Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization

The triumphant general didn’t stay long in Constantinople to celebrate his victory. That autumn, as a Byzantine fleet annihilated an Arab navy off the coast of Provence, he stormed through northern Mesopotamia, sacking the ancient Assyrian city of Nisibis, which had slipped from the imperial grasp under the reign of Jovian almost six hundred years before. Returning home along the Mediterranean coast, his army stopped at the city of Edessa, sparing its largely Christian population the horrors of a siege in exchange for its most priceless relic.^*

When Curcuas returned to Constantinople, he found the emperor a pale shadow of his former self. After more than a decade on the throne, Romanus was now in his seventies and seemingly a spent force. Most of his energy had been expended fighting domestic and foreign wars, and each new struggle further taxed his diminishing resources. The nobility was as grasping as ever, always clawing around the limits he tried to impose on them, and his land laws were proving nearly impossible to enforce. Perhaps some final reserve of strength might still have been found, but in the spring of 944 his favorite son died, and Romanus was plunged into despair.

The emperor had never really been comfortable with the humiliations he had inflicted on the legitimate Constantine VII, and now he was crippled with guilt. There were other sons, of course, but Romanus was painfully aware of how worthless they were. Brought up in the splendor of the imperial palaces among power and privilege, they were spoiled, entitled, and already famously corrupt. When the gifted John Curcuas arrived in Constantinople, they badgered their weary father into replacing him with a relative named Pantherius—a man whose name was unfortunately more impressive than his abilities. As a younger man, Romanus would never have allowed such a thing to happen, and after several military reversals, he realized that his spoiled sons couldn’t be allowed to follow him on the throne. Finding some last reserve of energy, the aging emperor composed a new will, officially naming the half-forgotten Constantine VII as his heir.

The decision to disinherit his own family shocked his contemporaries, but Romanus was tormented by his sins and could find no peace in his last years. With his body failing and death approaching, the fleeting glories of temporal power now seemed a poor exchange for the stains on his conscience. He had brushed aside the legitimate dynasty and forced his own grasping brood on the empire. Perhaps now, by setting things right, he could find some salve for a troubled conscience.

When the will was made public five days before Christmas of 944, the sons of Romanus were horrified. They had been mistreating Constantine VII for years, and the thought of him actually having power was too terrible to contemplate. This bitter betrayal convinced them that they had to act quickly to avoid their impending irrelevancy. Romanus was quickly seized and (somewhat willingly, one suspects) sent off to a monastery on the Princes Islands in the Marmara. The people of Constantinople, however, had no intention of being ruled any longer by the Lecapeni. Romanus had been acceptable enough—his combination of quiet diplomacy and military power had arrived just in time to guide the empire past the threat of Bulgaria—but no matter how able, he was still a usurper, and his squabbling sons had no right to follow him.

During Romanus’s reign, Constantine VII—driven by a survival instinct—had never made the slightest effort to assert himself, quietly allowing Romanus to push him ever further into the background. Whenever his name was needed to give something additional weight, he was willingly trotted out to wave to the crowds or add his signature to a document, and he hadn’t shown even the slightest whiff of ambition. During those long years in the shadows, however, something unexpected had happened. No one remembered—or cared any longer—that he had been born an illegitimate son to a father whose own paternity was in doubt. There was a certain sympathetic charm about the serious little boy who had been orphaned in the palace, surrounded and humiliated by a large and hostile family for so many years without complaint. Constantine VII had been “born in the purple”—a distinction that none of the arrogant Lecapeni could claim—and in his veins ran the true blood of the house of Macedon. The despised sons of Romanus had abused the rightful heir for long enough, and the people of the capital were no longer willing to tolerate that. When the elderly Romanus fell from power, Constantine VII suddenly found that he was wildly popular. Within days, a rumor started flying that his life was in danger, and an angry mob forced the unwilling Lecapeni brothers to recognize him as the senior emperor.