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Byzantine
– Alexius I Comnenus Emperor of
Byzantine
Empire 1081-1118 A.D.
Hyperpyron 17mm (0.56 grams) Thessalonica mint 1081-1118 A.D.
Reference: Sear 1924
Christ enthroned facing, wearing nimbus and raising right hand in benediction.
Alexius I standing, facing, wearig crown and holding labarum
and globe cross in upper field to right manus Dei.
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Alexios I Komnenos,
Latinized
as Alexius I Comnenus ( 1056 –
15 August 1118—note that some sources list his date of birth as 1048), was
Byzantine
emperor
from 1081 to 1118, and although he was
not the founder of the
Komnenian dynasty
, it was during his reign that
the Komnenos family came to full power. Inheriting a collapsing empire and faced
with constant warfare during his reign against both the
Seljuq Turks
in
Asia Minor
and the
Normans
in the western
Balkans
, Alexios was able to halt the Byzantine
decline and begin the military, financial, and territorial recovery known as the
Komnenian restoration
. His appeals to
Western Europe for help against the Turks were also the catalyst that triggered
the Crusades
.
Life
Alexios was the son of the
Domestic of the Schools
John Komnenos
and
Anna Dalassena
, and the nephew of
Isaac I Komnenos
(emperor 1057–1059). Alexios’
father declined the throne on the abdication of Isaac, who was accordingly
succeeded by four emperors of other families between 1059 and 1081. Under one of
these emperors,
Romanos IV Diogenes
(1067–1071), Alexios served
with distinction against the
Seljuq Turks
. Under
Michael VII Doukas
Parapinakes
(1071–1078) and
Nikephoros III Botaneiates
(1078–1081), he was
also employed, along with his elder brother
Isaac
, against rebels in
Asia Minor
,
Thrace
, and in
Epirus
.
In 1074, the western mercenaries led by
Roussel de Bailleul
rebelled in Asia Minor,[5]
but Alexios successfully subdued them by 1076. In 1078, he was appointed
commander of the field army in the West by Nikephoros III. In this capacity,
Alexios defeated the rebellions of
Nikephoros Bryennios the Elder
(whose son or
grandson later married Alexios’ daughter Anna) and
Nikephoros Basilakes
, the first at the
Battle of Kalavrye
and the latter in a surprise
night attack on his camp. Alexios was ordered to march against his
brother-in-law
Nikephoros Melissenos
in Asia Minor but refused
to fight his kinsman. This did not, however, lead to a demotion, as Alexios was
needed to counter the expected invasion of the
Normans
of Southern Italy, led by
Robert Guiscard
.
Conspiracy and revolt of the Komnenoi against Botaneiates
While the Byzantine troops were assembling for the expedition, Alexios was
approached by the Doukas faction at court, who convinced him to join a
conspiracy
against Nikephoros III. The mother
of Alexios, Anna Dalassena, was to play a prominent role in this coup d’état of
1081, along with the current empress,
Maria of Alania
. First married to Michael VII
Doukas and secondly to
Nikephoros III Botaneiates
, she was preoccupied
with the future of her son by Michael VII,
Constantine Doukas
. Nikephoros III intended to
leave the throne to one of his close relatives, and this resulted in Maria’s
ambivalence and alliance with the Komnenoi. The real driving force behind this
political alliance was Anna Dalassene.
Already closely connected to the Komnenoi through Maria’s cousin Irene to
Isaac Komnenos, the Komnenoi brothers were able to see the empress under the
pretense of a friendly family visit. Furthermore, to aid the conspiracy Maria
had adopted Alexios as her son, though she was only five years older than he
Maria was persuaded to do so on the advice of her own “Alans” and her eunuchs,
who had been instigated to do his by Isaac Komnenos. Knowing Anna’s tight hold
on her family, it must have been with her implicit approval that he be adopted.
As a result, Alexios and Constantine, Maria’s son, were now adoptive brothers
and both Isaac and Alexios took an oath that they would safeguard his rights as
emperor. By secretly giving inside information to the Komnenoi, Maria was an
invaluable ally.
As stated in the Alexiad, Isaac and Alexios left Constantinople in
mid-February 1081 to raise an army against Botaneiates. However, when the time
came, Anna quickly and surreptitiously mobilized the remainder of the family and
took refuge in the
Hagia Sophia
. From there she negotiated with
the emperor for the safety of family members left in the capital, while
protesting her sons’ innocence of hostile actions; under the falsehood of making
a vesperal visit to worship at the church, she deliberately excluded the
grandson of Botaneiates and his loyal tutor, met with Alexios and Isaac and fled
for the forum of Constantine. The tutor found them missing and eventually found
them on the palace grounds but she was able to convince him that they would
return to the palace shortly. Then to gain entrance to both the outer and inner
sanctuary of the church the women pretended to the gatekeepers that they were
pilgrims from
Cappadocia
who had spent all their funds and
wanted to worship before starting their return trip. However, before they were
to gain entry into the sanctuary, Straboromanos and royal guards caught up with
them to summon them back to the palace. Anna then protested that the family was
in fear for their lives, her sons were loyal subjects (Alexios and Isaac were
discovered absent without leave), and had learned of a plot by enemies of the
Komnenoi to have them both blinded and had, therefore, fled the capital so they
may continue to be of loyal service to the emperor. She refused to go with them
and demanded that they allow her to pray to the Mother of God for protection.
This request was granted and Anna then manifested her true theatrical and
manipulative capabilities: “She was allowed to enter. As if she were weighed
down with old age and worn out by grief, she walked slowly and when she
approached the actual entrance to the sanctuary made two genuflections; on the
third she sank to the floor and taking firm hold of the sacred doors, cried in a
loud voice: “Unless my hands are cuff off, I will not leave this holy place
except on one condition: that I receive the emperor’s cross as guarantee of
safety”.
Seal of Alexios as “Grand
Domestic of the West“
Nikephoros III Botaneiates was forced into a public vow that he would grant
protection to the family.Straboromanos tried to give her his cross, but for Anna
this was not sufficiently large enough so that all bystanders could witness the
oath. She also demanded that the cross be personally sent by Botaneiates as a
vow of his good faith. He obliged, sending a complete assurance for the family
with his own cross. At the emperor’s further insistence, and for their own
protection they took refuge at the convent of Petrion, where eventually they
were joined by Irene Doukaina’s mother,
Maria of Bulgaria
.
Botaneiates allowed them to be treated as refugees rather than guests. They
were allowed to have family members bring in their own food and were on good
terms with the guards from whom they learned the latest news.Anna was highly
successful in three important aspects of the revolt: she bought time for her
sons to steal imperial horses from the stables and escape the city, she
distracted the emperor and gave her sons time to gather and arm their troops and
she gave a false sense of security to Botaneiates that there was no real
treasonous coup against him. After bribing the Western troops who had guarded
the city, Isaac and Alexios Komnenos entered the capital victoriously on April
1, 1081.
During this time, Alexios was rumored to be the lover of Empress
Maria of Alania
, the daughter of King
Bagrat IV of Georgia
, who had been successively
married to
Michael VII
Doukas and his successor Nikephoros III
Botaneiates, renowned for her beauty.Alexios arranged for Maria to stay on the
palace grounds, and it was thought that Alexios was considering marrying the
erstwhile empress. However, his mother consolidated the Doukas family connection
by arranging the Emperor’s marriage to
Irene Doukaina
, granddaughter of the
Caesar John Doukas
, the uncle of Michael VII,
who would not have supported Alexios otherwise. As a measure intended to keep
the support of the Doukai, Alexios restored
Constantine Doukas
, the young son of
Michael VII and Maria, as co-emperor and a little later betrothed him to his own
first-born daughter
Anna
, who moved into the Mangana Palace with
her fiancé and his mother.
However, this situation changed drastically when Alexios’ first son
John II Komnenos
was born in 1087: Anna’s
engagement to Constantine was dissolved, and she was moved to the main Palace to
live with her mother and grandmother. Alexios became estranged from Maria, who
was stripped of her imperial title and retired to a monastery, and Constantine
Doukas was deprived of his status as co-emperor. Nevertheless, he remained in
good relations with the imperial family and succumbed to his weak constitution
soon afterwards.
Wars against the Normans, Pechenegs and Tzachas
Alexios’ long reign of nearly thirty-seven years was full of struggle. At the
very outset, he had to meet the formidable attack of the Normans (led by
Robert Guiscard
and his son
Bohemund
), who took
Dyrrhachium
and
Corfu
, and laid siege to
Larissa
in
Thessaly
(see
Battle of Dyrrhachium
). Alexios suffered
several defeats before being able to strike back with success. He enhanced this
by bribing the German king
Henry IV
with 360,000 gold pieces to attack the
Normans in Italy, which forced the Normans to concentrate on their defenses at
home in 1083–1084. He also secured the alliance of
Henry, Count of Monte Sant’Angelo
, who
controlled the
Gargano Peninsula
and dated his charters by
Alexios’ reign. Henry’s allegiance was to be the last example of Byzantine
political control on peninsular Italy. The Norman danger ended for the time
being with Robert Guiscard’s death in 1085, and the Byzantines recovered most of
their losses.
Next, Alexios had to deal with disturbances in
Thrace
, where the heretical sects of the
Bogomils
and the
Paulicians
revolted and made common cause with
the Pechenegs
from beyond the
Danube
.Paulician soldiers in imperial service
likewise deserted during Alexios’ battles with the Normans. As soon as the
Norman threat had passed, Alexios set out to punish the rebels and deserters,
confiscating their lands. This led to a further revolt near
Philippopolis
, and the commander of the field
army in the west, Gregory Pakourianos, was defeated and killed in the ensuing
battle. In 1087 the Pechenegs raided into Thrace and Alexios crossed into
Moesia
to retaliate but failed to take
Dorostolon (Silistra).
