17 Recovery Under The Macedonian Emperors

The illiterate usurper Basil the Macedonian (867–886) and his heirs sought legitimacy via military victory and patronage of the arts. They could not have acted more opportunely. The 10th century was an era of battles won and peoples baptized, including the Varangians of Russia and the South Slavs. By 1025, Eastern Europe had taken on its early shape as a Byzantine Orthodox commonwealth—Slavic in speech, Byzantine in aesthetics, and imperial in institutions.