Constantine X & Eudocia 1059AD Ancient Medieval Byzantine Coin Christ i36830

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. 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.

Constantine X Doukas or Ducas 

(1006 – May, 1067) was emperor of the

Byzantine Empire

from 1059 to 1067.

Reign

Constantine Doukas was the son of Andronikos Doukas, a

Paphlagonian

nobleman who may have served as governor of the theme of

Moesia
.

Constantine gained influence after he married, as his second wife,

Eudokia Makrembolitissa

, the niece of Patriarch

Michael Keroularios

. In 1057, Constantine supported the usurpation of

Isaac I Komnenos

, but gradually sided with the court bureaucracy against the

new emperor’s reforms. In spite of this tacit opposition, Constantine was chosen

as successor by the ailing Isaac in November, 1059, under the influence of

Michael Psellos

. Isaac abdicated and on

November

24
, 1059
,

Constantine X Doukas was crowned emperor.

The new emperor quickly associated two of his young sons in power, appointed

his brother

John Doukas

as kaisar (Caesar)

and embarked on a policy favorable to the interests of the court bureaucracy and

the church. Severely undercutting the training and financial support for the

armed forces, Constantine X fatally weakened Byzantine defences (by disbanding

the Armenian local militia of 50,000 men) at a crucial point of time, coinciding

with the westward advance of the

Seljuk Turks

and their Turcoman allies.

Constantine became naturally unpopular with the supporters of Isaac within

the military aristocracy, who attempted to assassinate him in 1061; he was also

unpopular with the general population, after he raised taxes to try to pay the

army at long last.

Constantine lost most of Byzantine

Italy
to the

Normans
under

Robert Guiscard

, except for the territory around

Bari, though a

resurgence of interest in retaining

Apulia
occurred

under his watch and he appointed at least four

catepans of Italy

:

Miriarch
,

Maruli
,

Sirianus
,

and

Mabrica

. He also suffered invasions from

Alp Arslan

in

Asia Minor

in 1064 and the

Uzes

in the Balkans

in 1065. Already old and unhealthy when he came to power, he died on

May 22
,

1067 and was

succeeded by his young sons under the regency of their mother Eudokia

Makrembolitissa.

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  and Romania .

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 the 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
Macedonian dynasty
(10th-11th centuries), the
Empire again expanded and experienced a two-century long
renaissance
, which came to an end with the loss
of much of Asia Minor to the
Seljuk Turks
after the
Battle of Manzikert
(1071).

The final centuries of the Empire exhibited a general trend of decline. It
struggled to
recover during the 12th century
, but was
delivered a mortal blow during 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 several small rival states in the area for the
final two centuries of its existence. This volatile period led 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
. 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;
Greek: Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων Basileia
tōn Rhōmaiōn, Ἀρχὴ τῶν Ῥωμαίων
Archē tōn Rhōmaiōn), “Romania” (Latin: Romania; Greek:
Ῥωμανία Rhōmania), the “Roman
Republic” (Latin: Res Publica Romana; Greek:
Πολιτεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων Politeia tōn
Rhōmaiōn), Graikia (Greek: Γραικία), and also as Rhōmais
(Greek: Ῥωμαΐς).

Although the Byzantine Empire had a multi-ethnic character during most of its
history and preserved
Romano-Hellenistic
traditions, 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.
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.

Early history

 

The Baptism of Constantine painted by
Raphael
‘s pupils (1520–1524,
fresco
, Vatican City,
Apostolic Palace
).
Eusebius of Caesarea
records that
(as
was common among converts of early
Christianity
) Constantine delayed receiving
baptism
until 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
Hellenised
by 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 ultimate imperium 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
Synod of Arles
and the
First Council of Nicaea
indicated his interest
in the unity of the Church, and showcased his claim to be its head.

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
Germanic 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 invading
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
. 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. 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).^[32]
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.^[40]
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.

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, traditional Greco-Roman culture was still influential
in the Eastern empire. Philosophers such as
John Philoponus
drew on
neoplatonic
ideas in addition to Christian
thought and empiricism
. Nevertheless,
Hellenistic philosophy
began to be supplanted
by or amalgamated into newer
Christian philosophy
. Polytheism was
suppressed by the state
. The closure of the
Platonic Academy
was a notable turning point.
Hymns written by
Romanos the Melodist
marked 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.^[45]
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

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
and
Jerusalem
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^[51]
(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
Patriarch 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. 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 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, the
Bulgars
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.

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

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
captured 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 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.

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

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-day
Herzegovina
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 Caliphate
began with the recapture of
Samosata
.

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.

The death of the Bulgarian tsar
Simeon I
in 927 severely weakened the
Bulgarians, allowing the Byzantines to concentrate on the eastern front.
Melitene was permanently recaptured in 934, and in 943 the famous general
John Kourkouas
continued the offensive in
Mesopotamia
with some noteworthy victories,
culminating in the reconquest of
Edessa
. Kourkouas was especially celebrated for
returning to Constantinople the venerated
Mandylion
, a relic purportedly imprinted with a
portrait of Christ.^[75]

The soldier-emperors
Nikephoros II Phokas
(reigned 963–969) and
John I Tzimiskes
(969–976) expanded the empire
well into Syria, defeating the emirs of north-west

Iraq. The great city of
Aleppo
was taken by Nikephoros in 962, and the
Arabs were decisively expelled from Crete in 963. The recapture of Crete put an
end to Arab raids in the Aegean, allowing mainland Greece to flourish once
again. Cyprus
was permanently retaken in 965, and the
successes of Nikephoros culminated in 969 with the recapture of
Antioch
, which he incorporated as a province of
the Empire. His successor John Tzimiskes recaptured Damascus,
Beirut
,
Acre
,
Sidon
,
Caesarea
, and
Tiberias
, putting Byzantine armies within
striking distance of Jerusalem, although the Muslim power centers in Iraq and
Egypt were left untouched. After much campaigning in the north, the last Arab
threat to Byzantium, the rich province of Sicily, was targeted in 1025 by
Basil II
, who died before the expedition could
be completed. Nevertheless, by that time the Empire stretched from the straits
of Messina
to the
Euphrates
and from the Danube to Syria.

