Reputation
Compared with the military success of his father's reign, Petar has been traditionally considered a weak ruler, who lost lands and prestige, allowed his military forces to decline while his country was ravaged by foreign invaders, and turned Bulgaria into a Byzantine satellite governed by Byzantine agents in the persons of his empress and her retinue. This view has been questioned by more recent scholarship, which emphasizes the affluence and internal peace enjoyed by Bulgarian society during this long reign, re-evaluates the relationship between Bulgaria and its semi-nomadic neighbors (Magyars and Pechenegs), and questions the allegedly sinister role of Romanos' granddaughter and her retinue. While Petar's reign witnessed the spread of the Bogomil heresy, its origins were more demographic (perhaps inspired by Paulicians settled earlier by Byzantine emperors in Thrace) than social, and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church canonized the monarch as a saint. Petar was considered a good ruler in the Middle Ages, and when Bulgaria fell under Byzantine rule (1018–1185), leaders of attempts to restore Bulgarian independence adopted his name to emphasize legitimacy and continuity.
Read more about this topic: Peter I Of Bulgaria
Famous quotes containing the word reputation:
“A prince must be prudent enough to know how to escape the bad reputation of those vices that would lose the state for him, and must protect himself from those that will not lose it for him, if this is possible; but if he cannot, he need not concern himself unduly if he ignores these less serious vices.”
—Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527)
“I have not written in vain if I have heretofore done anything towards diminishing the reputation of the Renaissance landscape painting.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900)
“How many people live on the reputation of the reputation they might have made!”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)