Download PDF | Icon and Minaret Sources of Byzantine and Islamic Civilization, Edited by Charles M. Brand, Prentice-Hall, Inc, 1969.
196 Pages
FOREWORD
But I never even heard of Byzantium when I was in college,” one is often told in a rather aggrieved tone of voice, by people who usually protest that they ‘‘adore history,” and consider themselves well-educated. And the complaint does indeed truly reflect American academic practice, which in turn reflects—even if at several removes— the traditional attitudes of the academic profession. For them, Mediaeval history has all too often meant the history of Western Europe alone: the familiar story of the barbarian invasions of the Roman Empire; its disintegration into smaller regions that would later re-emerge as the national states of England, France, Germany, Italy, and so on; the uniting spiritual and cultural force of the Roman Catholic Church, and the characteristic feudal and manorial society, yielding only slowly to the development of industry and urbanism.
Gradually during recent decades, however, teachers and students of history have more generally become aware that at the eastern end of the Mediterranean the Roman Empire did not fall to the barbarians, but continued to thrive through many vicissitudes, during all the centuries that were “Mediaeval” for Western Europe. At Byzantium, or Constantinople, Constantine’s city, dynasties of Roman Emperors succeeded each other. Greek was the popular, and before long the official, language; and Greek the literary and cultural tradition. Par excellence a Christian state and society, the Byzantine Empire resembled the Mediaeval West in many ways, but differed markedly from it in many others. There was much interchange, diplomatic and military, commercial, religious, and cultural, between them. We now recognize that to appreciate the Middle Ages we must make ourselves acquainted with both Eastern and Western European civilization, and that in the East the key is Byzantium. Bordering in the east on Byzantine territory and in Spain (and for a time in Sicily) on western Christian lands, the third great Mediaeval civilization of Islam also increasingly attracts our attention.
In this book, Professor Brand has skillfully selected from the wide range of Byzantine historical sources a series of passages from historians, biographers, and travellers, from the decrees of Church Councils, from the Lives of Saints, and from contemporary codes of law and imperial statutes that tell the reader what many aspects of Byzantine society were like; and in a short concluding section he introduces the reader to the religion and to some of the intellectual achievements of the Moslems. Some of these selections have never previously been translated into English, and are thus made available for the first time to those who do not read Byzantine Greek. This will, we hope, add a further sense of freshness for anyone who may here discover Byzantium and Islam for the first time, and enhance the experience for anyone who is seeking to improve an acquaintance already begun.
Robert Lee Wolff Coolidge Professor of History Harvard University
Introduction
At the commencement of the Middle Ages, while Western Europe became a collection of barbarian kingdoms, the Near East retained a high level of culture and organization. Not until the twelfth century did the Latin-speaking world challenge the countries of the eastern Mediterranean. There the Byzantine Empire preserved the Greco-Roman heritage, and the Arabic Caliphates created a new civilization blended from the religion of Mohammed and the learning of classical Greece.
Strictly speaking, no such entity as the “Byzantine Empire” existed. The Roman Empire preserved an unbroken tradition from Augustus to Constantine XI, slain defending his capital in 1453; his subjects still called themselves “Romans.” But at the start of the fourth century, after Diocletian had reorganized Roman institutions, Constantine I adopted Christianity and moved the capital to Byzantium on the Bosporus, renaming it Constantinople in his honor. In the fifth century the Latin-speaking half of the empire fell before the German onslaught, and Greek gradually became the language of emperors and subjects. This Christian, Greek-speaking remnant of the Roman Empire, with its distinctive blend of oriental, Greek, and Roman ideas, has been designated “Byzantine” by modern historians.
In the seventh century, the prophet Mohammed preached the monotheistic, puritanical religion of Islam to the nomads and traders of Arabia. Hitherto, this had been a desolate and backward land: now the Arabs, united under Mohammed’s successors, the Caliphs, rushed forth to conquer in the name of religion the whole of the ancient Near East. The Persian Empire collapsed, and the weakened Byzantine state lost Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and ultimately North Africa, but survived in Asia Minor and the Balkans. Gradually a new organization, the theme system, whereby generals in command of army corps areas became provincial governors, replaced older Byzantine institutions. Despite territorial losses, Byzantine political and religious ideas maintained their sway.
The Byzantines believed that they existed to carry out God’s will in the world. God intended all mankind to be Christian, to obey the commandments, and to be united under a single Byzantine emperor, God’s representative on earth. Not only was the emperor responsible for the prosperity of the realm, but also for its spiritual welfare: he had to uphold orthodoxy and assist his subjects to achieve salvation. Councils of bishops, meeting under imperial guidance, defined doctrine, and numerous monasteries helped his people into heaven.
Constantinople, the heart of the empire, was one of the great cities of the medieval world, thickly populated, rich in treasure, and renowned for the holy relics in its churches. The city was therefore the target of many attacks, but it fell for the first time only in 1204 to the Christians of the Fourth Crusade, Venetian traders and French knights. Never could the Byzantines forget what seemed to them a treacherous blow. In 1261 the Palaeologus dynasty regained the city, only to lose it to the Mohammedan Turks.
