Empire of God, page 23
The Russians
The Christianization of Rus
Basil II Porphyrogenitos was only eighteen years old when he became the emperor of the Romans in 976, and so initially he left the matters of the state to the same person who poisoned John Tzimiskes, his half-brother Basil Lekapenos. The eleventh-century historian Michael Psellos says that Basil Lekapenos was “the most remarkable person in the Roman Empire, outstanding in intellect, bodily stature, and regal appearance.”432 The empire thus seemed to be in capable hands, but Basil II’s entrusting his imperial duties to a minister appears to have given some people the impression that Basil II was soft and given to worldly pleasures, after the manner of his father, Romanos II. And since Romanos died, the empire had been ruled by two generals in succession, one of whom gained the throne by murdering the other. Now two other generals, Bardas Skleros and Bardas Phokas, who was the nephew of Nikephoros II Phokas, thought they saw an opportunity to further this precedent by overthrowing Basil II, as well as the junior emperor—his younger brother Constantine VIII—and ruling as emperors themselves.
Basil II, however, proved to be a wilier, more resourceful and more ruthless foe than they imagined. Needing allies with military might to face foes whose primary base of support was in the Roman military, he turned to Prince Vladimir of Kyiv, with whom Basil established a bond of familial loyalty by marrying the Russian to his sister, Anna. According to the twelfth-century Russian Primary Chronicle, this marriage came about just as Vladimir had been searching for a suitable religion for his kingdom. In 987, Vladimir summoned the Russian noblemen, the boyars, and the municipal magistrates, and said:
Behold, the Bulgars came before me urging me to accept their religion. Then came the Germans and praised their own faith; and after them came the Jews. Finally the Greeks appeared, criticizing all other faiths but commending their own, and they spoke at length, telling the history of the whole world from its beginning. Their words were artful, and it was wondrous to listen and pleasant to hear them. They preach the existence of another world. “Whoever adopts our religion and then dies shall arise and live forever. But whosoever embraces another faith, shall be consumed with fire in the next world.” What is your opinion on this subject, and what do you answer?433
His men answered, “You know, oh Prince, that no man condemns his own possessions, but praises them instead. If you desire to make certain, you have servants at your disposal. Send them to inquire about the ritual of each and how he worships God.”434 Vladimir thought that was good advice, and chose ten envoys, directing them “to go first among the Bulgars and inspect their faith. The emissaries went their way, and when they arrived at their destination they beheld the disgraceful actions of the Bulgars and their worship in the mosque; then they returned to their country. Vladimir then instructed them to go likewise among the Germans, and examine their faith, and finally to visit the Greeks. They thus went into Germany, and after viewing the German ceremonial,” they returned to Vladimir’s court.435 There they reported:
When we journeyed among the Bulgars, we beheld how they worship in their temple, called a mosque, while they stand ungirt. The Bulgar bows, sits down, looks hither and thither like one possessed, and there is no happiness among them, but instead only sorrow and a dreadful stench. Their religion is not good. Then we went among the Germans, and saw them performing many ceremonies in their temples; but we beheld no glory there. Then we went to Greece, and the Greeks led us to the edifices where they worship their God, and we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it. We only know that God dwells there among men, and their service is fairer than the ceremonies of other nations. For we cannot forget that beauty. Every man, after tasting something sweet, is afterward unwilling to accept that which is bitter, and therefore we cannot dwell longer here.436
Apparently the envoys had witnessed the Patriarchal Divine Liturgy in Hagia Sophia. After hearing their rapturous report of what they had seen there, the boyars said: “If the Greek faith were evil, it would not have been adopted by your grandmother Olga, who was wiser than all other men.”437 Vladimir asked them if they thought they should all get baptized, and they told him that such a decision was up to him. But Vladimir delayed making any decision, and the following year decided to seize Chersonesus (modern-day Kherson) on the Black Sea. Once he had taken it, he wrote to Basil II and Constantine VIII: “Behold, I have captured your glorious city. I have also heard that you have an unwedded sister. Unless you give her to me as wife, I shall deal with your own city as I have with Kherson.”438
