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Image:Roman Empire about 395.jpg Map of the Roman Empire ca. 395, showing the dioceses and praetorian prefectures of Gaul, Italy, Illyricum and Oriens (east), roughly analogous to the four Tetrarchs' zones of influence after Diocletian's reforms. The Byzantine Empire (native Greek name: Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων - Basileia tōn Rōmaiōn) is the term conventionally used since the 19th century to describe the Greek-speaking Roman Empire of the Middle Ages, centered around its capital of Constantinople. In certain specific contexts, usually referring to the time before the fall of the Western Roman Empire, it is also often referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire. During much of its history it was known to many of its Western contemporaries as the Empire of the Greeks because of the dominance of Greek language, culture and population.[1] To its inhabitants, the Empire was simply the Roman Empire and its emperors continued the unbroken succession of Roman emperors. In the Islamic world it was known primarily as روم (Rūm).
Others make the change during the reign of Theodosius I (379–395) and Christianity's official supplanting of the pagan Roman religion, or, following his death in 395, when the political division between East and West became permanent. Others place it yet later in 476, when Romulus Augustus, the last western Emperor, was forced to abdicate by his generalissimo Odoacer, thus leaving sole imperial authority with the emperor in the Greek East. Others point to the reorganisation of the empire in the time of Heraclius (ca. 620) when Latin titles and usages were officially replaced with Greek versions.[2] In any case, the changeover was gradual and by 330, when Constantine inaugurated his new capital, the process of Hellenization and increasing Christianization was already under way. The Empire is generally considered to have ended after the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, although Greek rule continued over areas of the Empire's territory for several more years, until the fall of Mystras in 1460 and Trebizond in 1461.
Name of the Byzantine Empire
The term 'Byzantine' was introduced in the English-speaking world by Sir George Finlay in 1851, in his History of Greece, from its Conquest by the Crusaders to its Conquest by the Turks. Standardization of the term began gradually in the 18th century, when French authors such as Montesquieu began to popularize it. OriginPartition of the Roman EmpireDuring the second and third centuries, the city of Rome became less important as an administrative centre for the Roman Empire. Simultaneously, provincial cities and regions became more important. Caracalla's decree in 212, the Constitutio Antoniniana, extended citizenship outside Italy to all free adult males in the entire Roman Empire, effectively raising provincial populations to equal status with the city of Rome itself. After the mid 3rd century, Emperors spent little time in the capital, instead focusing on the contested northern frontiers or the rich cities in the Greek East. As administering the entire Empire from Rome became increasingly difficult, it was divided in the late 3rd century. The Tetrarchy, established by Diocletian in 286, split the Empire in half, with two emperors (Augusti) ruling from Italy and Greece, each having as co-emperor a younger colleague of their own (Caesares). After Diocletian's voluntary abdication, the Tetrarchic system soon began to crumble: the division continued in some form into the 4th century until 324 when Constantine the Great defeated his last rival and became the sole emperor. Constantine the GreatConstantine made two momentous and far-reaching decisions; one being his decision to found a new capital city on the site of Byzantium and the other being his sponsorship of Christianity. Byzantium was well-positioned astride the trade routes between East and West; it was a superb base from which to guard the crucial Danubian provinces and was reasonably close to the Eastern frontiers. Constantine had experienced its potential as a fortress firsthand when it held out as the last pocket of resistance during his successful war against his Eastern rival Licinius (324). Constantine also recognized that the Eastern Empire, especially Asia Minor, was wealthier and more culturally homogenous than the West. In 330, Nova Roma was officially founded very near the location of Byzantium (which subsequently disappeared). However the populace commonly called it Constantinople (in Greek, Κωνσταντινούπολις, Kōnstantinoupolis, meaning Constantine's City). Constantine began the building of the great fortified walls that were perhaps the most striking feature of the city. These walls, expanded and rebuilt in subsequent ages, combined with the fortified