No More Learning

” On
26 July the Greek army was annihilated; no prisoners were taken ; for
the first time since the death of Valens four centuries earlier an Emperor
had fallen in battle; and, to add to the disgrace, his head, after being
exposed on a lance, was lined with silver and used as a goblet, in which
the savage Bulgarian pledged his nobles at state banquets. Yet the
lexicographer Suidas? would have us believe that this primitive savage
was the author of a code of laws—one of which ordered the uprooting
of every vine in Bulgaria, to prevent drunkenness, while another bade
his subjects give to a beggar sufficient to prevent him ever feeling the
pinch of want again. To complete the disaster, Nicephorus' son, the
Emperor Stauracius, died of his wounds.
This was not Krum's only triumph over the Greeks. In 812 he cap-
tured Develtus and Mesembria, as the war party at Constantinople,
headed by Theodore of Studion, declined to renew an old Greco-Bulgarian
commercial treaty of some fifty years earlier, which had permitted
merchants duly provided with seals and passports to carry on trade in
either state, and under which the Bulgarian ruler was entitled to a gift
of clothing and 30 lbs. of red-dyed skins. The treaty also fixed the
Greco-Bulgarian frontier at the hills of Meleona, well to the south of
the Balkans, and stipulated for the extradition of deserters. When
the Emperor Michael I marched against him in 813, Krum inflicted a
severe defeat at Versinicia near Hadrianople, and the rare circumstance
of the Bulgarians defeating the trained hosts of Byzantium in the open
country led to the suspicion of treachery on the part of the general, Leo
the Armenian. At any rate, he profited by the disaster, for he supplanted
Michael on the throne, and thus the rude Bulgarian could boast that he
had slain one Roman Emperor and caused the death of another and the
dethronement of a third. He now burned to take the Imperial city; but
this was a task beyond his powers. His strange human sacrifices before
the Golden Gate, his public ablutions, and the homage of his harem,
did not compensate for lack of experience in so formidable a siege. He
then claimed to erect his lance over the Golden Gate, and, when that
insolent request was refused, demanded an annual tribute, a quantity of fine
raiment, and a certain number of picked damsels. The new Emperor,
Leo V, offered to discuss these last proposals, in order to set an ambush
for his enemy. Krum unsuspectingly accepted the offer, and narrowly
Suidas, ed. Gaisford, 1. 761-62; Cedrenus, 11. 41-42; B2. xvi. 254-57.
1
CH. VIII.


## p. 234 (#276) ############################################

234
Omurtag
escaped assassination, thanks, so a monkish chronicler expresses it, to the
sins of his would be assassins. The smoking suburbs of Byzantium were
the testimony of his revenge; the palaceof St Mamas perished in the flames;
the shores of the Hellespont and the interior of Thrace were devastated.
Exactly a thousand years later, another Bulgarian army reached Chatalja,
the last bulwark of Constantinople, and the Bulgarian siege of 813 was
exhumed as an historical precedent.
Hadrianople succumbed to hunger; its inhabitants and those of other
Thracian towns were carried off to “Bulgaria beyond the Danube,” among
them the future Emperor, Basil I. But, by one of those sudden changes
of fortune with which recent Bulgarian history has familiarised us, Leo
inflicted such a crushing defeat upon the Bulgarians near Mesembria,
that the spot where he had lain in wait was long pointed out as “ Leo's
hill. ” To avenge this disaster, Krum prepared for another siege of
Constantinople, and this time intended to appear with a complete siege
train before the walls. But, as in the case of the great Serbian Tsar,
Stephen Dušan, death cut short the Bulgarian's enterprise. On 14 April
814 Krum burst a blood vessel. After a brief period of civil war, Krum's son,
Omurtag, became “ Sublime Khan,” and concluded a thirty years' peace
with the Empire, of which a summary has been preserved. By this treaty
Thrace was partitioned between the Greeks and the Bulgarians, and the
frontier ran from Develtus to the fortress of Makroliváda, between Ha-
drianople and Philippopolis, whence it turned northward to the Balkans.
It was not a paper frontier such as diplomacy loves to trace on maps,
but consisted of a rampart and trench, known to Byzantine historians as
“ the Great Fence” and to the modern peasants, who still tell strange
stories of how it was made, as the Erkesiya, from a Turkish word meaning
a “cutting in the earth. ”ı
Thus guaranteed against a conflict with the Greeks, the Bulgarians
turned their attention westward, and for the first time came into touch
with the Frankish Empire, which had established its authority as far south
as Croatia. In 824 a Bulgarian embassy appeared at the court of Louis
the Pious, in order to regulate the Franco-Bulgarian frontiers, which
marched together near Belgrade. The Western Emperor, knowing nothing
about the Bulgarians and their geographical claims, sent an envoy of his
own to make inquiries on the spot, and, after keeping the Bulgarian
mission waiting at Aix-la-Chapelle, finally sent it back without any de-
finite reply. Omurtag, anxious to maintain his prestige over the Slavs
beyond the Danube, who had shewn signs of placing themselves under
the protection of his powerful neighbour, invaded Pannonia and set up
Bulgarian governors there. In fact, Syrmia and eastern Hungary remained
Bulgarian till the Magyar conquest.
A Greek inscription on a pillar of the church of the Forty Martyrs
at Trnovo commemorates the works of the Sublime Khan Omurtag"
1 Bury in EHR. (1910), xxv. 276–87.


