censor; and after the Restoration retained the title of royal censor, with the office of conservator of the monuments of art. Besides works on botany, he wrote on the primitive language of Spain, and published an edition of Rabelais.—P. E. D.
JOHANNOT, Charles Henri Alfred, was born at Offenbach in Hesse-Darmstadt in 1800. Educated as an engraver, he practised that profession for some time at Paris, but, about 1830, he abandoned it for painting. He found a patron in Louis Philippe, for whom he executed several pictures of court ceremonies and reviews. His other paintings are chiefly from French history and the modern poets and novelists. He will probably be remembered chiefly, however, as a designer of woodcut vignettes, in which he displayed great originality and versatility. His illustrations to the French editions of Byron and Scott are familiar to most. He died on the 7th of December, 1837.—J. T—e.
JOHANNOT, Tony, born November 9, 1803, was, like his brother Alfred, brought up as an engraver, like him turned to painting, and ultimately gained his widest and most permanent reputation as a designer on wood. The editions of the works of Molière, of George Sand, Jerôme Paturot, the translations of the Vicar of Wakefield, Sterne's Sentimental Journal, and the like, gained for Tony Johannot a European reputation; and probably they stand almost alone among works of that class for their combination of vigorous design, with subtlety of characterization, refinement, and technical knowledge Tony Johannot died suddenly, August 4, 1852.—J. T—e.
JOHN:—The sovereigns and other distinguished persons of this name are here noticed in the following order—1, emperors of the east; 2, kings and princes in the alphabetical order of their respective countries; 3, princes not sovereigns; 4, popes; 5, ecclesiastics, &c., in the order of their surnames.
BYZANTINE EMPERORS.
John I., surnamed Zimisces, succeeded Nicephorus II. on the Byzantine throne. He was gifted with remarkable talents and a heroic spirit, although in his case these commanding qualities were marred by much that was deeply criminal. Yet his faults belonged to the age in which he lived—an age of rapine, treachery, and blood. To gain the imperial sceptre, he despatched Nicephorus by poison; and Theophania, the widow of his victim, became the spouse of her husband's murderer. The political and military genius of Zimisces infused new life into the drooping realm. Under his regime the Byzantine empire began to recover, as that of the Saracens decayed , and in the campaigns of 970-73 he totally defeated the Bulgarians and the Russians, extending at the same time his brilliant oriental victories even as far as the walls of Bagdad. The greater part of his career was spent in the camp, where his peculiar talents were most conspicuous; and he bid fair to restore the empire to all its former glory, when his ambitious course was cut short by an untimely death—the effect of poison prepared for him by those who dreaded the consequences of some meditated reforms—in 976.
John II., surnamed Calo-Joannes, son of Alexius Comnenus, was born in 1088, and succeeded to the throne in 1118. He was the best and greatest of the Comnenian princes, and was distinguished by his amiable disposition and his blameless life. His sister, the celebrated Anna Comnena, formed a conspiracy against him, with the view of placing her husband Bryennius on the throne. Her treason was discovered, and her accomplices were seized and convicted; but the clemency of John spared their lives, and even ultimately restored their estates. In the second year of his reign he inflicted several defeats on the Turks, who had made an inroad into Phrygia, and drove them back into their own territories. He next expelled the Scythians from Thrace, defeated the Servians and Huns, and repeatedly marched in triumph to Antioch and Aleppo. A second time the Turks were driven by his victorious arms to the mountains, and the maritime provinces of Asia for a time freed from their devastations. He began to indulge the hope of restoring the ancient limits of the empire, when he accidentally met his death from a poisoned arrow, which dropped from his quiver and wounded his hand while he was hunting the wild boar in the valley of Anazarbus in 1143. John was chaste, frugal, abstemious, and remarkable for his clemency. During his government the penalty of death was abolished in the Roman empire. He was ironically named Calo-Joannes, or John the Handsome, on account of his diminutive stature, swarthy complexion, and harsh features, but his grateful subjects applied the designation seriously to the beauties of his mind.—J. T.