harbor and fleet, made Constantinople a virtually impregnable fortress, and certainly the most important fortified city in the early Middle Ages. On several occasions in the centuries to come, the impregnability of Constantinople arguably was decisive in ensuring not only the continued existence of Roman/Byzantine power, but also that of Christendom as a whole. Image:Constantine Musei Capitolini.jpg Constantine I. The new capital became the center of Constantine's administration. He deprived the single praetorian prefect of his civil functions, introducing regional prefects with civil authority. During the 4th century, four great "regional prefectures" were also created. Constantine is generally considered to be the first Christian emperor, although the precise nature of his religious beliefs is not an easy matter to discern. Tradition holds that he received a vision from the Christian God at the Battle of Milvian Bridge in 312 promising him victory with the adaptation of the labarum as his insignia. For some time after the battle, imperial proclamations did not make explicit reference to Christianity, and public works such as the Arch of Constantine display no trace of Christian imagery. Eusebius records that, as was customary among Christian converts at the time, Constantine delayed receiving baptism until shortly before his death. Whatever the actual case may be, there is no question that after 312 Constantine began to shower favors on Christianity; the religion, which had been persecuted under Diocletian, became legally permitted and steadily increased in public influence as years passed, apart from a short-lived return to pagan predominance under Julian. Christianity would become one of the defining characteristics of the Byzantine Empire, as opposed to the pagan Roman Empire. Constantine also introduced a new stable gold coin, the solidus, which was to become the standard coin for centuries, and not only in the Byzantine Empire. After Emperor Jovian was asphyxiated while hurrying to Constantinople in 364, Valentinian was crowned emperor. He felt that he needed help to govern the large and troublesome empire, and, on March 28 of that year appointed his brother Valens as co-emperor in the palace of Hebdomon. Valens took the eastern half of the Balkan peninsula, Greece, Egypt, Syria and Asia Minor as far east as Persia. Image:Byzantium395AD2lightpurple.PNG The Roman Empire, c.395 AD. Valens' reign ended in 378 with one of the defining moments in the history of the Empire, when he and the best of the remaining Roman legions were slaughtered by the Visigoths at the Battle of Adrianople. This defeat has been proposed by some authorities as one possible date for dividing the ancient and medieval worlds, as it demonstrated the obsolescence of the infantry-dominated Roman military machine and the rise of cavalry, which was to dominate the Middle Ages. The Empire was divided further by Valens' successor Theodosius I (also called "the Great"), who had ruled both parts since 392. Following the dynastic principle well established by Constantine, in 395 Theodosius gave the two halves to his two sons Arcadius and Honorius. Arcadius became ruler of the eastern half, with his capital in Constantinople, and Honorius took the west, with his capital in Milan. Theodosius was the last emperor to rule both the eastern and western parts of the empire. Early historyImage:Leo I Louvre Ma1012.jpg Leo I of the Byzantine Empire (401 - 474, reigned 457 - 474). His successor, Marcian, refused to continue to pay this exorbitant sum. However, Attila had already diverted his attention to the Western Roman Empire. After he died in 453, the Hunnic Empire collapsed and Constantinople breathed again, even starting a profitable relationship with the remaining Huns, who would eventually fight as mercenaries in Byzantine armies. After the fall of Attila, the true chief in Constantinople was the Alan general Aspar. Leo I managed to free himself from the influence of the barbarian chief favouring the rise of the Isaurians, a semi-barbarian tribe living in Roman territory, in southern Anatolia. Aspar and his son Ardabur were murdered in a riot in 471, and henceforth, Constantinople was freed from the influence of barbarian leaders for centuries. Leo was also the first emperor to receive the crown not from a general or an officer, as evident in the Roman tradition, but from the hands of the Patriarch of Constantinople. This habit became mandatory as time passed, and in the Middle Ages, the religious characteristic of the coronation totally substituted the old military form. In 468, Leo unsuccessfully attempted to reconquer North Africa from the Vandals. By that time, the Western Roman Empire was restricted to Italy and the lands south of the Danube as far as the Balkans (Britain had been abandoned and was slowly being conquered by