Basil sent back a canny reply that was calculated to gain an ally rather than further antagonize a foe: “It is not meet for Christians to give in marriage to pagans. If you are baptized, you shall have her to wife, inherit the kingdom of God, and be our companion in the faith. Unless you do so, however, we cannot give you our sister in marriage.”439 Vladimir responded “that he was willing to accept baptism, having already given some study to their religion, and that the Greek faith and ritual, as described by the emissaries sent to examine it, had pleased him well.”440
Basil and Constantine, according to the Primary Chronicle, were thrilled to hear this, although likely only Basil was involved, for Constantine had shown no interest in matters of state. Their sister Anna, however, was deeply unhappy with the arrangement. Vladimir would be the first barbarian king to marry into the imperial family, and Anna was initially unwilling to make history in this way. “It is as if I were setting out into captivity,” she said, “better were it for me to die at home.”441
Basil, however, explained to her what was at stake: “Through your agency God turns the land of Rus to repentance, and you will relieve Greece from the danger of grievous war. Do you not see how much harm the Russes have already brought upon the Greeks? If you do not set out, they may bring on us the same misfortunes.”442 Anna, still tearful, nonetheless consented, and set out for Kyivan Rus, meeting Vladimir at Kherson.
Then, according to the Primary Chronicle, came a miracle, through the agency of the reluctant Anna herself:
By divine agency, Vladimir was suffering at that moment from a disease of the eyes, and could see nothing, being in great distress. The Princess declared to him that if he desired to be relieved of this disease, he should be baptized with all speed, otherwise it could not be cured. When Vladimir heard her message, he said, “If this proves true, then of a surety is the God of the Christians great,” and gave order that he should be baptized. The Bishop of Kherson, together with the Princess’s priests, after announcing the tidings, baptized Vladimir, and as the Bishop laid his hand upon him, he straightway received his sight. Upon experiencing this miraculous cure, Vladimir glorified God, saying, “I have now perceived the one true God.” When his followers beheld this miracle, many of them were also baptized.443
Thus, was affected one of the most momentous events of world history, the Christianization of Russia. Vladimir’s domains swiftly became Orthodox, and Orthodox Christianity was swiftly becoming a form of the Christian faith that was distinct from the form found in Rome and the rest of the West. As he was being instructed in the Christian faith, Vladimir was even warned against Latin practices:
Do not accept the teachings of the Latins, whose instruction is vicious. For when they enter the church, they do not kneel before the images, but they stand upright before kneeling, and when they have knelt, they trace a cross upon the ground and then kiss it, but they stand upon it when they arise. Thus while prostrate they kiss it, and yet upon arising they trample it underfoot. Such is not the tradition of the Apostles. For the Apostles prescribed the kissing of an upright cross, and also prescribed the use of images. For the Evangelist Luke painted the first image and sent it to Rome. As Basil has said, the honor rendered to the image redounds to its original. Furthermore, they call the earth their mother. If the earth is their mother, then heaven is their father, for in the beginning God made heaven and earth. Yet they say, “Our Father which art in Heaven.” If, according to their understanding, the earth is their mother, why do they spit upon their mother, and pollute her whom they caress?444
The estrangement of the churches in Western Europe from those of the Roman Empire was growing because of weightier matters than these, but the priests’ warnings to Vladimir demonstrate that the differences between Christianity in Rome and Christianity in Constantinople had become so pronounced that they were perceived and understood on a popular level as well as being matters of abstruse theological consideration. The formal schism between the two was still decades away, but it was decidedly into Orthodox Christianity—which by this time meant the Christianity of the Roman Empire in Constantinople—that Vladimir was baptized, and into which he led his kingdom.
