sons. The
hierarchy of the Greek Church, which supported the ruling classes of the
country and lent them authority at the same time that it increased its
own, was antipathetic to the Slavs, and the Bogomil heresy drew much
strength from its nationalistic colouring and from the appeal which it
made to the character of the Balkan Slavs, who have always been intolerant
of government by the Church. But neither the civil nor the ecclesiastical
authorities were able to cope with the problem; indeed they were apt to
minimize its importance, and the heresy was never eradicated till the
arrival on the scene of Islam, which proved as attractive to the
schismatics as the well-regulated Orthodox Church had been the reverse.

The third quarter of the tenth century witnessed a great recrudescence of
the power of Constantinople under the Emperor Nikiphoros Phokas, who
wrested Cyprus and Crete from the Arabs and inaugurated an era of
prosperity for the eastern empire, giving it a new lease of vigorous and
combative life. Wishing to reassert the Greek supremacy in the Balkan
peninsula his first act was to refuse any further payment of tribute to
the Bulgarians as from 966; his next was to initiate a campaign against
them, but in order to make his own success in this enterprise less costly
and more assured he secured the co-operation of the Russians under
Svyatoslav, Prince of Kiev; this potentate's mother Olga had visited
Constantinople in 957 and been baptized (though her son and the bulk of
the population were still ardent heathens), and commercial intercourse
between Russia and Constantinople by means of the Dnieper and the Black
Sea was at that time lively. Svyatoslav did not want pressing, and
arriving with an army of 10,000 men in boats, overcame northern Bulgaria
in a few days (967); they were helped by Shishman and the western Bulgars,
who did not mind at what price Peter and the eastern Bulgars were crushed.
Svyatoslav was recalled to Russia in 968 to defend his home from attacks
by the Tartar Pechenegs, but that done, he made up his mind to return to
Bulgaria, lured by its riches and by the hope of the eventual possession
of Constantinople.

The Emperor Nikiphoros was by now aware of the danger he had imprudently
conjured up, and made a futile alliance with eastern Bulgaria; but in
January 969 Peter of Bulgaria died, and in December of the same year
Nikiphoros was murdered by the ambitious Armenian John Tzimisces,[1] who
ther