Basil the Macedonian

Byzantine emperor (r. 867-886)

• Born: 812 or 813
• Birthplace: Charioupolis, Macedonia, Byzantine Empire (now in Greece)
• Died: August 29, 0886
• Place of death: Constantinople, Byzantine Empire (now in Istanbul, Turkey)

Through his strength, intelligence, and excellent administration, Basil established the Macedonian Dynasty, which brought the Byzantine Empire to great heights. He imparted such vitality to an ancient imperial tradition that it has been emulated by modern nations.

Early Life

Basil the Macedonian was the eldest son of a couple commonly called Constantine and Pancalo. The father of Constantine appears to have been an Armenian, Hmayeak, known sometimes by his name in Greek form, Maiactes. The mother of Constantine may have been a daughter of Leo V, the ruler of the Byzantine Empire from 813 to 820, also of Armenian descent. Scholar Cyril Toumanoff has traced Hmayeak's ancestry through the Armenian Mamikonian princes and the Arsacid rulers to the Achaemenid monarchs of Persia. The presence of the Armenians in Macedonia was not unusual, as the Byzantine Empire often moved groups of its minorities to areas it wished to strengthen and develop. Macedonia was under attack by the Bulgars during Basil's childhood, and there are unconfirmed reports that he and his family were taken captive by them for a time.

Basil did not learn to read and write until late in life, but he credited his father with being his principal instructor in the wisdom of life. A large, handsome man, he became a skilled rider and breaker of horses and developed impressive strength and athletic ability. These traits helped open his path to greatness when, as a young man, he moved to Constantinople. Also helpful were well-placed fellow Armenians, one of whom engaged Basil as his stable master. This man was a courtier with access to Emperor Michael III, who ruled from 842 to 867. When a wrestler was needed at the palace to defeat a Bulgarian challenger, Basil was taken there and won easily. On a royal hunting trip, Basil was present when the emperor's horse ran away. Vaulting into the saddle with great skill, he brought the steed back safely. The tall and personable Basil became a favorite of Michael III.

Life's Work

Basil divorced his first wife, Maria, the mother of his son Constantine, in 865 and married Eudocia, Michael III's concubine. In 866, Michael had Basil crowned as a coemperor of the Byzantine Empire, but in 867, Michael had a new favorite, so Basil, with the help of several relatives and friends, murdered Michael, becoming sole emperor of the eastern empire in 867. With Eudocia, Basil had three sons: Leo, born in 866; Alexander, born in 870; and Stephen, born in 871. The favorite son, Constantine, was crowned coemperor in 869, as was Leo in 870, these steps being taken to provide for an orderly succession to the throne.

Basil had great plans for his beloved Constantine. In 868, he tried to arrange his marriage to the daughter of Louis II, Roman emperor in the West. Because Louis had no sons, such a marriage could have reunited the two halves of the Roman Empire. Basil's extension of Byzantine control in southern Italy annoyed Louis, however, and the perennial quarrel about papal claims to authority over the Christians of the eastern empire also divided them. The marriage project failed, and the death of Constantine in 879 came as a bitter blow to the emperor. There are scholars who claim that the next heir, Leo, was actually the son of Michael III, but an analysis of the funeral oration delivered by Leo VI when Basil died shows him to be Basil's son, as does the fact that Basil could have eliminated Leo and arranged for the succession of one of his younger sons.

Under Basil I, the Byzantine navy became a dominant power in the eastern Mediterranean. When the Arab fleet attacked along the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea, laying siege to Dubrovnik in 867, a strong Byzantine naval force compelled them to abandon the siege and retire to the southwest. Byzantine missionary efforts led to the Christianization of the Serbians and the Slavic groups on the southeastern shore of the Adriatic, and progress was made with conversions in Bulgaria and Macedonia. There and in Russia, the use of Slavic languages in Slavic letters an alphabet devised by missionaries of Greek origin aided the spread of the faith. The drawing of the Slavic peoples of the Balkans and Russia into the Byzantine cultural, religious, and political orbit was a major achievement. Although Syracuse in Sicily was lost to the Muslims, the Byzantine position in the mainland of southern Italy was improved, against both Muslims and the adherents of the Roman Empire in the West.

