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Manuel I , Comnenus – Byzantine Emperor: 8 April 1143 – 24
September 1180 A.D. –
Bronze Half Tetarteron 16mm (1.78 grams) Struck at Uncertain Greek Mint
circa 1143-1180 A.D.
Reference: Sear 1980
Bust of St. George facing, beardless, wearing nimbus, tunic, cuirass and sagion,
and holding spear
and shield; to left, Θ / Γ / Є; to right, WP / ΓI / O / C.
MANYHΛ ΔΕCΠΟΤ, Bust of Manuel facing, wearing crown and loros, and holding
labarum and globe
topped with a cross.
You are bidding on the exact
item pictured, provided with a Certificate of Authenticity and Lifetime
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Comnenus , or
Manuel
I Komnenos (Greek:
Μανουήλ Α’ Κομνηνός, Manouēl I
Komnēnos,
November
28
, 1118
–
September 24
,
1180) was a
Byzantine Emperor
 of the 12th century who reigned over a crucial turning
point in the history of
Byzantium
and the
Mediterranean
. Eager to restore his
empire
to its past glories as the superpower of the Mediterranean world,
Manuel pursued an energetic and ambitious foreign policy. In the process he made
alliances with the Pope
and the resurgent west, invaded
Italy
, successfully handled the passage of the dangerous
Second Crusade
through his empire, and established a Byzantine protectorate
over the
Crusader kingdoms
of
Outremer
.
Facing Muslim
advances in the
Holy Land
,
he made common cause with the
Kingdom of Jerusalem
and participated in a combined invasion of
Fatimid
Egypt
.
Manuel reshaped the political maps of the
Balkans
and
the east Mediterranean, placing the kingdoms of
Hungary
and Outremer under Byzantine
hegemony
and campaigning aggressively against his neighbours both in the west and in the
east. However, towards the end of his reign Manuel’s achievements in the east
were compromised by a serious defeat at
Myriokephalon
, which in large part resulted from his arrogance in attacking
a well-defended
Seljuk
position.
Called ho Megas (Greek:
ὁ Μέγας, translated as “the
Great“) by the Greeks
, Manuel is known to have inspired intense loyalty in those who served
him. He also appears as the hero of a history written by his secretary,
John
Kinnamos
, in which every virtue is attributed to him. Manuel, who was
influenced by his contact with western Crusaders, enjoyed the reputation of “the
most blessed emperor of
Constantinople
” in parts of the
Latin
world as
well.[1]
Modern historians, however, have been less enthusiastic about him. Some of them
assert that the great power he wielded was not his own personal achievement, but
that of the
dynasty
he represented; they also argue that, since Byzantine imperial power
declined so rapidly after Manuel’s death, it is only natural to look for the
causes of this decline in his reign.
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.
Saint George (c. 275/281 – 23 April 303 AD) was a Greek who became an
officer in the Roman army. His father was the Greek Gerondios from
Cappadocia
Asia Minor and his mother was from
the city Lydda
.
Lydda
was a Greek city in
Palestine
from the times of the conquest of
Alexander the Great (333 BC). Saint George became an officer in the Roman army
in the Guard of
Diocletian
. He is venerated as a Christian
martyr. In
hagiography
, Saint George is one of the most
venerated saints in the
Catholic
(Western
and
Eastern Rites
),
Anglican
,
Eastern Orthodox
, and the
Oriental Orthodox
churches. He is immortalized
in the tale of
Saint George and the Dragon
and is one of the
Fourteen Holy Helpers
. His memorial is
celebrated on 23 April, and he is regarded as one of the most prominent
military saints
.
Many
Patronages of Saint George
exist around the
world, including:
Georgia
,
England
,
Egypt
,
Bulgaria
,
Aragon
,
Catalonia
,
Romania
,
Ethiopia
,
Greece
,
India
,
Iraq, Israel
,
Lebanon
,
Lithuania
,
Palestine
,
Portugal
,
Serbia
,
Ukraine
and
Russia
, as well as the cities of
Genoa
,
Amersfoort
,
Beirut
,
Botoşani
,
Drobeta Turnu-Severin
,
Timişoara
,
Fakiha
,
Bteghrine
,
Cáceres
,
Ferrara
,
Freiburg im Breisgau
,
Kragujevac
,
Kumanovo
,
Ljubljana
,
Pérouges
,
Pomorie
,
Preston
,
Qormi
,
Rio de Janeiro
,
Lod,
Lviv,
Barcelona
,
Moscow
and
Victoria, as well as of
the Scout Movement
[3]
and a wide range of professions, organizations and disease sufferers.
Life of Saint George
Historians have argued the exact details of the birth of Saint George for
over a century, although the approximate date of his death is subject to little
debate.[4][5]
The 1913
Catholic Encyclopedia
takes the position that
there seems to be no ground for doubting the historical existence of Saint
George, but that little faith can be placed in some of the fanciful stories
about him.[6]
The work of the
Bollandists
Danile Paperbroch
,
Jean Bolland
and
Godfrey Henschen
in the 17th century was one of
the first pieces of scholarly research to establish the historicity of the
saint’s existence via their publications in
Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca
and paved the
way for other scholars to dismiss the medieval legends.[7][8]
Pope Gelasius
stated that George was among
those saints “whose names are justly reverenced among men, but whose actions are
known only to God.”[9]
The traditional legends
have offered a historicised narration
of George’s encounter with a
dragon
: see “St. George and the Dragon” below.
The modern legend that follows below is synthesised from early and late
hagiographical sources
, omitting the more
fantastical episodes, to narrate a purely human military career in closer
harmony with modern expectations of reality. Chief among the legendary sources
about the saint is the
Golden Legend
, which remains the most familiar
version in English owing to
William Caxton
‘s 15th-century translation.[10]
It is likely that Saint George was born to a Greek Christian noble family in
Lydda, Palestine, during the late third century between about 275 AD and 285 AD,
and he died in the Greek city Nicomedia, Asia Minor. His father, Gerontios, was
a Greek, from Cappadocia, Asia Minor, officer in the Roman army and his mother,
Polychronia, was a Greek from the city Lydda, Palestine. They were both
Christians and from noble families of
Anici
, so the child was raised with Christian
beliefs. They decided to call him Georgios (Greek), meaning “worker of the land”
(i.e., farmer). At the age of 14, George lost his father; a few years later,
George’s mother, Polychronia, died.[11][12][13][14]
Eastern accounts give the names of his parents as Anastasius and Theobaste.[citation
needed]
Saint George Killing the Dragon, 1434/35, by
Martorell
Then George decided to go to
Nicomedia
, the imperial city of that time, and
present himself to Emperor
Diocletian
to apply for a career as a soldier.
Diocletian welcomed him with open arms, as he had known his father, Gerontius —
one of his finest soldiers. By his late 20s, George was promoted to the rank of
Tribunus
and stationed as an imperial guard of
the Emperor at Nicomedia.[15]
In the year AD 302, Diocletian (influenced by
Galerius
) issued an edict that every Christian
soldier in the army should be arrested and every other soldier should offer a
sacrifice to the
Roman gods
of the time. However George objected
and with the courage of his faith approached the Emperor and ruler. Diocletian
was upset, not wanting to lose his best
tribune
and the son of his best official,
Gerontius. George loudly renounced the Emperor’s edict, and in front of his
fellow soldiers and Tribunes he claimed himself to be a Christian and declared
his worship of Jesus Christ. Diocletian attempted to convert George, even
offering gifts of land, money and slaves if he made a sacrifice to the Roman
gods. The Emperor made many offers, but George never accepted.[16]
Recognizing the futility of his efforts, Diocletian was left with no choice
but to have him executed for his refusal. Before the execution George gave his
wealth to the poor and prepared himself. After various torture sessions,
including laceration on a wheel of swords in which he was resuscitated three
times, George was executed by
decapitation
before Nicomedia’s city wall, on
April 23, 303. A witness of his suffering convinced Empress Alexandra and
Athanasius, a pagan priest, to become Christians as well, and so they joined
George in martyrdom. His body was returned to
Lydda
in Palestine for burial, where Christians
soon came to honour him as a martyr.[17][18]:166
Although the above distillation of the legend of George connects him to the
conversion of Athanasius, who according to
Rufinus
was brought up by Christian
ecclesiastical authorities from a very early age,[19]
Edward Gibbon
[20][21]
argued that George, or at least the legend from which the above is distilled, is
based on
George of Cappadocia
,[22][23]
a notorious Arian bishop who was Athanasius’ most bitter rival, who in time
became Saint George of England. According to Professor Bury, Gibbon’s latest
editor, “this theory of Gibbon’s has nothing to be said for it.” He adds that:
“the connection of St. George with a dragon-slaying legend does not relegate him
to the region of the myth”.[24]
In 1856
Ralph Waldo Emerson
published a book of essays
entitled “English Traits.” In it, he wrote a paragraph on the history of Saint
George. Emerson compared the legend of Saint George to the legend of
Amerigo Vespucci
, calling the former “an
impostor” and the latter “a thief.”[25][26]
The editorial notes appended to the 1904 edition of Emerson’s complete works
state that Emerson based his account on the work of Gibbon, and that current
evidence seems to show that real St. George was not George the Arian of
Cappadocia.[25]
Merton M. Sealts also quotes
Edward Emerson
, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s youngest
son as stating that he believed his father’s account was derived from Gibbon and
that the real St. George “was apparently another who died two generations
earlier.”[27]
Saint George and
the dragon
Eastern Orthodox depictions of Saint George slaying a dragon often include
the image of the young maiden who looks on from a distance. The standard
iconographic interpretation of the image
icon is that the dragon represents both Satan (Rev. 12:9) and the
Roman Empire. The young maiden is the wife of
Diocletian
,
Alexandra
. Thus, the image as interpreted
through the language of Byzantine iconography, is an image of the martyrdom of
the saint.[citation
needed]
The episode of St. George and the
Dragon
was a legend[28]
brought back with the
Crusaders
and retold with the courtly
appurtenances belonging to the
genre of Romance
. The earliest known depiction
of the legend is from early eleventh-century
Cappadocia
(in the
iconography
of the
Eastern Orthodox Church
, George had been
depicted as a soldier
since at least the seventh century);
the earliest known surviving narrative text is an eleventh-century Georgian
text.
