Download PDF | (Empires of the World) James Francis LePree Ph.D. (editor), Ljudmila Djukic (editor) - The Byzantine Empire [2 volumes]_ A Historical Encyclopedia-Greenwood Press (2019).
680 Pages
INTRODUCTION
FROM ROMAN TO BYZANTINE
Byzantine history is a continuation of Roman history. The empire that we refer to as “Byzantine” today was called “Roman” by those who ruled and inhabited it. Roman political, social, and cultural institutions remained at work in the Byzantine Empire down to its fall in the 15th century. In the 17th century, scholars in the West began to refer to the period of Roman history after Constantine as something different, designating this “Byzantine,” a reference to Byzantion (Latin, Byzantium), which was the classical predecessor of Constantinople and often a synonym for it. This terminology was influenced by a well-established Western anti-Byzantine bias, whose roots were in the medieval period, which viewed the West as superior. This terminology was useful in the attempt of these scholars to distance Byzantium from this Western heritage.
Fortunately, historical study today has moved beyond medieval and early modern biases to recognize connections and continuities, something already apparent to astute observers in the past. The great 18th-century British historian Edward Gibbon, in his classic study, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, told the story of the Roman Empire from its high point in the second century CE down to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. He well understood that this was all Roman history. Yet, the terms “Byzantine” and “Byzantium” have since generally been adopted by modern historians to denote the Christian empire that existed from the 4th to the 15th centuries CE in contrast to the pagan Roman Empire that preceded it. Still, it must be noted that the inhabitants of the Byzantine Empire always called themselves “Rhomaioi,” the Greek word for “Romans,” and even the Ottoman Turks called their Orthodox Christian subjects by the name that they called themselves, “Rum” (or “Roman”), until the early 20th century. Byzantine emperors understood themselves to be Roman emperors and heirs of the imperial tradition of Augustus.
And so, modern scholars have generally adopted the term “Byzantine” to designate the empire’s long history from the 4th through the 15th centuries CE. Scholars refer to the empire’s early period from the fourth through sixth centuries CE both as the early Byzantine period and also as the late Roman Empire interchangeably, making this age a notable transitional period, where the foundations of the Byzantine civilization were established.
FOUNDATIONS OF BYZANTINE CIVILIZATION: ROMAN LAW AND INSTITUTIONS, GREEK LANGUAGE, AND CHRISTIANITY
The foundations that underlay the development of Byzantium are Roman law and governmental institutions, the Greek language, and Christianity.
After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the fourth century BCE, Greek culture became dominant in the eastern Mediterranean. When the Roman Empire expanded, absorbing the Greek kingdoms of the eastern Mediterranean in the second and first centuries BCE, Rome absorbed this region but was, in turn, conquered by Greek culture, as the Roman poet Horace put it. The Romans learned Greek. The Latin language, dominant in the western Mediterranean, never displaced Greek in the east.
Christianity emerged as the dominant religion of the Roman world in the early Byzantine period, which is also the late Roman period, when the state was Christianized after the reign of Emperor Constantine I (r. 306-337 CE). Constantine founded the city of Constantinople, which became the “New Rome” of the eastern Mediterranean and the capital of the Byzantine Empire. These events, the triumph of Christianity and the construction of a Roman capital in the Greek east, marked the beginning of a new era.
From a modern historical perspective, we can see the starting point of Byzantine history in the “crisis” of the third century CE, which was marked by epidemics, rampant inflation, famine, civil war, and invasions by Germanic tribes and Persian armies. New circumstances provoked by the crisis of the third century found their expression in the administrative reforms of Diocletian (r. 284-305 CE) and Constantine the Great. Diocletian carried out a major reorganization of the whole state administration. Constantine continued his work of reforming the state’s administrative organization, which, in its major characteristics, existed throughout the Byzantine Empire.
‘The crisis of the third century CE was especially disastrous in the western part of the empire. The eastern portion of the Roman Empire was more resilient, benefiting from greater economic resources and from the strength of the new capital city. It was precisely these characteristics that facilitated the development of the empire. The Roman Empire lost its hold on its western territories by the fifth century CE, but the territories in the east survived into this early Byzantine period.