During his retreat, the emperor was surrounded and worn down by the Pechenegs,
who forced him to sign a truce and pay protection money. In 1090 the Pechenegs
invaded Thrace again, while
Tzachas
, the brother-in-law of the Sultan of
Rum
, launched a fleet and attempted to arrange
a joint siege of Constantinople with the Pechenegs.Alexios overcame this crisis
by entering into an alliance with a horde of 40,000
Cumans
, with whose help he crushed the
Pechenegs at
Levounion
in Thrace on 29 April 1091.
This put an end to the Pecheneg threat, but in 1094 the Cumans began to raid
the imperial territories in the Balkans. Led by a pretender claiming to be
Constantine Diogenes, a long-dead son of the Emperor
Romanos IV
, the Cumans crossed the mountains
and raided into eastern Thrace until their leader was eliminated at
Adrianople
. With the Balkans more or less
pacified, Alexios could now turn his attention to
Asia Minor
, which had been almost completely
overrun by the
Seljuq Turks
.
Byzantine-Seljuq Wars and the First Crusade
The map of Europe during the
First Crusade
in 1097.
By the time Alexios ascended the throne, the Seljuqs had taken most of Asia
Minor. Alexios was able to secure much of the coastal regions by sending peasant
soldiers to raid the Seljuq camps, but these victories were unable to stop the
Turks altogether. As early as 1090, Alexios had taken reconciliatory measures
towards the
Papacy
, with the intention of seeking western
support against the Seljuqs. In 1095 his ambassadors appeared before
Pope Urban II
at the
Council of Piacenza
. The help which he wanted
from the West was simply
mercenary
forces and not the immense hosts
which arrived, to his consternation and embarrassment, after the pope preached
the First Crusade
at the
Council of Clermont
later that same year. Not
quite ready to supply this number of people as they traversed his territories,
the emperor saw his Balkan possessions subjected to further pillage at the hands
of his own allies. Alexios dealt with the first disorganized group of Crusaders,
led by the preacher
Peter the Hermit
, by sending them on to Asia
Minor, where they were massacred by the Turks in 1096.
The second and much more formidable host of crusaders gradually made its way
to Constantinople
, led in sections by
Godfrey of Bouillon
,
Bohemond of Taranto
,
Raymond IV of Toulouse
and other important
members of the western nobility. Alexios used the opportunity of meeting the
crusader leaders separately as they arrived and extracting from them oaths of
homage and the promise to turn over conquered lands to the
Byzantine Empire
.Transferring each contingent
into Asia, Alexios promised to supply them with provisions in return for their
oaths of homage. The crusade was a notable success for Byzantium, as Alexios now
recovered a number of important cities and islands. The
crusader siege
of
Nicaea
forced the city to surrender to the
emperor in 1097, and the subsequent crusader victory at
Dorylaion
allowed the Byzantine forces to
recover much of western Asia Minor.
John Doukas
re-established Byzantine rule in
Chios
,
Rhodes
,
Smyrna
,
Ephesus
,
Sardis
, and
Philadelphia
in 1097–1099. This success is
ascribed by Alexios’ daughter Anna to his policy and diplomacy, but by the Latin
historians of the crusade to his treachery and falseness. In 1099, a Byzantine
fleet of 10 ships were sent to assist the Crusaders in capturing
Laodicea
and other coastal towns as far as
Tripoli
. The crusaders believed their oaths
were made invalid when the Byzantine contingent under
Tatikios
failed to help them during the
siege of Antioch
; Bohemund, who had set himself
up as
Prince of Antioch
, briefly went to war with
Alexios in the Balkans, but was blockaded by the Byzantine forces and agreed to
become Alexios’ vassal by the
Treaty of Devol
in 1108.
In 1116, though already terminally ill, he conducted a series of defensive
operations in Bythinia and Mysia to defend his Anatolian territories against the
inroads of
Malik Shah
the Seljuq Sultan of Iconium. In
1117 he moved onto the offensive and pushed his army deep into the
Turkish-dominated Anatolian Plateau, where he defeated the Seljuq sultan at the
Battle of Philomelion
.
Personal life
During the last twenty years of his life Alexios lost much of his popularity.
The years were marked by persecution of the followers of the
Paulician
and
Bogomil
heresies—one of his last acts was to
publicly burn at the stake
Basil
, a Bogomil leader, with whom he had
engaged in a theological dispute.In spite of the success of the crusade, Alexios
also had to repel numerous attempts on his territory by the Seljuqs in
1110–1117.
Alexios was for many years under the strong influence of an eminence grise,
his mother
Anna Dalassene
, a wise and immensely able
politician whom, in a uniquely irregular fashion, he had crowned as
Augusta
instead of the rightful claimant to
the title, his wife Irene Doukaina. Dalassena was the effective administrator of
the Empire during Alexios’ long absences in military campaigns: she was
constantly at odds with her daughter-in-law and had assumed total responsibility
for the upbringing and education of her granddaughter Anna Komnene.
Succession
Alexios’ last years were also troubled by anxieties over the succession.
Although he had crowned his son
John II Komnenos
co-emperor at the age of five
in 1092, John’s mother Irene Doukaina wished to alter the succession in favor of
her daughter Anna and Anna’s husband,
Nikephoros Bryennios the Younger
. Bryennios had
been made
kaisar
(Caesar) and received the
newly-created title of
panhypersebastos
(“honoured above all”),
and remained loyal to both Alexios and John. Nevertheless, the intrigues of
Irene and Anna disturbed even Alexios’ dying hours.
Pretenders and rebels
Apart from all of his external enemies, a host of rebels also sought to
overthrow Alexios from the imperial throne, thereby posing another major threat
to his reign. Due to the troubled times the empire was enduring, he had by far
the greatest number of rebellions against him of all the Byzantine
emperors.These included:
Pre First Crusade
Post First Crusade
-
Salomon
, a
senator
of great wealth who in 1106 engaged
in a plot with four brothers of the Anemas family.
-
Gregory Taronites
, another governor of
Trebizond.
- The illegitimate descendant of a
Bulgarian
prince named Aron formed a plot
in 1107 to murder Alexios as he was encamped near
Thessalonica
. The presence of the empress
Irene and her attendants, however, made the execution of the plot difficult.
In an attempt to have her return to
Constantinople
, the conspirators produced
pamphlets that mocked and slandered the empress, and left them in her tent.
A search for the author of the publications uncovered the whole plot, yet
Aron was only banished due to his connection of the royal line of Bulgaria,
whose blood also flowed in the veins of the empress Irene.
Legacy
Rare seal of Alexios I with a depiction of the
Resurrection
Alexios I had stabilized the Byzantine Empire and overcame a dangerous
crisis, inaugurating a century of imperial prosperity and success. He had also
profoundly altered the nature of the Byzantine government. By seeking close
alliances with powerful noble families, Alexios put an end to the tradition of
imperial exclusivity and coopted most of the nobility into his extended family
and, through it, his government. Those who did not become part of this extended
family were deprived of power and prestige. This measure, which was intended to
diminish opposition, was paralleled by the introduction of new courtly
dignities, like that of
panhypersebastos
given to Nikephoros
Bryennios, or that of
sebastokrator
given to the emperor’s
brother Isaac Komnenos. Although this policy met with initial success, it
gradually undermined the relative effectiveness of imperial bureaucracy by
placing family connections over merit. Alexios’ policy of integration of the
nobility bore the fruit of continuity: every Byzantine emperor who reigned after
Alexios I Komnenos was related to him by either descent or marriage.
Family
By his marriage with
Irene Doukaina
, Alexios I had the following
children:
-
Anna Komnene
, who married the Caesar
Nikephoros Bryennios the Younger
.
- Maria Komnene, who married (1) Gregory Gabras and (2)
Nikephoros Katakalon
.
-
John II Komnenos
, who succeeded as emperor.
- Andronikos Komnenos,
sebastokrator
. Died in battle 1117 (Battle
of Philomelion).
-
Isaac Komnenos
, sebastokrator.
- Eudokia Komnene, who married Michael Iasites.
-
Theodora Komnene
, who married (1)
Constantine Kourtikes and (2) Constantine Angelos. By him she was the
grandmother of Emperors
Isaac II Angelos
and
Alexios III Angelos
.
- Manuel Komnenos
- Zoe Komnene.
Labarum of Constantine I, displaying the “Chi-Rho” symbol above.
The labarum was a
vexillum
(military standard) that displayed
the “Chi-Rho”
symbol
☧
, formed from the first two
Greek letters
of the word “Christ”
—
Chi
and
Rho
. It was first used by the
Roman emperor
Constantine I
. Since the vexillum consisted of
a flag suspended from the crossbar of a cross, it was ideally suited to
symbolize the
crucifixion
of
Christ
.
Later usage has sometimes regarded the terms “labarum” and “Chi-Rho” as
synonyms. Ancient sources, however, draw an unambiguous distinction between the
two.
Etymology
Beyond its derivation from Latin labarum, the etymology of the word is
unclear. Some derive it from Latin /labāre/ ‘to totter, to waver’ (in the sense
of the “waving” of a flag in the breeze) or laureum [vexillum] (“laurel
standard”). According to the
Real Academia Española
, the related
lábaro
is also derived from Latin labărum
but offers no further derivation from within Latin, as does the Oxford English
Dictionary.[5]
An origin as a loan into Latin from a Celtic language or
Basque
has also been postulated. There is a
traditional Basque symbol called the
lauburu
; though the name is only attested from
the 19th century onwards the motif occurs in engravings dating as early as the
2nd century AD.
