In one area only did the great emperor disastrously fail. Absorbed by the cares of state, he never produced an heir, but though this would prove to be calamitous for the empire, it didn’t appear so in his lifetime. By 1025, in the steady hands of its all-powerful emperor, the Byzantine eagle was triumphant on virtually every frontier. Its enemies were scattered and broken before it, and only in Sicily did the Muslim foe continue to resist. Hoping to correct that final oversight, the seventy-year-old emperor gathered a vast army and sent it under the care of a eunuch to await his arrival in Calabria. Basil II, however, never arrived. After a sixty-four-year reign—longer than any other monarch in Roman history—he died, fittingly enough, while planning the campaign.
Constantine the Great had set up twelve massive sarcophagi around his own magnificent tomb in the Church of the Holy Apostles, and the bodies of the greatest Byzantine emperors were traditionally laid to rest inside them. In 1025, there was one last unused sarcophagus, and by all rights Basil should have been buried there; but according to his own wishes, the body was taken to a church in Hebdomon just outside the city walls. Though there were few emperors who better deserved to be buried alongside the giants of the past, his final resting place was somehow fitting. He had always remained aloof from his citizens, never allowing himself to become distracted from the all-important task of running the empire. He had bent foreign rulers to his will, humbled his enemies, and provided a shield for the poor against the clutches of the aristocracy. Yet for all that, he was oddly distant, inspiring admiration in his subjects, but never love. His mind had always been uniquely un-Byzantine, cast more in the mold of his Spartan ancestors than the murky theological speculations of his peers. As the old rebel had advised him so many years ago, no woman or man was ever offered a share in his burdens. Through all the trials of his reign, he remained splendid but remote—surely the loneliest figure ever to sit on the Byzantine throne.
*Bardas Sclerus and Bardas Phocas had a tangled history. When Phocas first rebelled against his cousin Tzimisces, it had been Sclerus who had extinguished his military career by defeating him and sending him into exile. There was certainly no love lost between the two, but their fates were oddly linked until the end of their lives.*Vladimir had been interested in changing religions for some time. According to legend, he sent ambassadors to the major surrounding religions to help him decide. Islam was rejected for being without joy (especially in its rejection of alcohol and pork!), and Judaism was rejected since the Jews had lost their homeland and therefore seemed abandoned by God. Settling on Christianity, he sent his men to discover if the Latin or the Greek rite was better. It was hardly a fair fight. The ambassadors to the West found rather squat, dark churches, while their compatriots in Constantinople were treated to all the pageantry of a Divine Liturgy in the Hagia Sophia. “We no longer knew,” they breathlessly reported back to Vladimir, “whether we were in heaven or on earth.” The Russian prince was convinced. Within a year, he had been baptized, and Russia officially became Orthodox.*The term “Varangian” means “men of the pledge,” and they would be famously loyal to the throne (though not always to its occupant). On the night of their sovereign’s death, they had the curious right to run to the imperial treasury and take as much gold as they could comfortably carry. This custom enabled most Varangians to retire as wealthy men and ensured a steady stream of Norse and Anglo-Saxon recruits.*Michael Psellus, Fourteen Byzantine Rulers (London: Penguin, 1966).
20
THE MARCH OF FOLLY
The empire that Basil II left behind him was indeed glorious, stretching from the Danube in the west to the Euphrates in the east. No power in western Europe or the Middle East could approach it; its gold coin, the nomisma, was the standard currency of trade—and had been for centuries—and its Islamic enemies were cowed and crumbling. The Christian powers of Europe looked up to it as their great protector, and more than one German emperor traveled to southern Italy, where the imperial borders touched, to seek recognition of their titles.* Those from western Europe who traveled to the imperial markets or cities found a world drastically different from the one they had left behind. Medieval Europe was locked in feudalism, with little chance to escape grinding poverty. Peasants spent their lifetimes toiling on land they didn’t own, and medicine offered “cures” to the sick that were often as lethal as the disease. The poor subsisted on a diet of coarse, dark bread and cheese, and were lucky to reach the age of thirty-five. Communication between cities was slow, travel was dangerous, and writing was restricted to the rich and powerful. The church provided what little education was available, but only if a literate priest could be found.
In the East, by contrast, wealth poured into the imperial treasury, the population boomed, and famine seemed to be a thing of the past. Men flush with the excitement of new fortunes seemed to be everywhere, carried about in their sedan chairs, endowing lavish public buildings, and playing polo on the broad public avenues. Confidence was in the air, and it was contagious. The addition of the Bulgarians, the Serbs, and the Russians to the cultural mix had added layers of diversity, but society—and the church—had never been more unified. Iconoclasm, the last great heresy to afflict the Byzantine church, had been settled for nearly two centuries, and the church and the state were infused with a spirit of cooperation. Education once again became a way for ambitious young men to advance, and vast libraries became a status symbol.
There had always been a guarded respect for the pagan classics of antiquity, but with paganism long dead and no longer a threat, there was a new appreciation of the secular classics. A spirit of humanism swept through the empire, and scholars began to consciously emulate the styles of antiquity. Copies of the literature of ancient Greece and Rome became highly valued, and clergy and laymen alike began to dutifully reproduce the dazzling masterpieces. This was among the finest gifts that the empire bequeathed to posterity. Since Egypt—and the source of papyrus—had long been lost to the empire, the crumbling old manuscripts were copied onto more durable and readily available parchment. This in turn enabled the literature to survive. Despite the general destruction that followed the collapse of the empire, most of the Greek classics that are extant today come down to us through Byzantine copies of this period.
The emperors, of course, had always had access to the peerless imperial libraries, but now they began to see a general promotion of schooling as one of their roles. By the time of Basil II’s death, Constantinople was home to brilliant poets, jurists, and historians—a glittering collection of literati that wouldn’t be equaled in the West until the last days of the Renaissance.
It was a pity that Basil II didn’t leave anyone worthy of receiving such a glorious inheritance, but, unfortunately for Byzantium, the cultural flowering that had given the empire such a splendid educated class had also made its court arrogant and insulated, utterly convinced that they knew how to govern the empire better than anyone else. Basil’s death left power unexpectedly in their hands, and they deliberately chose weak and pliable emperors, interested more in keeping their newfound power than in what was best for the state. Ironically enough, this shortsighted policy of putting such mediocrities on the throne guaranteed their own decline. Ruthless taxation once again fell on the poor without burdening the rich, and the land laws of the Macedonian emperors were abandoned, leaving the peasants at the mercy of their predatory neighbors. The rich gobbled up virtually all of the land in their vast estates, while their contacts at court ensured that it was held tax free. Foolish emperors, confronted with a virtually independent aristocracy and now seriously short of funds, exacerbated the problem by devaluing their gold coins—a step the empire had managed to avoid for nearly seven hundred years. The value of the currency collapsed, sending inflation spiraling, and Byzantium’s prestige plummeted as international merchants abandoned the worthless coins.