‘The emperor reigned from Constantinople and exercised power through a complex state administration and bureaucracy and a vast military force, all of which were foundations of Byzantine imperial power. Yet, the Roman concept of the sovereignty of the people also remained. Constantinople, like Rome, had a senate, and the city’s inhabitants played an important role in acclaiming and supporting emperors (and sometimes even in toppling them). The emperor was not only expected to manage the civil administration, the army, and the people, but also to take care of them. Failure to do so could well mean the end of a reign. In addition, as Christian rulers, the emperors had to be mindful of supporting the church administration and adhering to and promoting correct theological positions. Thus, holding power was truly a challenging endeavor. While emperors readily promoted the idea that they were placed on the throne by God, the working reality of their power was far more complex and often messy.
As heir to Rome, the Byzantine Empire, in its early period, asserted a belief that it had claim on lands that had previously belonged to the Roman Empire, and it justified conquests with this rationale. Nonetheless, the empire’s economic, social, and political development after the early period led to new approaches to fiscal, social, and administrative organization. The Byzantine Empire was a dynamic state that experienced constant change and innovation, despite antiquated and inaccurate views that the empire was stagnant and unchanging.
Throughout the empire’s history, the church administration and its leaders wielded great influence, marking an important distinction between Roman (pagan/nonChristian) and Byzantine (Christian Roman) history. With their influential positions, Christian bishops and monastic leaders were often in conflict with the emperor. Despite such occurrences, there was a general collaboration between state and church administrations: the Byzantine Empire was an Orthodox Christian state. The emperor acted to support the church, promote Christianity, and confront any danger that threatened “correct teaching,” which is what Orthodoxia means in Greek. Such threats included heretical ideas and those who professed them, but imperial opponents could also be designated as hostile to Christianity. The emperor was a patron and protector of the church, but he was not a bishop or priest, and so, his influence on the church was great, but not absolute.
The emperor ran the civil administration, oversaw the military, protected the church, and guided the people. To help in this enormously challenging combination of responsibilities, emperors used public ceremonies to manifest the sanctity and authority of imperial power, expressing the idea that the emperor was chosen by God and approved by the military, the civil administration, and the people. On public processions and at the games in the Hippodrome, the people cheered according to scripts provided by chanters. During private ceremonies, the emperor’s elevated status was always emphasized, with tight controls enforced on the movement and the speech of all those in his presence. Byzantine ceremonial tradition had its roots in the Roman Empire and even deeper roots in the Persian Empire, whose ceremonial influence had already begun with Alexander’s conquest.
Greek was the dominant language of Byzantium, and the empire was responsible for the preservation of the classical Greek heritage of literature that is extant today, including the great Athenian playwrights, historians, and poets. The empire also contributed to Greek literature through many works of history and other genres as well as volumes of Christian literature, including theological texts and lives of saints. Byzantium carefully preserved the cultural treasures of antiquity and built upon them, creating a new synthesis of Christian and classical culture.
The heritage of Greek thought is evident in the Christian theology that emerged in the early Byzantine period. Christian theologians paired biblical understanding with aspects of the classical philosophical tradition to articulate Christian concepts and establish the “correct teaching” of Christian dogma. For many centuries, Byzantium was the greatest cultural and educational center in the Mediterranean world and, in fact, the Renaissance in Italy in the 14th and 15th centuries greatly benefited from the work of Byzantine scholars in Constantinople.
With its effective administrative organization and highly developed fiscal system, the Byzantine Empire wielded enormous financial resources. Its wealth was a basis of power and prestige, and the state’s financial strength, at least to outside observers at the time, seemed almost endless. Unfortunately, this was not the case in reality. Byzantine monetary success depended primarily on the productivity of peasant agricultural labor and on the effective implementation of its fiscal and civil administration, both of which were disrupted by wars, both foreign and civil, which is one reason that emperors often opted to pay enemies off rather than mobilize armies to fight them. It was not that Byzantium was weak, though the medieval West would regularly accuse emperors of being “effeminate”; such perceptions were the result of a major cultural clash between a monetized Byzantium and an undermonetized, overly martial West. Emperors were strong and also fiscally prudent—it was often more cost effective to pay rather than fight, though the empire also turned to the latter strategy when needed.
IMPERIAL CONSTANTINOPLE
Relocation of the Roman state’s administrative center to the east was partially inspired by the economic power of the more densely inhabited eastern part of the empire. There were also important strategic reasons. Germanic and other peoples were putting pressure on the Danube frontier in the north, and Persia was a constant threat in the east. Constantine, the empire’s first Christian ruler, founded his new city on the Bosporus, which absorbed the existing Greek city of Byzantion (Byzantium in Latin) and became the new imperial capital.