Vision of Constantine
A coin of Constantine (c.337) showing a depiction of his labarum
spearing a serpent.
On the evening of October 27, 312, with his army preparing for the
Battle of the Milvian Bridge
, the emperor
Constantine I
claimed to have had a vision
which led him to believe he was fighting under the protection of the
Christian God
.
Lactantius
states that, in the night before the
battle, Constantine was commanded in a dream to “delineate the heavenly sign on
the shields of his soldiers”. He obeyed and marked the shields with a sign
“denoting Christ”. Lactantius describes that sign as a “staurogram”, or a
Latin cross
with its upper end rounded in a
P-like fashion, rather than the better known
Chi-Rho
sign described by
Eusebius of Caesarea
. Thus, it had both the
form of a cross and the monogram of Christ’s name from the formed letters “X”
and “P”, the first letters of Christ’s name in Greek.
From Eusebius, two accounts of a battle survive. The first, shorter one in
the
Ecclesiastical History
leaves no doubt that
God helped Constantine but doesn’t mention any vision. In his later Life of
Constantine, Eusebius gives a detailed account of a vision and stresses that
he had heard the story from the emperor himself. According to this version,
Constantine with his army was marching somewhere (Eusebius doesn’t specify the
actual location of the event, but it clearly isn’t in the camp at Rome) when he
looked up to the sun and saw a cross of light above it, and with it the Greek
words
Ἐν Τούτῳ Νίκα
. The traditionally employed
Latin translation of the Greek is
in hoc signo vinces
— literally “In this
sign, you will conquer.” However, a direct translation from the original Greek
text of Eusebius into English gives the phrase “By this, conquer!”
At first he was unsure of the meaning of the apparition, but the following
night he had a dream in which Christ explained to him that he should use the
sign against his enemies. Eusebius then continues to describe the labarum, the
military standard used by Constantine in his later wars against
Licinius
, showing the Chi-Rho sign.
Those two accounts can hardly be reconciled with each other, though they have
been merged in popular notion into Constantine seeing the Chi-Rho sign on the
evening before the battle. Both authors agree that the sign was not readily
understandable as denoting Christ, which corresponds with the fact that there is
no certain evidence of the use of the letters chi and rho as a Christian sign
before Constantine. Its first appearance is on a Constantinian silver coin from
c. 317, which proves that Constantine did use the sign at that time, though not
very prominently. He made extensive use of the Chi-Rho and the labarum only
later in the conflict with Licinius.
The vision has been interpreted in a solar context (e.g. as a
solar halo
phenomenon), which would have been
reshaped to fit with the Christian beliefs of the later Constantine.
An alternate explanation of the intersecting celestial symbol has been
advanced by George Latura, which claims that Plato’s visible god in Timaeus
is in fact the intersection of the Milky Way and the Zodiacal Light, a rare
apparition important to pagan beliefs that Christian bishops reinvented as a
Christian symbol.
Eusebius’ description of the labarum
“A Description of the Standard of the Cross, which the Romans now call the
Labarum.” “Now it was made in the following manner. A long spear, overlaid with
gold, formed the figure of the cross by means of a transverse bar laid over it.
On the top of the whole was fixed a wreath of gold and precious stones; and
within this, the symbol of the Saviour’s name, two letters indicating the name
of Christ by means of its initial characters, the letter P being intersected by
X in its centre: and these letters the emperor was in the habit of wearing on
his helmet at a later period. From the cross-bar of the spear was suspended a
cloth, a royal piece, covered with a profuse embroidery of most brilliant
precious stones; and which, being also richly interlaced with gold, presented an
indescribable degree of beauty to the beholder. This banner was of a square
form, and the upright staff, whose lower section was of great length, of the
pious emperor and his children on its upper part, beneath the trophy of the
cross, and immediately above the embroidered banner.”
“The emperor constantly made use of this sign of salvation as a safeguard
against every adverse and hostile power, and commanded that others similar to it
should be carried at the head of all his armies.”
Iconographic career under Constantine
Coin of
Vetranio
, a soldier is holding two
labara. Interestingly they differ from the labarum of Constantine in
having the Chi-Rho depicted on the cloth rather than above it, and
in having their staves decorated with
phalerae
as were earlier Roman
military unit standards.
The emperor
Honorius
holding a variant of the
labarum – the Latin phrase on the cloth means “In the name of Christ
[rendered by the Greek letters XPI] be ever victorious.”
Among a number of standards depicted on the
Arch of Constantine
, which was erected, largely
with fragments from older monuments, just three years after the battle, the
labarum does not appear. A grand opportunity for just the kind of political
propaganda that the Arch otherwise was expressly built to present was missed.
That is if Eusebius’ oath-confirmed account of Constantine’s sudden,
vision-induced, conversion can be trusted. Many historians have argued that in
the early years after the battle the emperor had not yet decided to give clear
public support to Christianity, whether from a lack of personal faith or because
of fear of religious friction. The arch’s inscription does say that the Emperor
had saved the
res publica
INSTINCTV DIVINITATIS
MENTIS MAGNITVDINE (“by greatness of mind and by instinct [or impulse]
of divinity”). As with his predecessors, sun symbolism – interpreted as
representing
Sol Invictus
(the Unconquered Sun) or
Helios
,
Apollo
or
Mithras
– is inscribed on his coinage, but in
325 and thereafter the coinage ceases to be explicitly pagan, and Sol Invictus
disappears. In his
Historia Ecclesiae
Eusebius further reports
that, after his victorious entry into Rome, Constantine had a statue of himself
erected, “holding the sign of the Savior [the cross] in his right hand.” There
are no other reports to confirm such a monument.
Whether Constantine was the first
Christian
emperor supporting a peaceful
transition to Christianity during his rule, or an undecided pagan believer until
middle age, strongly influenced in his political-religious decisions by his
Christian mother
St. Helena
, is still in dispute among
historians.
As for the labarum itself, there is little evidence for its use before 317.In
the course of Constantine’s second war against Licinius in 324, the latter
developed a superstitious dread of Constantine’s standard. During the attack of
Constantine’s troops at the
Battle of Adrianople
the guard of the labarum
standard were directed to move it to any part of the field where his soldiers
seemed to be faltering. The appearance of this talismanic object appeared to
embolden Constantine’s troops and dismay those of Licinius.At the final battle
of the war, the
Battle of Chrysopolis
, Licinius, though
prominently displaying the images of Rome’s pagan pantheon on his own battle
line, forbade his troops from actively attacking the labarum, or even looking at
it directly.[16]
Constantine felt that both Licinius and
Arius
were agents of Satan, and associated them
with the serpent described in the
Book of Revelation
(12:9).
Constantine represented Licinius as a snake on his coins.
Eusebius stated that in addition to the singular labarum of Constantine,
other similar standards (labara) were issued to the Roman army. This is
confirmed by the two labara depicted being held by a soldier on a coin of
Vetranio
(illustrated) dating from 350.
The Byzantine Empire was
the predominantly Greek-speaking
continuation of the Roman
Empire during Late
Antiquity and the Middle
Ages. Its capital city was Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul),
originally known as Byzantium.
Initially the eastern half of the Roman Empire (often called the Eastern
Roman Empire in this context), it
survived the 5th century fragmentation
and collapse of the Western
Roman Empire and continued
to thrive, existing for an additional thousand years until it fell to
the Ottoman
Turks in 1453. During most
of its existence, the empire was the most powerful economic, cultural, and
military force in Europe. Both “Byzantine Empire” and “Eastern Roman Empire” are
historiographical terms applied in later centuries; its citizens continued to
refer to their empire as the Roman
Empire (Ancient
Greek: Βασιλεία
Ῥωμαίων, tr.Basileia
Rhōmaiōn; Latin: Imperium
Romanum), and Romania.
Several events from the 4th to 6th centuries mark the transitional period during
which the Roman Empire’s east
and west divided.
In 285, theemperor Diocletian (r.
284–305) partitioned the Roman Empire’s administration into eastern and western
halves. Between
324 and 330,Constantine
I (r. 306–337) transferred
the main capital from Rome to Byzantium,
later known as Constantinople (“City
of Constantine”) and Nova Roma (“New
Rome”). Under Theodosius
I (r. 379–395), Christianity became
the Empire’s official state
religion and others such
as Roman
polytheism were proscribed.
And finally, under the reign of Heraclius (r.
610–641), the Empire’s military and administration were restructured and adopted
Greek for official use instead of Latin. In
summation, Byzantium is distinguished from ancient
Rome proper insofar as it
was oriented towards Greek rather than Latin culture, and characterised by Orthodox
Christianity rather than Roman
polytheism.
The borders of the Empire evolved a great deal over its existence, as it went
through several cycles of decline and recovery. During the reign of
Justinian I
(r.
527–565), the Empire reached its greatest extent after reconquering much of the
historically Roman western Mediterranean coast,
including north Africa, Italy, and Rome itself, which it held for two more
centuries. During the reign of Maurice (r.
582–602), the Empire’s eastern frontier was expanded and north stabilised.
However, his assassination caused a two-decade-long
war with Sassanid
Persia which exhausted the
Empire’s resources and contributed to major territorial losses during the Muslim
conquests of the 7th
century. During the 10th-centuryMacedonian
dynasty, the Empire experienced a golden
age, which culminated in the reign of Emperor
Basil II “the Bulgar-Slayer”. However, shortly after Basil’s death, a
neglect of the vast military built up during the Late Macedonian
dynasty caused the Empire
to begin to lose territory in Asia Minor to the Seljuk
Turks. Emperor
Romanos IV Diogenes and
several of his predecessors had attempted to rid Eastern
Anatolia of the Turkish
menace, but this endeavor proved ultimately untenable – especially after the
disastrous Battle
of Manzikert in 1071.