## p. 235 (#277) ############################################

First Serbo-Bulgarian War
235
the “house of high renown" which he “built on the Danube," and the
sepulchre” which he “ made mid-way” between that and his “old
house” at Pliska. Of these two constructions the former has been identified
with the ruined fortress of Kadykei near Turtukai on the Danube (the
Bulgaro-Roumanian frontier according to the Treaty of Bucharest of
1913), the latter with a mound near the village of Mundzhilar. Another
Greek inscription, recently discovered at Chatalar, records a still more
important creation of this ruler~" a palace on the river Tutsa,” intended
to overawe the Greeks. This“ palace," founded, as the inscription informs
us, in 821–22, was none other than the future capital of Bulgaria, Great
Prêslav, or “the Glorious,” a little to the south-west of Shumla. Despite
the prayer uttered in this inscription that “the divine ruler may press
down the Emperor with his foot,” Omurtag, so far from attacking the
Greek Empire, actually aided Michael II in 823 against the rebel Thomas,
who was besieging Constantinople. Thus Byzantium, besieged by one
Bulgarian ruler, was, ten years later, relieved by another. There is little
continuity of policy in the Balkans.
Omurtag, who was still alive in 827, was succeeded by his son
Presiam, or Malomir as he was called in the increasingly important
Slavonic idiom of Bulgaria'. His reign is important historically because
it was unfortunately marred by the first of the long series of Serbo-
Bulgarian wars, of which our own generation has seen three. Charac-
teristically it seems to have arisen out of the Bulgarian occupation of
western Macedonia. The Serbian prince, Vlastimir, during a three years
struggle, inflicted heavy losses on the Bulgarians. Presiam's nephew and
successor, the famous Boris, who began his long reign in 852, was again
defeated by Vlastimir's three sons, and his own son Vladimir with
twelve great nobles was captured. Boris had to sue for peace to save the
prisoners; he was no more fortunate in his quarrel with the Croats, and
he maintained towards the Greeks the pacific policy of Omurtag.
The name of Boris is indelibly connected with the conversion of the
Bulgarians to Christianity. Sporadic attempts at conversion had already
been made, and with sufficient success to provoke persecution by Omurtag,
whose eldest son is even said to have become a proselyte. But in the
time of Boris Christianity became the State religion. In the Near East
politics and religion are inextricably mingled, and it is probable that
political considerations may have helped to influence the Bulgarian ruler.
Boris, placed midway between the Western and the Eastern Empire, had
played an equivocal part between Louis the German and Rostislav of
Moravia, now supporting the German, now the Slav. The Moravian
prince pointed out to Byzantium the danger to the whole Balkan
peninsula of a Bulgaro-German alliance, especially if Boris, as his German
ally desired, adopted the Western faith. Michael III at once saw the
gravity of the situation; he made a hostile demonstration against Bulgaria,
1 Bury, A History of the Eastern Roman Empire, Appendix X.
>
1
CH. VIII,


## p. 236 (#278) ############################################

236
Conversion of the Bulgarians
whose ruler submitted without a blow, agreed to accept the Orthodox
form of Christianity, thus becoming ecclesiastically dependent on the
Ecumenical Patriarch, and received, as a slight concession, a small rec-
tification of his frontier in the shape of an uninhabited district. Boris
was baptised in 864–65, the Emperor acted as his sponsor, and the convert
took his sponsor's name of Michael. Other less mundane reasons for his
conversion are given. It is said that, during a severe famine, he was
moved by the appeals of his sister (who had embraced Christianity during
her captivity in Constantinople) and by the arguments of a captive monk,
Theodore Koupharas, to become a Christian. Another story represents
him as terrified into acceptance of the faith by the realistic picture of the
Last Judgment painted for him by a Greek artist, Methodius. His
attempt, however, to force baptism upon his heathen subjects led to a
revolt of the nobles. He put down this insurrection with the utmost
severity; he executed 52 nobles with their wives and families, while sparing
the common folk. The celebrated Patriarch Photius sent a literary essay
to his “ well-beloved son on the heresies that beset, and the duties that
await, a model Christian prince, and missionaries—Greeks, Armenians,
and others—flooded Bulgaria. Perplexed by their different precepts and
alarmed at the reluctance of the Patriarch to appoint a bishop for
Bulgaria, Boris craftily sent an embassy to Pope Nicholas I, asking him
to send a bishop and priests, and propounding a list of 106 theological
and social questions, upon which he desired the Pope's authoritative
opinion. This singular catalogue of doubts included such diverse subjects
as the desirability of wearing drawers (which the Pope pronounced to be
immaterial), the expediency of the sovereign dining alone (which was
declared to be bad manners), the right way with pagans and apostates,
and the appointment of a Bulgarian Patriarch. Nicholas I sent Formosus,
afterwards Pope, and another bishop as his legates to Bulgaria with
replies to these questions, denouncing the practice of torturing prisoners
and other barbarous customs, but putting aside for the present the
awkward question of a Patriarch; Bulgaria was, however, to have a bishop,
and later on an archbishop. Photius in reply denounced the proceedings
of the Roman Church in Bulgaria, and the reluctance of the new Pope
Hadrian II to nominate as archbishop a person recommended by Boris
made the indignant Bulgarian abandon Rome for Byzantium, which
gladly sent him an archbishop and ten bishops. The Archbishop of
Bulgaria took the next place after the Patriarch at festivities; Boris' son,
the future Tsar Simeon, was sent to study Demosthenes and Aristotle
at Constantinople. One further step towards the popularisation of
Christianity in Bulgaria remained to be taken—the introduction of the
Slavonic liturgy and books of devotion. This was, towards the end of
· Boris' reign, the work of the disciples of Methodius, one of the two famous
“Slavonic Apostles," when they were driven from Moravia. Boris in 888
retired into a cloister, whence four years later he temporarily emerged to