The foundation began in 324 CE, immediately after his victory over his last political rival, which unified the Roman Empire under Constantine, both east and west. On May U1, 330 CE, Constantinople, “the city of Constantine,” was inaugurated. It was the new Rome in the east in contrast to “old” Rome in the west. There are few cities in the world whose foundation had such a great importance for world history as Constantinople. The strategic wisdom of the location is clear. The city is situated on the Bosporus, the meeting point of Asia and Europe, surrounded by sea on three sides: the Bosporus to the east, the Golden Horn to the north, and the Sea of Marmora to the south; it is accessible by land only from the west. At the same time, it controlled traffic between Europe and Asia, as well as dominating access between the Mediterranean and Black Seas. For a millennium, Constantinople was the economic, political, and cultural center of the Byzantine Empire.
Whereas the population of Rome was in decline throughout much of Byzantine history, Constantinople’s was on the rise. Within a century of its foundation, Constantinople overtook Rome in population. In the sixth century CE, Constantinople approached half a million inhabitants, whereas Rome had declined to less than 50,000. This “New Rome” was modeled on the old, with both built on seven hills, for example, and Constantinople even began to outshine Rome. Constantinople claimed that the privileges of the older sibling had transferred to the younger. Constantine made the city a capital to behold, embellishing it with magnificent buildings and churches and with monuments collected from all parts of the empire. From the beginning, Constantinople was a Roman city, with a Greek-speaking population, and was dominated by Christianity—that is, it reflected the foundations of Byzantium.
CONSTANTINE AND CHRISTIANITY
A commonly recurring question about Constantine is the nature of his conversion to Christianity: Was he indifferent, supporting Christianity for mostly political reasons; was his conversion one of profound belief; or was it something in between? As emperor, it certainly was the case that practical political goals were critical for Constantine. The empire’s population and, more important, the army, were primarily non-Christian, so Constantine had to act with some care. It is notable, however, that the transition of the political center toward the east possibly made a pro-Christian attitude more easily established through a new city, one which had no pagan past, rather than one that had the longest and most celebrated in the empire’s history, that of Rome itself.
The question is even more complex when one considers the extent of Constantine’s understanding of the new faith and also the influence of those close to him, such as his Christian mother, Helen, or his father’s devotion to Sol Invictus (“the Unconquered Son”), whose birthday was celebrated on December 25. Whatever position one takes on this question, what is evident is that by 312 CE with his victory over his western rival at Rome, Constantine began supporting Christianity, giving property to the Christian Church and influence to Christian leaders, who, for the first time, had the ear of a Roman emperor.
Constantine supported the Christian Church but was immediately confronted with a problem that previous emperors never had to face. Theological differences split the religion’s leadership and organization into competing factions. The emperor sought to “fix” the problem by calling meetings of bishops to work out a consensus of belief and establish the correct ruling. Such efforts were further examples of how the early Byzantine period was distinguished from its Roman predecessor.
A “watershed” manifestation of this imperial Christian effort was the Council of Nicaea, which Constantine summoned in 325 CE. This meeting was the first in a series of church councils deemed “ecumenical,” meaning universal, that were to establish the foundations of Christian belief, theology, and church organization, from the first held at Nicaea to the seventh also at Nicaea in 787 CE. It is important to consider that all seven of these councils took place near Constantinople (like Nicaea) or in the capital itself, again emphasizing the importance of the Byzantine Empire for the development of Christianity. None of these councils took place in Rome or in the west. The councils clarified correct teaching and condemned what was deemed heretical, that is, false teaching. The emperor convoked the council and influenced its discussions and decisions. Constantine set the precedent that emperors, and not bishops, summoned Ecumenical Councils. Church and state were intertwined, but this meant that theological divisions or disagreements over church leadership were now matters of grave importance for the state and required imperial attention.
The church was not a department of state, but the integration of church and state could easily make it appear so to modern observers. The power of the state supported the church, whose wealth increased throughout the empire, but it also threatened to overshadow it, with emperors seeking to ensure particular theological policies or positions. This collaboration of the state in religious discussion, the intersection of political and ecclesiastical interests, was already evident during Constantine’s reign. Christianity and Byzantine imperial power would be inseparable from this time out, with the briefest exception during the short reign of Constantine’s last descendent, Emperor Julian (r. 361-363 CE). Julian had hoped to stem the advance of Christianity and restore the empire to its traditional non-Christian religious foundations.