White George on the
coat of arms
of
Georgia
.
In the fully developed Western version, which developed as part of the
Golden Legend
, a dragon or
crocodile
makes its nest at the
spring
that provides water for the city of
“Silene” (perhaps modern
Cyrene
in
Libya
or the city of
Lydda in the
Holy Land
, depending on the source).
Consequently, the citizens have to dislodge the dragon from its nest for a time,
to collect water. To do so, each day they offer the dragon at first a sheep, and
if no sheep can be found, then a
maiden
must go instead of the sheep. The victim
is chosen by drawing lots. One day, this happens to be the
princess
. The
monarch
begs for her life to be spared, but to
no avail. She is offered to the dragon, but there appears Saint George on his
travels. He faces the dragon, protects himself with the
sign of the Cross
,[29]
slays the dragon, and rescues the princess. The citizens abandon their ancestral
paganism
and convert to Christianity.
The dragon motif was first combined with the standardised Passio Georgii
in
Vincent of Beauvais
‘ encyclopaedic Speculum
Historiale and then in
Jacobus de Voragine
‘s “Golden
Legend“, which guaranteed its popularity in the later
Middle Ages
as a literary and pictorial
subject.
The parallels with
Perseus
and
Andromeda
are inescapable. In the
allegorical
reading, the dragon embodies a
suppressed
pagan cult
.[30]
The story has other roots that predate Christianity. Examples such as
Sabazios
, the
sky father
, who was usually depicted riding on
horseback, and Zeus
‘s defeat of
Typhon
the
Titan
in
Greek mythology
, along with examples from
Germanic
and
Vedic traditions
, have led a number of
historians, such as Loomis, to suggest that George is a
Christianized
version of older deities in
Indo-European culture.
In the medieval romances, the lance with which St George slew the dragon was
called Ascalon, named after the city of
Ashkelon
in the
Levant
.[31]
Veneration as a martyr
A church built in Lydda
during the reign of
Constantine I
(reigned 306–37), was consecrated
to “a man of the highest distinction”, according to the church history of
Eusebius of Caesarea
; the name of the patron[32]
was not disclosed, but later he was asserted to have been George.
By the time of the Muslim conquest in the seventh century, a basilica
dedicated to the saint in Lydda existed.[33]
The church was destroyed in 1010 but was later rebuilt and dedicated to Saint
George by the
Crusaders
. In 1191 and during the conflict
known as the
Third Crusade
(1189–92), the church was again
destroyed by the forces of
Saladin
, Sultan of the
Ayyubid dynasty
(reigned 1171–93). A new church
was erected in 1872 and is still standing.
During the fourth century the veneration of George spread from Palestine
through Lebanon to the rest of the
Eastern Roman Empire
– though the martyr is not
mentioned in the Syriac
Breviarium
[18]
– and
Georgia
. In Georgia the feast day on November
23 is credited to
St Nino
of
Cappadocia
, who in Georgian hagiography is a
relative of St George, credited with bringing Christianity to the Georgians in
the fourth century. By the fifth century, the
cult
of Saint George had reached the
Western Roman Empire
as well: in 494, George
was canonized as a saint
by
Pope Gelasius I
, among those “whose names are
justly reverenced among men, but whose acts are known only to [God].”
In England the earliest dedication to George, who was mentioned among the
martyrs by Bede
, is a church at
Fordington
, Dorset, that is mentioned in the
wars of
Alfred the Great
. He did not rise to the
position of “patron saint”, however, until the 14th century, and he was still
obscured by
Edward the Confessor
, the traditional patron
saint of England, until 1552 when all saints’ banners other than George’s were
abolished in the
English Reformation
.
[34]
An apparition of George heartened the Franks at the
siege of Antioch
, 1098, and made a similar
appearance the following year at Jerusalem. Chivalric military
Order of St. George
were established in
Aragon
(1201),
Genoa
,
Hungary
, and by
Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor
,[35]
and in England the Synod of Oxford, 1222 declared
St George’s Day
a feast day in the kingdom of
England.
Edward III
put his
Order of the Garter
under the banner of St.
George, probably in 1348. The chronicler
Froissart
observed the English invoking St.
George as a battle cry on several occasions during the
Hundred Years’ War
. In his rise as a national
saint George was aided by the very fact that the saint had no legendary
connection with England, and no specifically localized shrine, as of
Thomas Becket
at Canterbury: “Consequently,
numerous shrines were established during the late fifteenth century,” Muriel C.
McClendon has written,[36]
“and his did not become closely identified with a particular occupation or with
the cure of a specific malady.”
The establishment of George as a popular saint and protective giant[37]
in the West that had captured the medieval imagination was codified by the
official elevation of his feast to a festum duplex[38]
at a church council in 1415, on the date that had become associated with his
martyrdom, 23 April. There was wide latitude from community to community in
celebration of the day across late medieval and early modern England,[39]
and no uniform “national” celebration elsewhere, a token of the popular and
vernacular nature of George’s cultus and its local horizons, supported by
a local guild
or confraternity under George’s
protection, or the dedication of a local church. When the Reformation in England
severely curtailed the saints’ days in the calendar, St. George’s Day was among
the holidays that continued to be observed.
Sources
The
coat of arms
of
Volodymyr
is the oldest known
Ukrainian city emblem.
According to the
Catholic Encyclopedia
, the earliest text
preserving fragments of George’s narrative is in an
Acta Sanctorum
identified by
Hippolyte Delehaye
of the scholarly
Bollandists
to be a
palimpsest
of the fifth century. However, this
Acta Sancti Georgii was soon banned as
heresy
by
Pope Gelasius I
(in 496).
The compiler of this Acta, according to Hippolyte Delehaye “confused
the martyr with his namesake, the celebrated
George of Cappadocia
, the
Arian
intruder into the see of Alexandria and
enemy of St.
Athanasius
“. A critical edition of a Syriac
Acta of Saint George, accompanied by an annotated English translation was
published by E.W. Brooks (1863–1955) in 1925. The hagiography was originally
written in Greek.
In Sweden, the princess rescued by Saint George is held to represent the
kingdom of Sweden, while the dragon represents an invading army. Several
sculptures of Saint George battling the dragon can be found in Stockholm, the
earliest inside Storkyrkan (“The Great Church”) in the Old Town.
The façade of architect
Antoni Gaudi
‘s famous
Casa Batlló
in
Barcelona, Spain
depicts this allegory.
In Islamic cultures
Saint George is somewhat of an exception among saints and legends, in that he
is known and respected by
Muslims
, as well as venerated by Christians
throughout the
Middle East
, from Egypt to Asia Minor.[40]
His stature in these regions derives from the fact that his figure has become
somewhat of a composite character mixing elements from Biblical, Quranic and
folkloric sources, at times being partially identified with
Al-Khidr
.[40]
He is said to have killed a dragon near the sea in
Beirut
and at the beginning of the 20th century
Muslim women used to visit his shrine in the area to pray for him.[40]
Feast days
In the General Calendar of the
Roman Rite
the feast of Saint George is on
April 23. In the
Tridentine Calendar
it was given the rank of
“Semidouble”. In
Pope Pius XII
‘s
1955 calendar
this rank is reduced to “Simple”.
In
Pope John XXIII
‘s
1960 calendar
the celebration is further
demoted to just a
“Commemoration”
. In
Pope Paul VI
‘s
1969 calendar
it is raised to the level of an
optional “Memorial”. In some countries, such as
England
, the rank is higher.
St George is very much honoured by the
Eastern Orthodox Church
, wherein he is referred
to as a “Great Martyr”, and in
Oriental Orthodoxy
overall. His major
feast day
is on April 23 (Julian
Calendar April 23 currently corresponds to
Gregorian Calendar
May 6). If, however, the
feast occurs before Easter
, it is celebrated on
Easter Monday
instead. The
Russian Orthodox Church
also celebrates two
additional feasts in honour of St. George: one on November 3 commemorating the
consecration
of a
cathedral
dedicated to him in
Lydda during the reign
Constantine the Great
(305–37). When the church
was consecrated, the relics
of the St. George were transferred
there. The other feast on November 26 for a church dedicated to him in
Kiev, ca. 1054.
In Egypt
the
Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria
refers to
St George as the “Prince of Martyrs” and celebrates his martyrdom on the 23rd of
Paremhat
of the
Coptic Calendar
equivalent to May 1. The
Copts
also celebrate the
consecration
of the first church dedicated to
him on 7th of the month of Hatour of the Coptic Calender usually equivalent to
17 November.
Patronages
A highly celebrated saint in both the
Western
and
Eastern
Christian
churches, a large number of
Patronages of Saint George
exist throughout the
world.[41]
St. George is the patron saint of England. His cross forms the national
flag of England
, and features within the
Union Flag
of the
United Kingdom
, and other national flags
containing the Union Flag, such as those of
Australia
and
New Zealand
. Traces of the cult of Saint George
in England pre-date the
Norman Conquest
in the eleventh century;[citation
needed] by the fourteenth century the saint had been
declared both the patron saint and the protector of the royal family.[42]
St George’s monument in
Tbilisi
,
Georgia
.
The
country of Georgia
, where devotions to the
saint date back to the fourth century, is not technically named after the saint,
but is a well-attested
backward derivation
of the English name.
However, a large number of towns and cities around the world are. Saint George
is one of the patron Saints of Georgia; the name Georgia (Sakartvelo in
Georgian) is an anglicisation
of Gurj, derived from the
Persian
word for the frightening and heroic
people in that territory.[43]
However, chronicles describing the land as Georgie or Georgia in French
and English, date from the early Middle Ages “because of their special reverence
for Saint George”,[44]
but these accounts have been seen as
folk etymology
;[citation
needed] compare
Land of Prester John
.
