Michael I. (Rhangabé) was an obscure nobleman who had married Procopia, the daughter of Nicephorus I., and been made master of the palace; his elevation to the throne was due to a revolutionary movement against his brother-in-law Stauracius, who reigned only two months after the death of Nicephorus on the battlefield (812). Elected as the tool of the bigoted orthodox party in the church, Michael diligently persecuted the Iconoclasts on the northern and eastern frontiers of the empire, but meanwhile allowed the Bulgarians to ravage a great part of Macedonia and Thrace; having at last taken the field in the spring of 813, he was defeated near Bersinikia, and Leo the Armenian was saluted emperor in his stead in the following summer. Michael, after having been compelled to become a monk, was permitted thenceforward to live unmolested in the island of Prote, where he died in 845.

Michael II. (The Stammerer), a native of Amorium in Phrygia, was of humble origin, and began life as a private soldier, but rose by his talents and assiduity to the rank of general. He was one of those who had favoured the election to the throne of his old companion in arms Leo the Armenian in 813, but, detected in a conspiracy against the government of that emperor, had been sentenced to death in December 820; his partisans, however, succeeded in assassinating Leo on the morning of Christmas Day, and called Michael from the prison to the throne. The principal features of his reign (820-829) were a protracted struggle (of nearly three years) against his brother general, Thomas, who aimed at the throne, the conquest of Crete by the Saracens in 823, and the beginning of their attacks upon Sicily (827). Conciliatory on the whole in his policy towards the image worshippers (his own sympathies were iconoclastic), he incurred the wrath of the monks by entering into a second marriage with Euphrosyne, daughter of Constantine VI., who had previously taken the veil. He died in October 829, and was succeeded by Theophilus his son.

Michael III. (The Drunkard) was the grandson of Michael the Stammerer, and succeeded his father Theophilus when only three years of age (842). Until his majority at the age of eighteen the affairs of the empire were managed by the empress-regent his mother Theodora; his education was shamefully neglected, and it was during this period that Michael formed the disgraceful personal habits which are indicated by his surname. In 861 Michael, together with his uncle Bardas, undertook an expedition against the Bulgarians, which resulted in the conversion of the Bulgarian king, who thenceforth bore the Christian name of Michael. The emperor had been less successful in the campaign which he led in person against Omar of Melitene in 860, but in 863 his uncle Petronas gained an important victory over the Saracens in Asia Minor. The year 865 was marked by the first appearance of the Russians in the Bosphorus. Michael was assassinated in his palace in 867 by Basilius the Macedonian, whom he had associated with himself in the empire in the previous year.

Michael IV. (The Paphlagonian) owed his elevation to Zoe, daughter of Constantine IX., the last of the Macedonian dynasty; this princess was married to Romanus HL, but becoming enamoured of Michael, her chamberlain, she poisoned her husband and married her attendant (1034). Michael, however, being of a weak character and subject to epileptic fits, possessed the supreme power only in name, and was a mere instrument in the hands of his brother, John the Eunuch, who had been first minister both of Constantine and Romanus. John’s diplomacy was successful in keeping the Arabs in the archipelago and Egypt quiet for some time, and he was at last able to secure a victory for the imperial arms at Edessa in 1037. The attempt to recover Sicily in the following year with the help of the Normans was less prosperous, and in 1040 the island wholly ceased to be a Byzantine province. About the same time, the Bulgarians having overrun Macedonia and Thrace, and threatening Constantinople, the indolent and infirm emperor, to the surprise alike of friends and foes, put himself at the head of the army, and not only drove the enemy beyond the frontier, but followed them into their own territory. He died, shortly after his triumph, on December 10, 1041.

Michael V. (Calaphates or The Caulker), nephew and successor of the preceding, derived his surname from his father Stephen, who had originally followed the occupation of a caulker of ships. He owed his elevation (December 1041) to his uncle John, whom along with Zoe he almost immediately banished; this led to a popular tumult and his dethronement after a brief reign of four months (April 1042). He lived for many years afterwards in the quiet obscurity of a monastery.

Michael VI. (The Warlike) was already an old man when chosen by the empress Theodora as her successor shortly before her death in 1056. His government was feeble in the extreme, and he was at last compelled to abdicate by Isaac Comnenus, who had defeated his army in Phrygia (August 1057). He also spent the rest of his life in a monastery.

