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Andronicus II , Palaeologus – Byzantine Emperor: 11 December 1282 – 24 May 1328
A.D.
Andronicus II and Michael IX: Joint Rule: 1295-1320 A.D.
Bronze 19mm (2.26 grams) Constantinople mint 1295-1320 A.D.
Reference: Sear 2440, Gr.1488
Andronicus II left and Michael IX right, standing holding labarum between
them.
AVTOKPATOPЄC POMAIWN in four lines.
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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.
Later usage
Modern ecclesiastical labara (Southern Germany).
The emperor
Constantine Monomachos
(centre
panel of a Byzantine enamelled crown) holding a miniature labarum
Michael IX Palaiologos or Palaeologus ( Mikhaēl IX
Palaiologos), (April 17, 1277 – October 12, 1320,
Thessalonica
,
Greece
), reigned as Byzantine co-emperor with
full imperial style 1294/1295–1320. Michael IX was the eldest son of
Andronikos II Palaiologos
and
Anna of Hungary
, a daughter of King
Stephen V of Hungary
.
Life
Michael IX Palaiologos was acclaimed co-emperor in 1281 and was crowned in
1294 or 1295. In 1300, he was sent at the head of Alanian mercenaries against
the Turks in
Asia Minor
, and in 1304–1305 he was charged
with dealing with the rebellious
Catalan Company
. After the murder of the
Catalan commander
Roger de Flor
, Michael IX led the Byzantine
troops (augmented by Turks and 5–8,000 Alanians) against the Catalans, but was
defeated and wounded.
Michael IX was also ultimately unsuccessful against
Theodore Svetoslav of Bulgaria
in 1307,
concluding peace in 1307 and marrying his daughter to the Bulgarian emperor. In
1311, Michael IX was defeated by Osman I. Michael IX eventually retired to
Thessalonica
, where he died in 1320.
A brave and energetic soldier willing to make personal sacrifices to pay or
encourage his troops, Michael IX was generally unable to overcome his enemies
and is the only Palaiologan emperor to predecease his father. Michael IX’s
premature death at age 43 was attributed in part to grief over the accidental
murder of his younger son Manuel Palaiologos by retainers of his older son and
co-emperor
Andronikos III Palaiologos
.
Family
Michael IX Palaiologos married
Rita of Armenia
(renamed Maria, later nun Xene),
daughter of King
Leo III of Armenia
and
Queen Keran of Armenia
on 16 January 1294. By
this marriage, Michael IX had several children, including:
-
Andronikos III Palaiologos
- Manuel Palaiologos, despotēs
- Anna Palaiologina, who married
Thomas I Komnenos Doukas
and then
Nicholas Orsini
.
- Theodora Palaiologina, who married
Theodore Svetoslav of Bulgaria
and then
Michael Asen III of Bulgaria
.
Andronikos II Palaiologos (25
March 1259
,
Nicaea
–
February
13
, 1332
,
Constantinople
) — also Andronicus II Palaeologus — reigned as
Byzantine emperor
from 1282 to 1328. He was the eldest surviving son of
Michael VIII Palaiologos
and
Theodora Doukaina Vatatzina
, grandniece of
John III Doukas Vatatzes
.
//
Andronikos II Palaiologos was acclaimed co-emperor in 1261, after
his father Michael VIII recovered
Constantinople
from the
Latin
Empire
, but he was crowned only in 1272. Sole emperor from 1282, Andronikos
II immediately repudiated his father’s unpopular Church union with the
Papacy
(which he had been forced to support while his father was still
alive), but was unable to resolve the related schism within the Orthodox clergy
until 1310. Andronikos II was also plagued by economic difficulties and during
his reign the value of the Byzantine
hyperpyron
depreciated precipitously while the state treasury accumulated less than one
seventh the revenue (in nominal coins) that it had done previously. Seeking to
increase revenue and reduce expenses, Andronikos II raised taxes and reduced tax
exemptions, and dismantled the Byzantine fleet (80 ships) in 1285, thereby
making the Empire increasingly dependent on the rival republics of
Venice
and
Genoa
. In 1291, he hired 50-60 Genoese ships. Later, in 1320, he tried to
resurrect the navy by constructing 20 galleys, but unfortunately he failed.
Andronikos II Palaiologos sought to resolve some of the problems facing the
Byzantine Empire
through diplomacy. After the death of his first wife, he
married
Yolanda (renamed Eirene) of Montferrat
, putting an end to the Montferrat
claim to the
Kingdom of Thessalonica
. Andronikos II also attempted to marry off his son
and co-emperor
Michael IX Palaiologos
to the Latin Empress
Catherine I of Courtenay
, thus seeking to eliminate Western agitation for a
restoration of the
Latin
Empire
. Another marriage alliance attempted to resolve the potential
conflict with Serbia
in
Macedonia
, as Andronikos II married off his five-year old daughter
Simonis
to
King
Stefan Milutin
in 1298.
