Basil Lekapenos - a powerful eunuch and ruler of Byzantine empire. He was an illegitimate son of the Byzantine emperor Romanos I Lekapenos who served as the parakoimomenos and chief minister of the Byzantine Empire for most of the period 947–985, under emperors Constantine VII, Nikephoros II Phokas, John I Tzimiskes, and Basil II.
His mother was a slave woman of "Scythian" (possibly implying Slavic/Bulgarians) origin. From his father's side, he had Macedonian and Armenian roots.
Basil was a close friend of emperor John Tzimiskes. Basil himself took part in the great campaign against the Rus' in Bulgaria in 971, having been entrusted with the reserve forces, the baggage train and the supply arrangements, while Tzimiskes himself with his elite troops marched ahead.
His enormous wealth enabled Basil to become, according to the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, "one of the most lavish Byzantine art patrons".
"Psellos characterized him as the most remarkable person in the Roman empire, outstanding in intellect, bodily stature, and regal in appearance." As an artifice shaped by human hands, Basil Lekapenos became skilled in rhetoric, diplomacy, warfare; he possessed avid desire for wealth and power, subtle taste, and an eye for exquisite shapes. This eunuch's adorned body could be equated to the beautiful Limburg container. It is this brilliant form in which power resides. The eunuch is the angelic guard and protector; the face and body of the empire, in brief—the container of the empire. Relic and reliquary work in tandem, a pair suspended between presence and absence, between inaccessible energy—the emperor—and sensual experience of an iconized container—the eunuch."
— Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics, 51: Spring 2007. By Francesco Pellizzi
The history of Byzantium is dotted with examples of what some historians condemn as over-powerful eunuch courtiers, who attempted to dominate their rulers. From Chrysaphios in the fifth century, Euphratas under Justinian, to Staurakios and Aetios, Samonas in the ninth, Basil Lekapenos in the tenth, and John the orphanotrophos (in charge of the large Imperial Orphanage in Constantinople) in the eleventh, the list is extensive. Basil Lekapenos, an illegitimate son of Romanos I, known as ‘Nothos’ (‘the Bastard’), made a particularly successful career. After being castrated as a child to destroy any imperial ambitions he might have developed, he was appointed parakoimomenos by Constantine VII. He held on to great power through the rule of Nikephoros II and John I, and practically governed the empire during the first decade of Basil II’s reign (976–85). With his great wealth, he commissioned magnificent art objects such as the Limburg reliquary. He also wrote a treatise on naval battles and had it copied in a splendid manuscript of military Taktika.
In this respect, Basil Lekapenos was typical of several high-ranking eunuchs who became art patrons, diplomats, generals, administrators, teachers, writers, theologians and churchmen (plate 10). In many cases these officials were detached from their court duties to undertake particular missions, diplomatic or military, such as Andreas, who negotiated with the Arabs in the seventh century, or Theoktistos, who commanded the navy in the ninth century. In Byzantium, as in the caliphate, eunuchs regularly found employment as military generals and diplomats. Their high status is confirmed in the Book on the Interpretation of Dreams, written by a Christian Greek author, Achmet, who drew on Byzantine and Arabic sources as well as on his own dreams. In common with many authors, he equates beautiful eunuchs with angels. Both of course were considered sexless beings, since angels have no sex and eunuchs were supposed to have lost theirs.
As well as these high-ranking eunuch officials, others made careers far away from the Great Palace and imperial patronage. They appear incidentally in hagiographical sources, and sometimes feature on a list of wedding gifts, as in the story of Digenes Akrites, the frontier hero. When Digenes Akrites finally married the girl (she is never named), her eldest uncle presented them with ten boys:
Sexless and handsome with lovely long hair,
Clothed in a Persian dress of silken cloth
With fine and golden sleeves about their necks.
— Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire by Judith Herrin.
About eunuchs' appearance in Byzantium.
As he [Andrew] sat on the ground in front of the gateway there came a young eunuch who was the chamberlain of one of the nobles.
His face was like a rose, the skin of his body white as snow, he was well shaped, fair-haired, possessing an unusual softness, and smelling of musk from afar.
[Another variant: beautiful young eunuch, with blond hair (epixanthos), a face like a rose and a body white like snow]
-- Life of St Andrew the Fool.
Basil had a luxurious palace with 3000 servants, and he also built the most beautiful church of St. Basil, full of gold and decorations. It is said that when his nephew Basil Porphyrogenitus destroyed this church, Basil the eunuch fell from a stroke and was paralyzed, and later he died in the monastery.
Psellos records that In 985, the emperor Basil Porphyrogenitus assumed personal rule and banished Basil Lekapenos who soon after died "his limbs…paralysed and he a living corpse".
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"In the course of Byzantium’s long history, a few individuals effectively ruled the empire without occupying the imperial throne. One of the most interesting of these figures was Basil the Nothos, or Basil the Parakoimomenos, who was the main power beside or behind the throne for most of the period from 945 to 985.
This he did until 985, when Basil II, no longer a teenager, could no longer bear his own exclusion from power. The vindictiveness with which he not only removed the Parakoimomenos from office, but also sought to destroy the latter’s political legacy, is a measure of how complete the elder Basil’s political control had been. It was a political control that both amassed and expended great wealth, both facilitating and relying on an extensive network of social and cultural patronage. The greatest beneficiary of this patronage, the monastery that Basil founded in the name of his patron saint, has disappeared almost without trace, but his sponsorship has been seen, or surmised, in numerous cultural artefacts of the later tenth century, and interest in his role as the last patron of the “Macedonian Renaissance” shows no signs of abating.
At the centre of the Parakoimomenos’ quasi-imperial power and patronage was his oikos, which was no doubt appropriate to his status. Indeed, his house and household are mentioned no less than four times in literature of the period. According to Leo the Deacon, Basil was able to mobilise and arm over three thousand “household members” (οἰκογενεῖς) in support of Nikephoros Phokas in 963. The same author later records that he had witnessed a bright star descending on the house of the proedros Basil; this portended Basil’s death shortly afterwards and the looting of his property
There is an additional reason for seeking the house of Basil the Parakoimomenos in the area of the Embolos of Domninos. This is because it was somewhere to the west of the Embolos that Basil established his monastery of St Basil, which was famously stripped of its wealth and its ornaments by Basil II."
-The House of Basil the Parakoimomenos, by Paul Magdalino