There are exactly 365 Orthodox churches in
Georgia
named after Saint George according to
the number of days in a year. According to myth, St. George was cut into 365
pieces after he fell in battle and every single piece was spread throughout the
entire country.[45][46][47]
According to another myth, Saint George appeared in person during the
Battle of Didgori
to support the Georgian
victory over the
Seldjuk army
and the Georgian uprising against
Persian rule. Saint George is considered by many Georgians to have special
meaning as a symbol of national liberation.[48]
Devotions to Saint George in
Portugal
date back to the twelfth century, and
Saint Constable
attributed the victory of the
Portuguese in the
battle of Aljubarrota
in the fourteenth century
to Saint George. During the reign of King
John I
(1357–1433) Saint George became the
patron saint of Portugal and the King ordered that the saint’s image on the
horse be carried in the
Corpus Christi
procession. In fact, the
Portuguese Army motto means Portugal and Saint George, in perils and in efforts
of war.[49]
Saint George is also one of the patron saints of the Mediterranean islands of
Malta
and
Gozo. In a battle between the Maltese and the Moors, Saint George was
alleged to have been seen with Saint Paul and Saint Agata, protecting the
Maltese. Besides being the patron of Victoria where
St. George’s Basilica, Malta
is dedicated to
him, St George is the protector of the island Gozo.[50]
Interfaith Shrine
There is a tradition in the Holy Land of Christians and Muslim going to an
Eastern Orthodox
shrine of St. George at
Beith Jala
, Jews also attend the site in the
belief that the prophet
Elijah
was buried there. This is testified to
by
Elizabeth Finn
in 1866, where she wrote, “St.
George killed the dragon in this country
Palestine
; and the place is shown close to
Beirut
(Lebanon).
Many churches and convents are named after him. The church at
Lydda is dedicated to St. George: so is a convent near Bethlehem, and
another small one just opposite the Jaffa gate; and others beside. The Arabs
believe that St. George can restore mad people to their senses; and to say a
person has been sent to St. George’s, is equivalent to saying he has been sent
to a madhouse. It is singular that the Moslem Arabs share this veneration for
St. George, and send their mad people to be cured by him, as well as the
Christians. But they commonly call him
El Khudder
—The Green—according to their
favourite manner of using epithets instead of names. Why he should be called
green, however, I cannot tell—unless it is from the colour of his horse. Gray
horses are called green in Arabic.”[51]
A possible explanation for this colour reference is
Al Khidr
, the erstwhile tutor of Moses, gained
his name from having sat in a barren desert, turning it into a lush green
paradise.[52][53]
William Dalrymple
reviewing the literature in
1999 tells us that
J. E. Hanauer
in his 1907 book Folklore of
the Holy Land: Muslim, Christian and Jewish “mentioned a shrine in the
village of Beit Jala, beside Bethlehem, which at the time was frequented by all
three of Palestine’s religious communities. Christians regarded it as the
birthplace of St. George, Jews as the burial place of the Prophet Elias.
According to Hanauer, in his day the monastery was “a sort of madhouse. Deranged
persons of all the three faiths are taken thither and chained in the court of
the chapel, where they are kept for forty days on bread and water, the
Eastern Orthodox
priest at the head of the
establishment now and then reading the Gospel over them, or administering a
whipping as the case demands.’[54]
In the 1920s, according to
Taufiq Canaan
‘s Mohammedan Saints and
Sanctuaries in Palestine, nothing seemed to have changed, and all three
communities were still visiting the shrine and praying together.”[55]
Dalrymple himself visited the place in 1995. “I asked around in the Christian
Quarter in Jerusalem, and discovered that the place was very much alive. With
all the greatest shrines in the Christian world to choose from, it seemed that
when the local Arab Christians had a problem – an illness, or something more
complicated: a husband detained in an Israeli prison camp, for example – they
preferred to seek the intercession of St George in his grubby little shrine at
Beit Jala rather than praying at the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem or the Church
of the Nativity in Bethlehem.”[55]
He asked the priest at the shrine “Do you get many Muslims coming here?” The
priest replied, “We get hundreds! Almost as many as the Christian pilgrims.
Often, when I come in here, I find Muslims all over the floor, in the aisles, up
and down.”[55][56][57]
The Encyclopædia Britannica quotes G.A. Smith in his Historic
Geography of the Holy Land p. 164 saying “The Mahommedans who usually
identify St. George with the prophet Elijah, at Lydda confound his legend with
one about Christ himself. Their name for Antichrist is Dajjal, and they have a
tradition that Jesus will slay Antichrist by the gate of Lydda. The notion
sprang from an ancient
bas-relief
of George and the Dragon on the
Lydda church. But Dajjal may be derived, by a very common confusion between n
and l, from Dagon, whose name two neighbouring villages bear to this day, while
one of the gates of Lydda used to be called the Gate of Dagon.”[58]
Colours and flag
St George’s cross
The “Colours of Saint George”, or
St George’s Cross
are a white flag with a red
cross, frequently borne by entities over which he is patron (e.g. the
Republic of Genoa
and then
Liguria
,
England
,
Georgia
,
Catalonia
,
Aragon
, etc.).
This was formerly the banner attributed to
St. Ambrose
. Adopted by the city of
Milan
(of which he was Archbishop) at least as
early as the 9th century, its use spread over Northern Italy including Genoa.[dubious
–
discuss
] Genoa’s patron saint
was St. George and while the flag was not associated with George in Genoa
itself, it is possibly[clarification
needed] the cause of the use of the design as the
attributed arms
of Saint George in the 14th
century.[dubious
–
discuss
]
The same colour scheme was used by
Viktor Vasnetsov
for the façade of the
Tretyakov Gallery
, in which some of the most
famous St. George icons are exhibited and which displays St. George as the coat
of arms of Moscow over its entrance.
In 1606, the
flag of England
(St.
George’s Cross), and the
flag of Scotland
(St.
Andrew’s Cross), were joined together to create the
Union Flag
.[59]
Iconography and models
Byzantine
icon of St. George,
Athens
Greece
St. George is most commonly depicted in early
icons
,
mosaics
and
frescos
wearing armour contemporary with the
depiction, executed in gilding and silver colour, intended to identify him as a
Roman soldier
. After the
Fall of Constantinople
and the association of
St George with the
crusades
, he is more often portrayed mounted
upon a
white horse
.
At the same time St George began to be associated with
St. Demetrius
, another early
soldier saint
. When the two saints are
portrayed together mounted upon horses, they may be likened to earthly
manifestations of the archangels
Michael
and
Gabriel
. St George is always depicted in
Eastern traditions upon a white horse and St. Demetrius on a red horse[60]
St George can also be identified in the act of spearing a dragon, unlike St
Demetrius, who is sometimes shown spearing a human figure, understood to
represent Maximian
.
A 2003 Vatican stamp issued on the anniversary of the Saint’s death depicts
an armoured Saint George atop a white horse, killing the dragon.[61]
During the early second millennium, George came to be seen as the model of
chivalry
, and during this time was depicted in
works of literature
, such as the
medieval romances
.
Jacobus de Voragine
,
Archbishop
of
Genoa
, compiled the Legenda Sanctorum, (Readings
of the Saints) also known as Legenda Aurea (the
Golden Legend
) for its worth among readers.
Its 177 chapters (182 in other editions) contain the story of Saint George.
Modern Russians interpret the icon not as a killing but as a struggle,
against ourselves and the evil among us. In Eastern Orthodox Christianity it is
possible to find Icons of St.George riding on Black horse, as well, there are
various examples in Russian Iconography, like the Icon in British Museum
Collection.
In the eastern Christian tradition, Saint George is portrayed as a martyr in
the classical orthodox icon style; he is either portrayed as a soldier with his
weapons, or in the more famous setting of him riding a white horse and slaying
the dragon. One exception to this icon tradition exists in the Saint George
Church for Melkite Catholics, in the Lebanese village of
Mieh Mieh
in south Lebanon, where you can find
hanging on its walls the only icons in the world (drawn according to the eastern
icon style) portraying the whole life of Saint George as well as the scenes of
his torture and martyrdom. This unique set was completed for the church’s 75th
jubilee in 2012, under the guidance of Mgr Sassine Gregoire.
The Byzantine Empire was
the predominantly Greek-speaking
continuation of the Roman
Empire during Late
Antiquity and the Middle
Ages. Its capital city was Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul),
originally known as Byzantium.
Initially the eastern half of the Roman Empire (often called the Eastern
Roman Empire in this context), it
survived the 5th century fragmentation
and collapse of the Western
Roman Empire and continued
to thrive, existing for an additional thousand years until it fell to
the Ottoman
Turks in 1453. During most
of its existence, the empire was the most powerful economic, cultural, and
military force in Europe. Both “Byzantine Empire” and “Eastern Roman Empire” are
historiographical terms applied in later centuries; its citizens continued to
refer to their empire as the Roman
Empire (Ancient
Greek: Βασιλεία
Ῥωμαίων, tr.Basileia
Rhōmaiōn; Latin: Imperium
Romanum), and Romania.
Several events from the 4th to 6th centuries mark the transitional period during
which the Roman Empire’s east
and west divided.
In 285, theemperor Diocletian (r.
284–305) partitioned the Roman Empire’s administration into eastern and western
halves. Between
324 and 330,Constantine
I (r. 306–337) transferred
the main capital from Rome to Byzantium,
later known as Constantinople (“City
of Constantine”) and Nova Roma (“New
Rome”). Under Theodosius
I (r. 379–395), Christianity became
the Empire’s official state
religion and others such
as Roman
polytheism were proscribed.
And finally, under the reign of Heraclius (r.
610–641), the Empire’s military and administration were restructured and adopted
Greek for official use instead of Latin. In
summation, Byzantium is distinguished from ancient
Rome proper insofar as it
was oriented towards Greek rather than Latin culture, and characterised by Orthodox
Christianity rather than Roman
polytheism.
The borders of the Empire evolved a great deal over its existence, as it went
through several cycles of decline and recovery. During the reign of
Justinian I
(r.
527–565), the Empire reached its greatest extent after reconquering much of the
historically Roman western Mediterranean coast,
including north Africa, Italy, and Rome itself, which it held for two more
centuries. During the reign of Maurice (r.
582–602), the Empire’s eastern frontier was expanded and north stabilised.
