Byzantine decline and subjection to Western influences: 1025 - 1260
The Byzantine Empire in 1025
Basil II never married. But after his death his relatives remained
in possession of the throne until 1056, less because of their efficiency
than because of a general feeling among the Byzantine people that
the prosperity of the empire was connected with the continuity of
the Macedonian dynasty. When Basil's brother Constantine VIII died
in 1028, the line was continued in his two daughters, Zoe and Theodora.
Zoe was married three times: to Romanus III Argyrus (ruled 1028
- 34), to Michael IV (1034 - 41), and to Constantine IX Monomachus
(1042 - 55), who outlived her. When Constantine IX died in 1055,
Zoe's sister, Theodora, reigned alone as empress until her death
a year later.
The great emperors of the golden age, not all of them members of
the Macedonian family, molded the history of that age. The successors
of Basil II were rather the creatures of circumstances, because
they did not make and seldom molded. In the 56 years from 1025 to
1081, there were 13 emperors. An attempt made by Constantine X Ducas
to found a new dynasty was disastrously unsuccessful. Not until
the rise of Alexius I Comnenus to power, in 1081, was stability
restored by an ensured succession in the Comnenus family, who ruled
for more than 100 years (1081 - 1185).
11th-century weakness
The state of the Byzantine Empire in the 11th century may be compared
to that of the Roman Empire in the 3rd century, when, after a long
period of secure prosperity, new pressures from beyond the frontiers
aggravated the latent tensions in society. The brief reigns of Basil
II's heirs reflected, and were often the product of, a division
in the Byzantine ruling class, a conflict between the military aristocracy
of the provinces and the civilian aristocracy, or bureaucracy, of
Constantinople. Each faction put up rival emperors. The sophisticated
urban aristocracy favoured rulers who would reverse the militaristic
trend of the empire and who would expand the civil service and supply
them and their families with lucrative offices and decorative titles.
The military families, whose wealth lay not in the capital but in
the provinces and who had been penalized by Basil II's legislation,
favoured emperors who were soldiers and not civil servants. In this
they were more realistic, for in the latter part of the 11th century
it became ever clearer that the empire's military strength was no
longer sufficient to hold back its enemies. The landowners in the
provinces appreciated the dangers more readily than the government
in Constantinople, and they made those dangers an excuse to enlarge
their estates in defiance of all the laws passed in the 10th century.
The theme system in Anatolia, which had been the basis of the empire's
defensive and offensive power, was rapidly breaking down at the
very moment when its new enemies were gathering their strength.
On the other hand, the urban aristocracy of Constantinople, reacting
against the brutalization of war, strove to make the city a centre
of culture and sophistication. The university was endowed with a
new charter by Constantine IX in 1045, partly to ensure a steady
flow of educated civil servants for the bureaucracy. The law school
was revived under the jurist John Xiphilinus; the school of philosophy
was chaired by Michael Psellus, whose researches into every field
of knowledge earned him a reputation for omniscience and a great
following of brilliant pupils. Psellus - courtier, statesman, philosopher,
and historian - is in himself an advertisement for the liveliness
of Byzantine society in the 11th century. What he and others like
him failed to take into account was that their empire was more and
more expending the resources and living on the reputation built
up by the Macedonian emperors.
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