Abstract
In the 10th century, Byzantium and the East Frankish Empire led by a German family were the two most powerful states. The Carolingians had been crowned Emperors of the Romans since 800. Byzantium had never fully recognized the creation of this rival Empire since this title was their possession, being the natural heir of the Roman Empire, and thus considered the Frankish ambition as illegitimate. Now in the 10th, both Empires carried on the policy of spreading the Christian faith started in the 9th century, as their duty as Emperors commanded them to . Between the two states, a vast pagan territory was to be conquered to Christianity. Bulgaria had been Christianised by the Byzantines, while in the West missions were sent among the Slavs and the Scandinavians . I have in this introduction to briefly present the peoples to whom Christianity was destined for a purpose of further clarity.
Several peoples were living on the border of the Byzantine state. What I have called the Bulgars was the settlement of a Turkish tribe upon the Slavs of the Southern Balkans.
They had created a state by annexing some Byzantine lands as northern Macedonia and Thrace. The Rus were also a growing power all along the 10th century. What is called Rus is actually the settlement of Scandinavians rulers upon the Slavs in the region of the Middle Dnieper, who took over the leadership of Khazaria in Kiev, to settle there and extend the so-called lands of Rus . Khazaria was a powerful state in the Caucasus in the 9th but lost power in the 10th and was composed of an elite who gradually fell into the arms of Judaism. The Pechenegs were a Turkish pagan people who were, like the Alans, allies of Byzantium and helped them controlling the rising power of the Rus.