Conditions were exceptionally favorable for the Byzantine Empire at this time because of Muslim divisiveness. Egypt established its own rulers in 868, and there were civil wars among the Arabs of North Africa. In the eastern part of the Islamic world, the rising power of the Turks was causing disunity. The Byzantine forces were able to advance their frontiers into what is now southeastern Turkey. The Armenians and their neighbors were thus shielded somewhat from Muslim pressures, and Armenia's relations with the empire were generally positive.

The Byzantine occupation of Tephrice, capital of the Paulicians a deviant Christian sect also moved the border eastward. That victory came in 872, and in the next year Basil's army moved forward in the region of the Euphrates River, taking Zapetra and Samosata. Basil was a ruthless and cruel leader, but he knew how to select highly effective commanders for his forces on land and sea. He motivated them thoroughly, supervising and coordinating them well. The concept of the Christian Empire, which had often been weakened by the divisive influence of the iconoclasts those who opposed the use of holy images in the Church exercised an inspirational and unifying role. Basil began the forging of real nationalism, or “uniculturalism.”

Basil was more a military leader than an intellectual, but his dynastic and family arrangements made it possible for his successors, some of whom tended to be more intellectual or even ineffectual, to blend their rulership's legitimacy with leadership from the armed forces. This was sometimes done by the marriage of legitimate heirs to successful generals or by regency and coemperorship between such partners. Basil also bequeathed an intricately organized civil service, administrative continuity, and a foundation of much-improved law codes.

Basil desired to revive and update the legal system of the empire by preparing an overarching code of Greco-Roman legislative acts. Emperor Justinian I, who ruled from 527 to 565, had codified the laws of ancient Rome, collecting and publishing all the valid imperial edicts. He had also published the collected writings of the classical Roman jurists, thus bringing the vast and frequently conflicting rulings of those jurists into one orderly system. Basil saw that the updating of such a system would provide an underlying unity for a regime that rested on an uneasy partnership of rough soldiers and cultivated bureaucrats, bridging their mutual suspicion and dislike. Not only would government and individual affairs be properly regulated but also a better framework would underlie the expanding commerce of the empire. The Byzantine Empire was the center of flourishing trade between Europe and Russia on the one hand and the commercial routes eastward into Asia on the other. The traders who moved goods through Mesopotamia and Persia, as far as India and China, contributed significantly to the economic well-being of the realm.

Basil wished to adapt the legal system to changed conditions, adding the many laws issued after Justinian's time. Not only was a housecleaning of the old material needed, but Basil also planned to accompany the code with explanations of the Latin words and phrases in Greek. The Greek language would be used for the code, but the old Latin references need not remain obscure.

The new compilations prepared under Basil's administration included a manual of legal science to explain the law and its penalties. Basil realized that the full code might not be issued in his time, and, as it turned out, most of the material was published in the reign of his son, Leo VI. Basil did publish Procheiron (English translation, 1931) and Epanagoge during his lifetime. The voluminous codes, in two sets of forty and sixty volumes, were drafted under Basil and published by his successor as the Basilica (from basilikos, meaning imperial). The influence of these ambitious works was felt not only during the ensuing six centuries of Byzantine history but also in Russia, where the works from Basil's reign were quoted in seventeenth century documents of the government and courts.

Especially interesting in Basil's legal material is the general theory set forth on the rights and duties of the various components of the government and the church authorities, under the emperor and the patriarch of the Church. These two supreme heads had parallel functions, the first to serve the material needs of the people, the second to see to their spiritual condition. The two were to cooperate for the benefit of all humankind.

In August of 886, Basil was mortally injured during a hunt. Taken back to Constantinople, he died nine days later, on August 29, 886. To his son, now Leo VI, he left a stable, well-organized nation, extending from southern Italy east to the Caucasus and from the banks of the Danube River on the north to Syria in the south.

Significance

The firm foundation laid by Basil the Macedonian, through strong government and a homogenized culture, unified a multiracial empire that could have been dissolved by its diversity. The Armenian and Slavic minorities were two groups that took a major part in leading the empire's forces, running its government, and enriching its commerce. Basil also resolved several potential religious schisms during his reign.

