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- Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus wrote a book for the "edification of his heirs" entitled "On the Administration of the Empire", in which he expounded the arcana of imperial policy: The enemy was to be neutralized through alliances with his opponents, pacified with gifts, drawn into the imperial sphere of influence, and finally annihilated.
The emperors of the Macedonian dynasty came close to achieving a true dynastic principle while remaining ostensibly within the Roman constitutional framework which made of the emperor an elected magistrate. The legal fiction was maintained as before: the successive emperors were formally acclaimed and crowned, but the belief that the only true emperor was a "porphyrogenitus", a son of the reigning monarch born in the "porphyra", or purple chamber of the palace, entrenched itself in the popular mind. Neither the youth nor the illegitimate birth of the sickly Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, nor the minority of Basil II and his brother Constantine VIII, nor even the ludicrous vagaries of the foolish old women who closed the Macedonian line, could break the passionate allegiance of the people to the dynasty.
The ultimate purpose of Constantine's advice to his son was "that the nations may bring thee their gifts and thou mayest be adored of them that dwell upon the earth." The emperor insisted that no foreigner was worthy of entering the imperial house and stressed the fact that the princess Maria Lecapena granted to Peter of Bulgaria was not "porphyrogenita". The same would be said of Otto II's bride, Theophano. The full imperial princess Anna was granted to a Russian bridegroom only under the double stress of civil war and threatened invasion.
Both the legitimate members of the dynasty and their coopted colleagues maintained high ideals of public service. Despite the growth of the bureaucracy necessitated by the expansion of the empire, no aspect of the life of his subjects lay beyond the attentive supervision of the ruler. The scholarly Constantine VII informs us of every minutia of imperial ceremonies and of the functioning of the "theme" system; the new general codification of the "Basilics" matched in size and inclusiveness the "Code of Justinian".
Culture was indispensable for any successful career. Except for the bluff Basil II, the emperors personally led the way and continued to favour intellectuals. Leo VI the Wise, the student of the learned Photius, was an excellent rhetorician; his son Constantine VII turned the imperial palace into a meeting place for scholars and literati.
This database researched and compiled by Norman Lee Madsen, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 21 July 2015.
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905 - 959 (~ 53 år)
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