## p. 237 (#279) ############################################

Simeon's love of learning
237
depose his elder son Vladimir, whose excesses had endangered the state.
After placing his younger son Simeon on the throne in 893, Boris lived
on till 907, and died in the odour of sanctity, the first of Bulgaria's
national saints.
With Simeon began again the struggle between Greeks and Bulgarians.
Two Greek merchants, who had obtained from the Emperor Leo VI the
monopoly of the Bulgarian trade, diverted it from Constantinople to
Salonica, and placed heavy duties upon the Bulgarian traders. The latter
complained to Simeon, and Simeon to the Emperor, but backstairs
influence at the palace prevented his complaints from being heard, and
forced him to resort to arms. He defeated the imperial forces, and sent
back the captives with their noses cut off. Leo summoned the Magyars
across the Danube to his aid; Simeon was defeated and his country
devastated up to the gates of Prêslav. But, when the Magyars withdrew,
he defeated a Greek army at Bulgaróphygos near Hadrianople and
ravaged the homes of the Magyars during their absence on a distant
expedition. An interval of peace ensued, during which the classically
educated ruler endeavoured to acclimatise Byzantine literature among his
recalcitrant subjects. Simeon collected and had translated 135 speeches
of Chrysostom; Constantine, a pupil of the “ Apostle” Methodius, trans-
lated another collection of homilies, and, at Simeon's command, four
orations of St Athanasius; John the Exarch dedicated to Simeon his
Shestodnev (or“Hexameron”), a compilation describing the creation from
Aristotle and the Fathers; a monk Grigori translated for him the chronicle
of John Malalas with additions; while several unknown writers drew up
an encyclopaedia of the contemporary knowledge of Byzantium. There
was nothing original in this literature; but, if it was not the natural
product of the Bulgarian spirit, it diffused a certain culture among the
few, and reflected credit upon the royal patron, whom his contemporaries
likened to the Ptolemies for his promotion of learning. Simeon had
learned also at Constantinople the love of magnificence as well as of
literature. If we may believe his contemporary, John the Exarch, his
residence at Great Prêslav, whither the capital had now been removed
from Pliska, was a marvel to behold, with its palaces and churches, its
paintings, its marble, copper, gold, and silver ornaments. In the palace
sat the sovereign “in a garment studded with pearls, a chain of coins
round his neck and bracelets on his wrists, girt about with a purple
girdle, and with a golden sword at his side. ” Of all this splendour, and
of a city which Nicetas in the thirteenth century described as “having
the largest circuit of any in the Balkans," a few scanty ruins remain.
Alexander, the successor of Leo VI, mortally offended Simeon by
rejecting his offer to renew the treaty concluded with his father. The
accession of the child Constantine Porphyrogenitus gave him his oppor-
tunity for revenge. In 913, a century after Krum, he appeared with an
army before Constantinople; next year he obtained Hadrianople by
CH. VIII.


## p. 238 (#280) ############################################

238
A Bulgarian Tsar and Patriarch
בל
treachery; and, on 20 August 917, he annihilated the Byzantine army at
Anchialus? , where half a century later the bones of the slain were still
visible. Bulgaria by this victory became for a brief period the dominant
power of the Balkan peninsula. Simeon's dominions stretched from the
Black to the Ionian Sea, except for a few Byzantine fortresses on the
Albanian coast; Niš and Belgrade were Bulgarian; but the Aegean
coast remained Greek. In 923 Simeon besieged Constantinople, and
Hadrianople again surrendered to the Bulgarians. The title of “Sublime
Khan” or even that of “Prince" seemed inadequate for the ruler of such
a vast realm; accordingly Simeon assumed the style of “ Tsar of the
Bulgarians and Greeks,” receiving his crown from Rome, while, as a
natural concomitant of the imperial dignity, the head of the Bulgarian
Church became - Patriarch of Prêslav," with his residence at Silistria.
Simeon's career closed in the midst of wars against the Serbs and
Croats, in the course of which he had laid Serbia waste but had been
defeated by the Croats. He died in 927, and, like most strong Balkan
rulers, was succeeded by a weak man. He had excluded his eldest son
Michael from the succession and confined him in a monastery; but his
second son, Tsar Peter, had the temperament of a pacifist. His first act
was to marry the grand-daughter of the Byzantine co-Emperor, Romanus I
Lecapenus, thus introducing for the first time a Greek Tsaritsa into the
Bulgarian court. He obtained by this marriage the recognition of his
imperial title and of the Bulgarian Patriarchate. But the war-party in
Bulgaria, headed by the Tsar's younger brother John, revolted against
what they considered a policy of concession to the Greeks; and, when
John was defeated, Simeon's eldest son emerged from his cell to lead a
fresh rebellion. Upon his death, a far more serious opponent arose in the
person of the noble, Shishman of Trnovo, and his sons. Shishman separated
Macedonia and Albania from old Bulgaria, and established a second
Bulgarian Empire in the western provinces. Torn asunder by these
rivalries, Bulgaria was also menaced by her neighbours, the Serbs, the
Patzinaks, and the Magyars, while the Bogomile heresy spread through
the land from the two parent Churches of the Bulgarians proper and of
the Macedonian or Thracian Dragovitchi. In Bulgaria, as in Bosnia, the
Bogomile tenets aroused vehement opposition, the leader of which was the
presbyter Cosmas. Apart from their beliefs, the Bogomiles, by the mere
fact of dividing the nation into two contending religious factions, weakened
its unity and prepared the way for the Turkish conquest. Even to-day
the name of the Babuni, as the Bulgarian Bogomiles were called, lingers
in the Babuna mountains near Prilep, the scene of fighting between the
Bulgarians and the Allies in the late war. Simultaneously with this im-
portant religious and social movement there arose a race of ascetic hermits,
of whom the chief, John of Rila, became the patron saint of Bulgaria.
1 Leo Diaconus, 124. Gibbon confused the site of this battle with the classic
river Achelous.


## p. 239 (#281) ############################################

The Bogomile heresy
239
Native of a village near Sofia and a simple herdsman, he lived for twenty
years now in the hollow of an oak, now in a cave of the Rila mountains,
an hour's climb above the famous monastery which bears his name. Here
the pious Tsar Peter visited him, and here he died in 946. His body was
removed by Peter to Sofia, but restored to Rila in 1469.
The last years of Peter's weak reign coincided with the great revival
of Byzantine military power upon the accession of Nicephorus II Phocas.
The Bulgarians had the tactlessness to demand from the conqueror of
Crete, just returned from his triumphs in Asia, “the customary tribute"
which Byzantium had paid to the strong Tsar Simeon. The victorious
Emperor-so the historian of his reign' informs us—"although not easily
moved to anger," was so greatly incensed at this impertinent demand
that he raised his voice and exclaimed that “the Greeks must, indeed, be
in a sorry plight, if, after defeating every enemy in arms, they were to
pay tribute like slaves to a race of Scythians, poor and filthy to boot. ”
Suiting the action to the word, he ordered the envoys to be beaten, and
bade them tell their master that the most mighty Emperor of the Romans
would forthwith visit his country and pay the tribute in person. When,
however, the soldierly Emperor had seen with his own eyes what a difficult
country Bulgaria was, he thought it imprudent to expose his own army
to the risks which had befallen his namesake and predecessor in the Balkan
passes. He therefore contented himself with taking a few frontier-forts,
and invited the Russians, on payment of a subvention, to invade Bulgaria
from the north and settle permanently there. Svyatoslav, the Russian
Prince, was only too delighted to undertake this task. He landed in 967
at the mouth of the Danube, drove the Bulgarians back into Silistria,
and took many of their towns. This Russian success made Nicephorus
reflect that a Russian Bulgaria might be more dangerous to Constantinople
than a weak native state—the same argument led to the Berlin treaty-
so he offered to help the Bulgarians to expel his Russian allies, and re-
quested that two Bulgarian princesses should be sent to Byzantium to be
affianced to the sons of the late Emperor Romanus, one of whom was
destined to be “the slayer of the Bulgarians. ” Peter sent the princesses
and his two sons as hostages, but his death, the assassination of Nicephorus,
and the withdrawal of the Russians in 969, menaced by the Patzinaks at
home, ended this episode. The biblically-named sons of Shishman-David,
Moses, Aaron, and Samuel—endeavoured to avail themselves of the absence
of the lawful heir, Boris II, to reunite eastern and western Bulgaria under
their dynasty, but the arrival of Boris frustrated their attempt. It was
reserved for the new Byzantine Emperor, John I Tzimisces, to end the
eastern Bulgarian Empire.
Svyatoslav had been so greatly charmed with the riches and fertility
of Bulgaria that he returned there, no longer as a Byzantine ally but
on his own account, preferring, as he said, to establish his throne on the
1 Leo Diaconus, 61-63, 77-80; Cedrenus, u. 372.
сн. .