He attempted this, however, by shifting state funding from the Christian Church to a revived pagan religious establishment and by modeling the pagan religious hierarchy after that of the existing and effective Christian organization. While Julian was truly devoted to classical culture and philosophy, his hostility to the new religion may also have been in some way connected to its association with the family of Constantine, which was responsible for the murder of his closest family members when he was a child; these murders were committed to eliminate competitors for the throne and to ensure that only the sons of Constantine would rule. Julian died unexpectedly, while on campaign against the Persians, and this final effort to stem the Christianization of the empire died with him.
ERA OF JUSTINIAN: POWER AND RENEWAL
The Christianization of the empire was a central characteristic of the early Byzantine period as was the challenge of Germanic incursions on the Rhine and Danube frontiers; attacks by nomadic peoples from the steppe region, most notably the Huns; and increased hostility from the Persian Empire of the Sassanid Dynasty, which ruled from the third to the seventh centuries CE. This combination of challenges led to the empire’s loss of its western territories, from Britain to Italy, in the fifth century CE. But the east remained intact, with the imperial capital of Constantinople, newly fortified with a massive land wall, emerging as the Mediterranean region’s premier city, eclipsing all other challengers in size and wealth.
The reign of Emperor Justinian I (r. 527-565 CE) was a culmination of many aspects of the early Byzantine period, which the emperor presented as a restoration or renewal of the empire. This was a period of great cultural achievements in literature and the arts and massive building projects, including the magnificent and massive domed cathedral, Hagia Sophia, the most celebrated church in Byzantine history. This was also a time of important administrative reforms, including the empire’s most influential codification of Roman law, Corpus Iuris Civilis. Finally, it was a time of great military power. Justinian achieved the reconquest of much of the western territory lost to Germanic tribes over the past century, including North Africa, Sicily, Sardinia, Italy, and portions of southern Spain. By Justinian’s death in 565 CE, the Byzantine Empire bordered nearly the entire Mediterranean Sea, but Justinian made no effort to retake the empire’s former territory of Gaul (modern France), held by the powerful Franks, or the bulk of Spain, held by the Visigoths, or Britain, which was much too far to restore imperial control.
Like his imperial predecessors, Justinian was active in the religious sphere, acting as the defender of Christianity, which included the persecution of paganism, again building on the Christianization of the state that marked the early Byzantine or late Roman period. Justinian faced a much more difficult problem trying to establish Christian unity by eliminating dissenting theological positions, which ultimately proved impossible, despite decades of efforts and many strategies, from dialogue, to holding the Fifth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople in 553 CE, to persecution. Despite Justinian’s remarkable reign and many achievements, Christian theological unity remained a permanent issue with church organizations in Syria and Egypt leaning in a different theological direction than that of Rome. Constantinople struggled for centuries to achieve unity in the empire between these Western and Eastern theological positions.
MIGRATIONS AND TRANSFORMATION
As mentioned, the Roman frontiers on the Rhine River in the west, on the Danube River in the north, and facing the Persian Empires in the east were gravely challenged in the early Byzantine period. In the north and west, Germanic peoples and sometimes nomadic tribes from the steppe region were drawn to these frontiers due to conflicts with neighboring peoples, issues of climate change and environmental challenge, and the attractiveness of the wealth of the Roman Empire.
Pressure on the frontier in the late fourth century CE led to its collapse in the west, with Germanic tribes seizing control of the empire’s western territories in the fifth century CE. The city of Rome was sacked and plundered by the Goths in 410 CE and again by the Vandals in 455 CE, while the nomadic Huns rampaged throughout the empire and also threatened the city of Rome. In 476 CE, a Germanic leader named Odoacer deposed a nominal Roman emperor in the west and proclaimed himself king of Italy, an unprecedented act, the validity of which was completely rejected by the reigning emperor in Constantinople.
In the sixth century CE, Emperor Justinian directly challenged this Germanic power, reconquering much of the lost Mediterranean territories. Much of Italy, however, was lost to another Germanic challenger, the Lombards, soon after Justinian’s death in 565 CE, though North Africa and Byzantine Spain remained imperial territory until the Arab conquests of the seventh century CE.