In spite of the resolution of problems in
Europe
,
Andronikos II was faced with the collapse of the Byzantine frontier in
Asia Minor
. After the failure of the co-emperor Michael IX to stem the
Turkish advance in Asia Minor in 1300, the Byzantine government hired the
Catalan Company
of
Almogavars
(adventurers from Aragon
and
Catalonia
)
led by
Roger
de Flor
to clear Byzantine Asia Minor of the enemy. In spite of some
successes, the Catalans were unable to secure lasting gains. They quarreled with
Michael IX, and eventually turned on their Byzantine employers after the murder
of Roger de Flor in 1305, devastating
Thrace
,
Macedonia, and Thessaly
on their road to Latin Greece. There they conquered the
Duchy of Athens
and
Thebes
. The Turks continued to penetrate the Byzantine possessions, and
Prusa
fell in 1326. By the end of Andronikos II’s reign, much of Bithynia
was in the hands of the
Ottoman Turks
of Osman I and his son and heir
Orhan
. Also,
Karesi
conquered Mysia
region with Paleokastron
after 1296, Germiyan conquered
Simav
in 1328,
Saruhan captured Magnesia
in 1313 and
Aydınoğlu
captured Symirna
in 1310.
The Empire’s problems were exploited by
Theodore Svetoslav of Bulgaria
, who defeated Michael IX and conquered much
of northeastern Thrace in c. 1305-1307. The conflict ended with yet another
dynastic marriage, between Michael IX’s daughter Theodora and the Bulgarian
emperor. The dissolute behavior of Michael IX’s son
Andronikos III Palaiologos
led to a rift in the family, and after Michael
IX’s death in 1320, Andronikos II disowned his grandson, prompting a
civil war
that raged, with interruptions, until 1328. The conflict
precipitated Bulgarian involvement, and
Michael Asen III of Bulgaria
attempted to capture Andronikos II under the
guise of sending him military support. In 1328 Andronikos III entered
Constantinople in triumph and Andronikos II was forced to abdicate. He died as a
monk in 1332.
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.
Nomenclature
The first use of the term “Byzantine” to label the later years of the Roman
Empire was in 1557, when
the German historian Hieronymus
Wolf published his work Corpus
Historiæ Byzantinæ, a collection of historical sources. The term comes from
“Byzantium”, the name of the city of Constantinople before it became
Constantine’s capital. This older name of the city would rarely be used from
this point onward except in historical or poetic contexts. The publication in
1648 of the Byzantine du Louvre (Corpus
Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae), and in 1680 of Du
Cange‘s Historia
Byzantina further popularised the
use of “Byzantine” among French authors, such as Montesquieu.[7] However,
it was not until the mid-19th century that the term came into general use in the
Western world. As regards the English historiography in particular, the first
occasion of the “Byzantine Empire” appears in a 1857 work of George
Finlay (History of the
Byzantine Empire from 716 to 1057).
The Byzantine Empire was known to its inhabitants as the “Roman Empire”, the
“Empire of the Romans” (Latin: Imperium
Romanum, Imperium Romanorum;
“Romania” (Latin: Romania;
the “Roman Republic” (Latin: Res
Publica Romana.
Although the Byzantine Empire had a multi-ethnic character during most of its
history and preserved Romano-Hellenistic traditions,[13] it
became identified by its western and northern contemporaries with its
increasingly predominant Greek
element. The occasional
use of the term “Empire of the Greeks” (Latin: Imperium
Graecorum) in the West to refer to the Eastern Roman Empire and of the
Byzantine Emperor as Imperator
Graecorum (Emperor of the Greeks) were
also used to separate it from the prestige of the Roman Empire within the new
kingdoms of the West.
The authority of the Byzantine emperor as the legitimate Roman emperor was
challenged by the coronation of Charlemagne as Imperator
Augustus by Pope
Leo III in the year 800.
Needing Charlemagne’s support in his struggle against his enemies in Rome, Leo
used the lack of a male occupant of the throne of the Roman Empire at the time
to claim that it was vacant and that he could therefore crown a new Emperor
himself.[17] Whenever
the Popes or the rulers of the West made use of the name Roman to
refer to the Eastern Roman Emperors, they usually preferred the term Imperator
Romaniae (meaning Emperor
of Romania) instead of Imperator
Romanorum (meaning Emperor
of the Romans), a title that they applied only to Charlemagne and his
successors.