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 the
Hungarians
. 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 of basileus (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.

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.^[84]
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.^[78]

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.

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.

At the same time, the Empire was faced with new enemies. Provinces in
southern Italy faced the
Normans
, who arrived in Italy at the beginning
of the 11th century. During a period of strife between Constantinople and Rome
that ended in the East-West Schism of 1054, the Normans began to advance, slowly
but steadily, into Byzantine Italy.
Reggio
, the capital of the tagma of Calabria,
was captured in 1060 by
Robert Guiscard
, followed by
Otranto
in 1068. Bari, the main Byzantine
stronghold in Apulia, was besieged in August 1068 and
fell in April 1071
. The Byzantines also lost
their influence over the
Dalmatian
coastal cities to
Peter Krešimir IV of Croatia
(r.
1058–1074/1075) in 1069.

It was in Asia Minor, however, that the greatest disaster would take place.
The Seljuq Turks
made their first explorations
across the Byzantine frontier into Armenia in 1065 and in 1067. The emergency
lent weight to the military aristocracy in Anatolia who, in 1068, secured the
election of one of their own,
Romanos IV Diogenes
, as emperor. In the summer
of 1071, Romanos undertook a massive eastern campaign to draw the Seljuks into a
general engagement with the Byzantine army.

At
Manzikert
, Romanos not only suffered a surprise
defeat at the hands of
Sultan

Alp Arslan
, but was also captured. Alp Arslan
treated him with respect, and imposed no harsh terms on the Byzantines. In
Constantinople, a coup took place in favour of
Michael Doukas
, who soon faced the opposition
of
Nikephoros Bryennios
and
Nikephoros III Botaneiates
. By 1081, the
Seljuks expanded their rule over virtually the entire Anatolian plateau from
Armenia in the east to
Bithynia
in the west and founded their capital
at Nicaea
, just 90 km from Constantinople.

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 to
Pope 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 Churches
with 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.

Alexios had anticipated help in the form of mercenary forces from the West,
but was totally unprepared for the immense and undisciplined force that soon
arrived in Byzantine territory. It was no comfort to Alexios to learn that four
of the eight leaders of the main body of the Crusade were Normans, among them
Bohemund. Since the crusade had to pass through Constantinople, however, the
Emperor had some control over it. He required its leaders to swear to restore to
the empire any towns or territories they might conquer from the Turks on their
way to the Holy Land. In return, he gave them guides and a military escort.

Alexios was able to recover a number of important cities and islands, and in
fact much of western Asia Minor. Nevertheless, the crusaders believed their
oaths were invalidated when Alexios did not help them during the siege of
Antioch (he had in fact set out on the road to Antioch, but had been persuaded
to turn back by
Stephen of Blois
, who assured him that all was
lost and that the expedition had already failed). Bohemund, who had set himself
up as
Prince of Antioch
, briefly went to war with the
Byzantines, but agreed to become Alexios’ vassal under the
Treaty of Devol
in 1108, which marked the end
of Norman threat during Alexios’ reign.

John II, Manuel I and the Second 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. 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. For this reason, he has been called the Byzantine
Marcus 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 the
Battle 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 III
against 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.

John’s chosen heir was his fourth son,
Manuel I Komnenos
, who campaigned aggressively
against his neighbours both in the west and in the east. In Palestine, he allied
himself with the Crusader
Kingdom of Jerusalem
and sent a large fleet to
participate in a combined invasion of
Fatimid Egypt
. Manuel reinforced his position
as overlord of the Crusader states, with his hegemony over Antioch and Jerusalem
secured by agreement with
Raynald
, Prince of Antioch, and
Amalric
, King of Jerusalem respectively.

In an effort to restore Byzantine control over the ports of southern Italy,
he sent an expedition to Italy in 1155, but disputes within the coalition led to
the eventual failure of the campaign. Despite this military setback, Manuel’s
armies successfully invaded the
Kingdom of Hungary
in 1167, defeating the
Hungarians at the
Battle of Sirmium
. By 1168, nearly the whole of
the eastern Adriatic coast lay in Manuel’s hands. Manuel made several alliances
with the Pope and Western Christian kingdoms, and successfully handled the
passage of the
Second Crusade
through his empire.

In the east, Manuel suffered a major defeat at the
Battle of Myriokephalon
, in 1176, against the
Turks. Yet the losses were quickly made good, and in the following year Manuel’s
forces inflicted a defeat upon a force of “picked Turks”. The Byzantine
commander John Vatatzes, who destroyed the Turkish invaders at the
Battle of Hyelion and Leimocheir
, not only
brought troops from the capital but also was able to gather an army along the
way; a sign that the Byzantine army remained strong and that the defensive
program of western Asia Minor was still successful.

12th-century
Renaissance

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.^[126]
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.

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. 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.

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.

Fourth Crusade

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 brief
siege
. 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.

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. 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 grandson
Andronikos 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

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.

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
. 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.

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.

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]

Religion

 

As a symbol and expression of the universal prestige of the
Patriarchate of Constantinople, Justinian built the Church of the
Holy Wisdom of God, Hagia Sophia, which was completed in the short
period of four and a half years (532–537).

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 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”.^[175]

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.^[176]
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.^[177]

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.

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
Eastern 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.^[208]
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.