These Arab invasions hit the empire at a particularly precarious time. Since the third century CE, the Roman Empire and the Persian Empire of the Sassanid Dynasty had endured repeated conflicts. These hot and cold wars culminated in a massive struggle that spanned the first quarter of the seventh century CE, leaving the Persian Empire defeated and Byzantium victorious but completely drained of resources. It was precisely at this moment that Arab armies, united by the Prophet Muhammad (d. 632 CE) and the religion of Islam and forged into a powerful military force, burst on the scene. The Persian Empire was overwhelmed and conquered, while Byzantium lost vast and wealthy territory, losing its eastern provinces (Syria to Egypt), North Africa, and Spain, with Anatolia (the Asian region of modern Turkey) now threatened by Arab raids.
While the empire’s eastern territories were reduced to Anatolia, its remaining western territories were further reduced in this period as Slavic tribes and a powerful nomadic Turkic people known as the Bulgars occupied much of the Balkans. In time, the Bulgars were completely “Slavicized” and lost their Turkic and nomadic roots. Imperial territory, which in the sixth century CE had spanned much of the Mediterranean, was now reduced to a fraction of its former self and faced possible extinction.
MIDDLE BYZANTINE PERIOD
The cataclysm of the seventh century CE brought the early Byzantine period to an end and marked the beginning of the middle Byzantine period (7th to 12th centuries CE). The empire was in truly dire straits. Yet, it did not collapse. The imperial idea remained, the imperial capital proved impregnable to all invaders, and the state’s ability to adjust to new circumstances and revise strategies to survive was dynamic.
Coming from the empire’s North African provinces, Heraclius (r. 610-641 CE) seized power in Constantinople and addressed the challenges. He brought the Persian war to a successful conclusion, but the empire’s resources were exhausted and he struggled mightily against the unexpected arrival of Arab armies. Yet, he established a dynasty that would survive much of the century and that kept the empire alive. The Heraclian century was turbulent for the family itself, but these rulers weathered the storm, despite a vastly reduced tax base and incessant military activity on all fronts. Moreover, theological controversy also raged as Constantinople continued to seek ways to harmonize various positions and to keep the Western and Eastern churches together.
This theological controversy became even more turbulent in the following century, when a new dynasty, the Syrian or Isaurian Dynasty (717-802 CE), embraced the idea that religious images, or icons, were violations of the Bible’s second commandment against “graven images,” believing that this religious error had caused the imperial defeats of the past century. The dynasty initiated the period of Iconoclasm (“icon breaking”), when the emperors sought to root out and destroy religious images, allowing only imperial images, which makes Byzantine iconoclasm distinct from that of Islam, which prohibits all such images. The dynasty successfully held firm against Balkan and Anatolian challenges but ran out of heirs by the end of the eighth century CE. A new dynasty revived Iconoclasm in the ninth century CE, after a string of Byzantine defeats, but the controversy was finally put to rest in 842 CE. Henceforth, emperors and the church were in agreement that icons were an essential component of Orthodox religious life and worship.
With this religious controversy resolved and church and state again acting in greater harmony, and the state guided by strong leadership and an effective administrative apparatus, the empire began to expand. This expansion largely overlaps with the reign of the Macedonian Dynasty (867-1056 CE), which was founded by Basil I (r. 867-886 CE), a peasant from the Balkans, who migrated to Constantinople to find opportunity. His was a classic “rags to riches” story that led to the imperial throne. In the course of the dynasty’s reign, Byzantium extended its borders against the weakening Abbasid Caliphate in the east, restoring control over all of Anatolia and into the Caucasus and northern Syria. The empire defeated the Bulgarian and Slavic kingdoms in the Balkans and restored the Danube as the Byzantine frontier. In the Mediterranean, Byzantium took Crete and Cyprus from Arab control and greatly strengthened its position in southern Italy.
Emperors of the Macedonian Dynasty wielded great authority abroad, but they were also mindful of good governance in the empire. This is reflected in a reorganization of Roman law, which was completed in the ninth century CE, a project reminiscent of Justinian’s great work in the sixth century CE. It was also during this dynasty that emperors issued laws protecting small landowners, referred to as “the poor” in the legislation, from encroachment by “the powerful,” who were absorbing their lands. This legislation promoted the idea of the emperor’s concern for justice, but it also revealed their attentiveness to the roots of military power, since the lands lost to “the powerful” may have weakened the army by seizing lands assigned to provincial soldiers as partial compensation for their service.