Because the marriage of Anna, the sister of Basil II, to Vladimir meant the union of the Roman and the Russian imperial families, there grew in Russia the idea that as Constantinople was the New Rome—or the Second Rome—so Moscow was the Third Rome, and, after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the sole heir and continuation of the Roman imperial tradition. This assertion has, of course, been met with considerable skepticism. Nevertheless, it also had immense influence over the development of imperial Russia. The title czar or tsar, in fact, is a Russian form of caesar, the ancient title of the Roman emperors. (The German kaiser was also a form of caesar, derived from the usage of the Holy Roman emperors.)
Orthodox Christian Russia considered itself to be the embodiment of the Greek and Roman traditions that had previously flourished in Rome and Constantinople. In these post-Cold War and new Cold War days, when the West is busy discarding and forgetting its own Christian tradition, it is overlooking the fact that Russia—the great antagonist of the present-day West—has roots in the same civilization that made Western Europe flourish and gave birth to the ideas that formed the basis for the United States of America. This is a deep kinship that it would benefit both sides to recall.
The Bulgar Slayer
Basil II prevailed against those who challenged his rule; he also accused his half-brother Basil Lekapenos of conspiring with one of them. Consequently, he removed him from all offices and nullified laws issued during his regency, confining the former imperial chamberlain and chief minister to his home. But even there, the emperor knew that his half-brother could and would still be scheming. “Then,” says John Skylitzes, “seeing that he would not remain quietly there but was forever conjuring up some unwelcome thing and endeavoring to regain his former power, he exiled him to the Bosporus and confiscated most of his property so that he would not have access to the means of committing any criminal offense.”445
There was a downside to toppling Basil Lekapenos, whose massive property holdings had attracted the attention of Emperor John Tzimiskes and gotten that emperor killed. For all his corruption, Basil Lekapenos had been well connected, and as long as he was at the side of the emperor, Lekapenos’s friends were the emperor’s friends. But once Lekapenos was gone, Skylitzes notes, Basil II was relatively isolated within the court. “Now the emperor was deprived of the parakoimomenos’ counsel; he was also devoid of friends and colleagues to assist in the difficulties which confronted him.”446
It may have been the loneliness of his position that led the emperor to have a cordial meeting with one of those who had plotted to overthrow him, Bardas Skleros. “When they shared a common drinking-bowl,” recounts Michael Psellos, “the emperor first put to his own lips the cup offered to Sclerus and took a moderate sip of its contents before handing it back to his guest. Thus he relieved him of any suspicion of poison, and at the same time proved the sanctity of their agreement.”447 Then he asked Skleros how the empire could be “preserved free from dissension.”448 Skleros answered: “Cut down the governors who become overproud. Let no generals on campaign have too many resources. Exhaust them with unjust exactions, to keep them busied with their own affairs. Admit no woman to the imperial councils. Be accessible to no one. Share with few your most intimate plans.”449
Basil appears to have taken this advice to heart. In 1004, he moved against the nobles, issuing, according to Skylitzes, “an ordinance that magnates were to pay the taxes of deceased common folk; this arrangement was called allelengyon.”450 This was based on the idea of corporate taxation, in which a group of people were assessed a certain amount and had to pay it even if some of their number had died since the assessment had been initially made or were away on military service. Many nobles, however, had been exempted from taxation for various reasons; this was an attempt to restore their obligations to the state as well as minimize the threat they posed to the emperor. Ecumenical Patriarch Sergios, as well as “many bishops and a good number of monks begged for this unreasonable burden to be withdrawn, but the emperor was not persuaded.”451 Michael Psellos adds that “after the great families had been humiliated and put on equal footing with the rest, Basil found himself playing the game of power politics with considerable success. He surrounded himself with favorites who were neither remarkable for brilliance of intellect, nor too learned.”452
Psellos’s taste for capable bureaucrats, however, was not borne out by any suffering the empire endured as a result of their absence. Basil II was able to turn his attention to the external threats that the empire faced, and he tackled them with exquisite skill.
