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

With his domestic affairs thus put in order, the emperor left once again for the East in 968. This time his aim was to eliminate the Muslim power that kept trying to take over Armenia. Marching into the little Armenian town of Manzikert, he annihilated the Arab emirate and liberated the province. Turning south, he swept into Syria, easily taking the major cities of Emesa and Edessa, and in 969 managed to reconquer Antioch—the ancient capital of Syria and seat of one of the five great patriarchates of the Christian Church. Not since the reign of Heraclius had an emperor set foot in the city, and it’s fitting that Nicephorus—whose name meant “bringer of victory”—would be the one to recover it. Gazing south, he briefly considered marching on to the Holy City, Jerusalem, but the campaigning season was nearly over, and a famine was plaguing both Byzantine and Arab lands. After twelve years of unbroken success, he could afford to postpone the conquest of Jerusalem for another year. It would still be there with the spring, and surely he deserved a rest. Swinging his great army around, the emperor marched wearily—but triumphantly—to his capital.

Yet for all his victories, Nicephorus was increasingly unpopular at home. In addition to his naturally abrasive personality, his attacks on ecclesiastical wealth had alienated the church, while the crippling taxes he levied to pay for his unending wars had lost the support of everyone else. His hated brother, Leo, had already been caught trying to artificially increase the price of wheat during a famine, and it was now widely believed that he was plotting to murder Theophano’s young sons, Basil and Constantine. The emperor may not have been personally involved with these charges, but he took no action against his brother, further tarnishing his damaged reputation. Widely blamed for the rising cost of food and (rather unfairly) a poor harvest, Nicephorus became a virtual recluse. Alarmed by a prophecy that he would be killed in the Great Palace by one of his own citizens, he built a large wall separating it from the city, barricading himself inside. When he ventured out onto the streets at all, he had to brave torrents of abuse and even the occasional (poorly aimed) brick thrown at his head. Trying to reduce tensions, the emperor scheduled a mock battle inside the Hippodrome, but a rumor spread that he intended to slaughter the population, and the sight of drawn swords sparked a stampede, which left several hundred spectators crushed in its wake. Not surprisingly. Nicephorus escaped the oppressive climate of the capital at every opportunity, but this in turn earned him an enemy more formidable than any he had met on the battlefield.

His wife, Theophano, now twenty-eight and completely bored with an austere and absent husband, had fallen madly in love with his nephew John Tzimisces. The dazzling young general was everything that her husband wasn’t. Dashing and intelligent with blond hair and piercing blue eyes, he was gracious and charming, irresistible to women—especially the lonely, cloistered empress. When John fell out of favor and was relieved of his command, it was the work of a moment for Theophano to force her adoring husband to recall him to Constantinople. There, under the cover of darkness, the two lovers met in the empress’s wing of the palace and plotted one of the foulest murders in Byzantine history.

On a bitterly cold night, fifteen days before Christmas, the conspirators struck. Assassins slipped into the palace disguised as women and were hidden by Theophano in several unused rooms to wait for nightfall. Just before midnight, John arrived and was hauled over the walls in a basket, as a heavy snow began to fall. Drawing their swords, the assassins crept to the imperial bedchamber and burst into the room, only to discover the emperor’s bed empty. Thinking they had been betrayed, the group panicked, and several conspirators attempted to leap off an upper balcony into the sea below. Just as the rest were turning to flee, however, a traitorous eunuch pointed out the figure of the sleeping emperor. He was (as usual) stretched out on a leopard skin on the floor.

Rushing over, the conspirators began to kick Nicephorus awake, striking him in the face with a sword as he tried to rise. The confused emperor was sent sprawling backward into the icons surrounding his blankets, his face covered in blood. Trying unsteadily to gain his feet, he was hauled roughly from the floor and thrown in front of Tzimisces, who shouted abuse at the bleeding man and ripped out handfuls of his beard. Barely conscious, Nicephorus implored the Virgin Mary for mercy, but this only served to enrage his assailants further. Smashing his jaw with the handles of their swords, they knocked out his teeth, torturing him until John finally gave the order to dispatch him with a hammer.