Whereas the empire’s human and fiscal resources had been wholly consumed by the military challenges of the seventh and eighth centuries CE, such resources could be diverted to increased cultural activity in the following centuries. Architectural monuments, works of art and literature, and institutions of higher learning all revived during a “renaissance” of culture and learning during the rule of the Macedonian Dynasty. Emperors became patrons of scholarship, art, and literature. The empire not only preserved the classical works of ancient Greek literature, which we have today, but it also contributed important works of art and literature.
In the 9th and 10th centuries CE, many Slavic peoples in the orbit of the Byzantine Empire, including the Bulgarians, Serbs, and Russians, were converted to Orthodox Christianity, thanks to the efforts of the Byzantine state and its missionaries. Of these missionaries, the most celebrated today are the “Apostles to the Slavs,” the brothers Cyril and Methodius, who spread Orthodox Christianity to the Moravians in central Europe and invented a script for the Slavic language, the descendant of which is called “Cyrillic” today and is used to write Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, and other languages.
Byzantine power reached a zenith in the lth century under Emperor Basil II (r. 976-1025 CE). The empire’s armies were triumphant in the east and west, the treasury was full, and imperial power was projected by a highly centralized administrative structure. Yet, the half century between the death of Emperor Basil II and the rise of Emperor Alexius in 1081 witnessed military defeat, rebellion, and civil strife. There was a Virtual dissolution of imperial power as a consequence of ineffective leadership, policies that triggered financial trouble and insurrection, and the appearance of formidable and simultaneous threats around the empire: the Normans in the west, the nomadic Pechenegs in the north (the Balkan frontier), and the Seljuq Turks in the east. In spring 1071, the Normans, with papal approval, conquered Bari, eliminating the last Byzantine possession in Italy, and set their sights on an invasion of the Byzantine Empire. At the other end of the empire, in summer 1071, Turkish Sultan Alp Arslan (r. 1063-1072) defeated the Byzantine army at Manzikert, capturing Emperor Romanus IV Diogenes (r. 1068-1071) and opening Anatolia to Turkish incursions, marking the beginning of the Turkification of Anatolia.
It was in this anarchic period that Alexius Comnenus became a general, at only 18 years of age. He proved his leadership ability and, at 24, maneuvered to seize the throne on April 1, 1081, and establish the Comnenus Dynasty (1081-1185), which provided stability and firm leadership to the imperial throne.
Alexius’s reign (r. 1081-1118) relied on an alliance of leading families, often bound by marriages. In this family diplomacy, Alexius was guided by his mother, Anna Dalassena, who arranged marriages for her children and zealously opposed any who stood in the way of her family’s power. Anna had arranged Alexius’s marriage to Irene, which united the Comnenus and Ducas families. Alexius relied heavily on family members for political and military posts and on his mother, into whose care he entrusted the administration, when he was on campaign. Rather than rely on eunuchs as previous emperors had done, Alexius’s palace was managed by his family. This emphasis on rule through family during the Comnenus Dynasty was a break with the approach to governing that was in place through the early and middle Byzantine period.
Alexius was able to check Pecheneg power in the Balkans and then focus his energy on the imminent threat of the Catholic Normans as the most serious danger to the empire and, after much struggle, stemmed the tide. This required an agreement with Venice that brought Venetian naval support against the Normans in return for taxfree trade in the empire, a boon to the economy of the Italian republic. Italian citystates increasingly began to look to Byzantium and the east for economic gain, often at the empire’s expense, which became a source of increasing tension between east and west.
To confront Turkish control of Anatolia, Alexius turned to the papacy to request military support for his effort. Pope Urban II (r. 1088-1099) was in support of a military venture but not one limited to operations in Anatolia. Rather, the pope aimed at a conquest of the Holy Land. And so, the Crusades were born, largely to the detriment of Byzantium.
The two branches of Christianity, the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, officially split in 1054, but it was this era of the Crusades that transformed this theological dispute into a permanent cultural divide. The First, Second, and Third Crusades hurled Catholic armies through Constantinople, each causing greater tension and increasing threat levels to the empire, even as their publicly acknowledged aim was the Holy Land. Crusader ideology was foreign to the Orthodox world, and Western soldiers and clergy progressively made the Catholic West appear hostile to Orthodoxy. This view was confirmed by the Fourth Crusade in 1204, when a Catholic crusading army assaulted and conquered Constantinople, imposing a Catholic emperor and patriarch on the city, and carving up the empire.