## p. 240 (#282) ############################################

240
Fall of Eastern Bulgaria
לל
Danube rather than at Kiev. He captured the Bulgarian capital and
the Tsar, crossed the Balkans, took and impaled the inhabitants of
Philippopolis, and bade the Greek government either pay him compen-
sation or leave Europe. The warlike Armenian who sat on the Greek
throne invaded Bulgaria in 971, traversed the unguarded Balkan passes,
took Great Prêslav, and released Boris and his family from Russian
captivity, saying that he had “come to avenge the Bulgarians for what
they had suffered from the Russians. ” But when Silistria, the last Russian
stronghold, fell, and the Russians had evacuated Bulgaria, Tzimisces de-
posed Boris and the Bulgarian Patriarch, and annexed eastern Bulgaria
to the Byzantine Empire. Boris was compelled to divest himself of his
regalia, and received a Byzantine court title; his brother was made an
eunuch. Great Prêslav was rebaptized Ioannoupolis after its conqueror;
the eastern Bulgarian Empire was at an end. Western Bulgaria under
the sons of Shishman remained, however, independent for 47 years longer.
Of these four sons, the so-called Comitopouloi (or“Young Counts”), David
was killed by some wandering Wallachs, Moses was slain while besieging
Seres, and Aaron with most of his family was executed for his Greek
sympathies by his remaining brother Samuel, who thus became sole
Bulgarian Tsar. His realm, at the period of its greatest extent (before
the Greek campaigns of 1000-1002), included a considerable part of
Danubian Bulgaria, with the towns of Great Prêslav, Vidin, and Sofia,
and much of Serbia and Albania, but was essentially Macedonian, and
his capital, after a brief residence at Sofia, was moved to Moglena, Vodená,
and Prespa (where an island in the lake still preserves the name of his
“castle”), and finally to the lake of Ochrida, the swamps of which he
drained by 100 canals into the river Drin.
Upon the death of Tzimisces in 976, the Bulgarians rose; both
Boris II and his brother, Roman, escaped from Constantinople, but the
former was shot by a Bulgarian in mistake for a Greek, while the latter,
being harmless, received a post from Samuel, who overran Thrace, the
country round Salonica, and Thessaly, and carried off from Larissa to
his capital at Prespa the remains of St Achilleus, Bishop of Larissa in
the time of Constantine the Great. The ruined monastery of the island
of Ahil in the lake still preserves the memory of this translation. Samuel
even marched into continental Greece and threatened the Peloponnese,
but was recalled by the news that the young Emperor Basil II had in-
vaded Bulgaria. The first of his Bulgarian campaigns, that of 981, ended,
however, ingloriously for the future conqueror of the Bulgarians. Whilst
on his way to besiege Sofia, he was defeated at Shtiponye near Ikhtiman
and with difficulty escaped to Philippopolis. Fifteen years of peace be-
tween the hereditary enemies ensued, which Samuel employed in making
war upon John Vladimir, the saintly Serbian Prince of Dioclea, in
ravaging Dalmatia, and in occupying Durazzo. Bulgaria thus for a brief
space-for Durazzo was soon recovered by the Greeks--became an


## p. 241 (#283) ############################################

Samuel and Basil II
241
Adriatic power. The Serbian prince, carried captive to Prespa, won the
heart of Samuel's daughter Kosara, who begged her father to release him
and allow her to marry him. Samuel not only consented, but allowed
him to return and rule over his conquered land.
In 996 began the second war between Basil II and the Bulgarians.
Basil, free at last from the cares of the civil wars, had appointed Taronites
governor of Salonica for the special purpose of checking Samuel's raids.
The new governor, however, fell with his son into a Bulgarian ambush
and was killed ; whereupon Basil sent Nicephorus Uranus to take his
place. Meanwhile Samuel, elated at his success, had marched again
through the vale of Tempe as far as the Peloponnese, ravaging and
plundering as he went. But this time he was not to return unscathed.
On his way back Uranus waited for him on the bank of the swollen
Spercheus, and, crossing in the night, fell upon the sleeping Bulgarian
soldiers, who had believed it impossible to ford the river. Samuel and
his son, Gabriel Radomir Roman, were wounded and only escaped capture
by lying as if dead among the corpses which strewed the field, fleeing,
when it was dark, to the passes of Pindus. From that moment Samuel's
fortune turned. His next loss was that of Durazzo, betrayed to the
Greeks by his father-in-law, the chief man of the place, and by the captive
son of Taronites, who had obtained the affections of another of the
Tsar's susceptible daughters, and had been allowed to marry her and had
received a command at that important position. The Greeks everywhere
took the offensive. In 1000 they entered and again subdued Danubian
Bulgaria, taking Great and Little Prêslav and Pliska, which is now
mentioned after a long interval. Next year Basil cleared the Bulgarian
garrisons out of the south Macedonian towns of Berrhoea, Servia, and
Vodená, and out of the Thessalian castles, removing them to Voleros at
the mouth of the Maritza. To this campaign we owe the first description,
which enlivens the prose of Cedrenus', of the waterfall of Vodená— the
Tivoli of Macedonia. In 1002 Vidin and Skoplje fell, and Samuel, believing
that the Vardar could not be crossed, once again nearly became the prisoner
of the Greeks. Hostilities dragged on, and Basil for the next twelve years
annually invaded the western Bulgarian Empire, which was now reduced
to part of Macedonia, Albania, and the mountains round Sofia. But in
1014 the third and last Bulgarian war of the reign broke out. On 29 July
Nicephorus Xiphias turned the strong Bulgarian position of Kleidion
("the key") in the Struma valley, near the scene of King Constantine's
victories over the Bulgarians 900 years later. Samuel escaped, thanks to
his son's assistance, to Prilep, but Basil blinded the 15,000 Bulgarian
captives, leaving one man in every hundred with one eye, so that he might
guide his totally blinded comrades to tell the tale to the fugitive Tsar.
Samuel fainted at the ghastly sight and two days later expired.
The western Bulgarian Empire survived him only four years. His
II. 436, 447, 449–56.
1
C. MED. U, VOL. IV. CH. VIII.
16


