Nikephoros II Phokas

Holy Right-⁠believing Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas was a general and emperor of the Romans (Byzantines), killed in the palace in the night of 10 to 11 December 969.

Family and soldiering

Nikephoros II Phokas, born around the year 912, belonged to the mighty and noble Cappadocian family of the Phokas, which gave the Eastern Empire great commanders: his grandfather, Nikephoros the Elder, his father, Bardas, and his brother, Leo. The Venerable Michael Maleinos was his uncle. From 954 he was domestic of the scholae and became known for his victories on the field. In 960-961 he led the Cretan campaign and took the Arab fortress of Chandax (Heraklion) after a hard siege; the city was sacked and razed, and the plunder served to arm the heavy cavalry. After a triumph in Constantinople he was named strategos autokrator of Asia, and on 2 July 963, near Caesarea in Cappadocia, the army proclaimed him emperor. He entered the capital on 16 August and was crowned; he then married Theophano, the widow of the emperor Romanus II.

His reign

The chronicler Leo the Deacon describes him as a strong, temperate and wise man, while other, hostile sources paint him harshly. He wore a hair shirt under his garments, slept on skins spread on the floor and abstained from meat; he even wished to become a monk. He wanted to give the war against the unbelievers a sacred character: he required his soldiers to pray morning and evening, and tried to have those fallen in battle numbered among the martyrs, but the patriarch and the bishops opposed it, and he yielded. He helped Saint Athanasius of Athos to raise the first monastery on Athos. At the same time, by a novel of 964, he forbade the founding of new monasteries and the enlarging of the estates of the old ones, judging that the craving for wealth corrupted monastic life.

In his first two years he secured imperial rule over Tarsus, Adana, Mopsuestia and Cyprus; in 966 he took Manbij and stood before the walls of Antioch. He suffered defeats in Sicily in 964 and 965, and the island remained in Arab hands. To strike the Bulgarians he called on the grand prince Sviatoslav of Kiev, who then would not leave Bulgaria. Antioch was taken by his officers on 28 October 969, when he had returned to the capital because of the threat from Sviatoslav.

His end

Long wars, new taxes, the famine of 969 and the coinage reform cost him his popularity. Fearing plots, he turned part of the palace into a fortress. Suspicious, he also removed the general John Tzimiskes. In the night of 10 to 11 December 969 the conspirators, aided by the empress Theophano, entered the palace in a basket let down from the wall and found the emperor sleeping on the floor beside the hearth. Tzimiskes ordered him killed. The guards, seeing the severed head of their master, proclaimed John Tzimiskes emperor.

For his service to the state and the Church, Nikephoros Phokas was numbered among the saints. His memory is kept on 24 December, in the new style, only in a codex of the Lavra; he is not included in the present calendar of the Russian Orthodox Church.