Despite a prominent period
of revival (1081-1180) under
the steady leadership of the Komnenos
family, who played an instrumental role in theFirst and Second
Crusades, the final centuries of the Empire exhibit a general trend
of decline. In 1204, after a period
of strife following the
downfall of the Komnenos
dynasty, the Empire was delivered a mortal blow by the forces of the Fourth
Crusade, when Constantinople was sacked and the Empire dissolved
and divided into competing
Byzantine Greek and Latin
realms. Despite the eventual recovery of Constantinople and re-establishment
of the Empire in 1261, Byzantium remained only one of a number of
small rival states in the area for the final two centuries of its existence.
This volatile period lead to its progressive
annexation by the Ottomans over
the 15th century and the Fall
of Constantinople in 1453.
Early history
The Roman
army succeeded in
conquering many territories covering the entire Mediterranean region and coastal
regions in southwestern
Europe and north Africa.
These territories were home to many different cultural groups, ranging from
primitive to highly sophisticated. Generally speaking, the eastern Mediterranean
provinces were more urbanised than the western, having previously been united
under the Macedonian
Empire and Hellenisedby
the influence of Greek culture.
The west also suffered more heavily from the instability of the 3rd century AD.
This distinction between the established Hellenised East and the younger
Latinised West persisted and became increasingly important in later centuries,
leading to a gradual estrangement of the two worlds.
Divisions of the
Roman Empire
In order to maintain control and improve administration, various schemes to
divide the work of the Roman Emperor by sharing it between individuals were
tried between 285 and 324, from 337 to 350, from 364 to 392, and again between
395 and 480. Although the administrative subdivisions varied, they generally
involved a division of labour between East and West. Each division was a form of
power-sharing (or even job-sharing), for the ultimateimperium was
not divisible and therefore the empire remained legally one state—although the
co-emperors often saw each other as rivals or enemies rather than partners.
In 293, emperor Diocletian created
a new administrative system (the tetrarchy),
in order to guarantee security in all endangered regions of his Empire. He
associated himself with a co-emperor (Augustus),
and each co-emperor then adopted a young colleague given the title of Caesar,
to share in their rule and eventually to succeed the senior partner. The
tetrarchy collapsed, however, in 313 and a few years later Constantine I
reunited the two administrative divisions of the Empire as sole Augustus.
Loss of the
western Roman Empire
After the fall of Attila, the Eastern Empire enjoyed a period of peace, while
the Western Empire deteriorated in continuing migration and expansion byGermanic
nations (its end is
usually dated in 476 when the Germanic Roman general Odoacer deposed
the titular Western Emperor Romulus
Augustulus). In 480 Emperor Zeno abolished
the division of the Empire making himself sole Emperor. Odoacer, now ruler of
Italy, was nominally Zeno’s subordinate but acted with complete autonomy,
eventually providing support of a rebellion against the Emperor.
Zeno negotiated with the conquering Ostrogoths,
who had settled in Moesia,
convincing the Gothic king Theodoric to
depart for Italy as magister
militum per Italiam (“commander
in chief for Italy”) with the aim to depose Odoacer. By urging Theodoric into
conquering Italy, Zeno rid the Eastern Empire of an unruly subordinate (Odoacer)
and moved another (Theodoric) further from the heart of the Empire. After
Odoacer’s defeat in 493, Theodoric ruled Italy on his own, although he was never
recognised by the eastern emperors as “king” (rex).
In 491, Anastasius
I, an aged civil officer of Roman origin, became Emperor, but it was
not until 497 that the forces of the new emperor effectively took the measure of Isaurian
resistance.[29]Anastasius
revealed himself as an energetic reformer and an able administrator. He
perfected Constantine I’s coinage system by definitively setting the weight of
the copper follis,
the coin used in most everyday transactions.[30] He
also reformed the tax system and permanently abolished the chrysargyron tax.
The State Treasury contained the enormous sum of 320,000 lb (150,000 kg) of gold
when Anastasius died in 518.
Reconquest of
the western provinces
Justinian I
depicted
on one of the famous mosaics of the Basilica
of San Vitale, Ravenna.
Justinian I
, the son of an Illyrian peasant,
may already have exerted effective control during the reign of his uncle, Justin
I (518–527). He
assumed the throne in 527, and oversaw a period of recovery of former
territories. In 532, attempting to secure his eastern frontier, he signed a
peace treaty with Khosrau
I of Persia agreeing to
pay a large annual tribute to the Sassanids.
In the same year, he survived a revolt in Constantinople (the Nika
riots), which solidified his power but ended with the deaths of a
reported 30,000 to 35,000 rioters on his orders.
In 529, a ten-man commission chaired by John
the Cappadocian revised
the Roman law and created a new codification of
laws and jurists’ extracts. In 534, the Code was
updated and, along with the enactements
promulgated by Justinian after 534, it formed the system of law used
for most of the rest of the Byzantine era.
The western conquests began in 533, as Justinian sent his general Belisarius to
reclaim the former province of Africa from
the Vandals who
had been in control since 429 with their capital at Carthage. Their
success came with surprising ease, but it was not until 548 that the major local
tribes were subdued. In Ostrogothic
Italy, the deaths of Theodoric, his nephew and heir Athalaric,
and his daughter Amalasuntha had
left her murderer,Theodahad (r.
534–536), on the throne despite his weakened authority.
Heraclian dynasty
The Byzantine Empire in 650 – by this year it lost all of its
southern provinces except the Exarchate
of Africa.
After Maurice’s murder by Phocas,
Khosrau used the pretext to reconquer the Roman
province of Mesopotamia.Phocas, an unpopular ruler invariably
described in Byzantine sources as a “tyrant”, was the target of a number of
Senate-led plots. He was eventually deposed in 610 by Heraclius, who sailed to
Constantinople from Carthage with
an icon affixed to the prow of his ship.
Following the ascension of Heraclius, the Sassanid advance pushed deep into Asia
Minor, occupying Damascus andJerusalem and
removing the True
Cross to Ctesiphon. The
counter-attack launched by Heraclius took on the character of a holy war, and an acheiropoietos image
of Christ was carried as a military standard (similarly,
when Constantinople was saved from an Avar siege in 626, the victory was
attributed to the icons of the Virgin that were led in procession byPatriarch
Sergius about the walls of
the city).
The main Sassanid force was destroyed at Nineveh in
627, and in 629 Heraclius restored the True Cross to Jerusalem in a majestic
ceremony. The war had exhausted both
the Byzantines and Sassanids, however, and left them extremely vulnerable to the Muslim
forces that emerged in the
following years. The Byzantines
suffered a crushing defeat by the Arabs at the Battle
of Yarmouk in 636, while
Ctesiphon fell in 634.
Siege of Constantinople (674–678)
The Arabs, now firmly in control
of Syria and the Levant, sent frequent raiding parties deep into Asia
Minor, and in 674–678
laid siege to Constantinople itself.
The Arab fleet was finally repulsed through the use of Greek
fire, and a thirty-years’ truce was signed between the Empire and the Umayyad
Caliphate. However, the Anatolian raids
continued unabated, and accelerated the demise of classical urban culture, with
the inhabitants of many cities either refortifying much smaller areas within the
old city walls, or relocating entirely to nearby fortresses. Constantinople
itself dropped substantially in size, from 500,000 inhabitants to just
40,000–70,000, and, like other urban centres, it was partly ruralised. The city
also lost the free grain shipments in 618, after Egypt fell first to the
Persians and then to the Arabs, and public wheat distribution ceased.
The void left by the disappearance of the old semi-autonomous civic institutions
was filled by the theme system, which entailed dividing Asia Minor into
“provinces” occupied by distinct armies that assumed civil authority and
answered directly to the imperial administration. This system may have had its
roots in certain ad hoc measures
taken by Heraclius, but over the course of the 7th century it developed into an
entirely new system of imperial governance.[59] The
massive cultural and institutional restructuring of the Empire consequent on the
loss of territory in the 7th century has been said to have caused a decisive
break in east Mediterranean Romanness and
that the Byzantine state is subsequently best understood as another successor
state rather than a real continuation of the Roman Empire.
The Greek fire was first used by the Byzantine
Navy during
the Byzantine-Arab Wars (from theMadrid
Skylitzes, Biblioteca
Nacional de España, Madrid).
Isaurian dynasty to the ascension of Basil I
Leo III the Isaurian
turned
back the Muslim assault in 718 and addressed himself to the task of reorganising
and consolidating the themes in Asia Minor. His successor, Constantine
V, won noteworthy victories in northern Syria and thoroughly
undermined Bulgarian strength.
Taking advantage of the Empire’s weakness after the Revolt
of Thomas the Slav in the
early 820s, the Arabs reemerged andcaptured
Crete. They also successfully attacked Sicily, but in 863 general Petronas gained
a huge
victory against Umar
al-Aqta, the emir of Melitene.
Under the leadership of emperor Krum,
the Bulgarian threat also reemerged, but in 815–816 Krum’s son, Omurtag,
signed a peace
treaty with Leo
V.
Macedonian dynasty and resurgence (867–1025)
The Byzantine Empire, c. 867.
The accession of Basil
I to the throne in 867
marks the beginning of the Macedonian
dynasty, which would rule for the next two and a half centuries. This
dynasty included some of the most able emperors in Byzantium’s history, and the
period is one of revival and resurgence. The Empire moved from defending against
external enemies to reconquest of territories formerly lost.[70]
In addition to a reassertion of Byzantine military power and political
authority, the period under the Macedonian dynasty is characterised by a
cultural revival in spheres such as philosophy and the arts. There was a
conscious effort to restore the brilliance of the period before the Slavic and
subsequent Arab
invasions, and the Macedonian era has been dubbed the “Golden Age” of
Byzantium. Though the Empire was
significantly smaller than during the reign of Justinian, it had regained
significant strength, as the remaining territories were less geographically
dispersed and more politically, economically, and culturally integrated.