## p. 242 (#284) ############################################

242
Fall of Western Bulgaria
son, Gabriel Roman, by a captive from Larissa succeeded him, but
excelled him in physique alone. Barely a year later Gabriel was murdered
by his cousin John Vladislav, Aaron's son, whose life he had begged his
father to
spare
when Aaron and the rest of his family were put to death.
The ungrateful wretch likewise assassinated his cousin's wife, blinded her
eldest son, and invited the Serbian Prince, John Vladimir, to be his
guest at Prespa and there had him beheaded. Having thus removed all
possible rivals in his own family, the new Tsar began to treat with Basil,
whose vassal he offered to become. Basil, mistrusting the murderer,
marched upon his capital of Ochrida, blinding all the Bulgarians whom
he took prisoners on the way. He captured Ochrida and was on his way
to relieve Durazzo, which was invested by the Bulgarians, when a sudden
defeat, inflicted upon a detachment of his army by the Bulgarian noble,
Ivats, caused him to retire on Salonica. The Bulgarians continued to
make a vigorous defence of their difficult country; Pernik successfully
resisted a siege of 88 days; the Tsar even endeavoured to make an
alliance with the Patzinaks from beyond the Danube against the
Greeks. But he fell by an unknown hand while besieging Durazzo in
1018. Bulgaria, left without a head, was divided into two parties--one,
headed by the widowed Tsaritsa Maria, the Patriarch David, and Bog-
dan, “the commander of the inner fortresses"; the other and weaker
party, led by the late Tsar’s son Fruyin, and the soldierly Ivats.
Upon
the news of the Tsar's death, Basil marched into Bulgaria to complete
the subjection of the country. At Strumitsa the Patriarch met him with
a letter from the Tsaritsa, offering on certain conditions to surrender
Bulgaria. Bogdan was rewarded with a Byzantine title for his treachery,
and then the Emperor proceeded to Ochrida, where he confiscated the
rich treasury of the Tsars. In his camp outside there waited upon him
the Tsaritsa with her six daughters and three of her sons, a bastard son
of Samuel, and the five sons and two daughters of Gabriel Radomir
Roman. The conqueror received her kindly, as well as the notables who
made their submission. Her three other sons, however, of whom Fruyin
was the most prominent, had fled to Mt. Tomor near Berat, where they
endeavoured to maintain the independence of Bulgaria in the Albanian
highlands, while Ivats held out in his castle of Pronishta in the same
mountainous region. The young princes, however, were forced to sur-
render and compensated with court titles; the brave Ivats was treacher-
ously seized and blinded. The last two nobles who still held out then
surrendered. After nearly 40 years of fighting, Bulgaria was subdued.
The “Bulgar-slayer,” as Basil II is known in history, celebrated his
triumph in the noblest of all existing churches, the majestic Parthenon,
then Our Lady of Athens. On his march he gazed upon the bleaching
bones of the Bulgarians who had fallen by the Spercheus twenty-two years
before, and upon the walls erected in the pass of Thermopylae to repel
their invasions. The great cathedral he enriched with offerings out of
יל


## p. 243 (#285) ############################################

Bulgaria a Byzantine province
243
the Bulgarian treasury, and 900 years later the Athenians were reminded
of his triumph there. Thence he returned to Constantinople, where the
ex-Tsaritsa, Samuel's daughters, and the rest of the Bulgarians were led
through the Golden Gate before him.
BULGARIA A BYZANTINE PROVINCE (1018–1186).
Bulgaria remained for 168 years a Byzantine province. Her nobles
had lost their leaders, her princes and princesses had disappeared amidst
the pompous functionaries of the Byzantine Court. Only her Church
remained autonomous, but that only on condition that the Patriarchate,
which during the period of the western Bulgarian Empire had had its seat
successively at Vodená, Prespa, and finally at Ochrida, was reduced to the
rank of an Archbishopric. In 1020 Basil II issued three charters' con-
firming the rights of “the Archbishop of Bulgaria"—the additional title
of “Justiniana Prima” was added in 1157—whose residence continued
to be at Ochrida, whither it had been moved by Simeon. He expressly
maintained intact the rights and area of its jurisdiction as it had been
in the times of both Peter and Samuel, which therefore included 30
bishoprics and towns, such as Ochrida, Kastoria, Monastir, and Skoplje in
Macedonia; Sofia and Vidin in old Bulgaria; Belgrade, Niš, Prizren, and
Rasa in what is now Jugoslavia; Canina (above Avlona), Cheimarra,
Butrinto, and Joannina in South Albania and Northern Epirus; and Stagi
(the modern Kalabaka) in Thessaly. We may therefore safely assume that
in the palmy days of Peter and of Samuel these places were included
within their respective Empires. In 1020 these thirty bishoprics contained
685 ecclesiastics and 655 serfs. But after Basil II's reign the number of
the suffragans was reduced practically to what it had been in the time of
Samuel, and after the first archbishop no more Bulgarians were appointed
to the see of Ochrida during the Byzantine period. The head of the
autonomous Bulgarian Church was always a Greek and often a priest
from St Sophia itself, except on one occasion when a Jew was nominated,
and the list includes the distinguished theologian and letter-writer,
Theophylact of Euboea, who felt as an exile his separation from culture
in the wilds of Bulgaria, and John Camaterus, afterwards Ecumenical
Patriarch at the time of the Latin conquest of Constantinople. The
Bogomile heresy made great progress during this period, especially round
Philippopolis, despite its persecution by the Emperor Alexius I. For
the civil and military administration of Bulgaria a new (Bulgarian) theme
was created under a Pronoetes? and also a duchy of Paristrium, while
the neighbouring themes had their territory enlarged. The various
governors, holding office usually for only a year, made as much out of
their districts as possible in the customary Oriental fashion; but the
local communities retained a considerable measure of autonomy, and we
לל
1 BZ. 11. 40–72. 2 Cf. infra, Chapter xxiii, p. 733.
CH. VIII.
16-2


