Background
Isaac I was born in c. 1007 in Istanbul, Turkey, the son of Manuel Erotikos Komnenos, who reportedly served as strategos autokrator of the East under Emperor Basil II, and defended Nicaea against the rebel Bardas Skleros in 978.
Isaac I was born in c. 1007 in Istanbul, Turkey, the son of Manuel Erotikos Komnenos, who reportedly served as strategos autokrator of the East under Emperor Basil II, and defended Nicaea against the rebel Bardas Skleros in 978.
Basil had Isaac I carefully educated at the monastery of Studion, and afterwards advanced them to high official positions.
During the disturbed reigns of Basil's seven immediate successors, Isaac I by his prudent conduct won the confidence of the army; in 1057 he joined with the nobles of the capital in a conspiracy against Michael VI, and after the latter's deposition was invested with the crown, thus founding the new dynasty of the Komneni. The first care of the new emperor was to reward his noble partisans with appointments that removed them from Constantinople, and his next was to repair the beggared finances of the empire. He revoked numerous pensions and grants conferred by his predecessors upon idle courtiers, and, meeting the reproach of sacrilege made by the patriarch of Constantinople by a decree of exile, resumed a proportion of the revenues of the wealthy monasteries. Isaac's only military expedition was against the Hungarians and the Pechenegs, who began to ravage the northern frontiers in 1059. Shortly after this successful campaign he was seized with an illness, and believing it mortal appointed as his successor Constantine Ducas, to the exclusion of his own brother John. Although he recovered Isaac did not resume the throne, but retired to the monastery of Studion and spent the remaining two years of his life as a monk, alternating menial offices with literary studies. His Scholia to the Iliad and other works on the Homeric poems are still extant. He died late in 1060 or early in 1061. Isaac's great aim was to restore the former strict organization of the government, and his reforms, though unpopular with the aristocracy and the clergy, and not understood by the people, certainly contributed to the continued survival of the Byzantine Empire. He died in the year 1061.
Isaac married Catherine, a daughter of Ivan Vladislav, the last Tsar of Bulgaria. Isaac raised her to Augusta. Following her husband's abdication, she appears to have co-reigned for a while with Constantine X, but eventually she too retired to the Myrelaion monastery under the monastic name of Xene. The couple had at least two children.