Wars against the Arabs
The general Leo
Phokas defeats
the Arabs atAndrassos in
960, from the Madrid
Skylitzes.
In the early years of Basil I’s reign, Arab raids on the coasts of Dalmatia were
successfully repelled, and the region once again came under secure Byzantine
control. This enabled Byzantine missionaries to penetrate to the interior and
convert the Serbs and the principalities of modern-dayHerzegovina and Montenegro to
Orthodox Christianity. An attempt to
retake Malta ended
disastrously, however, when the local population sided with the Arabs and
massacred the Byzantine garrison.
By contrast, the Byzantine position in Southern
Italy was gradually
consolidated so that by 873 Bari had
once again come under Byzantine rule,and most of Southern Italy would remain in
the Empire for the next 200 years.On the more important eastern front, the
Empire rebuilt its defences and went on the offensive. The Paulicians were
defeated and their capital of Tephrike (Divrigi) taken, while the offensive
against the Abbasid
Caliphatebegan with the recapture of Samosata.
The military successes of the 10th century were coupled with a major
cultural revival, the so-called Macedonian
Renaissance. Miniature from the Paris
Psalter, an example of Hellenistic-influenced art.
Under Michael’s son and successor, Leo
VI the Wise, the gains in the east against the now weak Abbasid
Caliphate continued. However, Sicily was lost to the Arabs in 902, and in 904 Thessaloniki,
the Empire’s second city, was sacked by an Arab fleet. The weakness of the
Empire in the naval sphere was quickly rectified, so that a few years later a
Byzantine fleet had re-occupied Cyprus,
lost in the 7th century, and also stormed Laodicea in
Syria. Despite this revenge, the Byzantines were still unable to strike a
decisive blow against the Muslims, who inflicted a crushing defeat on the
imperial forces when they attempted to regain Crete in
911.
Wars against
the Bulgarian Empire
Emperor Basil II (r. 976–1025).
The traditional struggle with the See
of Rome continued through
the Macedonian period, spurred by the question of religious supremacy over the
newly Christianised state of Bulgaria. Ending
eighty years of peace between the two states, the powerful Bulgarian tsar Simeon
I invaded in 894 but was pushed back by the Byzantines, who used their fleet to
sail up the Black
Sea to attack the
Bulgarian rear, enlisting the support of theHungarians. The
Byzantines were defeated at the Battle
of Boulgarophygon in 896,
however, and agreed to pay annual subsidies to the Bulgarians.
Leo the Wise died in 912, and hostilities soon resumed as Simeon marched to
Constantinople at the head of a large army. Though
the walls of the city were impregnable, the Byzantine administration was in
disarray and Simeon was invited into the city, where he was granted the crown ofbasileus (emperor)
of Bulgaria and had the young emperor Constantine
VII marry one of his
daughters. When a revolt in Constantinople halted his dynastic project, he again
invaded Thrace and conquered Adrianople. The
Empire now faced the problem of a powerful Christian state within a few days’
marching distance from Constantinople, as
well as having to fight on two fronts.
A great imperial expedition under Leo
Phocas and Romanos
I Lekapenos ended with
another crushing Byzantine defeat at the Battle
of Achelous in 917, and
the following year the Bulgarians were free to ravage northern Greece.
Adrianople was plundered again in 923, and a Bulgarian army laid siege to
Constantinople in 924. Simeon died suddenly in 927, however, and Bulgarian power
collapsed with him. Bulgaria and Byzantium entered a long period of peaceful
relations, and the Empire was now free to concentrate on the eastern front
against the Muslims. In 968, Bulgaria
was overrun by the Rus’ under Sviatoslav
I of Kiev, but three years later, John I Tzimiskes defeated the
Rus’ and re-incorporated Eastern Bulgaria into the Byzantine Empire.
The extent of the Empire under Basil
II.
Bulgarian resistance revived under the rule of the Cometopuli
dynasty, but the new emperor Basil II (r. 976–1025) made the
submission of the Bulgarians his primary goal. Basil’s
first expedition against Bulgaria, however, resulted in a humiliating defeat at
the Gates
of Trajan. For the next few years, the emperor would be preoccupied
with internal revolts in Anatolia, while the Bulgarians expanded their realm in
the Balkans. The war dragged on for nearly twenty years. The Byzantine victories
of Spercheios and Skopje decisively
weakened the Bulgarian army, and in annual campaigns, Basil methodically reduced
the Bulgarian strongholds.[84] At
the Battle
of Kleidion in 1014 the
Bulgarians were annihilated: their army was captured, and it is said that 99 out
of every 100 men were blinded, with the hundredth man left with one eye so he
could lead his compatriots home. When Tsar Samuil saw
the broken remains of his once gallant army, he died of shock. By 1018, the last
Bulgarian strongholds had surrendered, and the country became part of the
Empire.[84] This
victory restored the Danube frontier, which had not been held since the days of
the emperor Heraclius.
Relations with
the Kievan Rus’
Rus’
under
the walls of Constantinople (860).
Between 850 and 1100, the Empire developed a mixed relationship with the new
state of the Kievan
Rus’, which had emerged to the north across the Black Sea.[85] This
relationship would have long-lasting repercussions in the history of the East
Slavs, and the Empire quickly became the main tradingand
cultural partner for Kiev. The Rus’ launched their first attack against
Constantinople in
860, pillaging the suburbs of the city. In 941, they
appeared on the Asian shore of
the Bosphorus, but this time they were crushed, an indication of the
improvements in the Byzantine military position after 907, whenonly
diplomacy had been able to push back the invaders. Basil II could not
ignore the emerging power of the Rus’, and, following the example of his
predecessors, he used religion as a means for the achievement of political
purposes. Rus’–Byzantine relations
became closer following the marriage of the Anna
Porphyrogeneta to Vladimir
the Great in 988, and the
subsequent Christianisation
of the Rus’. Byzantine
priests, architects, and artists were invited to work on numerous cathedrals and
churches around Rus’, expanding Byzantine cultural influence even further, while
numerous Rus’ served in the Byzantine army as mercenaries, most notably as the
famous Varangian
Guard.
Even after the Christianisation of the Rus’, however, relations were not always
friendly. The most serious conflict between the two powers was the war of
968–971 in Bulgaria, but several Rus’ raiding expeditions against the Byzantine
cities of the Black Sea coast and Constantinople itself are also recorded.
Although most were repulsed, they were often followed by treaties that were
generally favourable to the Rus’, such as the one concluded at the end of the
war of 1043, during which the Rus’ gave an indication of their
ambitions to compete with the Byzantines as an independent power.
Apex
Constantinople became the largest and wealthiest city in Europe
between the 9th and 11th centuries.
By 1025, the date of Basil II’s death, the Byzantine Empire stretched from Armenia in
the east to Calabria in
Southern Italy in the west. Many
successes had been achieved, ranging from the conquest of Bulgaria to the
annexation of parts of Georgia and
Armenia, and the reconquest of Crete, Cyprus, and the important city of Antioch.
These were not temporary tactical gains but long-term reconquests.
Leo VI achieved the complete codification of Byzantine law in Greek. This
monumental work of 60 volumes became the foundation of all subsequent Byzantine
law and is still studied today. Leo
also reformed the administration of the Empire, redrawing the borders of the
administrative subdivisions (the Themata,
or “Themes”) and tidying up the system of ranks and privileges, as well as
regulating the behavior of the various trade guilds in Constantinople. Leo’s
reform did much to reduce the previous fragmentation of the Empire, which
henceforth had one center of power, Constantinople. However,
the increasing military success of the Empire greatly enriched and empowered the
provincial nobility with respect to the peasantry, who were essentially reduced
to a state of serfdom.
Under the Macedonian emperors, the city of Constantinople flourished, becoming
the largest and wealthiest city in Europe, with a population of approximately
400,000 in the 9th and 10th centuries. During
this period, the Byzantine Empire employed a strong civil service staffed by
competent aristocrats that oversaw the collection of taxes, domestic
administration, and foreign policy. The Macedonian emperors also increased the
Empire’s wealth by fostering trade with Western Europe, particularly through the
sale of silk and metalwork.
Split between Orthodox Christianity and Catholicism (1054)
Mural of Saints
Cyril and Methodius, 19th century, Troyan
Monastery, Bulgaria.
The Macedonian period also included events of momentous religious significance.
The conversion of the Bulgarians, Serbs and Rus’ to
Orthodox Christianity permanently changed the religious map of Europe and still
resonates today. Cyril
and Methodius, two Byzantine
Greek brothers from
Thessaloniki, contributed significantly to the Christianization
of the Slavs and in the
process devised the Glagolitic
alphabet, ancestor to the Cyrillic
script.
In 1054, relations between the Eastern and Western traditions within the
Christian Church reached a terminal crisis, known as the Great
Schism. Although there was a formal declaration of institutional
separation, on July 16, when three papal legates entered the Hagia Sophia during
Divine Liturgy on a Saturday afternoon and placed a bull of excommunication on
the altar, the so-called Great Schism
was actually the culmination of centuries of gradual separation.