However, his assassination caused a two-decade-long
war with Sassanid
Persia which exhausted the
Empire’s resources and contributed to major territorial losses during the Muslim
conquests of the 7th
century. During the 10th-centuryMacedonian
dynasty, the Empire experienced a golden
age, which culminated in the reign of Emperor
Basil II “the Bulgar-Slayer”. However, shortly after Basil’s death, a
neglect of the vast military built up during the Late Macedonian
dynasty caused the Empire
to begin to lose territory in Asia Minor to the Seljuk
Turks. Emperor
Romanos IV Diogenes and
several of his predecessors had attempted to rid Eastern
Anatolia of the Turkish
menace, but this endeavor proved ultimately untenable – especially after the
disastrous Battle
of Manzikert in 1071.
Despite a prominent period
of revival (1081-1180) under
the steady leadership of the Komnenos
family, who played an instrumental role in theFirst and Second
Crusades, the final centuries of the Empire exhibit a general trend
of decline. In 1204, after a period
of strife following the
downfall of the Komnenos
dynasty, the Empire was delivered a mortal blow by the forces of the Fourth
Crusade, when Constantinople was sacked and the Empire dissolved
and divided into competing
Byzantine Greek and Latin
realms. Despite the eventual recovery of Constantinople and re-establishment
of the Empire in 1261, Byzantium remained only one of a number of
small rival states in the area for the final two centuries of its existence.
This volatile period lead to its progressive
annexation by the Ottomans over
the 15th century and the Fall
of Constantinople in 1453.
Early history
The Baptism of Constantine painted
byRaphael‘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 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.
Loss of the
western Roman Empire
After the fall of Attila, the Eastern Empire enjoyed a period of peace, while
the Western Empire deteriorated in continuing migration and expansion byGermanic
nations (its end is
usually dated in 476 when the Germanic Roman general Odoacer deposed
the titular Western Emperor Romulus
Augustulus). In 480 Emperor Zeno abolished
the division of the Empire making himself sole Emperor. Odoacer, now ruler of
Italy, was nominally Zeno’s subordinate but acted with complete autonomy,
eventually providing support of a rebellion against the Emperor.
Zeno negotiated with the conquering Ostrogoths,
who had settled in Moesia,
convincing the Gothic king Theodoric to
depart for Italy as magister
militum per Italiam (“commander
in chief for Italy”) with the aim to depose Odoacer. By urging Theodoric into
conquering Italy, Zeno rid the Eastern Empire of an unruly subordinate (Odoacer)
and moved another (Theodoric) further from the heart of the Empire. After
Odoacer’s defeat in 493, Theodoric ruled Italy on his own, although he was never
recognised by the eastern emperors as “king” (rex).
In 491, Anastasius
I, an aged civil officer of Roman origin, became Emperor, but it was
not until 497 that the forces of the new emperor effectively took the measure of Isaurian
resistance.[29]Anastasius
revealed himself as an energetic reformer and an able administrator. He
perfected Constantine I’s coinage system by definitively setting the weight of
the copper follis,
the coin used in most everyday transactions.[30] He
also reformed the tax system and permanently abolished the chrysargyron tax.
The State Treasury contained the enormous sum of 320,000 lb (150,000 kg) of gold
when Anastasius died in 518.
Reconquest of
the western provinces
Justinian I
depicted
on one of the famous mosaics of the Basilica
of San Vitale, Ravenna.
Justinian I
, the son of an Illyrian peasant,
may already have exerted effective control during the reign of his uncle, Justin
I (518–527). He
assumed the throne in 527, and oversaw a period of recovery of former
territories. In 532, attempting to secure his eastern frontier, he signed a
peace treaty with Khosrau
I of Persia agreeing to
pay a large annual tribute to the Sassanids.
In the same year, he survived a revolt in Constantinople (the Nika
riots), which solidified his power but ended with the deaths of a
reported 30,000 to 35,000 rioters on his orders.
In 529, a ten-man commission chaired by John
the Cappadocian revised
the Roman law and created a new codification of
laws and jurists’ extracts. In 534, the Code was
updated and, along with the enactements
promulgated by Justinian after 534, it formed the system of law used
for most of the rest of the Byzantine era.
The western conquests began in 533, as Justinian sent his general Belisarius to
reclaim the former province of Africa from
the Vandals who
had been in control since 429 with their capital at Carthage. Their
success came with surprising ease, but it was not until 548 that the major local
tribes were subdued. In Ostrogothic
Italy, the deaths of Theodoric, his nephew and heir Athalaric,
and his daughter Amalasuntha had
left her murderer,Theodahad (r.
534–536), on the throne despite his weakened authority.
Heraclian dynasty
The Byzantine Empire in 650 – by this year it lost all of its
southern provinces except the Exarchate
of Africa.
After Maurice’s murder by Phocas,
Khosrau used the pretext to reconquer the Roman
province of Mesopotamia.Phocas, an unpopular ruler invariably
described in Byzantine sources as a “tyrant”, was the target of a number of
Senate-led plots. He was eventually deposed in 610 by Heraclius, who sailed to
Constantinople from Carthage with
an icon affixed to the prow of his ship.
Following the ascension of Heraclius, the Sassanid advance pushed deep into Asia
Minor, occupying Damascus andJerusalem and
removing the True
Cross to Ctesiphon. The
counter-attack launched by Heraclius took on the character of a holy war, and an acheiropoietos image
of Christ was carried as a military standard (similarly,
when Constantinople was saved from an Avar siege in 626, the victory was
attributed to the icons of the Virgin that were led in procession byPatriarch
Sergius about the walls of
the city).
The main Sassanid force was destroyed at Nineveh in
627, and in 629 Heraclius restored the True Cross to Jerusalem in a majestic
ceremony. The war had exhausted both
the Byzantines and Sassanids, however, and left them extremely vulnerable to the Muslim
forces that emerged in the
following years. The Byzantines
suffered a crushing defeat by the Arabs at the Battle
of Yarmouk in 636, while
Ctesiphon fell in 634.
Siege of Constantinople (674–678)
The Arabs, now firmly in control
of Syria and the Levant, sent frequent raiding parties deep into Asia
Minor, and in 674–678
laid siege to Constantinople itself.
The Arab fleet was finally repulsed through the use of Greek
fire, and a thirty-years’ truce was signed between the Empire and the Umayyad
Caliphate. However, the Anatolian raids
continued unabated, and accelerated the demise of classical urban culture, with
the inhabitants of many cities either refortifying much smaller areas within the
old city walls, or relocating entirely to nearby fortresses. Constantinople
itself dropped substantially in size, from 500,000 inhabitants to just
40,000–70,000, and, like other urban centres, it was partly ruralised. The city
also lost the free grain shipments in 618, after Egypt fell first to the
Persians and then to the Arabs, and public wheat distribution ceased.
The void left by the disappearance of the old semi-autonomous civic institutions
was filled by the theme system, which entailed dividing Asia Minor into
“provinces” occupied by distinct armies that assumed civil authority and
answered directly to the imperial administration. This system may have had its
roots in certain ad hoc measures
taken by Heraclius, but over the course of the 7th century it developed into an
entirely new system of imperial governance.[59] The
massive cultural and institutional restructuring of the Empire consequent on the
loss of territory in the 7th century has been said to have caused a decisive
break in east Mediterranean Romanness and
that the Byzantine state is subsequently best understood as another successor
state rather than a real continuation of the Roman Empire.
The Greek fire was first used by the Byzantine
Navy during
the Byzantine-Arab Wars (from theMadrid
Skylitzes, Biblioteca
Nacional de España, Madrid).
Isaurian dynasty to the ascension of Basil I
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 andcaptured
Crete. They also successfully attacked Sicily, but in 863 general Petronas gained
a huge
victory against Umar
al-Aqta, the emir of Melitene.
Under the leadership of emperor Krum,
the Bulgarian threat also reemerged, but in 815–816 Krum’s son, Omurtag,
signed a peace
treaty with Leo
V.
Macedonian dynasty and resurgence (867–1025)
The Byzantine Empire, c. 867.
The accession of Basil
I to the throne in 867
marks the beginning of the Macedonian
dynasty, which would rule for the next two and a half centuries. This
dynasty included some of the most able emperors in Byzantium’s history, and the
period is one of revival and resurgence. The Empire moved from defending against
external enemies to reconquest of territories formerly lost.[70]
In addition to a reassertion of Byzantine military power and political
authority, the period under the Macedonian dynasty is characterised by a
cultural revival in spheres such as philosophy and the arts. There was a
conscious effort to restore the brilliance of the period before the Slavic and
subsequent Arab
invasions, and the Macedonian era has been dubbed the “Golden Age” of
Byzantium. Though the Empire was
significantly smaller than during the reign of Justinian, it had regained
significant strength, as the remaining territories were less geographically
dispersed and more politically, economically, and culturally integrated.
Wars against the Arabs
The general Leo
Phokas defeats
the Arabs atAndrassos in
960, from the Madrid
Skylitzes.
In the early years of Basil I’s reign, Arab raids on the coasts of Dalmatia were
successfully repelled, and the region once again came under secure Byzantine
control. This enabled Byzantine missionaries to penetrate to the interior and
convert the Serbs and the principalities of modern-dayHerzegovina and Montenegro to
Orthodox Christianity. An attempt to
retake Malta ended
disastrously, however, when the local population sided with the Arabs and
massacred the Byzantine garrison.
By contrast, the Byzantine position in Southern
Italy was gradually
consolidated so that by 873 Bari had
once again come under Byzantine rule,and most of Southern Italy would remain in
the Empire for the next 200 years.On the more important eastern front, the
Empire rebuilt its defences and went on the offensive. The Paulicians were
defeated and their capital of Tephrike (Divrigi) taken, while the offensive
against the Abbasid
Caliphatebegan with the recapture of Samosata.
The military successes of the 10th century were coupled with a major
cultural revival, the so-called Macedonian
Renaissance. Miniature from the Paris
Psalter, an example of Hellenistic-influenced art.