No such distinction existed in the Persian, Islamic, and Slavic worlds, where
the Empire was more straightforwardly seen as the continuation of the Roman
Empire. In the Islamic world it was known primarily as روم (Rûm).
History
Early history
The Baptism of Constantine painted
byRaphael‘s
pupils (1520–1524, fresco,
Vatican City,
PalaceApostolic). Eusebius
of Caesarea records
that (as was
common among converts of early Christianity) Constantine
delayed receiving baptismuntil
shortly before his death.
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.
Recentralisation
In 330, Constantine moved
the seat
of the Empire to Constantinople,
which he founded as a second Rome on the site of Byzantium, a city
well-positioned astride the trade routes between East and West. Constantine
introduced important changes into the Empire’s military, monetary, civil and
religious institutions. As regards his economic policies in particular, he has
been accused by certain scholars of “reckless fiscality”, but the gold solidus he
introduced became a stable currency that transformed the economy and promoted
development.
Under Constantine, Christianity did not become the exclusive religion of the
state, but enjoyed imperial preference, because the
emperor supported it with generous privileges. Constantine
established the principle that emperors could not settle questions of doctrine
on their own, but should summon instead general
ecclesiastical councils for
that purpose. His convening of both the
of ArlesSynod and the First
Council of Nicaea indicated
his interest in the unity of the Church, and showcased his claim to be its head.
The Roman Empire during the reigns of Leo I(east) and
Majorian (west) in
460 AD. Roman rule in the west would last less than two more
decades, whereas the territory of the east would remain static until
the reconquests of Justinian I.
In 395, Theodosius
I bequeathed the imperial
office jointly to his sons: Arcadius in
the East and Honorius in
the West, once again dividing Imperial administration. In the 3rd and 4th
centuries, the Eastern part of the empire was largely spared the difficulties
faced by the West—due in part to a more established urban culture and greater
financial resources, which allowed it to placate invaders with tribute and
pay foreign mercenaries. This success allowed Theodosius
II to focus on the codification
of the Roman law and the
further fortification of the
walls of Constantinople, which left the city impervious to most
attacks until 1204.
To fend off the Huns,
Theodosius had to pay an enormous annual tribute to Attila.
His successor, Marcian,
refused to continue to pay the tribute, but Attila had already diverted his
attention to the West.
After his death in 453, the Hunnic
Empire collapsed, and many
of the remaining Huns were often hired as mercenaries by Constantinople.
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 by
nationsGermanic (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.
In 535, a small Byzantine expedition to Sicily met
with easy success, but the Goths soon stiffened their resistance, and victory
did not come until 540, when Belisarius captured Ravenna,
after successful sieges of Naples and
Rome. In 535–536, Theodahad sent Pope
Agapetus I to
Constantinople to request the removal of Byzantine forces from Sicily, Dalmatia,
and Italy. Although Agapetus failed in his mission to sign a peace with
Justinian, he succeeded in having the Monophysite Patriarch
Anthimus I of Constantinople denounced,
despite empress Theodora‘s
support and protection.
The Ostrogoths were soon reunited under the command of King Totila and captured
Rome in 546. Belisarius,
who had been sent back to Italy in 544, was eventually recalled to
Constantinople in 549. The arrival of
the Armenian eunuch Narses in
Italy (late 551) with an army of some 35,000 men marked another shift in Gothic
fortunes. Totila was defeated at the Battle
of Taginae and his
successor, Teia,
was defeated at the Battle
of Mons Lactarius (October
552). Despite continuing resistance from a few Gothic garrisons and two
subsequent invasions by the Franks and Alemanni,
the war for the Italian peninsula was at an end. In
551, Athanagild,
a noble from Visigothic Hispania,
sought Justinian’s help in a rebellion against the king, and the emperor
dispatched a force under Liberius,
a successful military commander. The Empire held on to a small slice of the Iberian
Peninsula coast until the
reign of Heraclius.
The Eastern Roman Empire in 600 AD during the reign of Emperor
Maurice.
In the east, the Roman–Persian Wars continued until 561 when the envoys of
Justinian and Khosrau agreed on a 50-year peace. By
the mid-550s, Justinian had won victories in most theatres of operation, with
the notable exception of the Balkans,
which were subjected to repeated incursions from the Slavs and
the Gepids.
Tribes of Serbs and Croats were
later resettled in the northwestern Balkans, during the reign of Heraclius. Justinian
called Belisarius out of retirement and defeated the new Hunnish threat. The
strengthening of the Danube fleet caused the Kutrigur Huns
to withdraw and they agreed to a treaty that allowed safe passage back across
the Danube.