## p. 244 (#286) ############################################

244
Bulgarian rising of 1040
וי
are expressly told that Basil left the taxes as they had been in the time
of Samuel, payable in kind.
The Bulgarians did not, however, remain inactive during this long
period of Byzantine rule. A succession of weak rulers and court intrigues
followed the death of Basil “the Bulgar-slayer. ” The Bulgarian prince
Fruyin, and his mother the ex-Tsaritsa, were mixed up in these intrigues,
both imprisoned in monasteries, and the former blinded. In 1040 a more
serious movement arose. Simultaneous insurrections broke out among
the Serbs of what is now Montenegro and the Bulgarians, who found a
leader in a certain Peter Delyan, who gave himself out to be a son of the
Tsar Gabriel Radomir Roman. Greeted enthusiastically as Tsar, he had
the country at his feet, so lively was the memory of the old dynasty.
But a rival appeared in the person of the warlike Tikhomir, who was
acclaimed Tsar by the Slavs of Durazzo. Delyan invited his rival and
the Bulgarians that were with him to a meeting, at which he told them
that “one bush could not nourish two redbreasts," and bade them choose
between Tikhomir and the grandson of Samuel, promising to abide loyally
by their decision. Loud applause greeted his speech; the people stoned
Tikhomir and proclaimed Delyan their sole sovereign. He marched upon
Salonica, whence the Emperor Michael IV the Paphlagonian fled, while
his chamberlain, Ivats, perhaps a son of the Bulgarian patriot, went over
with his war chest to the insurgents. One Bulgarian army took Durazzo;
another invaded Greece and defeated the imperial forces before Thebes;
the entire province of Nicopolis (except Naupactus) joined the Bulgar-
ians, infuriated at the exactions of the Byzantine tax-collector and at
the substitution, by the unpopular finance minister, John, the Emperor's
brother, of cash payments for payments in kind. But another Bulgarian
leader now appeared in the person of Alusian, younger brother of the
Tsar John Vladislav, and Delyan's cousin, whom the grasping minister's
greed had also driven to revolt. Delyan wisely offered to share the first
place with this undoubted scion of the stock of Shishman--for his own
claims to the blood royal were impugned. But a great defeat of the
Bulgarians before Salonica, which was ascribed to the intervention of
that city's patron saint, St Demetrius, led to recriminations and suspicions.
Alusian invited his rival to a banquet, made him drunk, and blinded him.
The double-dyed traitor then betrayed his country to the Emperor, the
revolt was speedily crushed, and Delyan and Ivats were led in triumph
to Constantinople.
Another Bulgarian rising took place in 1073, and from the same
cause—the exactions of the imperial treasury, which continued to ignore
the wise practice of Basil II and the lessons of the last rebellion. Having
no prominent leader of their own to put on the throne, the Bulgarian
chiefs begged Michael, first King of the Serbian state of Dioclea, to
send them his son, Constantine Bodin, whom they proclaimed “Tsar of
the Bulgarians” at Prizren under the popular name of Peter, formerly


## p. 245 (#287) ############################################

Further risings
245
לל
borne by Simeon's saintly son. But there was a party among the Bul-
garians hostile to what was doubtless regarded as a foreign movement;
the insurgents made the mistake, after their initial successes, of dividing
their forces, and were defeated at Paun (“the peacock” castle) on the
historic field of Kossovo, where Bodin was taken prisoner. Frankish mer-
cenaries in Byzantine employ completed the destruction by burning down
the palace of the Tsars on the island in the lake of Prespa and sacking
the church of St Achilleus. Worse still were the frequent raids of the
Patzinaks and Cumans, while Macedonia was the theatre of the Norman
invasion. But, except for occasional and quickly suppressed risings of
Bulgarians and Bogomiles, there was no further serious insurrection for
over 100 years. Under the Comnenian dynasty the Bulgarians were
better governed, and they lacked local leaders to face a series of energetic
Emperors.
CH. VIII.


## p. 246 (#288) ############################################

246
CHAPTER IX.
THE GREEK CHURCH: ITS RELATIONS
WITH THE WEST UP TO 1054.
AFTER the festival in honour of the restoration of the images
(11 March 843), the last religious differences between the East and West
seemed to have disappeared, and yet the course of events during the
Iconoclast controversy had seriously modified the conditions under which
the relations between Rome and Constantinople had been hitherto
maintained.
The Papacy emerged from that long dispute completely emancipated
politically from the Byzantine Empire. After the accession of Paul I
(757) the Pope no longer applied to the Emperor of Constantinople for
the ratification of his election but to the King of the Franks, and after
the year 800 to the Emperor of the West. After Pope Hadrian the year
of the reign of the Eastern Emperors no longer appears in the papal
bulls, and nothing is more significant than this breaking with an ancient
tradition
It cannot be disputed that after the second Council of Nicaea (787),
held in the presence of the papal legates, relations had been renewed
between Rome and Constantinople, which continued until the second
abolition of image-worship (815). But neither the Empress Irene nor
her successors dreamt of revoking the edict of Leo the Isaurian which
had deprived the Roman Church of its patrimony in the East and of its
jurisdiction over Southern Italy and Illyricum. A still more illuminating
fact is that, when the Empress Theodora restored image-worship in 843,
she did not treat with the Pope as Irene had done, and the new Patriarch
Methodius ordered the anathema to be launched against the iconoclasts
without the co-operation of Rome.
Two distinct and opposed attitudes towards the Pope may, in fact, be
seen in the Greek Church. On the one hand the superior clergy, largely
recruited from among laymen, ex-governors or high officials, steeped in
the doctrines of Caesaropapism, could not shew much enthusiasm and
indeed felt considerable misgivings towards a pontiff who, since the events
of the year 800, had been the mainstay of the Emperors of the West,
1 Kleinclausz, L'empire carolingien, ses origines et ses transformations, Paris, 1902,
p. 165.


