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:
“Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Talk to every woman as if you loved her, and to every man as if he bored you, and at the end of your first season you will have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“I am sorry to say we whites have a sad reputation among many of the Polynesians. The natives of these islands are naturally of a kindly and hospitable temper, but there has been implanted among them an almost instinctive hate of the white man. They esteem us, with rare exceptions, such as some of the missionaries, the most barbarous, treacherous, irreligious, and devilish creatures on the earth.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)