Thomas the Slav was a 9th-century Byzantine military commander. He led a revolt against Emperor Michael II the Amorian in 821–23. He was 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.
About Thomas the Slav in brief
Thomas the Slav was a 9th-century Byzantine military commander. He led a wide-scale revolt against Emperor Michael II the Amorian in 821–23. He was 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 Leo V’s rise to the throne, Thomas was raised to a senior military command in central Asia Minor. After the murder of Leo and usurpation of the throne by Michael, 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. He laid siege to Constantinople, but Michael II called for help from the Bulgarian ruler khan Omurtag. 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. Its effects on the military position of the Empire, particularly vis-à-vis the Arabs, are also disputed. The 11th- century Theophanes Continuatus states that Thomas was descended from South Slavs resettled inAsia Minor by successive Byzantine emperors.
Most modern scholars support his Slavic descent and believe his birthplace to have been near Gaziura in thePontus. In a second version, he came to Constantinople as a poor youth and entered the service of a man with the high court rank of patrikios. Then, discovered trying to commit adultery with his master’s wife, Thomas fled to the Arabs in Syria. Pretending to be the murdered emperor Constantine VI, he then led an Arab-sponsored invasion of Asia Minor,. but was defeated and punished. The first tradition relates that Thomas served as a spatharios to Bardane Tourkos, who rose in rebellion against Emperor Nikephoros I in 803. The second version is the only one recorded in the chronicle of George the Monk, the Life of Saints, and George Symeon of Lesbos, who wrote about Thomas in The Life of Saint David, the Lesbos Monk and George of St. David, and other sources of the time. Most scholars follow the first account alone, preferring to rely on the later tradition to discredit Thomas, and preferring to reject it altogether. The only surviving source of Thomas’s story is the 9th century chronicle, The Life and Saints of David, which relates that he served as spathios to Bardanes, the monostrategos of eastern themes, who was killed in a battle in 797. The other two accounts relate that Thomas rose in an uprising against Emperor Nero I, who died in 799.
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