The Byzantine Empire

The Byzantine Empire was the continuation of the Roman Empire in the Greek-speaking, eastern part of the Mediterranean. Christian in nature, it was perennially at war with Muslims. Flourishing during the reign of the Macedonian emperors, its demise was the consequence of attacks by Seljuk Turks, crusaders, and Ottoman Turks.

Byzantium was the name of a small but important town at the Bosphorus Strait, a channel that connects the Sea of Marmara and the Aegean Sea to the Black Sea and separates the continents of Europe and Asia. In Greek times, the town was at the frontier between the Greek and Persian worlds. In the fourth century B.C., Alexander the Great made both worlds part of his Hellenistic universe. Later, Byzantium became a town of growing importance within the Roman Empire.

By the third century A.D., the Romans had many thousands of miles of border to defend. Growing pressure caused a crisis, especially in the Danube and Balkan area, where the Goths violated Rome’s borders. In the East, the Sasanian Persians transgressed the frontiers along the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers. The emperor Constantine the Great (who reigned from 306-337 A.D.) was one of the first to realize the impossibility of managing the far-flung empire’s problems from the capital of Rome.

Constantinople

In 330 A.D., Emperor Constantine decided to make Byzantium, which he had re-founded a couple of years before and named after himself, his new residence. Constantinople lay halfway between the Balkan area and the Euphrates River, and not too far from the immense wealth and manpower of Asia Minor — the vital part of the empire.

“Byzantium” was to become the name for the Eastern Roman Empire. After the death of Constantine, in an attempt to overcome the growing military and administrative problem, the Roman Empire divided into eastern and western sections. The western part is considered as definitely finished by the year 476 A.D., when its last ruler was dethroned. The eastern Byzantine Empire, in contrast, would continue for another millennium.  

Christianity

In the course of the fourth century, the Roman world became increasingly Christian, and the Byzantine Empire was certainly a Christian state. It was the first empire in the world to be founded not only on worldly power, but also on the authority of the Church. Paganism, however, stayed an important source of inspiration for many people during the first centuries of the Byzantine Empire.

When Christianity became organized, the Church was led by five patriarchs who resided in Alexandria, Jerusalem, Antioch, Constantinople, and Rome. The Council of Chalcedon (451) decided that the patriarch of Constantinople was to be the second in the priestly hierarchy. Only the pope in Rome was his superior. After the Great Schism of 1054, the eastern (Orthodox) church separated from the western (Roman Catholic) church. The center of influence for the Orthodox churches later shifted to Moscow.  

Cultural Life

The historian Edward Gibbon helped give the Byzantine Empire a reputation of stagnation, great luxury and corruption. What we definitely know is that the emperors in Constantinople presided over a court life that was ruled by a very formal hierarchy. There were all kinds of political maneuvers between factions. However, the image of a luxury-addicted, conspiring, decadent court with treacherous empresses and an inert state system is historically inaccurate. On the contrary: for its age, the Byzantine Empire was quite modern. Its tax system and administration were so efficient that the empire survived more than a thousand years.

The culture of Byzantium was rich and affluent, while science and technology also flourished. Very important for us, nowadays, was the Byzantine tradition of rhetoric and public debate. Philosophical and theological discourses were important in public life, with even emperors taking part in them. The debates kept knowledge and admiration for Greek philosophical and scientific heritage alive. Byzantine intellectuals quoted their classical predecessors with great respect, even though they had not been Christians. And although it was the Byzantine emperor Justinian who closed Plato’s famous Academy of Athens in 529, the Byzantines are also responsible for passing on much of the Greek legacy to Muslims, who later helped Europe explore this knowledge again and transition from the Middles Ages into the European Renaissance.  

Justinian

Byzantine history begins with the founding of Constantinople as the imperial residence on 11 May 330 A.D. and ends on 29 May 1453 when the Ottoman sultan Mehmet II conquered the city. Generally, the history of the Empire is divided into three periods: its early period under emperors such as Justinian; its middle period of great cultural prosperity under the Macedonian dynasty; and finally, the eventual period of crisis and decline in its later years.

The first of these, from 330 until 867, saw the creation of a powerful empire. During the reign of Justinian (527-565), a last attempt was made to reconquer provinces of the former Roman Empire under one ruler, the one in Constantinople. This plan largely succeeded: the wealthy provinces in Italy and Africa were reconquered, Libya was rejuvenated, and money bought sufficient diplomatic influence in the realms of the Frankish rulers in Gaul and the Visigoth dynasty in Spain. The rebounding unity was celebrated with the construction of the church of Holy Wisdom, Hagia Sophia, in Constantinople. The price for the reunion, however, was high. Justinian had to pay off the Sasanian Persians and had to deal with firm resistance, such as in Italy.

Under Justinian, the lawyer Tribonian (500-547) created the famous Corpus Iuris. The Code of Justinian, a compilation of all the imperial laws, was published in 529; soon the Institutions (a handbook) and the Digests (fifty books of jurisprudence) were added. The project was completed with some additional laws: the Novellae.  

