The Menologion of Basil II is a classic example of Byzantine Christian Art, showing the supremacy of Christian Empire over its rivals in the Balkans. It shows the emperor being crowned by the angels of Christian theology and also given a spear by another angel. He stands in triumph beneath several men bowing in respect to the emperor. This is one of the most famous depictions of the Emperor Basil II and represents the apogee of the Byzantine Empire in artistry.
Emperor Basil II stands above the many rulers of the Byzantine Empire as Byzantine Trajan, with Justinian being a close competitor. In my article on who was the best Byzantine Emperor, I argue that Emperor Basil II was the best emperor of the Middle Byzantine Era. He showed himself to be a cunning manipulator of politics and had a keen eye for controlling the aristocracy in his empire. He wasn’t an intellectual man or close to as pious as Nicephorus Phoakas. He was a man who lived amongst his soldiers, without any pretensions. He may have been born in the purple in Constantinople, but he bled just in the same way and shared among the struggles of his men while on various campaigns. This is in stark contrast to his brother, Constantine VIII, who was spending his time a prince as a devotee to pleasure and living out his days in Constantinople, waiting to take the reins of power from Basil II. In comparison, Basil II was a man of action and was not allowing the nobility to govern his actions. Emperors who were nothing more puppets of eunuchs were commonplace after Heraclius; Basil II stood tall in age where the bureaucracy sought to control Emperors.
He managed to conquer the Bulgarian Empire, bring a great surplus to the Empire, reform land ownership to make more equitable, brought the army to great heights and managed to restore the borders to Danube, which hadn’t seen a Roman army since Emperor Heraclius. He was among the emperors who brough the Macedonian Dynasty to greatest heights in history. However,
However, in spite of such virtues, was he really the best Emperor in Byzantine history?
Was Basil II truly the best Emperor in Byzantine History?
In the article that I wrote when I just started writing about Byzantine history, I had this idea that Basil II was among one of the best in an age that was saw the Byzantines rising from strength to strength. The Macedonian dynasty was a family which had made the Byzantine Empire into a new empire that could withstand the test of time. Unlike the Emperors after Heraclius who had simply been just trying to maintain the shrunken realm, the Macedonians were actively trying to expand it. Basil II was simply the apex of this process that had been germinating since Basil in 867 AD. The Macedonians were the dynasty that Rome truly needed in its crisis years when it was a Pagan empire.
However, the reason why people call emperors or empires as overrated is because we, as modern people have the benefit of hindsight. We can see that the Byzantines were not going to be reclaiming the Holy Land in the name of Christianity. We understood that the Muslims were in control, and they were not going to allow Christians to have control of such lands again. The Byzantine could have made some inroads into the Fatimid Caliphate’s territory but it was not going to be able to take territory without the empire having to counter the Holy Roman Empire.
The Byzantines were not a superpower like in Antiquity; this meant that Emperors who were incompetent were causing greater issues just because Europe was a much more competitive place than during the Roman Empire. They were no longer just contending with warlike tribes; they had cultures and structures of their own.
Basil II and many of his contemporaries understood this. The Byzantines invested a lot into propaganda to utilize soft power when needed to push a political aim or achieve some economic change. They may have had the one of the most powerful militaries in Europe at the time, but it wasn’t a massive organization on the same scale as the Empire under Augustus or even the Western Empire under Theodosius. The Byzantines sought to integrate many peoples from across the European continent into their armies and also spread their religion in order to gain new allies.
Basil II’s achievements were truly remarkable, especially when considering that the Bulgarian Empire and the Fatimid Caliphates were both powerful opponents that were able to take on the Byzantine Empire.
The skillful usage of diplomacy, especially with the Slavs in the north was one of Basil II’s greatest strengths.
The Successors to the Emperor Basil II
However, the successors of Basil II were not as competent as him or the previous generations of Macedonian rulers as I stated in that article. The Byzantine Empire was probably only going to be able to continue conquering with a series of more competent rulers. While the Empire could probably survive some incompetency after Basil II, the rulers after him did not come close to the greatness of men such as Basil II or Nikephoros Phokas. These men had brought the Byzantine Empire to levels of might that it had not seen since the days of Heraclius.
To make a historical comparison, the best example would be the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans managed to continue expanding throughout the 14 to 17th Centuries. Osman I to Suleiman I, the rulers of the Ottoman Empire were incredibly competent at fighting European powers such as the Hapsburgs and the Holy Roman Empire. The economy was competently managed by many bureaucrats and aligned along Islamic lines. While the Ottoman state may have peaked with Suleiman, the incompetence of his son Selim II and other leaders after him was mitigated by the competency of many eunuchs and bureaucrats.
After the Battle of Vienna, the Ottoman state was no longer able to cover the cracks in the system that were emerging after Suleiman. The same could be said for the Byzantine state after the Battle of Manzikert. However, the stretch of time between the passing of the throne to Constantine VIII vs Suleiman and Suleiman II in the late 1600s, shows that the Ottoman Empire was a much durable institution than that of the Byzantines. The conquests of the Byzantines were pretty much taken by the Seijuk Turks in the 11th Century.
Basil II was obviously a great Emperor in my eyes, in spite of whatever issues there will still lurking underneath the appearance of glory during his reign. However, the biggest issue with the reign of Emperor Basil II is that did not decide to have a male heir in order to take his place. While he had his brother, waiting to take the reigns of power, Constantine VIII was not a serious man and could not engender the same level of devotion as Basil II did with his troops and citizens.
Overall, Basil II in my view was not overrated but an important contriubuter to the history of the Byzantine Empire.
Byzantine-Empire.com 