Basile Ier

Biography

Its childhood and its rise are in particular known to us by the work of Jean Skylitzès, Synopsis Historiarum . Resulting from a family of Armenian peasants established in Macedonia, it would be according to the Byzantine author also descendant of a famous Armenian chalk-lining, that of the Arsacides. On its childhood, Jean Skylitzès tells that it would have been captured with its family by Krum (in Bulgare Крум), Khan of the Bulgares, at the time of the catch of Andrinople before returning in its fatherland “thanks to the divine benevolence”. Leaving Macedonia for Constantinople, he is enlisted by a man of the name of Théophilitzès, near of the emperor and César Bardas, which makes its Prôtostrator of it. Noticed by the emperor Michel III, he becomes initially simple rider, and becomes, thanks to his beauty and at his address to draw up the horses, his favorite, doing it prôtostrator and making him marry his mistress.

Jean Skylitzès also tells that the César Bardas as Leon the Philosopher would have predicted that Basile would cause the loss of the line of the emperor. However very near to the emperor, it pushes this one to eliminate his maternal uncle, the César Bardas, before making it even assassinate to him. It thus founds the dynasty Macedonian under which the Byzantine empire reaches its apogee.

Basile Ier is a man without scruple but a wise and advised policy. He restores by drastic economies the treasure previously wasted by Michel III. He drives back the Arab methodically of the minor Asia and restores the Byzantine authority on the Italy of the south. Thus it seizes Tarente in 880.

In the religious field it relegates initially the patriarch Photius, cousin of his predecessor, in a convent, then restores it in its prerogatives in 878 and confirms it at its station by the pseudo-synodus photiana in 879 in VIIIe ecumenical council of the Greeks. The relations with Rome also improve when the emperor accepts in 869/870, at the time of VIIIe council œucumenic of Constantinople which had condemned Photius, to restore Ignace like patriarch and to return in the Roman communion.

Finally in the legislative field Basile Ier starts the philosopher's stone continued by its successors (" purification of Lois"), and in particular Leon VI, by the publication of the Prochiron and the Épanagogè . This collection of the imperial laws is known under the name of Basiliques .

There is of him a treaty of the Art to reign addressed to his Leon son (published with Palermo, 1584, Greek-Latin, and translated into French by dom Percheron, 1590). It had begun in 877 a collection of laws in 60 books, that his/her son finished and who is known under the title of Basiliques : it is a Greek translation of the Institutes , Digeste , and Code Justinien , with complements. This collection was published in 1647 with Paris by Fabrot, 7 folio volumes, and with Leipzig, by Heimbach, 1831 - 1849, 5 volumes in-4.

Basile Ier dies in 886, at the 73 years age after a 19 years reign.

See too

Sources

Publications

Basilii, imperatoris Constantinopoli, exhortationum capita sexaginta sex, per achrostichidem, AD Leonem filium cognomento philosophum . Lutetiae: apud Fédéric Morel, 1584.

Internal bond

Rebirth Macedonian

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