the Angles and Saxons, Spain had been overrun by the Visigoths and Suevi, the Vandals had taken Africa while Gaul was being contested by the Franks, Burgundians, Bretons, Visigoths and some Roman remnants). In 466, as a condition of his Isaurian alliance, Leo married his daughter Ariadne to the Isaurian Tarasicodissa, who took the name Zeno. When Leo died in 474, Zeno and Ariadne's younger son (Leo I's grandson) succeeded to the throne as Leo II, with Zeno acting as regent. When Leo II died later that year, Zeno became emperor. The end of the Western Empire is sometimes dated to 476, early in Zeno's reign, when the barbarian general Odoacer deposed the titular Western Emperor Romulus Augustus, but declined to replace him with another puppet. To recover Italy, Zeno could only negotiate with the Ostrogoths of Theodoric, who had been settled in Moesia. He sent the barbarian king to Italy as magister militum per Italiam ("commander in chief for Italy"). After the fall of Odoacer in 493, Theodoric, who had lived in Constantinople during his youth, ruled Italy on his own, maintaining a merely formal obedience to Zeno. He was the most powerful Germanic king of that age, but his successors were greatly inferior and their kingdom of Italy started to decline in the 530s. In 475, Zeno was deposed by a plot to elevate Basiliscus (the general who led Leo I's 468 invasion of North Africa) to the throne. Zeno recovered the throne twenty months later. However, he had to face the threat from his Isaurian former official Illo and the other Isaurian, Leontius, who was also elected rival emperor. Isaurian prominence ended when an aged civil officer of Roman origin, Anastasius I, became emperor in 491 and after a long war defeated them in 498. Anastasius revealed himself to be an energetic reformer and an able administrator. He perfected Constantine I's coinage system by definitively setting the weight of the copper follis, the coin used in most everyday transactions. He also reformed the tax system, and abolished the hated chrysargyron tax in a manner that ensured that it could never be revived. The State Treasury contained the enormous sum of 320,000 pounds of gold when he died. Age of Justinian IImage:Meister von San Vitale in Ravenna 003.jpg Justinian I depicted on one of the famous mosaics of the St. Vitale church in Ravenna. The reign of Justinian I, which began in 527, saw a period of Byzantine expansion into former Roman territories. The 6th century also saw the beginning of a long series of conflicts with the Byzantine Empire's traditional early enemies, such as the Sassanid Persians, Slavs and Bulgars. Theological debates, such as over the question of Monophysitism, also caused civil unrest. Justinian, the son of an Illyrian peasant, had perhaps already exerted effective control during the reign of his predecessor and uncle, Justin I (518–527). Justin I was a former officer in the imperial army who had been chief of the guards to Anastasius I, and had been proclaimed emperor (almost at the age of 70) after Anastasius' death. Justinian was later adopted as Justin's son. Justinian was determined to re-establish Roman rule over all of the Mediterranean world. Ruling with his influential wife, Theodora, a former courtesan, Justinian reformed the administration and the law, and with the help of brilliant generals such as Belisarius and Narses, he regained much of the lost Roman territories in the west, conquering much of Italy, North Africa, and a small area in southern Spain. In 532, attempting to secure his eastern frontier, Justinian signed a peace treaty with the Sassanid Shah Khosrau I agreeing to pay a large annual tribute to the Sassinids. The same year, the Nika riots erupted and lasted for one week in the capital. This was a most violent revolt, and nearly half of Constantinople was destroyed. The western conquests began in 533, as Justinian sent Belisarius to reclaim the former province of North Africa with a small army of 15,000 men, mainly mercenaries. An earlier expedition in 468 had been a failure, but this new venture was successful. The kingdom of the Vandals at Carthage lacked the strength of former times under King Gaiseric and the Vandals surrendered after few battles against Belisarius' forces. General Belisarius received a Roman triumph in Constantinople with the last Vandal king, Gelimer, as his prisoner. However, the reconquest of North Africa would take a few more years to stabilize. It was not until 548 that the major local independent tribes were subdued. In 535, Justinian I launched his most ambitious campaign, the reconquest of Italy. Italy was under the rule of the Ostrogoths. He dispatched an army to march overland from Dalmatia while the main contingent, again under the command of General Belisarius, went by sea to Sicily and easily conquered the island. The marches on the Italian