Michael VII. (Ducas or Parapinaces) was the eldest son of Constantine XI. Ducas, by whom along with his brothers Andronicus I. and Constantine XII. he was invested with the title of Augustus; this joint succession took place in 1067, but in 1071 it suited the policy of the uncle Joannes Caesar to make Michael sole emperor. For this position Michael, whose “character was degraded, rather than ennobled, by the virtues of a monk and the learning of a sophist,” was by no means fitted, and at length two generals of the name of Nicephorus, surnamed Bryennius and Botaniates, simultaneously rebelled against him in 1078; with hardly a struggle he resigned the purple and retired into a monastery, where he afterwards received the title of archbishop of Ephesus.

Michael VIII. (Palaeologus), born in 1234, was the son of Andronicus Palaeologus Comnenus and Irene Angela the granddaughter of Alexius Angelus, emperor of Constantinople. At an early age he rose to distinction, and ultimately became commander of the French mercenaries in the employment of the emperors of Nicaea. A few days after the death of Theodore Lascaris II. in 1259, Michael, by the assassination of Muzalon (which he is believed but not proved to have encouraged), succeeded to the guardianship, shared with the patriarch Arsenius, of the young emperor John Lascaris, then a lad of only eight years. Afterwards invested with the title of “despot,” he was finally proclaimed joint-emperor, and crowned alone at Nicaea on January 1, 1260. In the following year (July 1261) Constantinople fell into the hands of the Caesar Alexius Strategopulus, and Michael, having got himself crowned anew in the church of St Sophia, caused his boy colleague to be blinded and sent into banishment. For this last act he was excommunicated by Arsenius, and the ban was not removed until six years afterwards (1268), on the accession of a new patriarch. In 1263 and 1264 respectively Michael, with the help of Urban IV., concluded peace with Villehardouin, prince of Achaia, and Michael, despot of Epirus, who had previously been incited by the pope to attack him; the friendly intervention had been secured by a promise on the emperor’s part to help forward the reunion of the Eastern and Western churches. In 1269 Charles of Sicily, aided by John of Thessaly, again made war with the alleged purpose of restoring Baldwin to the throne of Constantinople, and pressed Michael so hard that ultimately, yielding to the importunities of Gregory X., he caused the deputies of the Eastern church to attend the council of Lyons (1274) and there accept the “filioque” and papal supremacy. The union thus brought about between the two churches was, however, extremely distasteful to the Greeks, and the persecution of his “schismatic” subjects to which the emperor was compelled to resort weakened his power so much that Martin IV. was tempted to enter into alliance with Charles of Anjou and the Venetians for the purpose of reconquering Constantinople. The invasion, however, failed, and Michael so far had his revenge in the “Sicilian Vespers,” which he helped to bring about. He died in Thrace in December 1282, and was succeeded by his son Andronicus II.

Michael IX. (Palaeologus) was the son of Andronicus II., and was associated with him on the throne from 1295, but predeceased him (1320).

The personal character of Michaelis can be read between the lines of his autobiography with the aid of the other materials collected by the editor Hassencamp («Λ. D. Michaelis Lebensbeschreibung, &c., 1793). To understand the secret of his enormous influence, it is not enough to read his books, now for the most part dull enough to us; we must see the upright vivacious laborious man, with a good deal of worldly prudence and a good deal of temper, much absorbed in his manifold academic activities in the university and Royal Society of Göttingen, yet ever full of interest in the larger world, and of shrewd judgmentsand lively talk, with a strong sense of his rights and dignity, yet with a good and warm heart; shining especially in the lecture-room, where he dealt forth knowledge with discursive hand from a full store, displaying the methods as well as the results of his all-sided research, not without a touch of the vanity of the polyhistor, and loving to leave the chair under a storm of applause at a parting bon-mot which he acknowledged at the door in a backward glance of triumph. The same volume contains a full list of his works. Besides those already mentioned it is sufficient to refer to his New Testament Introduction (the first edition, 1750, preceded the full development of his powers, and is a very different book from the later editions), bis reprint of Lowth’s Praelectiones with important additions (1758-62), his German translation of the Bible with notes (1773-92), his Orientalische und Exegetische Bibliothek (1775-85), and Neue 0. and E. Bib. (1786-91), his Mosaisches Recht (1770—71), and his edition of Castle’s Lexicon Syriacum (1787-88). His Litterarischer Briefwechsel (1794-96) contains much that is interesting for the history of learning in his time.