[The following is adapted from P. Stephenson, Byzantium's Balkans Frontier: A Political Study of the Northern Balkans, 900-1204 (Cambridge University Press, 2000), ch. 1.]
Byzantine relations with Bulgaria were complicated in the early years
of the tenth century: more complicated than many historians have allowed.
The Bulgarian Tsar Symeon (c. 894-927) has been portrayed by both Byzantine
and modern authors as an aggressor intent on capturing Constantinople from
which he might rule a united Byzantine-Bulgarian empire. However, recent
scholarship (notably the work of Bozhilov and Shepard) has questioned this,
and maintained that Symeon's ambitions were more limited until the final
years of his reign, the 920s, when he engineered a series of confrontations
with the Byzantine Emperor Romanos I Lekapenos (920-44). (We will cover
these years elsewhere: see the letters of Nicholas Mystikos and Theodore
Daphnopates.) Symeon's died on 27 May 927, and his successor Peter (d.
967) immediately launched a major invasion of the Byzantine administrative
district of Macedonia. As one of four sons such a show of strength would
have been necessary to secure the support of his father's boyars. However,
the Bulgarian troops withdrew swiftly, at the same time razing the fortresses
that they had held until then in Thrace, and this early performance was
not repeated. Instead, it heralded forty years of apparent harmony and
cooperation between the two major powers in the northern Balkans. The reason
for the withdrawal, and the centrepiece of the enduring Bulgarian Byzantine
accord was the marriage in 927 of Peter to Maria Lecapena, granddaughter
of the (senior) ruling emperor Romanus I Lecapenus.Peter has generally
been held to have presided over the dramatic decline of Bulgaria. Thus
Browning (1975: 194-5) concludes his stimulating comparative study with
the observation 'the grandiose dreams of ... Symeon ended in the dreary
reality of Peter's long reign, when Bulgaria became a harmless Byzantine
protectorate'. Such interpretations focus on Bulgaria's military prowess,
comparing Symeon's successes with his son's inactivity, and draw heavily
on Byzantine narrative sources. If we examine the material evidence the
indications are entirely different, suggesting a period of political consolidation
and economic expansion. Byzantine sources, as much by their silences as
their occasional references to the tsar's irenic disposition, bear testimony
to the relative peace, if not the prosperity of Peter's reign and his good
relations with Constantinople. This is not to suggest that Bulgaria was
not considered a potential threat in Constantinople, for as we will see
shortly many other peoples were considered suitable allies against Peter.
Nevertheless, in the mid-tenth century the productive hinterland of Constantinople
was no longer trampled under the boots of Bulgarian troops. Perhaps the
most significant indication of the new status quo is the absence of any
substantive chapter on the Bulgarians in the treatise known as the De
Administrando Imperio (DAI). Compiled on the instruction of
Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, to whom it is generally attributed, it
comprises 53 chapters of advice addressed to his son and heir Romanus II
(959-63). Some chapters are culled directly from earlier histories to provide
antiquarian information on peoples and places of contemporary concern to
the imperial court. However, the chapters of greatest interest are those
based on dossiers of information on the empire's neighbours compiled in
the century before the work was completed c. 954. Virtually all that we
know of Byzantine diplomatic procedure is based on the DAI, and
it is possible to construct a detailed picture of imperial policy in the
Balkans and beyond from a close examination of the text.
Three brief excerpts are available: