Download PDF | Historical Dictionary of Byzantium , by John H. Rosser (Author), Scarecrow Press 2001.
536 Pages
INTRODUCTION
No state ever existed that called itself either “Byzantium” or the “Byzantine Empire.” These are modern, conventional terms for the Roman Empire from 324–1453: from the foundation of Constantinople (formerly called Byzantium) to the conquest of the city by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. The “Byzantines” always called themselves Romans (romaioi), and referred to their emperor as Emperor of the Romans (basileon ton Rhomaion). After 324 the orientation of the Roman Empire became more eastern, partly because Constantinople (also called New Rome; modern Istanbul), founded by Constantine I the Great, lay in the East.
From the seventh century onward the heartland of Byzantium lay in Asia Minor, in what now comprises modern Turkey, and Byzantine possessions in the West were reduced to southern Italy. One can understand why some have called it the “Eastern Roman Empire.” What is important to realize is that “Byzantium” refers to the Roman state after 324. Byzantium was a Christian empire. To understand how this happened, one must turn again to Constantine I, who himself became a Christian in ca. 312, the first Roman emperor to do so. Constantine actively supported the church, and participated in church affairs, including the Council of Nicaea in 325, which declared Arianism a heresy.
The emperor’s role in the church established the emperor as God’s viceroy on earth, the 13th apostle, as it were. Constantine’s program of church construction laid the foundations for Christian architecture. Subsequently, Byzantine art developed as a religious art. Thus, not only did the Roman Empire change by virtue of its new capital and eastern orientation but also it became the chief supporter of the Christian church. Byzantium was gradually transformed by these changes. The perception of Byzantium as lacking vitality, as exotically ritualized and conservative in its court and administration, and as perpetually in decline, even corrupt, reflects a western medieval viewpoint that persisted into modern times.
The truth is quite the opposite. Byzantium showed a vitality unmatched by any medieval state. Rather than perpetual decline, one finds periodic renewal, even after Byzantium was destroyed by the Fourth Crusade in 1204. That it was the only medieval empire of long duration is proof of its vitality, of its ability to transform itself in the face of serious external threats. Byzantine history can be divided into three basic phases: Early, Middle, and Late. The first phase, Early Byzantine (essentially Late Antiquity), dates from the foundation of Constantinople in 324 until ca. 650, by which time the Arab expansion emerged as a serious threat. The second phase can be called Middle Byzantine, lasting from ca. 650 to the battle of Mantzikert in 1071, which opened up Asia Minor, the heartland of medieval Byzantium, to Turkish settlement. (Some scholars might replace 1071 with 1204, the year when Constantinople was conquered by the Fourth Crusade.) The Late Byzantine phase lasted from 1071 until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks on 29 May 1453. After 324, Byzantium was gradually separated from its western provinces. This process was due chiefly to massive incursions of Germanic peoples in the late fourth and fifth centuries. The failure of the wars of reconquest launched by Justinian I (527–565), as well as the Slavic settlements in the Balkan Peninsula, were decisive in this respect. After the seventh century, knowledge of Greek, the common language spoken by Byzantines, declined precipitously in the West.
Differences in church ritual and doctrine in subsequent centuries contributed to the schism between eastern and western churches in 1054. As mentioned previously, the western knights of the First Crusade who gathered in Constantinople in 1097 represented the first large number of westerners to travel to Constantinople across the Balkan Peninsula in centuries. When the First Crusade arrived in Constantinople, the differences that had accrued over the centuries became apparent. Byzantium became envied for its riches, was perceived as foreign, as untrustworthy, and possibly heretical. The First Crusade posed a great threat to the city, as did the Second Crusade, which also passed through the city. Finally, the axe fell when the Fourth Crusade conquered Constantinople in 1204. Byzantium was effectively destroyed until 1265, when its virtual state-in-exile, the Empire of Nicaea, reconquered Constantinople. Threats continued to appear from the West, including those from the Catalan Grand Company, and from Charles of Anjou. However, it was the Turkish threat from the East, by the mid-14th century in the form of the Ottoman Turks, that proved fatal. The Byzantine emperor governed a vast bureaucracy that minted coins, collected taxes, regulated commerce, and maintained large standing armies.
The emperor could intervene in church affairs, although most emperors knew that replacing bishops and archbishops was acceptable, but meddling in theology was not. There were notable exceptions, such as Justinian I and Leo III, both of whom posterity has labeled “caesaropapist.” Imperial ceremonials (e.g., acclamations, processions, audiences), all carefully scripted, formatted much of the emperor’s public life. Much of it was in monumental settings like Hagia Sophia, the Great Palace, and the Hippodrome, and it was always intended to glorify the majesty of the imperial office. The great reception hall called the Magnaura, adjacent to the Great Palace, was where foreign ambassadors were received. Ambassadors were ushered into the emperor’s presence with two gold organs playing, golden lions roaring, and mechanical birds twittering. The great throne there, called the throne of Solomon, contained a mechanism that could suddenly lift the seated emperor to the ceiling, which is what Liutprand of Cremona, ambassador for king of Italy Berenar II in 949, reports seeing. Ushered into the presence of Emperor Constantine VII, Liutprand did obeisance three times with his face to the ground. When he lifted his head for the third time the emperor had somehow changed his raiment and was high up near the ceiling. Byzantine society was characterized by ethnic diversity. Greeks, Armenians, Slavs, Georgians, and other ethnic minorities were fully accepted, as long as they themselves accepted Orthodox Christianity.
There were Armenian emperors; one Slav contender for the imperial throne, Thomas the Slav, almost became emperor. Jews, who did not meet this qualification, were nevertheless allowed to live in virtually autonomous communities where they practiced their religion freely. They engaged in numerous trades; Jewish doctors were popular with Jews and non-Jews alike. Western merchants and mercenaries were prominent in Constantinople from the 11th century. An example is Harold Hardrada, a Viking from Rus who commanded the elite Varangian Guard in Constantinople. He returned to Norway to become its king and died fighting King Harold of England in 1066 at Stamford Bridge. After 1066, the Varangian Guard recruited the Anglo-Saxon warriors whom William the Conqueror defeated at Hastings. There was even a mosque in Constantinople from the 10th century onward. Byzantium made a profound influence on its neighbors, especially on the fledgling Slavic states. Indeed, there existed a kind of “Byzantine Commonwealth” of Slavic states, which included, above all, Kievan Rus, Serbia, and Bulgaria. To them Byzantium bequeathed its literature and art, indeed its distinctive alphabets, the Glagolitic and Cyrillic.
This legacy continued even after Constantinople fell to the Ottomans. Moscow began to refer to itself as the “Third Rome,” the inheritor of Byzantium, the second Rome. However, it is the larger centrality of Byzantium to medieval European civilization that may surprise the beginning student. For one cannot understand the Middle Ages without understanding Byzantium, the only true empire medieval Europe ever knew. Today, access to Byzantine civilization is largely through its surviving art and architecture. Byzantine art may perhaps be best understood through its icons, which remain a living tradition within Orthodox churches. However, Byzantine architecture, including Byzantium’s greatest church, Hagia Sophia, in Constantinople, is not so easily understandable. Like much of Byzantium, Hagia Sophia needs to be studied to be understood. The same is true of Byzantine history, which is often not taught at all, or poorly taught. Even if one travels to Greece, the modern heir of the Byzantine religious tradition, the non-Greek tourist will find a tourist industry that caters to an overwhelming interest in ancient, not Byzantine, Greece. One must be prepared to sail to Byzantium on one’s own, so to speak. Within the comfort of one’s home one can access significant bibliography in English.
One can admire Byzantine art in most major museums, including the museum at Dumbarton Oaks, in Washington, D.C., home to the famous research center devoted to Byzantine studies. One can visit its extant monuments, including the monasteries of Meteora, the restored town of Mistra, and, of course, Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. Even today, modern Istanbul, despite its development as a Turkish city since 1453, contains impressive Byzantine monuments. First-time visitors, if offered a choice, should approach Constantinople for the first time by sea, as did the western knights of the Fourth Crusade, many of whom were stunned by their sight of the city. Geoffrey de Villehardouin describes this moment: “I can assure you that all those who had never seen Constantinople before gazed very intently at the city, having never imagined there could be so fine a place in all the world. They noted its high walls and lofty towers encircling it, and its rich palaces and tall churches, of which there were so many that no one would have believed it to be true if he had not seen it with his own eyes, and viewed the length and breadth of that city which reigns supreme over all others.” M. R. B. Shaw (trans.), Joinville and Villehardouin: Chronicles of the Crusade (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963), 58–59. Readers who approach Byzantium for the first time may soon consider it is the best vantage point from which to view the entire historical landscape of the Middle Ages.
The view of the Middle Ages from Constantinople, “that city which reigns supreme over all others” is truly Olympian. It connects the reader with all parts of the medieval Islamic world, the kingdoms bordering the Black Sea, the tribes of the Eurasian steppe, Kievan Rus and the Slavic states of the Balkan Peninsula, and the Latin West. The diversity of important foreigners that one encounters in the history of Byzantium illustrates this. They include Attila the Hun, Michael the Slav, Vladimir of Rus, Harold Hardrada, Bohemund, Roger Flor, Alamundarus, Alp Arslan, Amadeo VI of Savoy, Aspar, Asparuch, Bayezid, Bela III of Hungary, Vladimir of Rus, Boniface of Montferrat, khan Boris, Boucicaut, Charles I of Anjou, Chosroes I, Enrico Dandalo, Gagik II, Gainas, Gaiseric, Harun al-Rashid, Hervé Frankopoulos, Humbert, Jaroslav the Wise, John Italos, Krum, Liutprand of Cremona, Louis VII, Mamun, Manfred, Otto III, Ricimir, Robert Guiscard, Stefan Urosh II Milutin, Stilicho, Svjatoslav, and Vigilius. One could go on. Arguably no other vantage point—not Baghdad, not Cordoba, not Rome, not Palermo, and certainly neither Paris nor London—provides such a high hill from which to view the diversity of the Middle Ages.
From that high hill, one’s assumptions about the preeminence of the Latin West from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance begins to diminish. Greco-Roman antiquity does not appear as a broken reed, with centuries of discontinuity leading to eventual Renaissance. Rather, continuity and transformation are the operative words. By studying the history of how “Byzantine” history was created in modern times, one begins to understand how great was the impact of Renaissance and Early Modern European scholarship on our present values and historical perspective. Add to this the fact that in our own times the decline of the great European empires has made it difficult to understand any of the great empires of the past, whether Aztec, Ottoman, or Byzantine. Among the many reasons to study Byzantium, there is an important one that should be emphasized: Irrespective of its relationship with neighboring peoples, irrespective of its relationship to its Greco-Roman past, Byzantium was a unique world civilization that deserves to be considered on its own terms.
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