Under Michael’s son and successor, Leo
VI the Wise, the gains in the east against the now weak Abbasid
Caliphate continued. However, Sicily was lost to the Arabs in 902, and in 904 Thessaloniki,
the Empire’s second city, was sacked by an Arab fleet. The weakness of the
Empire in the naval sphere was quickly rectified, so that a few years later a
Byzantine fleet had re-occupied Cyprus,
lost in the 7th century, and also stormed Laodicea in
Syria. Despite this revenge, the Byzantines were still unable to strike a
decisive blow against the Muslims, who inflicted a crushing defeat on the
imperial forces when they attempted to regain Crete in
911.
Wars against
the Bulgarian Empire
Emperor Basil II (r. 976–1025).
The traditional struggle with the See
of Rome continued through
the Macedonian period, spurred by the question of religious supremacy over the
newly Christianised state of Bulgaria. Ending
eighty years of peace between the two states, the powerful Bulgarian tsar Simeon
I invaded in 894 but was pushed back by the Byzantines, who used their fleet to
sail up the Black
Sea to attack the
Bulgarian rear, enlisting the support of theHungarians. The
Byzantines were defeated at the Battle
of Boulgarophygon in 896,
however, and agreed to pay annual subsidies to the Bulgarians.
Leo the Wise died in 912, and hostilities soon resumed as Simeon marched to
Constantinople at the head of a large army. Though
the walls of the city were impregnable, the Byzantine administration was in
disarray and Simeon was invited into the city, where he was granted the crown ofbasileus (emperor)
of Bulgaria and had the young emperor Constantine
VII marry one of his
daughters. When a revolt in Constantinople halted his dynastic project, he again
invaded Thrace and conquered Adrianople. The
Empire now faced the problem of a powerful Christian state within a few days’
marching distance from Constantinople, as
well as having to fight on two fronts.
A great imperial expedition under Leo
Phocas and Romanos
I Lekapenos ended with
another crushing Byzantine defeat at the Battle
of Achelous in 917, and
the following year the Bulgarians were free to ravage northern Greece.
Adrianople was plundered again in 923, and a Bulgarian army laid siege to
Constantinople in 924. Simeon died suddenly in 927, however, and Bulgarian power
collapsed with him. Bulgaria and Byzantium entered a long period of peaceful
relations, and the Empire was now free to concentrate on the eastern front
against the Muslims. In 968, Bulgaria
was overrun by the Rus’ under Sviatoslav
I of Kiev, but three years later, John I Tzimiskes defeated the
Rus’ and re-incorporated Eastern Bulgaria into the Byzantine Empire.
The extent of the Empire under Basil
II.
Bulgarian resistance revived under the rule of the Cometopuli
dynasty, but the new emperor Basil II (r. 976–1025) made the
submission of the Bulgarians his primary goal. Basil’s
first expedition against Bulgaria, however, resulted in a humiliating defeat at
the Gates
of Trajan. For the next few years, the emperor would be preoccupied
with internal revolts in Anatolia, while the Bulgarians expanded their realm in
the Balkans. The war dragged on for nearly twenty years. The Byzantine victories
of Spercheios and Skopje decisively
weakened the Bulgarian army, and in annual campaigns, Basil methodically reduced
the Bulgarian strongholds.[84] At
the Battle
of Kleidion in 1014 the
Bulgarians were annihilated: their army was captured, and it is said that 99 out
of every 100 men were blinded, with the hundredth man left with one eye so he
could lead his compatriots home. When Tsar Samuil saw
the broken remains of his once gallant army, he died of shock. By 1018, the last
Bulgarian strongholds had surrendered, and the country became part of the
Empire.[84] This
victory restored the Danube frontier, which had not been held since the days of
the emperor Heraclius.
Relations with
the Kievan Rus’
Rus’
under
the walls of Constantinople (860).
Between 850 and 1100, the Empire developed a mixed relationship with the new
state of the Kievan
Rus’, which had emerged to the north across the Black Sea.[85] This
relationship would have long-lasting repercussions in the history of the East
Slavs, and the Empire quickly became the main tradingand
cultural partner for Kiev. The Rus’ launched their first attack against
Constantinople in
860, pillaging the suburbs of the city. In 941, they
appeared on the Asian shore of
the Bosphorus, but this time they were crushed, an indication of the
improvements in the Byzantine military position after 907, whenonly
diplomacy had been able to push back the invaders. Basil II could not
ignore the emerging power of the Rus’, and, following the example of his
predecessors, he used religion as a means for the achievement of political
purposes. Rus’–Byzantine relations
became closer following the marriage of the Anna
Porphyrogeneta to Vladimir
the Great in 988, and the
subsequent Christianisation
of the Rus’. Byzantine
priests, architects, and artists were invited to work on numerous cathedrals and
churches around Rus’, expanding Byzantine cultural influence even further, while
numerous Rus’ served in the Byzantine army as mercenaries, most notably as the
famous Varangian
Guard.
Even after the Christianisation of the Rus’, however, relations were not always
friendly. The most serious conflict between the two powers was the war of
968–971 in Bulgaria, but several Rus’ raiding expeditions against the Byzantine
cities of the Black Sea coast and Constantinople itself are also recorded.
Although most were repulsed, they were often followed by treaties that were
generally favourable to the Rus’, such as the one concluded at the end of the
war of 1043, during which the Rus’ gave an indication of their
ambitions to compete with the Byzantines as an independent power.
Apex
Constantinople became the largest and wealthiest city in Europe
between the 9th and 11th centuries.
By 1025, the date of Basil II’s death, the Byzantine Empire stretched from Armenia in
the east to Calabria in
Southern Italy in the west. Many
successes had been achieved, ranging from the conquest of Bulgaria to the
annexation of parts of Georgia and
Armenia, and the reconquest of Crete, Cyprus, and the important city of Antioch.
These were not temporary tactical gains but long-term reconquests.
Leo VI achieved the complete codification of Byzantine law in Greek. This
monumental work of 60 volumes became the foundation of all subsequent Byzantine
law and is still studied today. Leo
also reformed the administration of the Empire, redrawing the borders of the
administrative subdivisions (the Themata,
or “Themes”) and tidying up the system of ranks and privileges, as well as
regulating the behavior of the various trade guilds in Constantinople. Leo’s
reform did much to reduce the previous fragmentation of the Empire, which
henceforth had one center of power, Constantinople. However,
the increasing military success of the Empire greatly enriched and empowered the
provincial nobility with respect to the peasantry, who were essentially reduced
to a state of serfdom.
Under the Macedonian emperors, the city of Constantinople flourished, becoming
the largest and wealthiest city in Europe, with a population of approximately
400,000 in the 9th and 10th centuries. During
this period, the Byzantine Empire employed a strong civil service staffed by
competent aristocrats that oversaw the collection of taxes, domestic
administration, and foreign policy. The Macedonian emperors also increased the
Empire’s wealth by fostering trade with Western Europe, particularly through the
sale of silk and metalwork.
Split between Orthodox Christianity and Catholicism (1054)
Mural of Saints
Cyril and Methodius, 19th century, Troyan
Monastery, Bulgaria.
The Macedonian period also included events of momentous religious significance.
The conversion of the Bulgarians, Serbs and Rus’ to
Orthodox Christianity permanently changed the religious map of Europe and still
resonates today. Cyril
and Methodius, two Byzantine
Greek brothers from
Thessaloniki, contributed significantly to the Christianization
of the Slavs and in the
process devised the Glagolitic
alphabet, ancestor to the Cyrillic
script.
In 1054, relations between the Eastern and Western traditions within the
Christian Church reached a terminal crisis, known as the Great
Schism. Although there was a formal declaration of institutional
separation, on July 16, when three papal legates entered the Hagia Sophia during
Divine Liturgy on a Saturday afternoon and placed a bull of excommunication on
the altar, the so-called Great Schism
was actually the culmination of centuries of gradual separation.
Crisis and fragmentation
The Empire soon fell into a period of difficulties, caused to a large extent by
the undermining of the theme system and the neglect of the military. Nikephoros
II Phokas (reigned
963–969), John Tzimiskes and Basil II changed the military divisions (τάγματα, tagmata)
from a rapid response, primarily defensive, citizen army into a professional,
campaigning army increasingly manned by mercenaries. Mercenaries,
however, were expensive and as the threat of invasion receded in the 10th
century, so did the need for maintaining large garrisons and expensive
fortifications.[95]
Basil II left a burgeoning treasury upon his death, but neglected to plan for
his succession. None of his immediate successors had any particular military or
political skill and the administration of the Empire increasingly fell into the
hands of the civil service. Efforts to revive the Byzantine economy only
resulted in inflation and a debased gold coinage. The army was now seen as both
an unnecessary expense and a political threat. Therefore, native troops were
cashiered and replaced by foreign mercenaries on specific contract.
Komnenian
dynasty and the crusaders
Alexios I
, founder of the Komnenos
dynasty.
The period from about 1081 to about 1185 is often known as the Komnenian or
Comnenian period, after the Komnenos
dynasty. Together, the five Komnenian emperors (Alexios I, John II,
Manuel I, Alexios II and Andronikos I) ruled for 104 years, presiding over a
sustained, though ultimately incomplete, restoration of the military,
territorial, economic and political position of the Byzantine Empire. Though
the Seljuk Turks occupied the Empire’s heartland in Anatolia, it was against
Western powers that most Byzantine military efforts were directed, particularly
the Normans.
The Empire under the Komnenoi played a key role in the history of the Crusades
in the Holy Land, which Alexios I had helped bring about, while also exerting
enormous cultural and political influence in Europe, the Near East, and the
lands around the Mediterranean Sea under John and Manuel. Contact between
Byzantium and the “Latin” West, including the Crusader states, increased
significantly during the Komnenian period. Venetian and other Italian traders
became resident in Constantinople and the empire in large numbers (there were an
estimated 60,000 Latins in Constantinople alone, out of a population of three to
four hundred thousand), and their presence together with the numerous Latin
mercenaries who were employed by Manuel helped to spread Byzantine technology,
art, literature and culture throughout the Latin West, while also leading to a
flow of Western ideas and customs into the Empire.