LATE BYZANTINE EMPIRE
The Comnenus Dynasty ended in 1185 and, with its demise, a vacuum in leadership emerged. The empire struggled with internal conflicts and rebellion. The empire’s control over its territory began unraveling as Cyprus broke away from Constantinople and Bulgaria once again emerged as an intendent kingdom in the Balkans. This weakness was capitalized on by the assaulting crusader army in 1204, led by the Venetian ruler Enrico Dandolo. After taking Constantinople, the Crusaders divided the empire among the various Crusader leaders, each of whom ruled former Byzantine territory independently, paying nominal attention to the new Catholic emperor whom they had appointed at Constantinople. Venice itself was careful to take control of Aegean islands and other coastal territories that benefited its commercial prosperity. In addition to a Latin emperor, the Crusaders imposed a Catholic bishop on the city, and the Catholic liturgy was presided over in the city’s great cathedral, Hagia Sophia.
Byzantine leaders and church figures fled to the provinces in eastern Greece and northwest and northeast Anatolia, establishing bases of operation, which both competed against one another and resisted the Crusaders. It was one of these states, that of Nicaea in northwest Anatolia, that most effectively confronted this Western Catholic ascendancy.
Michael Palaeologus (r. 1259-1282), a Nicene general and then emperor, wrested control of Constantinople from the Crusaders in 1261, after 57 years of Latin rule, and established the empire’s last family in power, the Palaeologan Dynasty (1259-1453). Michael then struggled for decades to stem a Western Christian threat of a second conquest, while restoring the city, like a new Constantine, after decades of Crusader neglect. Hagia Sophia was rededicated as an Orthodox cathedral, where Michael was recrowned, at the traditional site of the empire’s coronation ceremony, despite having already been crowned at Nicaea.
Michael VIII Palaeologus was the last Byzantine emperor whose armies and diplomacy were notable. The empire lacked the resources to maintain this level of international engagement and it increasingly looked to the West for financial support, granting trade concessions and land to Italian city-states, which gained greater economic control of the region. The empire also outsourced its naval operations to Italian fleets and relied more and more on mercenaries in its army, who proved both expensive and unreliable.
While the borders of the empire during the Palaeologan Dynasty were reduced to little more than Greece, some Aegean islands, and modest lands in Anatolia, Byzantine cultural activity was still significant, including great works of art and important works of scholarship and historical study. The city of Mistra, near Sparta in southern Greece, became a new intellectual and cultural center, while Byzantine scholars inspired Renaissance humanists in Italy, a connection that is often overlooked. The classical Greek texts that were cherished by Renaissance intellectuals came from the Byzantine Empire. Moreover, its religious influence continued to be important, particularly in Russia, which looked to Constantinople for religious leadership into the 15th century, though this was severed when Emperor John VIII Palaeologus (r. 1425-1448) agreed to a union of the churches, essentially accepting Catholic ascendancy over the Orthodox Church (which was almost immediately rejected by the Orthodox Church and people of Byzantium). John did this out of utter desperation: the empire urgently needed help against the rising Ottoman Turks.
The Ottoman tribe emerged as a rising entity in the 14th century and began expanding from its base in northwest Anatolia. The Ottomans took advantage of Byzantine and Balkan conflicts and civil wars to operate as mercenaries and to establish a foothold in Europe. By the 15th century, Ottoman power seemed insurmountable. After the Council of Ferrera-Florence and the temporary union of the churches, a Western Crusade was launched but was defeated by the Ottomans at Varna in 1444. There was little hope left.
On the morning of May 29, 1453, Sultan Mehmed II (r. 1451-1481) succeeded where his Muslim and Ottoman forbearers had failed, as had every besieging army for the past millennium: he broke through the city’s land wall. Constantine XI (r. 1449-1453), the last Byzantine emperor, fell on the field of battle and with him, the line of Roman emperors that stretched back to Constantine I and to Augustus had come to an end. Yet, the influence of the empire would continue: Mehmed II made Constantinople his new capital, which it remained down to the end of the Ottoman Empire in the 20th century, while further to the north in Moscow, Czar Ivan III viewed himself as inheriting the mantle of power from Byzantium and carrying on a divine mission in his “Third Rome.”
The Byzantine millennium, from Constantine I in the 4th century CE to Constantine XI in the 15th century, presents an era of tremendous historical importance and remarkable cultural legacy, to which this encyclopedia offers access.
Matthew T. Herbst
Link
Press Here
0 التعليقات :
إرسال تعليق