Crisis and fragmentation
The Empire soon fell into a period of difficulties, caused to a large extent by
the undermining of the theme system and the neglect of the military. Nikephoros
II Phokas (reigned
963–969), John Tzimiskes and Basil II changed the military divisions (τάγματα, tagmata)
from a rapid response, primarily defensive, citizen army into a professional,
campaigning army increasingly manned by mercenaries. Mercenaries,
however, were expensive and as the threat of invasion receded in the 10th
century, so did the need for maintaining large garrisons and expensive
fortifications.[95]
Basil II left a burgeoning treasury upon his death, but neglected to plan for
his succession. None of his immediate successors had any particular military or
political skill and the administration of the Empire increasingly fell into the
hands of the civil service. Efforts to revive the Byzantine economy only
resulted in inflation and a debased gold coinage. The army was now seen as both
an unnecessary expense and a political threat. Therefore, native troops were
cashiered and replaced by foreign mercenaries on specific contract.
Komnenian
dynasty and the crusaders
Alexios I
, founder of the Komnenos
dynasty.
The period from about 1081 to about 1185 is often known as the Komnenian or
Comnenian period, after the Komnenos
dynasty. Together, the five Komnenian emperors (Alexios I, John II,
Manuel I, Alexios II and Andronikos I) ruled for 104 years, presiding over a
sustained, though ultimately incomplete, restoration of the military,
territorial, economic and political position of the Byzantine Empire. Though
the Seljuk Turks occupied the Empire’s heartland in Anatolia, it was against
Western powers that most Byzantine military efforts were directed, particularly
the Normans.
The Empire under the Komnenoi played a key role in the history of the Crusades
in the Holy Land, which Alexios I had helped bring about, while also exerting
enormous cultural and political influence in Europe, the Near East, and the
lands around the Mediterranean Sea under John and Manuel. Contact between
Byzantium and the “Latin” West, including the Crusader states, increased
significantly during the Komnenian period. Venetian and other Italian traders
became resident in Constantinople and the empire in large numbers (there were an
estimated 60,000 Latins in Constantinople alone, out of a population of three to
four hundred thousand), and their presence together with the numerous Latin
mercenaries who were employed by Manuel helped to spread Byzantine technology,
art, literature and culture throughout the Latin West, while also leading to a
flow of Western ideas and customs into the Empire.
In terms of prosperity and cultural life, the Komnenian period was one of the
peaks in Byzantine history, and
Constantinople remained the leading city of the Christian world in terms of
size, wealth, and culture. There was
a renewed interest in classical Greek philosophy, as well as an increase in
literary output in vernacular Greek. Byzantine
art and literature held a pre-eminent place in Europe, and the cultural impact
of Byzantine art on the west during this period was enormous and of long lasting
significance.
Alexios I and the
First Crusade
After Manzikert, a partial recovery (referred to as the Komnenian restoration)
was made possible by the efforts of the Komnenian dynasty. The
first emperor of this dynasty was Isaac
I (1057–1059) and the
second Alexios I. At the very outset of his reign, Alexios faced a formidable
attack by the Normans under Robert Guiscard and his son Bohemund
of Taranto, who captured Dyrrhachium and Corfu,
and laid siege to Larissa in Thessaly.
Robert Guiscard’s death in 1085 temporarily eased the Norman problem. The
following year, the Seljuq sultan died, and the sultanate was split by internal
rivalries. By his own efforts, Alexios defeated the Pechenegs;
they were caught by surprise and annihilated at the Battle
of Levounion on 28 April
1091.
Having achieved stability in the West, Alexios could turn his attention to the
severe economic difficulties and the disintegration of the Empire’s traditional
defences. However, he still did not
have enough manpower to recover the lost territories in Asia Minor and to
advance against the Seljuks. At the Council
of Piacenza in 1095,
Alexios’ envoys spoke toPope
Urban II about the
suffering of the Christians of the East, and underscored that without help from
the West they would continue to suffer under Muslim rule.
Urban saw Alexios’ request as a dual opportunity to cement Western Europe and
reunite the Eastern
Orthodox Churcheswith the Roman
Catholic Church under his
rule. On 27 November 1095, Pope Urban
II called together the Council
of Clermont, and urged all those present to take up arms under the
sign of the Cross and
launch an armed pilgrimage to
recover Jerusalem and the East from the Muslims. The response in Western Europe
was overwhelming.
John
II, Manuel I and the Second Crusade
Medieval manuscript depicting the Capture
of Jerusalem during
the First Crusade.
Alexios’s son John
II Komnenos succeeded him
in 1118, and ruled until 1143. John was a pious and dedicated Emperor who was
determined to undo the damage his empire had suffered at the Battle of
Manzikert, half a century earlier.[114] Famed
for his piety and his remarkably mild and just reign, John was an exceptional
example of a moral ruler, at a time when cruelty was the norm.[115] For
this reason, he has been called the ByzantineMarcus
Aurelius.
In the course of his twenty-five year reign, John made alliances with the Holy
Roman Empire in the West,
decisively defeated the Pechenegs at theBattle
of Beroia, and personally
led numerous campaigns against the Turks in
Asia Minor. John’s campaigns fundamentally changed the balance of power in the
East, forcing the Turks onto the defensive and restoring to the Byzantines many
towns, fortresses and cities right across the peninsula. He
also thwarted Hungarian, and Serbian threats during the 1120s, and in 1130
allied himself with the German
emperor Lothair
IIIagainst the Norman king Roger
II of Sicily.
In the later part of his reign, John focused his activities on the East. He
defeated the Danishmend emirate
of Melitene,
and reconquered all of Cilicia,
while forcing Raymond
of Poitiers, Prince of Antioch, to recognise Byzantine suzerainty. In
an effort to demonstrate the Emperor’s role as the leader of the Christian
world, John marched into the Holy
Land at the head of the
combined forces of the Empire and the Crusader
states; yet despite the great vigour with which he pressed the
campaign, John’s hopes were disappointed by the treachery of his Crusader
allies. In 1142, John returned to
press his claims to Antioch, but he died in the spring of 1143 following a
hunting accident. Raymond was emboldened to invade Cilicia, but he was defeated
and forced to go to Constantinople to beg mercy from the new Emperor.
12th-century Renaissance
‘The Lamentation of Christ’ (1164), a fresco from the church
of Saint Panteleimon in
Nerezi near Skopje. It is considered a superb example of 12th
century Komnenian art.
John and Manuel pursued active military policies, and both deployed considerable
resources on sieges and on city defences; aggressive fortification policies were
at the heart of their imperial military policies. Despite
the defeat at Myriokephalon, the policies of Alexios, John and Manuel resulted
in vast territorial gains, increased frontier stability in Asia Minor, and
secured the stabilisation of the Empire’s European frontiers. From circa 1081 to
circa 1180, the Komnenian army assured the Empire’s security, enabling Byzantine
civilisation to flourish.
This allowed the Western provinces to achieve an economic revival that continued
until the close of the century. It has been argued that Byzantium under the
Komnenian rule was more prosperous than at any time since the Persian invasions
of the 7th century. During the 12th century, population levels rose and
extensive tracts of new agricultural land were brought into production.
Archaeological evidence from both Europe and Asia Minor shows a considerable
increase in the size of urban settlements, together with a notable upsurge in
new towns. Trade was also flourishing; the Venetians, the Genoese and
others opened up the ports of the Aegean to commerce, shipping goods from the
Crusader kingdoms of Outremer and
Fatimid Egypt to the west and trading with the Empire via Constantinople.
In artistic terms, there was a revival in mosaic,
and regional schools of architecture began producing many distinctive styles
that drew on a range of cultural influences. During
the 12th century, the Byzantines provided their model of early humanism as
a renaissance of interest in classical authors. In Eustathius
of Thessalonica, Byzantine humanism found its most characteristic
expression. In philosophy, there was
resurgence of classical learning not seen since the 7th century, characterised
by a significant increase in the publication of commentaries on classical
works.In addition, it is during the Komnenian period that there occurs the first
transmission of classical Greek knowledge towards the West.
Decline and
disintegration
Dynasty of the Angeloi
Manuel’s death on 24 September 1180 left his 11-year-old son Alexios
II Komnenos on the throne.
Alexios was highly incompetent at the office, but it was his mother, Maria
of Antioch, and her Frankish background that made his regency
unpopular.[131] Eventually, Andronikos
I Komnenos, a grandson of Alexios I, launched a revolt against his
younger relative and managed to overthrow him in a violent coup
d’état.
Utilizing his good looks and his immense popularity with the army, he marched on
to Constantinople in August 1182, and
incited a massacre of the Latins. After
eliminating his potential rivals, he had himself crowned as co-emperor in
September 1183. He eliminated Alexios II, and took his 12-year-old wife Agnes
of France for himself.
Iconium
was
won by the Third Crusade.
Andronikos began his reign well; in particular, the measures he took to reform
the government of the Empire have been praised by historians. According to George
Ostrogorsky, Andronikos was determined to root out corruption: Under
his rule, the sale of offices ceased; selection was based on merit, rather than
favouritism; officials were paid an adequate salary so as to reduce the
temptation of bribery. In the provinces, Andronikos’s reforms produced a speedy
and marked improvement.
The aristocrats were infuriated against him, and to make matters worse,
Andronikos seems to have become increasingly unbalanced; executions and violence
became increasingly common, and his reign turned into a reign of terror. Andronikos
seemed almost to seek the extermination of the aristocracy as a whole. The
struggle against the aristocracy turned into wholesale slaughter, while the
Emperor resorted to ever more ruthless measures to shore up his regime.
Despite his military background, Andronikos failed to deal with Isaac
Komnenos, Béla
III of Hungary (r.
1172–1196) who reincorporated Croatian territories into Hungary, and Stephen
Nemanja of Serbia (r.