mainland were initially victorious and the major cities, including Naples, Rome and the capital Ravenna, fell one after the other. The Goths were seemingly defeated and Belisarius returned to Constantinople in 541 with the Ostrogoth king Witiges as a prisoner in chains. Image:Byzantium5503lightblue.PNG Map of the Byzantine Empire around 550 However, the Ostrogoths and their supporters were soon reunited under the energetic command of Totila. The ensuing Gothic Wars were an exhausting series of sieges, battles and retreats that consumed almost all the Byzantine and Italian fiscal resources, impoverishing much of the peninsula. Belisarius was eventually recalled by Justinian, who had lost trust in his commander. At a certain point, the Byzantines seemed to be on the verge of losing all their reconquests. Having neglected to provide sufficient financial and logistical support to the desperate troops under Belisarius' former command, in the summer of 552 Justinian gathered a massive army of 35,000 men (mostly Asian and Germanic mercenaries) to contribute to the war effort. The astute and diplomatic eunuch Narses was chosen for the command. Totila was defeated and died at the Battle of Busta Gallorum. His successor, Teias, was likewise defeated at the Battle of Mons Lactarius (central Italy, October 552). Despite continuing resistance from a few Goth garrisons and two subsequent invasions by the Franks and Alamanni, the war for the Italian peninsula was at an end. Justinian's program of reconquest was further extended in 554 when a Byzantine army took advantage of a civil war to seize a small part of Spain from the Visigoths. All the main Mediterranean islands were also now under Byzantine control. Aside from these conquests, Justinian revised the ancient Roman legal code in the new Corpus Juris Civilis. Even though the laws were still written in Latin, the language itself was becoming archaic and poorly understood even by those who wrote the new code. Under Justinian's reign, the Church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople ("Holy Wisdom"), the most famous and important of the Empire, was rebuilt in the 530s, having been destroyed during the Nika riots. The 6th century was also a time of flourishing culture and even though Justinian closed the university at Athens, the Empire produced notable people such as the epic poet Nonnus, the lyric poet Paul the Silentiary, the historian Procopius and the natural philosopher John Philoponus, among others. Image:Theodora ravenna.jpg Empress Theodora and her retinue (mosaic from Basilica of San Vitale, 6th century). The conquests in the west meant that other parts of the Empire were left almost unguarded even though Justinian was a great builder of fortifications in Byzantine territories throughout his reign. Khosrau I had, as early as 540, broken his pact with Justinian and plundered Antiochia. The only way Justinian could forestall him was to increase the sum he paid to the Persians every year. The Balkans were subjected to repeated incursions from the Slavs, who had first crossed the imperial frontiers during the reign of Justin I. They took advantage of the sparsely deployed Byzantine troops and pressed on as far as the Gulf of Corinth. The Kutrigur Bulgars also attacked in 540. The Slavs invaded Thrace in 545 and in 548 assaulted Dyrrachium, an important port on the Adriatic Sea. In 550, the Sclaveni came within 65 kilometers of Constantinople itself. In 559, the Empire found itself unable to repel a great invasion of Kutrigurs and Sclaveni. Divided in three columns, the invaders reached Thermopylae, the Gallipoli peninsula and the suburbs of Constantinople. The Slavs feared the intact power of the Danube Byzantine fleet and of the Utigurs (paid by the Byzantines themselves) more than the ill-prepared Byzantine imperial army. The Empire was safe, but in the following years Byzantine control in the Balkans was severely weakened. Soon after the death of Justinian in 565, the Germanic Lombards, a former imperial foederati tribe, invaded and conquered much of Italy. The Visigoths reconquered Cordoba, the main Byzantine city in Spain, first in 572 and then definitively in 584. The last Byzantine strongholds in Spain were swept away twenty years later. The Turks emerged in Crimea, and, in 577, a horde of some 100,000 Slavs invaded Thrace and Illyricum. Sirmium, the most important Roman city on the Danube, was lost in 582, but the Byzantines managed to maintain control of the river for several more decades, even though they increasingly lost control of the inner provinces. Justinian's successor, Justin II, refused to pay Justinian's tribute to the Sassanid Empire. This resulted in a long and costly war, which lasted until the reign of his successors Tiberius II and Maurice, focused over the control over the disputed territory of