After Justinian, the Byzantine and Sasanian empires suffered heavy losses in a terrible war. The troops of the Persian king Khusrau II captured Antioch and Damascus, stole the True Cross from Jerusalem, occupied Alexandria, and even reached the Bosphorus Strait. In the end, the Byzantine armies were victorious under the emperor Heraclius.

However, the empire was weakened and soon lost Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Cyrenaica, and Africa to the Islamic Arabs. For a moment, Syracuse, in Sicily, served as the imperial residence.  At the same time, the Lombards conquered parts of Italy, while Bulgars settled south of the Danube River. The ultimate humiliation took place in 800, when the leader of the Frankish barbarians in the West, Charlemagne, preposterously claimed that he, and not the ruler in Constantinople, was the Christian emperor.  

The Macedonian Dynasty

In the second period of Byzantine history, the empire reached its peak. This second period fell during the Macedonian dynasty (867-1057). After an age of contraction, the empire expanded again and in the end, almost every Christian city in the East was within the empire’s borders. On the other hand, wealthy Egypt and large parts of Syria were forever lost, and Jerusalem was not reconquered.

In 1014 the mighty Bulgarian Empire, which had once been a very serious threat to the Byzantine state, was finally overcome after a bloody war, becoming part of Byzantium. The victorious emperor, Basilius II, was surnamed Boulgaroktonos, “slayer of Bulgars.” The northern border was now finally secured and the empire flourished.

Throughout this whole period the Byzantine currency was the leading currency in the Mediterranean world. It was a stable currency ever since the founding of Constantinople.

Constantinople was the city where people of every religion and nationality lived next to one another, all in their own quarters and with their own social structures. Taxes for foreign traders were just the same as for the inhabitants. This was unique in the world of the middle ages.  

Crisis

Despite these favorable conditions, Italian cities like Venice and Amalfi gradually gained influence and became serious competitors in the Mediterranean. Trade in the Byzantine world was no longer the monopoly of the Byzantines themselves. Fuel was added to these trade conflicts when the pope and patriarch of Constantinople went separate ways in 1054 during the Great Schism. Another problem was the rise of Byzantine aristocratic families, which were usually unwilling to submit their private interest to the interest of the commonwealth.

Decay became inevitable after the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. The Byzantine army, under Emperor Romanus IV Diogenes, was beaten by an army of Seljuk Turks commanded by Alp Arslan (“the Lion”). Romanus was probably betrayed by one of his own generals and by his nephew.

After the battle, the Byzantine Empire lost Antioch, Aleppo, and Manzikert, and within years, the Turks took over the whole of Asia Minor. From then on, the empire suffered from lack of manpower. In this crisis, a new dynasty, the Comnenes, came to power. To obtain new Frankish mercenaries, who had fought at Manzikert, Emperor Alexius sent a request for help to Pope Urban II, who responded by summoning the western world for the first of the Crusades. The western warriors swore loyalty to the emperor and reconquered parts of Anatolia for Byzantium, but they also kept Antioch, Edessa, and the Holy Land for themselves.  

Decline and Fall

For the Byzantines, it was increasingly difficult to contain the westerners. They were not only fanatic warriors, but also shrewd traders. In the twelfth century, the Byzantines created a system of diplomacy with towns like Venice that secured trade by offering favorable positions to merchants of friendly cities.

Soon, the Italians were everywhere, and they were not always willing to accept that the Byzantines had a different faith. In the age of the Crusades, the Greek Orthodox Church became a target of violence too. Crusaders plundered Constantinople in 1204. Much of the loot can still be seen in the church of San Marco in Venice. 

When the Crusaders captured and ransacked Constantinople in 1204, they also established the Latin Empire of Constantinople, which was a feudal Crusader state that lasted until 1261. This new “empire” was intended to replace the Byzantine Empire under control of the West, with a Western Roman Catholic emperor ruling in place of the Eastern Roman emperors. For more than half a century, the empire was ruled by monarchs from the West, but they never succeeded in gaining full control. Local rulers continued the Byzantine traditions, like the “emperors” of the Anatolian mini-states and the Palaiologos dynasty that ruled Nicaea.

The Seljuk Turks initially benefited from the division of the Byzantine Empire. Their defeat, however, in 1243, in a war against the Mongols weakened them, preventing the Seljuk Turks from taking control of Nicaea and Trapezus. Small Turkish principalities were established in Anatolia, and from one of these territories would rise Osman I, the founder of the Ottoman Empire.

The Palaiologoi managed to recapture Constantinople in 1261, but the Byzantine Empire was now steadily in decline. It continuously lost territory, population, and power. The capital was dilapidated and in disrepair. In 1453, Mehmet II saw his chance and laid siege. Within two months, the Ottoman Empire (which had replaced the Seljuk Turks) had conquered Constantinople, effectively ending the Byzantine Empire.

Artistic Legacy

After the Ottoman take-over, many Byzantine artists and scholars fled to the west, taking with them precious manuscripts. They were not the first ones. Already in the fourteenth century, Byzantine artisans, abandoning the declining cultural life of Constantinople, had found ready employment in Italy. Their work was greatly appreciated, and western artists were ready to copy their style. One of the most striking examples of Byzantine influence can be seen in the works of the painter Giotto, one of the most important Italian artists of the early Renaissance.