In terms of prosperity and cultural life, the Komnenian period was one of the
peaks in Byzantine history, and
Constantinople remained the leading city of the Christian world in terms of
size, wealth, and culture. There was
a renewed interest in classical Greek philosophy, as well as an increase in
literary output in vernacular Greek. Byzantine
art and literature held a pre-eminent place in Europe, and the cultural impact
of Byzantine art on the west during this period was enormous and of long lasting
significance.
Alexios I and the
First Crusade
After Manzikert, a partial recovery (referred to as the Komnenian restoration)
was made possible by the efforts of the Komnenian dynasty. The
first emperor of this dynasty was Isaac
I (1057–1059) and the
second Alexios I. At the very outset of his reign, Alexios faced a formidable
attack by the Normans under Robert Guiscard and his son Bohemund
of Taranto, who captured Dyrrhachium and Corfu,
and laid siege to Larissa in Thessaly.
Robert Guiscard’s death in 1085 temporarily eased the Norman problem. The
following year, the Seljuq sultan died, and the sultanate was split by internal
rivalries. By his own efforts, Alexios defeated the Pechenegs;
they were caught by surprise and annihilated at the Battle
of Levounion on 28 April
1091.
The Byzantine Empire and the Sultanate
of Rûm before
the First
Crusade.
Having achieved stability in the West, Alexios could turn his attention to the
severe economic difficulties and the disintegration of the Empire’s traditional
defences. However, he still did not
have enough manpower to recover the lost territories in Asia Minor and to
advance against the Seljuks. At the Council
of Piacenza in 1095,
Alexios’ envoys spoke toPope
Urban II about the
suffering of the Christians of the East, and underscored that without help from
the West they would continue to suffer under Muslim rule.
Urban saw Alexios’ request as a dual opportunity to cement Western Europe and
reunite the Eastern
Orthodox Churcheswith the Roman
Catholic Church under his
rule. On 27 November 1095, Pope Urban
II called together the Council
of Clermont, and urged all those present to take up arms under the
sign of the Cross and
launch an armed pilgrimage to
recover Jerusalem and the East from the Muslims. The response in Western Europe
was overwhelming.
John
II, Manuel I and the Second Crusade
Medieval manuscript depicting the Capture
of Jerusalem during
the First Crusade.
Alexios’s son John
II Komnenos succeeded him
in 1118, and ruled until 1143. John was a pious and dedicated Emperor who was
determined to undo the damage his empire had suffered at the Battle of
Manzikert, half a century earlier.[114] Famed
for his piety and his remarkably mild and just reign, John was an exceptional
example of a moral ruler, at a time when cruelty was the norm.[115] For
this reason, he has been called the ByzantineMarcus
Aurelius.
In the course of his twenty-five year reign, John made alliances with the Holy
Roman Empire in the West,
decisively defeated the Pechenegs at theBattle
of Beroia, and personally
led numerous campaigns against the Turks in
Asia Minor. John’s campaigns fundamentally changed the balance of power in the
East, forcing the Turks onto the defensive and restoring to the Byzantines many
towns, fortresses and cities right across the peninsula. He
also thwarted Hungarian, and Serbian threats during the 1120s, and in 1130
allied himself with the German
emperor Lothair
IIIagainst the Norman king Roger
II of Sicily.
In the later part of his reign, John focused his activities on the East. He
defeated the Danishmend emirate
of Melitene,
and reconquered all of Cilicia,
while forcing Raymond
of Poitiers, Prince of Antioch, to recognise Byzantine suzerainty. In
an effort to demonstrate the Emperor’s role as the leader of the Christian
world, John marched into the Holy
Land at the head of the
combined forces of the Empire and the Crusader
states; yet despite the great vigour with which he pressed the
campaign, John’s hopes were disappointed by the treachery of his Crusader
allies. In 1142, John returned to
press his claims to Antioch, but he died in the spring of 1143 following a
hunting accident. Raymond was emboldened to invade Cilicia, but he was defeated
and forced to go to Constantinople to beg mercy from the new Emperor.
The Byzantine Empire in orange, c. 1180, at the end of theKomnenian
period.
12th-century Renaissance
‘The Lamentation of Christ’ (1164), a fresco from the church
of Saint Panteleimon in
Nerezi near Skopje. It is considered a superb example of 12th
century Komnenian art.
John and Manuel pursued active military policies, and both deployed considerable
resources on sieges and on city defences; aggressive fortification policies were
at the heart of their imperial military policies. Despite
the defeat at Myriokephalon, the policies of Alexios, John and Manuel resulted
in vast territorial gains, increased frontier stability in Asia Minor, and
secured the stabilisation of the Empire’s European frontiers. From circa 1081 to
circa 1180, the Komnenian army assured the Empire’s security, enabling Byzantine
civilisation to flourish.
This allowed the Western provinces to achieve an economic revival that continued
until the close of the century. It has been argued that Byzantium under the
Komnenian rule was more prosperous than at any time since the Persian invasions
of the 7th century. During the 12th century, population levels rose and
extensive tracts of new agricultural land were brought into production.
Archaeological evidence from both Europe and Asia Minor shows a considerable
increase in the size of urban settlements, together with a notable upsurge in
new towns. Trade was also flourishing; the Venetians, the Genoese and
others opened up the ports of the Aegean to commerce, shipping goods from the
Crusader kingdoms of Outremer and
Fatimid Egypt to the west and trading with the Empire via Constantinople.
In artistic terms, there was a revival in mosaic,
and regional schools of architecture began producing many distinctive styles
that drew on a range of cultural influences. During
the 12th century, the Byzantines provided their model of early humanism as
a renaissance of interest in classical authors. In Eustathius
of Thessalonica, Byzantine humanism found its most characteristic
expression. In philosophy, there was
resurgence of classical learning not seen since the 7th century, characterised
by a significant increase in the publication of commentaries on classical
works.In addition, it is during the Komnenian period that there occurs the first
transmission of classical Greek knowledge towards the West.
Decline and
disintegration
Dynasty of the Angeloi
Manuel’s death on 24 September 1180 left his 11-year-old son Alexios
II Komnenos on the throne.
Alexios was highly incompetent at the office, but it was his mother, Maria
of Antioch, and her Frankish background that made his regency
unpopular.[131] Eventually, Andronikos
I Komnenos, a grandson of Alexios I, launched a revolt against his
younger relative and managed to overthrow him in a violent coup
d’état.
Utilizing his good looks and his immense popularity with the army, he marched on
to Constantinople in August 1182, and
incited a massacre of the Latins. After
eliminating his potential rivals, he had himself crowned as co-emperor in
September 1183. He eliminated Alexios II, and took his 12-year-old wife Agnes
of France for himself.
Iconium
was
won by the Third Crusade.
Andronikos began his reign well; in particular, the measures he took to reform
the government of the Empire have been praised by historians. According to George
Ostrogorsky, Andronikos was determined to root out corruption: Under
his rule, the sale of offices ceased; selection was based on merit, rather than
favouritism; officials were paid an adequate salary so as to reduce the
temptation of bribery. In the provinces, Andronikos’s reforms produced a speedy
and marked improvement.
The aristocrats were infuriated against him, and to make matters worse,
Andronikos seems to have become increasingly unbalanced; executions and violence
became increasingly common, and his reign turned into a reign of terror. Andronikos
seemed almost to seek the extermination of the aristocracy as a whole. The
struggle against the aristocracy turned into wholesale slaughter, while the
Emperor resorted to ever more ruthless measures to shore up his regime.
Despite his military background, Andronikos failed to deal with Isaac
Komnenos, Béla
III of Hungary (r.
1172–1196) who reincorporated Croatian territories into Hungary, and Stephen
Nemanja of Serbia (r.
1166–1196) who declared his independence from the Byzantine Empire. Yet, none of
these troubles would compare to William
II of Sicily‘s (r. 1166–1189) invasion force of 300 ships and 80,000
men, arriving in 1185. Andronikos
mobilised a small fleet of 100 ships to defend the capital but other than that
he was indifferent to the populace. He was finally overthrown when Isaac
Angelos, surviving an imperial assassination attempt, seized power
with the aid of the people and had Andronikos killed.
The reign of Isaac II, and, still more, that of his brother Alexios
III, saw the collapse of what remained of the centralised machinery
of Byzantine government and defence. Although, the Normans were driven out of
Greece, in 1186 the Vlachs and
Bulgars began a rebellion that led to the formation of the Second
Bulgarian Empire. The internal policy of the Angeloi was
characterised by the squandering of the public treasure, and fiscal
maladministration. Imperial authority was severely weakened, and the growing
power vacuum at the center of the Empire encouraged fragmentation. There is
evidence that some Komnenian heirs had set up a semi-independent state in Trebizond before
1204. According to Alexander
Vasiliev, “the dynasty of the Angeloi, Greek in its origin, …
accelerated the ruin of the Empire, already weakened without and disunited
within.”
Fourth Crusade
The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople, by Eugène
Delacroix (1840).
In 1198, Pope
Innocent III broached the
subject of a new crusade through legates and encyclical
letters.The stated intent of the crusade was to conquer Egypt,
now the centre of Muslim power in the Levant.
The crusader army that arrived at Venice in
the summer of 1202 was somewhat smaller than had been anticipated, and there
were not sufficient funds to pay the Venetians, whose fleet was hired by the
crusaders to take them to Egypt. Venetian policy under the ageing and blind but
still ambitious Doge Enrico
Dandolo was potentially at
variance with that of the Pope and the crusaders, because Venice was closely
related commercially with Egypt.
The crusaders accepted the suggestion that in lieu of payment they assist the
Venetians in the capture of the (Christian) port of Zara in
Dalmatia (vassal city of Venice, which had rebelled and placed itself under
Hungary’s protection in 1186). The
city fell in November 1202 after a briefsiege. Innocent,
who was informed of the plan but his veto disregarded, was reluctant to
jeopardise the Crusade, and gave conditional absolution to the crusaders—not,
however, to the Venetians.
Map to show the partition of the empire following the Fourth
Crusade, c. 1204.