Armenia. Fortunately for the Byzantines, the Persian Empire was weakened by a civil war. Maurice was able to take advantage of his friendship with the new king Khosrau II (whose disputed accession to the Persian throne had been assisted by Maurice) in order to sign a favorable peace treaty in 591. This treaty gave the Byzantine Empire control over much of western Armenia. Maurice reorganized the remaining Byzantine possessions in the west into two Exarchates: Ravenna and Carthage. Maurice increased the Exarchates' self-defense capabilities and delegated them to civil authorities. The Avars and later the Bulgars overwhelmed much of the Balkans, and in the early 7th century the Sassanids invaded and conquered Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Armenia. The Persians were eventually defeated and the territories recovered by Emperor Heraclius in 627. However, the unexpected appearance of the Arabs, newly united and converted to Islam, overwhelmed an Empire exhausted from the Persian wars, and the southern provinces were overrun. The Byzantine Empire's most catastrophic defeat of this period was the Battle of Yarmuk, fought in Syria. Heraclius and the military governors of Syria were slow to respond to the new threat, and Byzantine Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt, and the Exarchate of Africa were incorporated into the Muslim Caliphate in the 7th century, a process that was completed with the fall of Carthage in 698. The Byzantines made little attempt to regain the lost provinces, dominated as they were by Monophysitism. The Lombards continued to expand in northern Italy, taking Liguria in 640 and conquering most of the Exarchate of Ravenna in 751, leaving the Byzantines with control of only small areas around the toe and heel of Italy, plus some semi-independent coastal cities like Venice, Naples, Amalfi and Gaeta. Fight for survivalImage:ByzantineEmpire717AD2lightpurple.PNG The Byzantine Empire at the accession of Leo III, c. 717 The Empire's loss of territory was offset to a degree by consolidation and an increased uniformity of rule. Emperor Heraclius made Greek the official language, and the Emperor's Latin title, Augustus, was replaced with the Greek Βασιλεύς Basileus. Heraclius' reforms widened the cultural gap between the Eastern Roman Empire and its earlier predecessor, as well as the former imperial lands of western Europe. Within the empire, the southern provinces differed significantly in culture and practice from those in the north, observing Monophysite Christianity rather than Chalcedonian Orthodox. The loss of the southern territories to the Arabs further strengthened Orthodox practice in the remaining provinces. Constans II (reigned 641–668) subdivided the empire into a system of military provinces called themes in an attempt to improve local responses to the threat of constant assaults. Outside the capital urban life declined, but Constantinople grew to become what was likely the largest city in the world. During Constans' reign the Byzantines completely withdrew from Egypt, and the Arabs launched numerous attacks on the islands of the Mediterranean Sea and Aegean Sea. Constans sent a fleet to attack the Arabs at Finike in 655, but was defeated: 500 Byzantine ships were destroyed in the battle, and the emperor himself came close to being killed. Only an Arab civil war forestalled the planned Muslim assault on Constantinople. Image:Walls of Constantinople.JPG Restored section of the fortifications that protected Constantinople during the medieval period. In 658, the imperial army defeated the Slavs on the Danube River, temporarily slowing their advance into the Balkans. However, the arrival of the Bulgars in the 670s forced the Byzantines to abandon the Danube frontier, and soon nearly the entire Balkan peninsula was lost to the empire for the next three centuries. Constans, having attracted the hatred of the people of Constantinople, temporarily moved the capital to Syracuse. In 661, he launched an attack on the Lombard Duchy of Benevento in southern Italy. After a series of victories and defeats, he retreated to Naples. He was the last Eastern emperor to visit Rome as a Byzantine possession, though later emperors would return in the 15th century to beg for help against the Ottomans. Constans was assassinated in Sicily shortly after this campaign, and no serious attempt was made to reconquer southern Italy until the 9th century. Arab attempts to conquer Constantinople were frustrated by the secret Byzantine weapon Greek fire (the exact composition of which remains a mystery to this day), the extensive city fortifications and the skill of both generals and warrior-emperors such as Leo the Isaurian (r. 717–741). In his landmark work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the 18th century historian Edward Gibbon depicted the Byzantine Empire of this time as effete and decadent.