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

After lopping off the head, the conspirators threw the rest of the battered corpse out of a window. While one of the assassins went running through the palace with the severed head to discourage any retaliation from the imperial guard, the rest spread out into the snowy streets shouting that the tyrant had been overthrown. John himself, meanwhile, headed to the imperial throne room and pulled on the purple boots reserved for the emperor. At the sight of him wearing the imperial regalia, whatever resistance was left collapsed. The imperial guards dropped their swords and knelt obediently, hailing Tzimisces as emperor of the Romans.

The next day, some manner of decorum was restored when Nicephorus’s headless corpse was quietly interred in the Church of the Holy Apostles. It was an ignominious end for a man who had served his empire so faithfully, but though few mourned him in the capital, posterity kept his name alive. His legend inspired generations of Byzantine and Bulgar poets, who celebrated his exploits in the epic poetry of the frontier. The church beatified him, and the monks of his monastery on Mount Athos continue to venerate him as their founder to this day.^* Those who visited his tomb, tucked away in a quiet corner of the imperial mausoleum, could reflect that the great warrior emperor was summed up neatly with the wry inscription on his sarcophagus. Nicephorus Phocas, it proclaimed, YOU CONQUERED ALL BUT A WOMAN.

The lady in question made a show of being the grieving widow, but by now everyone knew how the emperor had died, and, in an unfortunate example of the vicious double standard in tenth-century Byzantium, blame for the entire sordid affair fell squarely on Theophano’s shoulders. The empress was by no means innocent, but she was hardly the femme fatale that popular opinion made her. Deeply in love with John and desperate to protect her son Basil II, she was profoundly shocked when her lover abruptly threw her out of the palace and had her shipped off to a lonely exile. The patriarch had made it quite clear to Tzimisces that if he wanted to be crowned, he must first get rid of the despised Theophano, and the ambitious young man was only too happy to comply.

Surprisingly enough, given the excessive brutality and illegality of his rise, John’s coronation was a calm affair, unsullied by riots or protests. This undoubtedly had something to do with his announcement that rioting would be punished with instant death, but most of the subdued capital was genuinely quite fond of their charismatic new emperor. He was already known for his generosity—a reputation he improved by distributing his vast fortune to the poor as a condition of his penance—and when he rather disingenuously executed two of his coconspirators for the murder of Nicephorus, most citizens considered the matter at rest.

There was something irresistible about John Tzimisces. Having learned the art of war at the feet of his uncle, he combined Nicephorus’s military prowess with an infectious conviviality that endeared him to everyone he met.^* There was a new vitality in the air, a feeling that anything could be accomplished now that the disagreeable emperor was dead and a true statesman had taken his place. The only ones who seemed to object to the change on the Byzantine throne were the Phocas family, but they did so more out of a sense of duty than passion. Nicephorus’s nephew Bardas Phocas raised the obligatory standard of revolt, but it failed to attract wide support, and when Tzimisces’ best friend Bardas Sclerus showed up with an army, Phocas quietly accepted exile on a pleasant Aegean island.

While his subordinates mopped up any traces of resistance to his rule, the emperor busied himself by drilling an army to deal with the mess his predecessor had left in the Balkans. The Russians were increasingly arrogant and bellicose, making no secret of the fact that they intended to invade Byzantine territory. “Don’t trouble yourself with coming to us,” they informed Tzimisces when they heard of his preparations, “we will soon enough be at your gates.”