After the death of Theobald
III, Count of Champagne, the leadership of the Crusade passed to Boniface
of Montferrat, a friend of the HohenstaufenPhilip
of Swabia. Both Boniface and Philip had married into the Byzantine
Imperial family. In fact, Philip’s brother-in-law, Alexios
Angelos, son of the deposed and blinded Emperor Isaac II Angelos, had
appeared in Europe seeking aid and had made contacts with the crusaders.Alexios
offered to reunite the Byzantine church with Rome, pay the crusaders 200,000
silver marks, join the crusade and provide all the supplies they needed to get
to Egypt. Innocent was aware of a
plan to divert the Crusade to Constantinople and forbade any attack on the city,
but the papal letter arrived after the fleets had left Zara.
Crusader sack of Constantinople (1204)
The crusaders arrived at the city in the summer of 1203 and quickly attacked,
started a major fire that damaged large parts of the city, and seized control of
it (first of two times). Alexios III fled from the capital, and Alexios Angelos
was elevated to the throne as Alexios IV along with his blind father Isaac.
However, Alexios IV and Isaac II were unable to keep their promises and were
deposed by Alexios V. Eventually, the crusaders took the city a second time on
13 April 1204 and Constantinople was subjected to pillage and massacre by the
rank and file for three days.
Many priceless icons, relics, and other objects later turned up in Western
Europe, a large number in Venice. According to Choniates, a prostitute was even
set up on the Patriarchal throne.[144] When
Innocent III heard of the conduct of his crusaders, he castigated them in no
uncertain terms. But the situation was beyond his control, especially after his
legate, on his own initiative, had absolved the crusaders from their vow to
proceed to the Holy Land.
When order had been restored, the crusaders and the Venetians proceeded to
implement their agreement; Baldwin
of Flanders was elected Emperor and
the Venetian Thomas
Morosini chosen as
Patriarch. The lands divided up among the leaders included most of the former
Byzantine possessions, however resistance would continue through the Byzantine
remnants of the Nicaea, Trebizond,
and Epirus.
Fall
Empire in exile
After the sack of Constantinople in 1204 by Latin crusaders, two Byzantine
successor states were established: the Empire of Nicaea, and the Despotate of
Epirus. A third one, the Empire of Trebizond was created a few weeks before the
sack of Constantinople by Alexios
I of Trebizond. Of these three successor states, Epirus and Nicaea
stood the best chance of reclaiming Constantinople. The Nicaean Empire
struggled, however, to survive the next few decades, and by the mid-13th century
it lost much of southern Anatolia.
The weakening of the Sultanate
of Rûm following the Mongol
Invasion in 1242–43 allowed
many beyliks and ghazis to
set up their own principalities in Anatolia, weakening the Byzantine hold on
Asia Minor. In time, one of the Beys, Osman
I, created an empire that would eventually conquer Constantinople.
However, the Mongol Invasion also gave Nicaea a temporary respite from Seljuk
attacks allowing it to concentrate on the Latin Empire only north of its
position.
Reconquest of
Constantinople
The Byzantine Empire c. 1263.
The Empire of Nicaea, founded by the Laskarid
dynasty, managed to reclaim
Constantinople from the
Latins in 1261 and defeat Epirus. This led to a short-lived revival of Byzantine
fortunes under Michael
VIII Palaiologos, but the war-ravaged Empire was ill-equipped to deal
with the enemies that now surrounded it. To maintain his campaigns against the
Latins, Michael pulled troops from Asia Minor, and levied crippling taxes on the
peasantry, causing much resentment. Massive
construction projects were completed in Constantinople to repair the damages of
the Fourth Crusade, but none of these initiatives was of any comfort to the
farmers in Asia Minor, suffering raids from Muslim ghazis.
Rather than holding on to his possessions in Asia Minor, Michael chose to expand
the Empire, gaining only short-term success. To avoid another sacking of the
capital by the Latins, he forced the Church to submit to Rome, again a temporary
solution for which the peasantry hated Michael and Constantinople. The
efforts of Andronikos
II and later his grandsonAndronikos
III marked Byzantium’s
last genuine attempts in restoring the glory of the Empire. However, the use of
mercenaries by Andronikos II would often backfire, with the Catalan
Company ravaging the
countryside and increasing resentment towards Constantinople.
Rise of the Ottomans and fall of Constantinople
The siege
of Constantinople in
1453 according to a 15th-century French miniature.
Things went worse for Byzantium during the civil wars that followed after
Andronikos III died. A six-year
long civil war devastated
the empire, allowing the Serbian ruler Stefan
IV Dushan (r. 1331–1346)
to overrun most of the Empire’s remaining territory and establish a short-lived
“Serbian
Empire“. In 1354, an earthquake at Gallipoli devastated
the fort, allowing the Ottomans (who
were hired as mercenaries during the civil war by John
VI Kantakouzenos) to establish themselves in Europe. By
the time the Byzantine civil wars had ended, the Ottomans had defeated the
Serbians and subjugated them as vassals. Following the Battle
of Kosovo, much of the Balkans became dominated by the Ottomans.[151]
The Eastern Mediterranean just before the fall of Constantinople.
The Byzantine emperors appealed to the West for help, but the Pope would only
consider sending aid in return for a reunion of the Eastern Orthodox Church with
the See of Rome. Church unity was considered, and occasionally accomplished by
imperial decree, but the Orthodox citizenry and clergy intensely resented the
authority of Rome and the Latin
Rite.[152] Some
Western troops arrived to bolster the Christian defence of Constantinople, but
most Western rulers, distracted by their own affairs, did nothing as the
Ottomans picked apart the remaining Byzantine territories.[153]
Constantinople by this stage was underpopulated and dilapidated. The population
of the city had collapsed so severely that it was now little more than a cluster
of villages separated by fields. On 2 April 1453, Sultan
Mehmed‘s army of some 80,000 men and large numbers of irregulars laid
siege to the city.[154]
Despite a desperate last-ditch defence of the city by the massively outnumbered
Christian forces (c. 7,000 men, 2,000 of whom were foreign),[153]Constantinople
finally fell to the Ottomans after a two-month siege on 29 May 1453. The last
Byzantine Emperor, Constantine
XI Palaiologos, was last seen casting off his imperial regalia and
throwing himself into hand-to-hand combat after the walls of the city were
taken.[155]
Political aftermath
By the time of the fall of Constantinople, the only remaining territory of the
Byzantine Empire was the Despotate
of the Morea (Peloponnese),
which was ruled by brothers of the last Emperor, Thomas
Palaiologos and Demetrios
Palaiologos. The Despotate continued on as an independent state by
paying an annual tribute to the Ottomans. Incompetent rule, failure to pay the
annual tribute and a revolt against the Ottomans finally led to Mehmed II’s
invasion of Morea in May 1460. Demetrios asked the Ottomans to invade and drive
Thomas out. Thomas fled. The Ottomans moved through the Morea and conquered
virtually the entire Despotate by the summer. Demetrios thought the Morea would
be restored to him to rule, but it was incorporated into the Ottoman fold.
A few holdouts remained for a time. The island of Monemvasia refused
to surrender and it was first ruled for a short time by a Catalan corsair. When
the population drove him out they obtained the consent of Thomas to place
themselves under the Pope’s protection before the end of 1460. The Mani
Peninsula, on the Morea’s south end, resisted under a loose coalition
of the local clans and then that area came under Venice’s rule. The very last
holdout was Salmeniko,
in the Morea’s northwest. Graitzas
Palaiologos was the
military commander there, stationed at Salmeniko
Castle. While the town eventually surrendered, Graitzas and his
garrison and some town residents held out in the castle until July 1461, when
they escaped and reached Venetian territory.
The Empire of Trebizond, which had split away from the Byzantine Empire just
weeks before Constantinople was taken by the Crusaders in 1204, became the last
remnant and last de facto successor state to the Byzantine Empire. Efforts by
the Emperor David to recruit European powers for an anti-Ottoman crusade
provoked war between the Ottomans and Trebizond in the summer of 1461. After a
month long siege, David surrendered the city of Trebizond on 14 August 1461.
With the fall of Trebizond, the last remnant of the Roman Empire was
extinguished.
The nephew of the last Emperor, Constantine XI, Andreas
Palaiologos claimed to
have inherited the title of Byzantine
Emperor. He lived in the Morea until its fall in 1460, then escaped
to Rome where he lived under the protection of the Papal
States for the remainder
of his life. Since the office of emperor had never been technically hereditary,
Andreas’ claim would have been without merit under Byzantine law. However, the
Empire had vanished, and Western states generally followed the Roman church
sanctioned principles of hereditary sovereignty. Seeking a life in the west,
Andreas styled himself Imperator
Constantinopolitanus (“Emperor of
Constantinople”), and sold his succession rights to both Charles
VIII of France and the Catholic
Monarchs. However, no one ever invoked the title after Andreas’s
death.
Mehmed II and his successors continued to consider themselves heirs to the Roman
Empire until the
demise of the Ottoman Empire in
the early 20th century. They considered that they had simply shifted its
religious basis as Constantine had done before. Meanwhile, the Danubian
Principalities (whose
rulers also considered themselves the heirs of the Eastern Roman Emperors[157])
harboured Orthodox refugees, including some Byzantine nobles.
At his death, the role of the emperor as a patron of Eastern Orthodoxy was
claimed by Ivan
III, Grand
duke of Muscovy.
He had married Andreas’ sister, Sophia
Paleologue, whose grandson, Ivan
IV, would become the first Tsar of
Russia (tsar, or czar,
meaning caesar, is a term
traditionally applied by Slavs to the Byzantine Emperors). Their successors
supported the idea that Moscow was the proper heir to Rome and Constantinople.
The idea of the Russian
Empire as the successive Third
Rome was kept alive until
its demise with the Russian
Revolution.
Culture
Economy
The Byzantine economy was among the most advanced in Europe and
the Mediterranean for
many centuries. Europe, in particular, was unable to match Byzantine economic
strength until late in the Middle
Ages. Constantinople was
a prime hub in a trading network that at various times extended across nearly
all of Eurasia andNorth
Africa, in particular being the primary western terminus of the
famous Silk
Road. Until the first half of the 6th century and in sharp contrast
with the decaying West, Byzantine economy was flourishing and resilient.
