In the year 886 an emperor rose to the Byzantine throne who would go down in history with the name of Leōn VI ho Sophos , i.e. Leo the Wise (or the Philosopher ), because of his vast culture. Second of the Macedonian dynasty, it was not entirely clear whether his father was Basil I, as the official version said, or his predecessor, Michael III, but he still managed to be appointed thanks to the mediation of an obscure woman whom he There are not many certain facts and the fabulous riches that she bequeathed to him:Danielis, to whose memory a street is dedicated in his native Patras.
Miguel III, alias El Beodo , was at the head of the Eastern Roman Empire since 842, after succeeding his father Theophilus when he was only three years old and under the regency of his mother Theodora, who relied on a council made up of relatives (her brothers, Thecla , Bardas and Petronas, plus the logoteta of the drocmo, Teoctisto). They had the unusual luck that there was no attempted usurpation, which gave stability to the period to put an end to the iconoclastic and Paulician heresies (the second relatively, since it led to another, the Bogomi), curb the expansionism of the Abbasid caliphates and Fatimid, reorganize the battered finances and subdue the population of the Peloponnese.
Miguel was not properly educated and turned out to be a capricious ruler, dominated by his uncle Bardas, who managed to make a coup to remove the other regents and be named Caesar. The consequence was an aggressive foreign policy, conquering Bulgaria, part of Asia Minor, and expanding Christianity, although the so-called Schism of Photius could not be avoided. There were also setbacks, one of which, the one that occurred in Sicily - where he could only keep Syracuse and Taormina - caused an exodus of Sicilians to the Peloponnese. In that southern land of Greece, the episode that completely changed the panorama would take place.
It was in the city of Patras, specifically, where a page of Theophilitzes (a relative of Bardas) had been sent to probe Danielis, a widow with a large fortune - surely inherited from a Slavic husband - whose growing power aroused some suspicion. That page was also called Bardas and was of Macedonian origin, from a peasant family, although later a royal ancestry linked to the Arsacids of Armenia and even Constantine the Great would be ascribed to him. Actually his ethnicity is not known with certainty, but traditionally it is said that he and his family were slaves of the khan Krum of Bulgaria until they managed to escape to Byzantine Thrace, entering the service of the aforementioned Theophilitzes.
In any case, his mission in Patras was a success as unexpected as it was profitable for the empire and for himself. Firstly because he did, in effect, curry favor with Danielis, who gave him a fortune in property and money during the two months he stayed there citing illness (even after the imperial delegation returned home); and second, because he also attracted the attention of Miguel III, who after contemplating his physical abilities in horse taming and wrestling named him parakomenos (literally "the one who sleeps beside [the emperor's chamber"] something like his personal bodyguard). Thanks to this, this modest but ambitious servant began to prosper at court.
In fact, he divorced his wife Maria to marry another according to his new rank, Eudocia Ingerina, who was one of the emperor's mistresses. Already fully immersed in Byzantine idiosyncrasy, he convinced Miguel III to finish off Caesar Bardas and free him from his influence, occupying his position himself. That was in 886 and in the same year he was promoted to co-emperor. Some suppose that he perhaps then adopted an illegitimate son of his new lord and not recognized until then (others think that he did not adopt him but pretended not to know that he was not his; we will see later). We are talking about León, the one we reviewed at the beginning, who thus came to have a father and would become a legal heir.
Heir because when the emperor began to divert favors from him to another favorite called Basilikianos, to whom he granted the unheard-of grace of wearing the emperor's exclusive red boots, the other decided to get them both out of the way. On the night of September 24, 867, while Miguel was sleeping one of the drunken sprees that gave him his nickname, a group of traitors led by the protovestiarios (imperial wardrobe attendant) Rendakios stabbed them to death. Thus ascended to the throne that man of poor origin, with the name of Basilio I the Macedonian .
There is no doubt that a good part of that destiny that he forged for himself was due to Danielis, the woman he met in Patras, who was the one who laid the first stone filling him with riches. Now, who was Danielis exactly? There is very little information about her. It is known that she was a Byzantine aristocrat, a widow to be exact, owner of extensive estates in the Peloponnese, where she also owned carpet and other textile factories. All this, however, does not explain why she decided to favor Basilio; It is a fact that has been lost to history. What does seem obvious is that she was right with her choice, because that reign was prosperous and lasting.
Basil I behaved very differently from Michael III. The new emperor was restrained and very religious, building an imposing cathedral, ingratiating himself with the pope of Rome without submitting to him and fighting the aforementioned bogomils (Gnostic ascetics declared heretics). He also obtained several military victories, especially in Italy, where he recovered a large part of Calabria from the Muslims (at the cost of losing Syracuse and Malta, yes) and was thus able to restore Byzantine power in the Mediterranean, especially after the conquest of Cyprus.
But, above all, the emperor reorganized the economy and carried out intense legislative work, compiled in sixty volumes (Basilika ) and other minor works (Eisagoge , Prochiron ), which would be the basis of Byzantine law until the end of the empire. In short, the Eastern Roman Empire was once again shining and it was in this context that the visit that an elderly Danielis decided to make to her former pupil was framed, entering Constantinople on a palanquin carried on the shoulders of a dozen slaves and accompanied by an entourage made up of four hundred men, a hundred eunuchs and as many maidens, each and every one carrying a gift; a show considered quite extravagant even at the time. Basilio showed her gratitude by naming her Basileomētōr (Queen Mother) and protospatharios (head of the bodyguard) to her son Juan de ella, in addition to showering her with gifts.
After almost two decades of reign, the emperor suffered a serious hunting accident in which his belt caught on the antlers of a deer and he was dragged by the animal for several kilometers; the resulting injuries led to fevers that were fatal. Basilio died on August 29, 886 and the always thorny problem of the succession was left open. His eldest son, Constantine, had died in 879, so the youngest, Alexander, had been associated with the throne that same year. The third in discord was León, whom Basilio detested because he was convinced that he was actually the son of Miguel III.
Moreover, he feared that one day he would want to avenge the previous emperor and, on top of that, his fondness for his books made him so different from his presumed progenitor that he treated him with disdain. The relationship deteriorated after Eudocia, the mother, died:León was very dissatisfied with his marriage to the lady Teófano Martinakia (later canonized by the Orthodox Church), imposed by his father to distance him from his lover Zoe Zautzina -whom he simultaneously married a minor official - and his opposition began to be considered suspicious of rebellion.
The distrust reached the point that Basilio accused him of being involved in a plot against him, ordering him to be imprisoned. That caused popular disturbances; when three years later he granted her freedom, he did so by threatening to blind him (a traditional Byzantine system to prevent someone from reigning, since this meant that they could not represent the reflection of divine perfection). Luckily for Leo, his tutor, the Patriarch Photius, dissuaded the emperor.
Double luck because, curiously, Danielis supported León's candidacy. For this he showered him with money with which to attract factual circles, in the case of Estiliano Zautzez (the father of his lover) or the eunuch Samonas, who joined the aforementioned Focio and other high officials. And, indeed, the one who would be Leo VI managed to win the crown; his first order, by the way, was to organize a new and pompous funeral in honor of Michael III, whose remains he had transferred from the Philippikos Monastery in Chrysopolis, on the Asian coast of the Bosphorus, to the imperial mausoleum of the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople. , which would be one more indication that he really was his son.
Danielis outlived his own offspring, Juan, passing away on an uncertain date. In his will he bequeathed all his property and fortune to the emperor, including three thousand slaves that the Byzantine state manumitted to send as settlers to southern Italy.