Katepano - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The katepánō was a senior Byzantine

Byzantine Empire

The 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...

military rank and office

Byzantine aristocracy and bureaucracy

The Byzantine Empire had a complex system of aristocracy and bureaucracy, which was inherited from the Roman Empire. At the apex of the pyramid stood the Emperor, sole ruler and divinely ordained, but beneath him a multitude of officials and court functionaries operated the administrative...

. The word was Latinized

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

as capetanus/catepan, and its meaning seems to have merged with that of the Italian "capitaneus" (which derives from the Latin word "caput", meaning head). This hybridized term gave rise to the English language

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

term captain and its equivalents in other languages (Capitan, Kapitan, Kapitän

Kapitän

Kapitän is the German word for Captain. It is also a shortened version of several ranks in the German navy, ranging from Korvettenkapitän to Kapitän zur See. The general meaning is equivalent to Captain....

, El Capitan, Il Capitano, Kapudan Pasha etc.)

History

The katepáno first appears in the 9th century, when it was used in the generic sense of "the one in charge" by two officials: the head of the basilikoi anthrōpoi ("imperial men"), a class of low-level court functionaries, and the head of the Mardaites

Mardaites

The Mardaites inhabited the highland regions of southern Anatolia, Isauria, Syria, and Lebanon. Their origins are little known, but they may have been of Armenian origin...

marine detachments of the Byzantine naval

Byzantine navy

The Byzantine navy was the naval force of the East Roman or Byzantine Empire. Like the empire it served, it was a direct continuation from its imperial Roman predecessor, but played a far greater role in the defense and survival of the state then its earlier iterations...

theme of the Cibyrrhaeots in southern Asia Minor

Asia Minor

Asia Minor is a geographical location at the westernmost protrusion of Asia, also called Anatolia, and corresponds to the western two thirds of the Asian part of Turkey...

. In the wake of the great eastern conquests of the 960s, however, the title acquired a more specific meaning.

The newly acquired frontier zones were divided into smaller themata, and grouped together to form large regional commands, headed either by a doux ("duke") or a katepanō. These were the ducates/katepanates of Antioch

Antioch

Antioch on the Orontes was an ancient city on the eastern side of the Orontes River. It is near the modern city of Antakya, Turkey.Founded near the end of the 4th century BC by Seleucus I Nicator, one of Alexander the Great's generals, Antioch eventually rivaled Alexandria as the chief city of the...

, covering the south-eastern frontier in northern Syria

Syria

Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....

, of Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...

in the east around the Euphrates

Euphrates

The Euphrates is the longest and one of the most historically important rivers of Western Asia. Together with the Tigris, it is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia...

, and of Chaldia

Chaldia

Chaldia was a historical region located in the Black Sea coast of Asia Minor . Its name was derived from a people called the Chaldoi that inhabited the region in Antiquity. Chaldia was used throughout the Byzantine period and was established as a formal theme, known as the Theme of Chaldia , in...

in the north-east. During the reign of Emperor Basil II

Basil II

Basil II , known in his time as Basil the Porphyrogenitus and Basil the Young to distinguish him from his ancestor Basil I the Macedonian, was a Byzantine emperor from the Macedonian dynasty who reigned from 10 January 976 to 15 December 1025.The first part of his long reign was dominated...

(r. 976-1025), the eastern border was further expanded, and the katepanate of Iberia was established in 1022.

In the West, the most famous katepanate, that of southern Italy, is attested in the Escorial Taktikon
Escorial Taktikon
The Escorial Taktikon , also known as the Taktikon Oikonomides after Nicolas Oikonomides who first edited it, is a list of Byzantine offices, dignities, and titles composed in Constantinople during the 970s...

, a list of offices compiled circa 971-975, and after the successful conclusion of the Byzantine–Bulgarian Wars, a katepanō of Bulgaria

Bulgaria

Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...

is also attested. A Serbian catepanate

Catepanate of Serbia

Catepanate of Ras or Serbia was a Byzantine province established between 971–976, during the rule of John Tzimiskes...

is also attested, which was known as the "katepano of Ras

Rascia

Rascia was a medieval region that served as the principal province of the Serbian realm. It was an administrative division under the direct rule of the monarch and sometimes as an appanage. The term has been used to refer to various Serbian states throughout the Middle Ages...

".

With the catastrophic territorial losses suffered during the 11th century, the office disappears in the sense of the overall military commander, but is retained in a more local level: during the Komnenian and Palaiologan periods, the term katepanikion thus comes to denote low-level administrative areas, both in Asia Minor (including the Empire of Trebizond

Empire of Trebizond

The Empire of Trebizond, founded in April 1204, was one of three Byzantine successor states of the Byzantine Empire. However, the creation of the Empire of Trebizond was not directly related to the capture of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade, rather it had broken away from the Byzantine Empire...

) and Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

.

These were small subdivisions of the earlier themata, and consisted of little more than a fortified capital (the kastron) and its surrounding territory. In the Palaiologan era, the katepanikion was governed by a kephalē
Kephale (Byzantine Empire)
In the late Byzantine Empire, the term kephalē was used to denote local and provincial governors.It entered use in the second half of the 13th century, and was derived from the colloquial language. Consequently, it never became an established title or rank of the Byzantine imperial hierarchy, but...

(Greek: κεφαλή, "head"), who had supreme civil and military authority within its bounds. Like many other Byzantine institutions, the katepanikion as an administrative subdivision was also adopted in the Second Bulgarian Empire

Second Bulgarian Empire

The 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...

History

See also