the reign of Philippikos is disastrous.

The Bulgarians, taking advantage of the disorders in the empire, raid through Thrace and plunder as far as the vicinity of Constantinople in 712.

When Philippikos transfers an army from the Opsikion theme to police the Balkans, the Umayyad Caliphate under Al-Walid I makes inroads across the weakened defenses of Asia Minor.

The Arabs capture several cities in 712-713.

The Opsikian army in Thrace on June 3, 713, overthrows and blinds Philippikos and, mainly at the instigation of the Senate and people, installs his chief secretary, Artemios, as Anastasios II.

Soon after his accession, Anastasios II imposes discipline on the army and executes those officers who had been directly involved in the conspiracy against Philippikos.

Andrew of Crete had been sent from his monastery in Jerusalem to Constantinople, where he had become deacon of the Hagia Sophia.

During the reign of Philippikos he had been made archbishop of Gortyna and had taken part in the Synod of Constantinople, where he had subscribed to Monothelitism; he recants his Monothelitic views in 713.

In developing the liturgy of the Greek Church, he is credited with inventing the kanon, a new genre of hymnography that consists of nine odes in stanzaic form, each sung to a different melody.

His canon replaces the kontakion, a homiletic hymn of which all stanzas were sung to the same melody.

Andrew is the author of many hymns and canons still used in Greek liturgical books.