## p. 247 (#289) ############################################

The Greek Church and Rome
247
regarded at Byzantium as usurpers. A large number of these prelates
had adhered to iconoclast doctrines, and in 843 many of them tried to
obliterate this past by a reconciliation with orthodoxy.
On the other hand, these high official clergy were confronted by the
monks, and especially the Studites, who had defended image-worship
even to martyrdom, and were resolute opponents to the interference of
the Emperors in the affairs of the Church. Their fundamental doctrine
was complete liberty as against the State in matters of dogma no less
than of discipline. But the one effective guarantee of this liberty for
them was the close union of the Greek Church with Rome. They recog-
nised in the successor to St Peter the spiritual authority denied to the
Emperor. Theodore of Studion, in his correspondence with the Popes
and sovereigns, emphasises the necessity of submitting to the arbitration
of the Pope all the difficulties which may perplex the Church', and for
a long time the monastery of Studion was considered the stronghold of
the Roman party at Byzantium.
For these reasons the restoration of image-worship in 843, even if it
was an undeniable victory for the Studites, was not so complete a success
as they had wished, and the Patriarch Methodius, himself formerly a
monk but animated by a conciliatory spirit and desirous above all things
of restoring peace in the Church, made several vigorous attacks on their
uncompromising policy. On the other side, the elevation to the Patri-
archate in 846 of Ignatius, son of the Emperor Michael Rangabé, who
during his brief reign had been the protector and almost the servant of
the Studites, seemed to assure definitely the triumph of their doctrines.
Brought up in exile on Princes Islands, Ignatius was a true ascetic and
had fervently embraced all the principles of Studite reform. Friendly
relations with Rome seemed therefore assured, but a significant incident
shewed that the new Patriarch, however well disposed he might be towards
the Pope, did not propose to abandon one jot of his autonomy. Gregory
Asbestas, Archbishop of Syracuse, having taken refuge at Constantinople,
was condemned by a synod for certain irregularities. He appealed to
Pope Leo IV, who commanded Ignatius to send him the acts of the
synod; the Patriarch refused, and the matter remained unsettled. Bene-
dict III, who succeeded Leo IV in 899, refused to confirm the deposition
of Gregory Asbestas and contented himself with suspending him until he
had seen the evidence? Thus, though the relations between Rome and
Constantinople had once more become normal and the good will of Ignatius
and the Studites towards the Pope was manifestly great, the long sepa-
ration due to the Iconoclastic dispute had borne fruit; the Greek Church
had become accustomed to complete autonomy, so far as Rome went,
and its bishops, who fostered feelings of distrust and even hostility
against her, only awaited an opportunity to shew them. The crisis in
1 MPG, xcix. cols. 141, 1017, 1020, 1192, 1332.
2 Bury, History of the Eastern Roman Empire, pp. 184–185.
CB. IX.


## p. 248 (#290) ############################################

248
Ignatius and Photius
the Patriarchate, which was the result of the deposition of Ignatius, soon
supplied them with the desired opportunity.
Ignatius had made many enemies for himself by his uncompromising
character and his unbending austerity, which did not spare those who
held the highest places. In 858 he dared to attack the Caesar Bardas,
whose profligacy was a public scandal, and refused to administer the
sacrament to him. Bardas avenged this insult by banishing Ignatius to
the island of Terebinthus, after having implicated him in an imaginary
plot against the Emperor (27 November 858). Then, being unable to
extort from him an act of abdication, and without even waiting for the
result of the trial which was pending, Bardas raised to the patriarchal
throne a layman, the protoasecretis Photius, one of the most renowned
teachers in the University of Constantinople.
Photius, if we can believe his letters', appears to have hesitated at
first to accept the post, but ended by allowing himself to be persuaded,
and within six days was professed a monk and received all the eccle-
siastical orders. On 25 December 858 he was consecrated Patriarch in St
Sophia. He represented the party of the high clergy which had adopted
once more the tradition of Tarasius, Nicephorus, and Methodius, and he
met at once with violent opposition from the monks, especially from the
Studites, whose Abbot Nicholas of Studion refused to take the com-
munion with him, and was banished. He therefore thought it expedient
to consolidate his power by a reconciliation with Rome. In 860 a solemn
embassy, consisting of four bishops and a high lay official, was sent to
Pope Nicholas. Its object was to invite the Pope to assemble a council
to settle the dispute as to image-worship, and more especially to obtain
the papal recognition of Photius as lawful Patriarch. This step in itself
shews that Photius at that time accepted generally the jurisdiction of the
Pope.
But Nicholas I refused to recognise the election of Photius without
fuller information, and, after protesting against the deposition of Ignatius,
he despatched to Constantinople two legates, Radoald, Bishop of Porto,
and Zacharias, Bishop of Anagni, with instructions to hold an inquiry
and to treat Ignatius provisionally as lawful Patriarch. No efforts were
spared at Constantinople to conceal this news. The legates as soon as
they arrived (February 861) were secluded and prevented from com-
municating with Ignatius and his partisans. Pressure was brought to bear
on them by threats and even by bribes. They allowed themselves to be
persuaded and, contrary to their instructions, they consented to preside
at a council which was convened at the Holy Apostles (May 861), and
pronounced the deposition of Ignatius, after suborned witnesses had been
1
Loparev, Byzantine lives of the saints of the eighth and ninth centuries (Vizan-
tiyski Vremennik, xvii. 1913, p. 49).
2 Vita S. Nicolai Studitae (MPG, cv. col. 863; cf. Loparev, Vizantiyski Vremennik,
XVII. p. 189).