[4] However, an alternative examination reveals an early medieval military superpower. Scholars point to the empire's heavy cavalry (the cataphracts), its subsidy (albeit inconsistently) of a free and well-to-do peasant class forming the basis for cavalry recruitment, its extraordinarily in-depth defense systems (the themes) and its use of subsidies to make its enemies fight each other. Other factors include the empire's prowess at intelligence-gathering, a communications and logistics system based on mule trains, a superior (though often under-funded) navy and rational military strategies and doctrines (not dissimilar to those of Sun Tzu) that emphasized stealth, surprise, swift manoeuvering and the marshaling of overwhelming force at the time and place of the commander's choosing. The 8th century was dominated by controversy and religious division over iconoclasm. Icons were banned by Emperor Leo III, leading to revolts by iconodules (supporters of icons) throughout the empire. After the efforts of Empress Irene, the Second Council of Nicaea met in 787 and affirmed that icons could be venerated but not worshipped. Irene also attempted a marriage alliance with Charlemagne the Frank, recently crowned by the Pope as Emperor of the West. In theory, this alliance would have united the two 'Roman' empires and created a European superpower comparable in strength to ancient Rome. In practice, the two empires were so different that it is hard to see how such a union could have succeeded. Regardless, these plans were abandoned when Irene was deposed. The iconoclast controversy returned in the early 9th century, only to be resolved once more in 843 during the regency of Empress Theodora, who restored the icons. These controversies further contributed to the disintegrating relations with the Roman Catholic Church and the Frankish/Germanic Holy Roman Empire, both of which continued to increase their independence and power. Macedonian dynasty and resurgenceThe Early Byzantine Empire reached its height under the Macedonian emperors of the late 9th, 10th, and early 11th centuries. During these years the Empire held out against pressure from the Roman church to remove Patriarch Photios. The Empire gained control over the Adriatic Sea, southern Italy, and all of Bulgaria as it was under the Bulgarian tsar Samuel. The cities of the empire expanded, and affluence was able to spread across the provinces because of the empire's new-found security. The population of the empire rose, and production increased, stimulating new demand while also helping to encourage trade. Culturally, this was a productive period of Byzantine history, as there was considerable growth in education and learning. Ancient texts were preserved and patiently re-copied. Byzantine art flourished, and brilliant mosaics graced the interiors of new churches, which were being built across the empire in this period.[5] Though the empire was significantly smaller than it was during the reign of Justinian it emerged stronger during this period. This was largely due to the fact that its remaining territories were less geographically and more politically and culturally integrated. The lands it had lost were generally rebellious due to religious controversy or geographically discontinuous and difficult to defend. Internal developmentsAlthough traditionally attributed to Basil I (867-886), initiator of the Macedonian dynasty, the "Byzantine renaissance" has been more recently ascribed largely to the reforms of his predecessor, Michael III (842-867) and his wife's counsellor, the erudite Theoktistos. The latter in particular favoured culture at the court, and, with a careful financial policy, increased steadily the gold reserves of the Empire. The rise of the Macedonian dynasty coincided with internal developments which strengthened the religious unity of the empire.[6] The iconoclast movement was experiencing a steep decline: this favoured its soft suppression by the emperors and the reconciliation of the religious strife that had drained the imperial resources in the previous centuries. Despite occasional tactical defeats, the administrative, legislative, cultural and economic situation continued to improve under Basil's successors, especially with Romanos I Lekapenos (920-944). The theme military subdivision reached its definitive form in this period, with new ones added in recognition of the new conquests. The church establishment began to support loyally the imperial cause, and the power of the landowning class was limited in favour of agricultural small holders, who made up an important part of the military force of the Empire. These favourable conditions contributed to the increasing ability of the emperors to wage war against the Arabs. Wars against the M | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