1166–1196) who declared his independence from the Byzantine Empire. Yet, none of
these troubles would compare to William
II of Sicily‘s (r. 1166–1189) invasion force of 300 ships and 80,000
men, arriving in 1185. Andronikos
mobilised a small fleet of 100 ships to defend the capital but other than that
he was indifferent to the populace. He was finally overthrown when Isaac
Angelos, surviving an imperial assassination attempt, seized power
with the aid of the people and had Andronikos killed.
The reign of Isaac II, and, still more, that of his brother Alexios
III, saw the collapse of what remained of the centralised machinery
of Byzantine government and defence. Although, the Normans were driven out of
Greece, in 1186 the Vlachs and
Bulgars began a rebellion that led to the formation of the Second
Bulgarian Empire. The internal policy of the Angeloi was
characterised by the squandering of the public treasure, and fiscal
maladministration. Imperial authority was severely weakened, and the growing
power vacuum at the center of the Empire encouraged fragmentation. There is
evidence that some Komnenian heirs had set up a semi-independent state in Trebizond before
1204. According to Alexander
Vasiliev, “the dynasty of the Angeloi, Greek in its origin, …
accelerated the ruin of the Empire, already weakened without and disunited
within.”
Fourth Crusade
The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople, by Eugène
Delacroix (1840).
In 1198, Pope
Innocent III broached the
subject of a new crusade through legates and encyclical
letters.The stated intent of the crusade was to conquer Egypt,
now the centre of Muslim power in the Levant.
The crusader army that arrived at Venice in
the summer of 1202 was somewhat smaller than had been anticipated, and there
were not sufficient funds to pay the Venetians, whose fleet was hired by the
crusaders to take them to Egypt. Venetian policy under the ageing and blind but
still ambitious Doge Enrico
Dandolo was potentially at
variance with that of the Pope and the crusaders, because Venice was closely
related commercially with Egypt.
The crusaders accepted the suggestion that in lieu of payment they assist the
Venetians in the capture of the (Christian) port of Zara in
Dalmatia (vassal city of Venice, which had rebelled and placed itself under
Hungary’s protection in 1186). The
city fell in November 1202 after a briefsiege. Innocent,
who was informed of the plan but his veto disregarded, was reluctant to
jeopardise the Crusade, and gave conditional absolution to the crusaders—not,
however, to the Venetians.
Map to show the partition of the empire following the Fourth
Crusade, c. 1204.
After the death of Theobald
III, Count of Champagne, the leadership of the Crusade passed to Boniface
of Montferrat, a friend of the HohenstaufenPhilip
of Swabia. Both Boniface and Philip had married into the Byzantine
Imperial family. In fact, Philip’s brother-in-law, Alexios
Angelos, son of the deposed and blinded Emperor Isaac II Angelos, had
appeared in Europe seeking aid and had made contacts with the crusaders.Alexios
offered to reunite the Byzantine church with Rome, pay the crusaders 200,000
silver marks, join the crusade and provide all the supplies they needed to get
to Egypt. Innocent was aware of a
plan to divert the Crusade to Constantinople and forbade any attack on the city,
but the papal letter arrived after the fleets had left Zara.
Crusader sack of Constantinople (1204)
The crusaders arrived at the city in the summer of 1203 and quickly attacked,
started a major fire that damaged large parts of the city, and seized control of
it (first of two times). Alexios III fled from the capital, and Alexios Angelos
was elevated to the throne as Alexios IV along with his blind father Isaac.
However, Alexios IV and Isaac II were unable to keep their promises and were
deposed by Alexios V. Eventually, the crusaders took the city a second time on
13 April 1204 and Constantinople was subjected to pillage and massacre by the
rank and file for three days.
Many priceless icons, relics, and other objects later turned up in Western
Europe, a large number in Venice. According to Choniates, a prostitute was even
set up on the Patriarchal throne.[144] When
Innocent III heard of the conduct of his crusaders, he castigated them in no
uncertain terms. But the situation was beyond his control, especially after his
legate, on his own initiative, had absolved the crusaders from their vow to
proceed to the Holy Land.
When order had been restored, the crusaders and the Venetians proceeded to
implement their agreement; Baldwin
of Flanders was elected Emperor and
the Venetian Thomas
Morosini chosen as
Patriarch. The lands divided up among the leaders included most of the former
Byzantine possessions, however resistance would continue through the Byzantine
remnants of the Nicaea, Trebizond,
and Epirus.
Fall
Empire in exile
After the sack of Constantinople in 1204 by Latin crusaders, two Byzantine
successor states were established: the Empire of Nicaea, and the Despotate of
Epirus. A third one, the Empire of Trebizond was created a few weeks before the
sack of Constantinople by Alexios
I of Trebizond. Of these three successor states, Epirus and Nicaea
stood the best chance of reclaiming Constantinople. The Nicaean Empire
struggled, however, to survive the next few decades, and by the mid-13th century
it lost much of southern Anatolia.
The weakening of the Sultanate
of Rûm following the Mongol
Invasion in 1242–43 allowed
many beyliks and ghazis to
set up their own principalities in Anatolia, weakening the Byzantine hold on
Asia Minor. In time, one of the Beys, Osman
I, created an empire that would eventually conquer Constantinople.
However, the Mongol Invasion also gave Nicaea a temporary respite from Seljuk
attacks allowing it to concentrate on the Latin Empire only north of its
position.
Reconquest of
Constantinople
The Empire of Nicaea, founded by the Laskarid
dynasty, managed to reclaim
Constantinople from the
Latins in 1261 and defeat Epirus. This led to a short-lived revival of Byzantine
fortunes under Michael
VIII Palaiologos, but the war-ravaged Empire was ill-equipped to deal
with the enemies that now surrounded it. To maintain his campaigns against the
Latins, Michael pulled troops from Asia Minor, and levied crippling taxes on the
peasantry, causing much resentment. Massive
construction projects were completed in Constantinople to repair the damages of
the Fourth Crusade, but none of these initiatives was of any comfort to the
farmers in Asia Minor, suffering raids from Muslim ghazis.
Rather than holding on to his possessions in Asia Minor, Michael chose to expand
the Empire, gaining only short-term success. To avoid another sacking of the
capital by the Latins, he forced the Church to submit to Rome, again a temporary
solution for which the peasantry hated Michael and Constantinople. The
efforts of Andronikos
II and later his grandsonAndronikos
III marked Byzantium’s
last genuine attempts in restoring the glory of the Empire. However, the use of
mercenaries by Andronikos II would often backfire, with the Catalan
Company ravaging the
countryside and increasing resentment towards Constantinople.
Rise of the Ottomans and fall of Constantinople
The siege
of Constantinople in
1453 according to a 15th-century French miniature.
Things went worse for Byzantium during the civil wars that followed after
Andronikos III died. A six-year
long civil war devastated
the empire, allowing the Serbian ruler Stefan
IV Dushan (r. 1331–1346)
to overrun most of the Empire’s remaining territory and establish a short-lived
“Serbian
Empire“. In 1354, an earthquake at Gallipoli devastated
the fort, allowing the Ottomans (who
were hired as mercenaries during the civil war by John
VI Kantakouzenos) to establish themselves in Europe. By
the time the Byzantine civil wars had ended, the Ottomans had defeated the
Serbians and subjugated them as vassals. Following the Battle
of Kosovo, much of the Balkans became dominated by the Ottomans.[151]
The Byzantine emperors appealed to the West for help, but the Pope would only
consider sending aid in return for a reunion of the Eastern Orthodox Church with
the See of Rome. Church unity was considered, and occasionally accomplished by
imperial decree, but the Orthodox citizenry and clergy intensely resented the
authority of Rome and the Latin
Rite.[152] Some
Western troops arrived to bolster the Christian defence of Constantinople, but
most Western rulers, distracted by their own affairs, did nothing as the
Ottomans picked apart the remaining Byzantine territories.[153]
Constantinople by this stage was underpopulated and dilapidated. The population
of the city had collapsed so severely that it was now little more than a cluster
of villages separated by fields. On 2 April 1453, Sultan
Mehmed‘s army of some 80,000 men and large numbers of irregulars laid
siege to the city.[154]
Despite a desperate last-ditch defence of the city by the massively outnumbered
Christian forces (c. 7,000 men, 2,000 of whom were foreign),[153]Constantinople
finally fell to the Ottomans after a two-month siege on 29 May 1453. The last
Byzantine Emperor, Constantine
XI Palaiologos, was last seen casting off his imperial regalia and
throwing himself into hand-to-hand combat after the walls of the city were
taken.[155]
Culture
Economy
The Byzantine economy was among the most advanced in Europe and
the Mediterranean for
many centuries. Europe, in particular, was unable to match Byzantine economic
strength until late in the Middle
Ages. Constantinople was
a prime hub in a trading network that at various times extended across nearly
all of Eurasia andNorth
Africa, in particular being the primary western terminus of the
famous Silk
Road. Until the first half of the 6th century and in sharp contrast
with the decaying West, Byzantine economy was flourishing and resilient.
The Plague
of Justinian and the Arab
conquests would represent
a substantial reversal of fortunes contributing to a period of stagnation and decline.
Isaurian reforms and, in particular, Constantine
V‘s repopulation, public works and tax measures, marked the beginning
of a revival that continued until 1204, despite territorial contraction.[160] From
the 10th century until the end of the 12th, the Byzantine Empire projected an
image of luxury and travellers were impressed by the wealth accumulated in the
capital.[161]
The Fourth
Crusade resulted in the
disruption of Byzantine manufacturing and the commercial dominance of the
Western Europeans in the eastern
Mediterranean, events that amounted to an economic catastrophe for
the Empire. The Palaiologoi tried
to revive the economy, but the late Byzantine state would not gain full control
of either the foreign or domestic economic forces. Gradually, it also lost its
influence on the modalities of trade and the price mechanisms, and its control
over the outflow of precious metals and, according to some scholars, even over
the minting of coins.