## p. 249 (#291) ############################################

Conflict between Photius and Nicholas I
249
produced to affirm that the accused had been elected contrary to the
canons? .
But when the legates returned to Rome, loaded with presents from
Photius, the Pope received them with indignation and repudiated all
their acts. In an encyclical addressed to the three Eastern Patriarchs
he declared that the deposition of Ignatius was illegal and that Photius
improperly held the see of Constantinople. In answer to a letter from
Photius, brought by an imperial secretary, in which the Patriarch seemed
to treat with him on equal terms, the Pope reminded him that the see of
Rome was the supreme head of all the Churches. Finally, at the request
of some partisans of Ignatius, including the Archimandrite Theognostus,
who had succeeded in escaping to Rome, he called a council at the Lateran
palace (April 863), which summoned Photius to resign all his powers on
pain of excommunication; the same injunction was laid on all the bishops
consecrated by Photius? .
The dispute thus entered the domain of law, and the issue at stake
was the jurisdiction of the Pope over the Church at Constantinople.
Before taking the final step and embarking on schism, Photius seems to
have hesitated and to have adopted diplomatic means at first. He in-
duced the Emperor Michael to write a letter to the Pope, which was in
the nature of an ultimatum. The Emperor threatened to march on Rome
in the event of Nicholas refusing to revoke his sentences, and repudiated
the doctrine of the supreme jurisdiction of the papacy. Nicholas, making
the widest concessions, offered to revise the judgment of the council if
Ignatius and Photius would consent to appear before him at Rome? .
Photius, on his side, was fully posted in Western affairs, and knew that the
uncompromising character of Nicholas roused keen opposition in those
parts. He had favourably received a memorandum from the Archbishops
of Cologne and Trèves, who had been deposed by the Pope for having
consented to the divorce of Lothar II. In the course of the
year
863
Photius addressed letters to the Western clergy and to the Emperor
Louis II to demand the deposition of Nicholas by a Council of the
Church'. This was not yet rupture with the West, since by acting as he
did he hoped to find a more conciliatory Pope than Nicholas. Neverthe-
less, when he learned of the arrival of Roman legates in Bulgaria, consider-
ing their interference with this newly-founded Church as an encroachment
on the rights of the Patriarchate, he convoked a synod (867), which
formally condemned the Latin uses introduced into the Bulgarian Church,
and more particularly the double procession of the Holy Ghost. This was
the first step in an antagonism which was destined to end in schism.
1 Mansi, Concilia, xv. 179-202. Vita Ignatii 19-21 (MPG, cv. col. 488).
2 Nicolaus, Epist. 7 (Mansi, Concilia, xv. col. 178–183).
3 Nicolaus, Epist. 8 (Mansi, Concilia, xv. 187-216).
Bury, Eastern Roman Empire, p. 200. Gay, L'Italie méridionale et l'empire
byzantin, pp. 80–82.
4
CE. IX,


## p. 250 (#292) ############################################

250
The schism of Photius
Matters came rapidly to a head. In November 866 the Pope resolved
to address a final appeal to Constantinople, and despatched fresh legates
with orders to put letters into the hands of the Emperor and principal
personages of the court. Photius then took the decisive step, and it is
possible that this decision was influenced by the raising of Basil to the
imperial throne as colleague to Michael after the murder of Bardas. He
wished to confront the future Emperor, whose hostility he anticipated,
with an accomplished fact. In the course of the summer of 867 a council
presided over by the Emperor Michael pronounced the excommunication
of Pope Nicholas, declared the practices of the Roman Church to be
heretical as opposed to Greek use, and stigmatised the intervention of
that hurch in the affairs of Constantinople as unlawful. The resolutions
of the council were sent by Photius to the Eastern Patriarchs in the form
of an encyclical, in which he bitterly condemned all the peculiar usages
of the Western Churches: the addition of the Filioque to the creed,
the Saturday fast, the use of eggs in Lent, the custom of the clergy of
shaving the beard, and others. Two bishops went to take the acts of the
council to Italy. The Pope, desirous of justifying Western uses, com-
manded Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims, to convoke provincial councils
in order to answer the objections of the Greeks!
The split between the East and the West was thus effected. It is
clear that the differences in the uses quoted by Photius were not the real
cause of the schism. From the dogmatic point of view the East and the
West participated in the same faith, that of the Ecumenical Councils.
The addition of the Filioque to the creed modified in appearance the
idea which was formed of the relations between the Persons of the
Trinity, but in no respect changed the dogma itself. It was not impos-
sible, as indeed subsequent events shewed, to come to some agreement as
to Church discipline and the liturgy. At the close of the year 867 the
two apostles of the Slavs, Constantine (Cyril), a pupil of Photius, and
his brother Methodius, arrived at Rome, bringing with them the relics of
St Clement. Pope Nicholas was dead and it was his successor Hadrian II
who consecrated them bishops (5 January 868) and, by giving the name
of Cyril to Constantine, paid homage to the great Patriarch of Alex-
andria who had formerly been the connecting link between the East and
Rome. He further approved the translation of the Scriptures made by
the two apostles, as well as their liturgy in the Slavonic tongue? . No act
shews more clearly the conciliatory spirit of the two Churches in the
matter of uses. The cause of the separation cannot therefore be found
here, but must be attributed to the regard for its autonomy which inspired
1 Among the answers are quoted those of Odo, Bishop of Beauvais, and Aeneas,
Bishop of Paris. Text of the Encyclical of Photius, MPG, cii. cols. 724–731.
See Hefele, Histoire des Conciles (French translation by Leclercq, 1911), vol. iv.
Pp. 442-449.
2
Leger, Cyrille et Méthode, pp. 100-103. Cf. supra, Chapter vil(B), pp. 224-5.


## p. 251 (#293) ############################################

Deposition of Photius
251
the Church of Constantinople. Photius, by championing this cause, easily
led with him the bishops who, like himself, refused to admit the supreme
jurisdiction of the Pope in disciplinary matters. We shall further see
that even on this question the Greeks were far from being obstinate, and
admitted the intervention of the Pope when it served their interests.
Their attitude towards Rome was, in reality, always dependent on the
vicissitudes of their own disputes.
It was a palace revolution in the end which overthrew Photius and
revived relations with Rome.