During the 6th century, older Hellenistic
religion and philosophy,
still influential in the east, began to be supplanted by or amalgamated into
newer Christian philosophy, with pagan
traditions suppressed by imperial order. While philosophers such as John
Philoponus drew on neoplatonic ideas
as well as Christian thought and empiricism,
the Platonic
Academy is recorded as
being closed in 529. Hymns written by Romanos
the Melodistmarked the development of the Divine
Liturgy, while architects and builders worked to complete the new
Church of the Holy
Wisdom, Hagia
Sophia, which was designed to replace an older church destroyed
during the Nika Revolt. The Hagia Sophia stands today as one of the major
monuments of Byzantine architectural history. During
the 6th and 7th centuries, the Empire was struck by a series
of epidemics, which greatly devastated the population and contributed
to a significant economic decline and a weakening of the Empire.
After Justinian died in 565, his successor, Justin
II refused to pay the
large tribute to the Persians. Meanwhile, the Germanic Lombards invaded
Italy; by the end of the century only a third of Italy was in Byzantine hands.
Justin’s successor, Tiberius
II, choosing between his enemies, awarded subsidies to the Avars while
taking military action against the Persians. Though Tiberius’ general,Maurice,
led an effective campaign on the eastern frontier, subsidies failed to restrain
the Avars. They captured the Balkan fortress of Sirmium in
582, while the Slavs began to make inroads across the Danube.Maurice, who
meanwhile succeeded Tiberius, intervened in a Persian civil war, placed the
legitimate Khosrau
II back on the throne and
married his daughter to him. Maurice’s treaty with his new brother-in-law
enlarged the territories of the Empire to the East and allowed the energetic
Emperor to focus on the Balkans. By 602, a series of successful Byzantine campaigns had
pushed the Avars and Slavs back across the Danube.
Shrinking borders
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 by
SergiusPatriarch 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 the
SkylitzesMadrid, Biblioteca
Nacional de España, Madrid).
The withdrawal of large numbers of troops from the Balkans to combat the
Persians and then the Arabs in the east opened the door for the gradual
southward expansion of Slavic peoples into the peninsula, and, as in Asia Minor,
many cities shrank to small fortified settlements.In the 670s, theBulgars were
pushed south of the Danube by the arrival of the Khazars.
In 680, Byzantine forces sent to disperse these new settlements were defeated.
In 681, Constantine
IV signed a treaty with
the Bulgar khan Asparukh,
and the new
Bulgarian state assumed
sovereignty over a number of Slavic tribes that had previously, at least in
name, recognised Byzantine rule. In
687–688, the final Heraclian emperor, Justinian
II, led an expedition against the Slavs and Bulgarians, and made
significant gains, although the fact that he had to fight his way from Thrace to Macedonia demonstrates
the degree to which Byzantine power in the north Balkans had declined.[63]
Justinian II attempted to break the power of the urban aristocracy through
severe taxation and the appointment of “outsiders” to administrative posts. He
was driven from power in 695, and took shelter first with the Khazars and then
with the Bulgarians. In 705, he returned to Constantinople with the armies of
the Bulgarian khan Tervel,
retook the throne, and instituted a reign of terror against his enemies. With
his final overthrow in 711, supported once more by the urban aristocracy, the
Heraclian dynasty came to an end.
Isaurian dynasty to the ascension of Basil I
The Byzantine Empire at the accession of Leo III, c. 717. Striped
area indicates land raided by the Arabs.
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 and
Cretecaptured. 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.
Religious
dispute over iconoclasm
The 8th and early 9th centuries were also dominated by controversy and religious
division over Iconoclasm,
which was the main political issue in the Empire for over a century. Icons (here
meaning all forms of religious imagery) were banned by Leo and Constantine from
around 730, leading to revolts by iconodules (supporters
of icons) throughout the empire. After the efforts of empress Irene,
the Second
Council of Nicaea met in
787 and affirmed that icons could be venerated but not worshiped. Irene is said
to have endeavoured to negotiate a marriage between herself and Charlemagne,
but, according to Theophanes
the Confessor, the scheme was frustrated by Aetios, one of her
favourites.
In the early 9th century, Leo V reintroduced the policy of iconoclasm, but in
843 empress Theodora restored
the veneration of icons with the help of Patriarch
Methodios.Iconoclasm played a part in the further alienation of East
from West, which worsened during the so-called Photian
schism, when Pope
Nicholas I challenged the
elevation of Photios to
the patriarchate.
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 the
BlocEastern 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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