John II of Naples

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John II (died 919) was the duke of Naples from 915 to his death. He succeeded his father Gregory IV on the latter's death late in 915.

The Dukes of Naples were the military commanders of the ducatus Neapolitanus, a Byzantine outpost in Italy, one of the few remaining after the conquest of the Lombards. In 661, Emperor Constans II, highly interested in south Italian affairs, appointed a Neapolitan named Basil dux or magister militum. Thereafter a line of dukes, often largely independent and dynastic from the mid-ninth century, ruled until the coming of the Normans, a new menace they could not weather. The thirty-ninth and last duke, Sergius VII, surrendered his city to King Roger II of Sicily in 1137.

Gregory IV was the firstborn son of Duke Sergius II of Naples and successor of his paternal uncle, Bishop Athanasius, in 898, when he was elected dux, or magister militum, unanimously by the aristocracy. His other paternal uncle, Stephen, succeeded Athanasius as bishop. According to the Chronicon ducum et principum Beneventi, Salerni, et Capuae et ducum Neapolis, he reigned for sixteen years and eight months.

He had accompanied his father to the Battle of the Garigliano under Nicholas Picingli, where the Christian coalition defeated the Moslems of the fortress on the Garigliano.

Nicholas Epigingles, better known by his Latinized surname Picingli, was a Byzantine general active in southern Italy and the Balkans. As strategos of the thema of Longobardia, he led the Byzantine contingent of the Christian league in the Battle of Garigliano in 915. He was killed fighting against the Bulgarians, probably in the Battle of Acheloos on 20 August 917.

Garigliano river in Italy

The Garigliano is a river in central Italy.

Preceded by
Gregory IV 		Duke of Naples
915–919		Succeeded by
Marinus I

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Garigliano may refer to:

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