Basil's dynasty spread Byzantine influence throughout Europe. His great-great-granddaughter, Theophano, married the Western Roman emperor Otto II and became a forebear of Edward I of England and most later European dynasties. Her sister Anna married Prince Vladimir I of Kiev, the Christianizer of Russia. Vladimir's granddaughter, Anna, was the wife of King Henry I of France; her son was the first of many kings in the West to be named Philip. She was mindful, in selecting the name, of her supposed descent from Philip II, king of Macedonia, the father of Alexander the Great. The uses of these two names by the much later rulers of expansionist Spain and Russia, respectively, demonstrate the vitality even into modern times of the dynamic Byzantine imperial concept.

The heirs of Basil I were well advised to emulate his governmental acumen, but with respect to aggressive empire-building, this emulation has been a tragic force in history. For centuries, Russia saw itself as the Third Rome, Constantinople having been the second. Many modern imperialists have dignified their tyrannies as continuations of the ancient empires, appropriating such symbols as the fasces, eagles, and the titles czar and kaiser, derived from the earlier term, caesar.

Byzantine Emperors: Macedonian Line, 842-1056

Reign

• Emperor

842-867

• Michael III (last of the Phrygian line)

846

• Arabs sack Vatican

865

• Varangian (Russian) incursions

867-886

• Basil I the Macedonian

867

• Siege of Dubrovnik

886

• Venice independent

886-912

• Leo VI the Wise (the Philosopher)

907

• More Varangian attacks

912-913

• Alexander

913-919

• Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus

919-944

• Romanus I Lecapenus

944

• Treaty with Russians

944-959

• Constantine VII (restored)

959-963

• Romanus II

963

• Basil II Bulgaroktonos

963-969

• Nicephorus II Phocas

969-976

• John I Tzimisces

971

• Bulgaria conquered

976-1025

• Basil II (restored)

989

• Russia converted to Christianity

1018

• Macedonian Bulgaria annexed

1025-1028

• Constantine VIII

1028-1034

• Zoë and Romanus III Argyrus

1034-1041

• Zoë and Michael IV the Paphlagonian

1041-1042

• Zoë and Michael V Calaphates

1042

• Zoë and Theodora

1042-1050

• Zoë, Theodora, and Constantine IX Monomachus

1050-1055

• Theodora and Constantine IX

1055-1056

• Theodora

Bibliography

Charanis, Peter. “The Armenians in the Byzantine Empire.” Byzantinoslavica 22 (1961): 226-240. A detailed account of the Armenian minority of Byzantium, with special attention to the time of Basil and his dynasty.

Diehl, Charles. Byzantine Portraits. Translated by Harold Bell. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927. A dated but still-important text that provides sketches of major figures of the empire, including Basil.

Diehl, Charles. Byzantium: Greatness and Decline. Translated by Naomi Walford. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1957. A well-organized work in four sections: “Evolution of Byzantine History,” “Elements of Power,” “Elements of Weakness,” and “Byzantium’s Contribution to the World.” Includes an extensive bibliography.

Ostrogorsky, George. History of the Byzantine State. Translated by Joan Hussey. Rev. ed. New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 1969. An excellent, thorough history. Contains an especially good explanation of the sources on the subject, such as original contemporary materials.

Sherrard, Philip. Byzantium. New York: Time-Life Books, 1966. Notable for being composed of many pictures drawn from very early chronicles, showing events in Byzantium. Much attention to Basil.

Tougher, Shaun. The Reign of Leo VI (886-912): Politics and People. New York: Brill, 1997. Surveys the reign of Basil and his son Leo VI, the establishment of the Macedonian Dynasty, Leo’s wives, military affairs, and more. Includes a map, bibliography, and index.

Treadgold, Warren. “The Persistence of Byzantium.” Wilson Quarterly 22, no. 4 (Autumn, 1998). Presents a detailed history of the Byzantine Empire and argues for its recognition as one of the greatest empires in the history of the world.

Vasiliev, A. A. History of the Byzantine Empire, 324-1453. 2 vols. 1928-1929. 2d ed. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964. A standard authority, but especially recommended for its chapter on the study of Byzantine history.

Vryonis, Speros. Byzantium and Europe. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1967. Good source on a key aspect of Basil’s role in forming history and ideology.

Wagner, Anthony. Pedigree and Progress. London: Phillimore, 1975. Contains a detailed account of the Asian antecedents of Basil, his dynasty, and its marriages and relationships with the European nations. Provides relevant, translated portions of Cyril Toumanoff’s Manuel de Généalogie et de Chronologie pour l’Histoire de la Caucasie Chrétienne (Rome, 1976), not otherwise available in English.