The Plague
of Justinian and the Arab
conquests would represent
a substantial reversal of fortunes contributing to a period of stagnation and decline.
Isaurian reforms and, in particular, Constantine
V‘s repopulation, public works and tax measures, marked the beginning
of a revival that continued until 1204, despite territorial contraction.[160] From
the 10th century until the end of the 12th, the Byzantine Empire projected an
image of luxury and travellers were impressed by the wealth accumulated in the
capital.[161]
The Fourth
Crusade resulted in the
disruption of Byzantine manufacturing and the commercial dominance of the
Western Europeans in the eastern
Mediterranean, events that amounted to an economic catastrophe for
the Empire. The Palaiologoi tried
to revive the economy, but the late Byzantine state would not gain full control
of either the foreign or domestic economic forces. Gradually, it also lost its
influence on the modalities of trade and the price mechanisms, and its control
over the outflow of precious metals and, according to some scholars, even over
the minting of coins.
One of the economic foundations of Byzantium was trade, fostered by the maritime
character of the Empire. Textiles must have been by far the most important item
of export; silks were certainly imported into Egypt, and appeared also in
Bulgaria, and the West. The state
strictly controlled both the internal and the international trade, and retained
the monopoly of issuing coinage,
maintaining a durable and flexible monetary system adaptable to trade needs.
The government exercised formal control over interest rates, and set the
parameters for the activity of the guilds and
corporations, in which it had a special interest. The emperor and his officials
intervened at times of crisis to ensure the provisioning of the capital, and to
keep down the price of cereals. Finally, the government often collected part of
the surplus through taxation, and put it back into circulation, through
redistribution in the form of salaries to state officials, or in the form of
investment in public works.
Science, medicine, law
The frontispiece of the Vienna
Dioscurides, which shows a set of seven famous
physicians.
The writings of Classical
antiquity never ceased to
be cultivated in Byzantium. Therefore, Byzantine science was in every period
closely connected with ancient
philosophy, and metaphysics. Although
at various times the Byzantines made magnificent achievements in the application
of thesciences (notably
in the construction of the Hagia
Sophia), after the 6th century Byzantine scholars made few novel
contributions to science in terms of developing new theories or extending the
ideas of classical authors.
Scholarship particularly lagged during the dark years of plague and
the Arab conquests, but then during the so-called Byzantine
Renaissance at the end of the
first millennium Byzantine scholars re-asserted themselves becoming experts in
the scientific developments of the Arabs and Persians, particularly in astronomy and mathematics. The
Byzantines are also credited with several
technological advancements, particularly in architecture (e.g. the
pendentive dome) and warfare technology (e.g. Greek
fire).
In the final century of the Empire, Byzantine grammarians were those principally
responsible for carrying, in person and in writing, ancient Greek grammatical
and literary studies to early Renaissance
Italy. During this period, astronomy and
other mathematical
sciences were taught in
Trebizond; medicine attracted the interest of almost all scholars.
In the field of law, Justinian
I‘s reforms had a clear effect on the evolution of jurisprudence,
and Leo III’s Ecloga influenced
the formation of legal institutions in the Slavic world. In
the 10th century, Leo
VI the Wise achieved the
complete codification of the whole of Byzantine law in Greek, which became the
foundation of all subsequent Byzantine law, generating interest to the present
day.
Religion
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 imperial role in the affairs of the Church never developed into a fixed,
legally defined system. With the
decline of Rome, and internal dissension in the other Eastern Patriarchates, the
Church of Constantinople became, between the 6th and 11th centuries, the richest
and most influential center of Christendom. Even
when the Empire was reduced to only a shadow of its former self, the Church
continued to exercise significant influence both inside and outside of the
imperial frontiers. As George
Ostrogorsky points out:
The Patriarchate
of Constantinople remained
the center of the Orthodox world, with subordinate metropolitan
sees and
archbishoprics in the territory of Asia Minor and the Balkans, now lost to
Byzantium, as well as in Caucasus,
Russia and Lithuania.
The Church remained the most stable element in the Byzantine Empire.
The official state Christian doctrine was determined by the first
seven ecumenical councils, and it was then the emperor’s duty to
impose it to his subjects. An imperial decree of 388, which was later
incorporated into the Codex
Justinianus, orders the population of the Empire “to assume the name of
Catholic Christians”, and regards all those who will not abide by the law as
“mad and foolish persons”; as followers of “heretical dogmas”.
Despite imperial decrees and the stringent stance of the state
church itself, which came
to be known as the Eastern
Orthodox Church or Eastern
Christianity, the latter never represented all Christians in
Byzantium. Mango believes that, in the early stages of the Empire, the “mad and
foolish persons”, those labelled “heretics”
by the state church, were the majority of the population.Besides the pagans,
who existed until the end of the 6th century, and the Jews,
there were many followers – sometimes even emperors – of various Christian
doctrines, such as Nestorianism,Monophysitism, Arianism,
and Paulicianism,
whose teachings were in some opposition to the main theological doctrine, as
determined by the Ecumenical Councils.
Another division among Christians occurred, when Leo III ordered the destruction
of icons throughout the Empire. This led to a significant
religious crisis, which ended in mid-9th century with the restoration
of icons. During the same period, a new wave of pagans emerged in the Balkans,
originating mainly from Slavic people. These were gradually Christianised,
and by Byzantium’s late stages, Eastern Orthodoxy represented most Christians
and, in general, most people in what remained of the Empire.
Jews were a significant minority in the Byzantine state throughout its history,
and, according to Roman law, they constituted a legally recognised religious
group. In the early Byzantine period they were generally tolerated, but then
periods of tensions and persecutions ensued. In any case, after the Arab
conquests, the majority of Jews found themselves outside the Empire; those left
inside the Byzantine borders apparently lived in relative peace from the 10th
century onwards.
Art and literature
Miniatures of the 6th-century Rabula
Gospeldisplay the more abstract and symbolic nature of
Byzantine art.
Surviving Byzantine art is mostly religious and with exceptions at certain
periods is highly conventionalized, following traditional models that translate
carefully controlled church theology into artistic terms. Painting in fresco, illuminated
manuscripts and on wood
panel and, especially in earlier periods, mosaic were
the main media, and figurative sculpture very
rare except for small carved
ivories. Manuscript painting preserved to the end some of the
classical realist tradition that was missing in larger works.Byzantine art was
highly prestigious and sought-after in Western Europe, where it maintained a
continuous influence on medieval
art until near the end of
the period. This was especially so in Italy, where Byzantine styles persisted in
modified form through the 12th century, and became formative influences on Italian
Renaissance art. But few
incoming influences affected Byzantine style. By means of the expansion of the
Eastern Orthodox church, Byzantine forms and styles spread to all the Orthodox
world and beyond. Influences from
Byzantine architecture, particularly in religious buildings, can be found in
diverse regions from Egypt and Arabia to Russia and Romania.
In Byzantine literature, therefore, four different cultural elements must be
reckoned with: the Greek,
the Christian, the Roman,
and the Oriental. Byzantine literature is often classified in five groups:
historians and annalists, encyclopaedists (Patriarch Photios, Michael
Psellus, and Michael
Choniates are regarded as
the greatest encyclopaedists of Byzantium) and essayists, and writers of secular
poetry (The only genuine heroic epic of the Byzantines is the Digenis
Acritas). The remaining two groups include the new literary
species: ecclesiastical and theological literature, and popular poetry.
Of the approximately two to three thousand volumes of Byzantine literature that
survive, only three hundred and thirty consist of secular poetry, history,
science and pseudo-science. While the
most flourishing period of the secular literature of Byzantium runs from the 9th
to the 12th century, its religious literature (sermons, liturgical
books and poetry,
theology, devotional treatises etc.) developed much earlier with Romanos
the Melodist being its
most prominent representative.
Legacy
King David in
robes of a Byzantine emperor. Miniature from the Paris
Psalter.
Byzantium has been often identified with absolutism, orthodox spirituality,
orientalism and exoticism, while the terms “Byzantine” and “Byzantinism” have
been used as bywords for decadence, complex bureaucracy, and repression. In the
countries of Central and
Southeast Europe that exited theEastern
Bloc in late 80s and early
90s, the assessment of Byzantine civilisation and its legacy was strongly
negative due to their connection with an alleged “Eastern authoritarianism and
autocracy.” Both Eastern and Western European authors have often perceived
Byzantium as a body of religious, political, and philosophical ideas contrary to
those of the West. Even in 19th-century
Greece, the focus was mainly on the classical past, while Byzantine
tradition had been associated with negative connotations.
This traditional approach towards Byzantium has been partially or wholly
disputed and revised by modern studies, which focus on the positive aspects of
Byzantine culture and legacy. Averil
Cameron regards as
undeniable the Byzantine contribution to the formation of the medieval Europe,
and both Cameron and Obolensky recognise the major role of Byzantium in shaping
Orthodoxy, which in turn occupies a central position in the history and
societies of Greece, Bulgaria, Russia, Serbia and other countries. The
Byzantines also preserved and copied classical manuscripts, and they are thus
regarded as transmitters of the classical knowledge, as important contributors
to the modern European civilisation, and as precursors of both the Renaissance
humanism and the Slav
Orthodox culture.
As the only stable long-term state in Europe during the Middle Ages, Byzantium
isolated Western Europe from newly emerging forces to the East. Constantly under
attack, it distanced Western Europe from Persians, Arabs, Seljuk Turks, and for
a time, the Ottomans. From a different perspective, since the 7th century, the
evolution and constant reshaping of the Byzantine state were directly related to
the respective progress of Islam.
Following the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453, Sultan Mehmed
II took the title “Kaysar-i-Rûm”
(the Turkish equivalent of Caesar of Rome), since he was determined to make the
Ottoman Empire the heir of the Eastern Roman Empire. According
to Cameron, regarding themselves as “heirs” of Byzantium, the Ottomans preserved
important aspects of its tradition, which in turn facilitated an “Orthodox
revival” during the post-communist period
of the Eastern European states.
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