At the Right Hand of the Lord: Proximity, Patronage, and Power in 10th-Century Byzantium

In this paper I will present a case study on Basil Lekapenos, perhaps the most famous Byzantine eunuch and a major Byzantine statesman for much of the tenth century. Although the illegitimate son of a usurper, Basil exercised a tremendous amount of influence on his legitimate imperial relatives: ten years after his fall, exile, and death, laws were still being passed reversing the decisions and orders he had issued while in power. Basil's authority is partly grounded in his status (however indirect) as a member of the imperial family: as the confidant of his half-sister, the empress Helena Lekapene, and right-hand minister of her husband, Constantine VII, Basil controlled nominations to court offices and mediated access to imperial audiences. Yet this authority also derives from the physical proximity to the emperor that Basil enjoyed as a privilege of his numerous high-ranking court titles, particularly that of parakoimōmenos—literally, “the one who sleeps beside.” As parakoimōmenos, Basil would have appeared alongside the emperor throughout the daily proceedings of the court, to say nothing of feast days, urban processions, or military campaigns. By the end of his career, Basil would have immortalized this literal proximity in the metaphorical (and metaphysical) space of several artistic commissions, including one exceptional reliquary upon which Basil's name is engraved at the right hand of the central crucifix. Through an examination of Basil's activities in all three of these spatial contexts—familial, courtly, and artistic—I challenge stereotypical conceptions of service and agency associated with eunuchs by both their medieval contemporaries and modern observers. Although Basil was an undoubtedly exceptional individual, this case study shows that these associations were not always imposed on eunuchs from without, but could also be the objects of active cultivation—and, indeed, that the proximity implied such associations could act a powerful source of authority.