MANUEL I., Comnenus, emperor of Constantinople from 1143 to 1184, was the fourth son of John II. (Calo-Joannes), and was born about the year 1120. He succeeded to the imperial crown on April 8, 1143, having for his martial qualities been nominated by John to the inheritance in preference to his elder surviving brother. During his reign of thirty-seven years he was involved in almost perpetual war, in which he displayed much more of the courage of a soldier than of the prudence and skill of a commander. In 1144 the imperial general Demetrius Branas brought back Raymond, the Latin prince of Antioch, to his allegiance, and in 1145 Manuel in person drove out the Turks who had invaded Isauria, and compelled them to accept peace on his own terms. In 1147 he granted a passage through his dominions to the crusaders under Louis VII. of France and Conrad III. of Germany, but secretly harassed them by every means in his power, and sent word to the Turks of their approach. In the following year he became involved, along with the Venetians, in a war with Roger of Sicily, who had taken Corfu and invaded Greece; an episode of the campaign towards its beginning was his repulse beyond the Danube of the Patzenegues, of whom he took hostages for their future good behaviour. Disembarking his host at Corfu before the end of the year, he invested the fortress in co-operation with the Venetian army; the inhabitants, after a long siege, in which he displayed prodigies of personal strength and valour, surrendered in 1149. Manuel was now prevented from invading Sicily by a diversion made by the Servians and Hungarians on the Danube, who were nut completely vanquished until 1152. In that year Manuel was repulsed by the Turks in Cilicia, but in the west his troops obtained possession of Bari, ...

MANUEL II., J/’alaeologus, emperor of Constantinople, was born in 1348, and succeeded his father, John VI. (with whom he had been associated since 1375), in 1391. At the time he was a hostage at the court of Bajazet at'Nicaea, but succeeded in making his escape; he was forthwith besieged in Constantinople by the sultan, whose victory over the Christians at Nicopolis, however (September 28, 1395), did not secure for him the capital. Manuel subsequently set out in person to seek help from the West, and for this purpose visited Italy, France, and Germany, but without material success; the victory of Timur in 1402, and the death of Bajazet in the following year, were the first events to give him a genuine respite from Ottoman oppression. He stood on friendly terms with Mahomet I., but was again besieged in his capital by Amurath II. in 1422. He died in 1425, and was succeeded by his son, John VII.