One of the economic foundations of Byzantium was trade, fostered by the maritime
character of the Empire. Textiles must have been by far the most important item
of export; silks were certainly imported into Egypt, and appeared also in
Bulgaria, and the West. The state
strictly controlled both the internal and the international trade, and retained
the monopoly of issuing coinage,
maintaining a durable and flexible monetary system adaptable to trade needs.
The government exercised formal control over interest rates, and set the
parameters for the activity of the guilds and
corporations, in which it had a special interest. The emperor and his officials
intervened at times of crisis to ensure the provisioning of the capital, and to
keep down the price of cereals. Finally, the government often collected part of
the surplus through taxation, and put it back into circulation, through
redistribution in the form of salaries to state officials, or in the form of
investment in public works.
Science, medicine, law
The frontispiece of the Vienna
Dioscurides, which shows a set of seven famous
physicians.
The writings of Classical
antiquity never ceased to
be cultivated in Byzantium. Therefore, Byzantine science was in every period
closely connected with ancient
philosophy, and metaphysics. Although
at various times the Byzantines made magnificent achievements in the application
of thesciences (notably
in the construction of the Hagia
Sophia), after the 6th century Byzantine scholars made few novel
contributions to science in terms of developing new theories or extending the
ideas of classical authors.
Scholarship particularly lagged during the dark years of plague and
the Arab conquests, but then during the so-called Byzantine
Renaissance at the end of the
first millennium Byzantine scholars re-asserted themselves becoming experts in
the scientific developments of the Arabs and Persians, particularly in astronomy and mathematics. The
Byzantines are also credited with several
technological advancements, particularly in architecture (e.g. the
pendentive dome) and warfare technology (e.g. Greek
fire).
In the final century of the Empire, Byzantine grammarians were those principally
responsible for carrying, in person and in writing, ancient Greek grammatical
and literary studies to early Renaissance
Italy. During this period, astronomy and
other mathematical
sciences were taught in
Trebizond; medicine attracted the interest of almost all scholars.
In the field of law, Justinian
I‘s reforms had a clear effect on the evolution of jurisprudence,
and Leo III’s Ecloga influenced
the formation of legal institutions in the Slavic world. In
the 10th century, Leo
VI the Wise achieved the
complete codification of the whole of Byzantine law in Greek, which became the
foundation of all subsequent Byzantine law, generating interest to the present
day.
Religion
The survival of the Empire in the East assured an active role of the Emperor in
the affairs of the Church. The Byzantine state inherited from pagan times the
administrative, and financial routine of administering religious affairs, and
this routine was applied to the Christian
Church. Following the pattern set by Eusebius
of Caesarea, the Byzantines viewed the Emperor as a representative or
messenger of Christ,
responsible particularly for the propagation of Christianity among pagans, and
for the “externals” of the religion, such as administration and finances. As Cyril
Mango points out, the
Byzantine political thinking can be summarised in the motto “One God, one
empire, one religion”.
The imperial role in the affairs of the Church never developed into a fixed,
legally defined system. With the
decline of Rome, and internal dissension in the other Eastern Patriarchates, the
Church of Constantinople became, between the 6th and 11th centuries, the richest
and most influential center of Christendom. Even
when the Empire was reduced to only a shadow of its former self, the Church
continued to exercise significant influence both inside and outside of the
imperial frontiers. As George
Ostrogorsky points out:
The Patriarchate
of Constantinople remained
the center of the Orthodox world, with subordinate metropolitan
sees and
archbishoprics in the territory of Asia Minor and the Balkans, now lost to
Byzantium, as well as in Caucasus,
Russia and Lithuania.
The Church remained the most stable element in the Byzantine Empire.
The official state Christian doctrine was determined by the first
seven ecumenical councils, and it was then the emperor’s duty to
impose it to his subjects. An imperial decree of 388, which was later
incorporated into the Codex
Justinianus, orders the population of the Empire “to assume the name of
Catholic Christians”, and regards all those who will not abide by the law as
“mad and foolish persons”; as followers of “heretical dogmas”.
Despite imperial decrees and the stringent stance of the state
church itself, which came
to be known as the Eastern
Orthodox Church or Eastern
Christianity, the latter never represented all Christians in
Byzantium. Mango believes that, in the early stages of the Empire, the “mad and
foolish persons”, those labelled “heretics”
by the state church, were the majority of the population.Besides the pagans,
who existed until the end of the 6th century, and the Jews,
there were many followers – sometimes even emperors – of various Christian
doctrines, such as Nestorianism,Monophysitism, Arianism,
and Paulicianism,
whose teachings were in some opposition to the main theological doctrine, as
determined by the Ecumenical Councils.
Another division among Christians occurred, when Leo III ordered the destruction
of icons throughout the Empire. This led to a significant
religious crisis, which ended in mid-9th century with the restoration
of icons. During the same period, a new wave of pagans emerged in the Balkans,
originating mainly from Slavic people. These were gradually Christianised,
and by Byzantium’s late stages, Eastern Orthodoxy represented most Christians
and, in general, most people in what remained of the Empire.
Jews were a significant minority in the Byzantine state throughout its history,
and, according to Roman law, they constituted a legally recognised religious
group. In the early Byzantine period they were generally tolerated, but then
periods of tensions and persecutions ensued. In any case, after the Arab
conquests, the majority of Jews found themselves outside the Empire; those left
inside the Byzantine borders apparently lived in relative peace from the 10th
century onwards.
Art and literature
Miniatures of the 6th-century Rabula
Gospeldisplay the more abstract and symbolic nature of
Byzantine art.
Surviving Byzantine art is mostly religious and with exceptions at certain
periods is highly conventionalized, following traditional models that translate
carefully controlled church theology into artistic terms. Painting in fresco, illuminated
manuscripts and on wood
panel and, especially in earlier periods, mosaic were
the main media, and figurative sculpture very
rare except for small carved
ivories. Manuscript painting preserved to the end some of the
classical realist tradition that was missing in larger works.Byzantine art was
highly prestigious and sought-after in Western Europe, where it maintained a
continuous influence on medieval
art until near the end of
the period. This was especially so in Italy, where Byzantine styles persisted in
modified form through the 12th century, and became formative influences on Italian
Renaissance art. But few
incoming influences affected Byzantine style. By means of the expansion of the
Eastern Orthodox church, Byzantine forms and styles spread to all the Orthodox
world and beyond. Influences from
Byzantine architecture, particularly in religious buildings, can be found in
diverse regions from Egypt and Arabia to Russia and Romania.
In Byzantine literature, therefore, four different cultural elements must be
reckoned with: the Greek,
the Christian, the Roman,
and the Oriental. Byzantine literature is often classified in five groups:
historians and annalists, encyclopaedists (Patriarch Photios, Michael
Psellus, and Michael
Choniates are regarded as
the greatest encyclopaedists of Byzantium) and essayists, and writers of secular
poetry (The only genuine heroic epic of the Byzantines is the Digenis
Acritas). The remaining two groups include the new literary
species: ecclesiastical and theological literature, and popular poetry.
Of the approximately two to three thousand volumes of Byzantine literature that
survive, only three hundred and thirty consist of secular poetry, history,
science and pseudo-science. While the
most flourishing period of the secular literature of Byzantium runs from the 9th
to the 12th century, its religious literature (sermons, liturgical
books and poetry,
theology, devotional treatises etc.) developed much earlier with Romanos
the Melodist being its
most prominent representative.
Legacy
King David in
robes of a Byzantine emperor. Miniature from the Paris
Psalter.
Byzantium has been often identified with absolutism, orthodox spirituality,
orientalism and exoticism, while the terms “Byzantine” and “Byzantinism” have
been used as bywords for decadence, complex bureaucracy, and repression. In the
countries of Central and
Southeast Europe that exited theEastern
Bloc in late 80s and early
90s, the assessment of Byzantine civilisation and its legacy was strongly
negative due to their connection with an alleged “Eastern authoritarianism and
autocracy.” Both Eastern and Western European authors have often perceived
Byzantium as a body of religious, political, and philosophical ideas contrary to
those of the West. Even in 19th-century
Greece, the focus was mainly on the classical past, while Byzantine
tradition had been associated with negative connotations.
This traditional approach towards Byzantium has been partially or wholly
disputed and revised by modern studies, which focus on the positive aspects of
Byzantine culture and legacy. Averil
Cameron regards as
undeniable the Byzantine contribution to the formation of the medieval Europe,
and both Cameron and Obolensky recognise the major role of Byzantium in shaping
Orthodoxy, which in turn occupies a central position in the history and
societies of Greece, Bulgaria, Russia, Serbia and other countries. The
Byzantines also preserved and copied classical manuscripts, and they are thus
regarded as transmitters of the classical knowledge, as important contributors
to the modern European civilisation, and as precursors of both the Renaissance
humanism and the Slav
Orthodox culture.
As the only stable long-term state in Europe during the Middle Ages, Byzantium
isolated Western Europe from newly emerging forces to the East. Constantly under
attack, it distanced Western Europe from Persians, Arabs, Seljuk Turks, and for
a time, the Ottomans. From a different perspective, since the 7th century, the
evolution and constant reshaping of the Byzantine state were directly related to
the respective progress of Islam.
Following the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453, Sultan Mehmed
II took the title “Kaysar-i-Rûm”
(the Turkish equivalent of Caesar of Rome), since he was determined to make the
Ottoman Empire the heir of the Eastern Roman Empire. According
to Cameron, regarding themselves as “heirs” of Byzantium, the Ottomans preserved
important aspects of its tradition, which in turn facilitated an “Orthodox
revival” during the post-communist period
of the Eastern European states.
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