John III. (Ducas Vatatzes), born at Didymoticum in Thrace in 1193, was the son-in-law and successor of Theodore Lascaris I., who had enlarged the principality of Nice in Bithynia to imperial dimensions. In 1222 Vatatzes commenced his long and remarkable reign, which, lasting for thirty-three years, reflected rare lustre on the endowments, moral and intellectual, of him who swayed the sceptre. Under his rule, as the Latin empire dissolved, the Greek empire over which he so worthily presided, began once more to gain ascendancy. His military achievements were alike important and successful. Rescuing his provinces from native and foreign usurpers, he also by the construction of a fleet obtained the command of the Hellespont, and reigned supreme from the Turkish frontiers to the Adriatic sea. Nor was his internal administration less deserving of praise. Retaining friendly relations with the Turks, he had at least partial leisure to encourage internal improvements; and all his accustomed energy he devoted to such a task. Agriculture and commerce found in him a zealous patron; while the education of youth and the revival of learning were the most serious objects of his care. He died on the 30th October, 1255, deeply and universally lamented by his subjects.
John IV. was the son of Theodore Lascaris II., and eight years old at his father's death. He was deprived of his sight, and consigned to privacy and oblivion by Michael Palæologus, an illustrious Greek noble who afterwards usurped the throne. This crime was perpetrated on the 25th December, 1261.
John V. See Cantacuzene.
John VI. (Palæologus), born in 1332, was the son of Andronicus the Younger and Anne, a princess of the house of Savoy. At his father's demise in 1341, he was left when only in his ninth year under the guardianship of the regent, John Cantacuzene, who had rendered important services to the state, and was subsequently induced, rather by the pressure of events than from any treasonable motive, to assume the imperial title. For years intestine discord raged with varying success; and while the vital energies of the empire were thus being rapidly exhausted, barbarian invaders were pressing upon its frontiers from every side. Cantacuzene, notwithstanding, triumphed for the time, but his reign was agitated by the strife of faction; and when he surrendered the crown for a cloister in 1355, John Palæologus resumed the imperial purple. During the long period that elapsed until the decease of the latter, the empire sunk into a condition of complete decrepitude. Weak and voluptuous, John could oppose no effectual barrier to the victories of the Turkish Amurath, whose vassal in the end he virtually became. He died in 1391.
John VII. (Palæologus), was born in 1390, and succeeded his father Manuel in 1425. For the decadence of the imperial power this prince derived a species of compensation from the interest he took in ecclesiastical affairs. The great object of his life was to effect re-union between the Eastern and Western churches; and for the purpose of its accomplishment he went to Italy, visited the pope, and attended the council of Ferrara in 1438. The resuscitation of the study of Greek literature in western Europe was the indirect but invaluable result of the eastern sovereign's Italian journey; the learned men who followed in his train having been instrumental in reviving it in the land they visited, after the long oblivion of many hundred years. John Palæologus died in 1448, and was succeeded by his younger brother Constantine, the last of the Byzantine emperors.—J. J.
KINGS OF ARRAGON.
John I., born in 1350, was the son of Pedro IV., whom he succeeded in 1387. His reign was troubled by the intrigues of his mother-in-law, Sibilla, and by the turbulence of his Sicilian and Sardinian subjects. Personally, however, he was almost entirely devoted to luxurious amusements He was killed by a fall from his horse in 1395.
John II., born in 1397, son of Ferdinand the Just. He became king of Navarre in virtue of his wife Blanche, daughter of Charles III., in 1425, and succeeded his brother, Alfonso V., on the throne of Arragon, Sicily, and Sardinia in 1458. From a very early period he was engaged in intrigues in Castile, during the reign of his imbecile namesake, Juan II. of that kingdom (who must not be confounded with him), and of his son Henry IV. The marriage of the infante Fernando (son