‘The Arabs had already fallen victim to these same Turks. Outside Arabia, the Arab conquerors had blended with their subjects, while implanting their religion and usually their language. Native cultures and traditions gradually reasserted themselves, especially after a Persian family, the Abbasids, seized the Caliphate. Frontier regions became independent, and the Caliphs had by the late ninth century fallen under the control of their own guard-commanders. The eleventh-century advance of the Turks created a series of ephemeral principalities which usually lacked meaningful boundaries and political stability.
Such disintegration did little harm to Islamic civilization. ‘The Abbasid era was one of great achievement, for the masterpieces of ancient Greece, now translated into Arabic, challenged outstanding scientific and philosophic thinkers. The conflict between reason and revelation, between Greek philosophy and the dogmas of the Koran, was protracted, but it ended with a victory for the forces of religious orthodoxy. Only in such neutral fields as social and political philosophy could Arabic thought advance.
Islam survives in the modern world as the religion of many millions; Byzantine political ideas and civilization were inherited by Russia and by the Orthodox churches of the East. In all of them old ideas and dreams have not entirely died.
Part One cfo BYZANTINE POLITICAL FOUNDATIONS
The Byzantine state inherited the autocratic tradition of Rome. On the Byzantine emperor, as on his Roman predecessor, rested the whole burden of the government, entailing final responsibility for all decisions and unlimited authority to execute them. Yet in practice he could work only within limits laid down by the traditions of the Roman-Byzantine state, especially those institutions and ideas embodied in Roman law: a “tyrant” risked speedy overthrow.
The Roman emperor had been regarded as divine, for only a god could govern so vast and heterogeneous a realm. When he accepted Christianity, Constantine the Great had to create a new conception of his relationship to God. His ideas were reflected and expounded by Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea in Palestine. While scarcely a brilliant thinker, ‘Eusebius shaped eastern Christian attitudes toward the state. As he explained to Constantine in an oration celebrating the commencement of Constantine’s thirtieth year of rule (335), the emperor was directly chosen by God, and was thus blessed, inspired, and guided by God (see Reading-No-).
After Eusebius, the Byzantines did not state their theories at great length; rather, the emperor’s role was implicit in all that pertained to or emanated from him. Thus Constantine VII (called_Porphyrogenitus, “Born-in-the-Purple’’), in an oration to his generals (ca. 958), could refer to his subjects as his God-given heritage, his flock, and could even draw a parallel lf and Christ (Reading No. 2). In the Preface to his Book of Ceremonies, he expanded this comparison: just as God rules i aw of nature, so the emperor rules by the good order of the court—the empire is a model of the uni“right order” and “ritual” for Constantine, the meanings are inter, changeable, and their unavoidable separation 1 in translation distorts his intention (Reading No. 3). From- ast epoch of Byzantine histor Pancwe eS a goon in 1392 of Manuel II Palaeolo-ship of the emperor to ect is stressed, Indeed, are emperor appears here as a member of the priesthood, although the Byzantines avoided any precise definition of his status. Thus during one portion of the ceremonies he was clad as a bishop, and administered Communion to himself. Yet the people’s role, by their acclamations, in the making of an emperor is also evident: it went bac j Readin No. 4). _ throned, the em o act, for upon him depended the fate of the realm.
A few examples will illustrate this point. ‘The “Byzantine E Empire (as distinct from the Roman) originated in the con version of Constantine I to Christianity. Eusebius gives an account of this momentous event in his Life of Constantine, which _he composed after 337 on the basis of his conversations with the emperor (Reading ~ No. 5). Not all Byzantine rulers were devoted or capable. ConstantineIX Monomachus (1042-1055) gained the throne by marriage with Empress Zoe, who with her sister Theodora constituted the last survivors of the Macedonian Dynasty. A cultured man, patron of art and learning, Constantine IX indulged himself by introducing his mistress Sclerena into the palace and public life. His friend and secretary Michael Psellus in his Chrono ia gives a picture of a luxurious court and carefree emperor (Reading No. 6).
Partly as a result of Constan“tine IX’s laxity, his successors found themselves in a difficult position. Alexius I Comnenus (1081-1118) was compelled at the outset of_his reign to face Turks in Asia Minor, Petchenegs (a Turkic tribe_Thrace, and Normans in the western Balkans. These last, under Robert Guiscard, had conquered the Byzantine possessions in southern Italy, and then, with the aid of a youth claiming to be the deposed Michael VII haa mivanced upon Constantinople Alexis Ts bravery daughter, Anna Comnena, to create an epic in prose, the Alexiad, Writing in the 1140s, in a nostalgic, hero-worshiping spirit, she utilized written sources and the recollections of her father’s officials (Reading No. 7).
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