THE ROLE OF PILGRIMAGES j'«" 105
Roman Emperor Heraclius and his subjects to persevere, in fe face of
an apparently irretrievable defeat, in waging the last and worst k>f ,the
Romano-Persian wars (gerebatur A.D. 603-28) until they had libferatj&fU*
Christendom's holy city Jerusalem from a Zoroastrian domination and
had recovered a Holy Rood which had been removed by sacrilegious
Persian hands in A.D. 614. The same ardent feeling for the same Christian
Holy Land was to be the loadstone of Western Christian Crusaders'
efforts a hundred years after the time of Basil II's two Syrian cam-
paigns. When the Eastern Orthodox Christian warrior-emperors Niki-
ph6ros Phokas (imperabat A.D. 963-9), John Tzimisces (imperabat A.D.
969-76), and Basil II (imperabat A.D. 969-1025) successively invaded
Syria, were they moved in part by the same nostalgia for the cradle of
Christianity ?

If the master-motive of Basil's raid in the direction of Palestine in
A.D. 999 had indeed been a crusader's zeal, it would be difficult—even
after making full allowance for Basil's double preoccupation with the
Great Romano-Bulgarian war on a distant European front and with the
repeated rebellions of feudal magnates in the Anatolian heart of his
dominions1—to understand how in A.D. 1001 Basil could have brought
himself to conclude a ten-years' truce with the 'Fatirnid' Power under
which the Syrian arena was partitioned between the two empires along
a line running, far out of range of Jerusalem, from a point on the shore
of the Mediterranean, just to the north of Tartus (Antaradus), to a point
on the bank of the River Orontes just to the south of Shayzar (Caesarea).z
It would be even more difficult to understand why in A.D. 1009 Basil did
not break the truce, even at the cost of interrupting his war-to-the-death
with Bulgaria, as he had interrupted it once before in A.D. 995, in order
to transfer his striking force to a Syrian theatre of operations. In A.D. 995
Basil had made a forced march across Anatolia for the sake of saving
Aleppo from falling into the hands of the Tatimid' Power; in A.D. 1009
what was at stake in Syria was not the fortress of Aleppo but the Church
of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. In A.D. 1009 this Christian holy
place was pillaged and rased by order of the 'Fatimid' Caliph Hakim
(imperabat A.D. 996-1020).3 Yet Basil made no military move either to
prevent the outrage or to avenge it.

There are, nevertheless, some indications that Basil II, as well as his
successors Constantine VIII (IX) (imperabat solus A.D. 1025-8) and
Constantine IX (X) Monomakhos (imperabat A.D. 1042-54), was partly
moved by a genuine concern for the Palestinian holy places. In A.D. 987-8,
seven years before his first Syrian campaign, Basil himself had sent a
mission to Cairo charged with funds for the upkeep of the Church of the
Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem.4 In A.D. 1027 Constantine VIII negotiated
with the 'Fatimid' Government a treaty empowering him to undertake
the restoration of the church, which Halkim had destroyed in the mean-
time. This treaty was renewed in A.D. 1036; and the actual work of

1 See IV. iv. 390-3 and 396-7.

a See Runciman, S.: A History of the Cru$ades> vol. i (Cambridge 1951, University
Press), p. 33.

3 See V. v. 683-5.

* See Runciman, op. cit., p. 34, n. i.

B 2915,rs E 2