The enemies of the Romans had noticed that the emperor was consumed with putting down internal revolts and had taken advantage of his distraction. The Bulgars had not been neutralized by the capture of Boris II; other Bulgars rejected the Roman assertion of authority, and Basil had initially been too distracted to do anything about it. But in 1002, he launched a full-scale invasion of Bulgaria. Constantine Manasses speaks of his successes in rapturous terms, enthusiastically depicting scenes of appalling gore: “The Bulgarian leaders perceived his might; their fields were dyed with blood; corpses were scattered like oak trunks. In many places, swamps formed from the blood that had poured out. Then the Ausonian troops [that is, Basil’s forces], those heavily armed, and those not so heavily armed, danced with carefree steps through Thrace. The Bulgarian corpses were strewn everywhere, no fewer than the corpses of the Trojans in ancient times, when Achilles ravaged Troy near the Scamander.”453
Basil’s successes against the Bulgars earned him the nickname Bulgaroktonos, “the Bulgar Slayer.” Modern people generally recoil at such sobriquets, but in Basil’s day it was a badge of honor, indicating his victory over a people who would have destroyed the empire utterly and killed or enslaved many of its citizens if it had been able to do so. Others were given similar names, notably Santiago Matamoros—or St. James the Moor Slayer—who was said to have miraculously appeared and led a Christian army to victory over the Moors in Spain.
Nowadays such names are regarded as contrary to the passion for “diversity” we are all supposed to cultivate. In 2004, Spanish authorities decided to remove the statue of Santiago Matamoros from the Santiago de Compostela Cathedral in order to appease Muslims after the jihad bombings in Madrid that killed 193 people.454 The authorities reversed themselves after a public outcry, but there is no doubt that Santiago Matamoros and Basil Bulgaroktonos are against the spirit of the age. Today we are to extend the hand of friendship and open our doors to those who wish to destroy us, setting the example for them of how we can set our differences aside and live together in multicultural harmony. The only problem with this scenario is that not everyone subscribes to this view. The US and Europe face existential threats today from those who would destroy them as completely as the Bulgars wished to destroy the Roman Empire. But today, should any of these threats mount an actual attack, innumerable multitudes within our own gates would denounce the very idea of fighting back. The days when people were named Matamoros and Bulgaroktonos may have been cruder and less polite, as well as less welcoming to “the other,” but they had a healthier sense of survival than many do today.
Basil had concluded a truce with the Shi’ite Fatimid caliphate, but in 1009, the Fatimid caliph Hakim, according to John Skylitzes, “broke his truce with the Romans on a small pretext and for minor infringements scarcely worthy of notice. He destroyed the magnificent church which had been erected over the tomb of Christ the Savior in Jerusalem; he devastated the illustrious monasteries [there] and dispersed the monks who lived in them to the four corners of the earth.”455
Nikephoros Phokas and John Tzimiskes had made great gains for the empire in Syria but had not been able to reach Jerusalem. Basil was not able to do so either; it would be left to later emperors to deal with the growing problem of the Muslim presence in the Holy Land, which involved not only the destruction of churches but the menacing of pilgrims, many of whom were killed, and others enslaved.
Nonetheless, when Basil II died in 1025, the Romans could look back on his nearly fifty years as emperor with immense gratitude. His conquests had significantly enlarged the empire and increased the confidence and security of the people. Those conquests, as well as his frugal fiscal policies at home, had left the Roman treasury overflowing. The twentieth-century historian E. R. A. Sewter concludes: Basil “crushed rebellions, subdued the feudal landowners, conquered the enemies of the Empire, notably in the Danubian provinces and the East. Everywhere the might of Roman arms was respected and feared. The treasury was overflowing with the accumulated plunder of Basil’s campaigns. Even the lamp of learning, despite the emperor’s known indifference, was burning still, if somewhat dimly. The lot of ordinary folk in Constantinople must have been pleasant enough. For most of them life was gay and colorful, and if the city’s defensive fortifications were at some points in disrepair they had no cause to dread attacks.”456
The empire’s power at this point was virtually unrivaled. The Islamic powers were enduring a period of weakness and instability of their own. The Western European states looked upon the empire as a great power, ruled from the great city of Constantinople that had no peer in the West.
