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The eastern part of the later Roman Empire, dating from A.D. 330 when Constantine I rebuilt Byzantium and made it his capital. Its extent varied greatly over the centuries, but its core remained the Balkan Peninsula and Asia Minor. The empire collapsed when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453.
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The Byzantine empire started with the first Christian emperor of the eastern Roman empire, Constantine, in ad 330. At that time Byzantium was inaugurated as the new capital of the eastern empire and renamed Constantinople. In ad 392 the emperor Theodosius proclaimed Christianity to be the official religion of the Roman empire and on his death in ad 395 the empire was split between his two sons, never to be reunited. The eastern empire was ruled from Constantinople and developed as the Byzantine empire. The greatest Byzantine emperor was probably Justinian the Great who ruled from ad 527 to 565. He introduced a new legal system and expanded the boundaries of the empire as far west as Spain, Italy, and Africa. He encouraged the arts, a unique blend of late Roman and Greek influences, and commissioned the building of the great basilica of Haghia Sophia in Constantinople.
Following the death of the Prophet Mohammed in ad 632, Arab armies took Egypt, Syria, and Palestine from the Byzantines, and Constantinople was itself besieged from ad 674 to 678. It survived, but the empire was further reduced at this time by the loss of North Africa and Italy. It was brought to the brink of civil war by the Iconoclastic Crisis before enjoying another brief golden age under Basil II (ad 976–1025). But the empire's troubles increased as invaders made further incursions into Byzantine territory. In the 11th century the Seljuk Turks took large parts of Asia Minor and overran Anatolia, menacing Christian pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem. Reluctantly the emperor, Alexius I, sought help from the Christian west and the First Crusade was organized to help the Byzantines recapture the Holy Land from Muslim forces. The result was victory for the Crusaders, but they were not so lucky in the Second and Third Crusades. The Fourth Crusade, launched in 1202, was partly inspired by the Vatican's jealousy of Byzantium's trading power. It soon became an excuse to plunder Constantinople itself, the Crusaders ruling the city from 1204 through to 1261. The rise of the Ottoman empire during the 14th century finally put an end to the Byzantines, the fall of Constantinople itself being in April 1453.
Throughout its existence the Byzantine Empire was subject to important changes in its boundaries. The core of the empire consisted of the Balkan Peninsula (i.e., Thrace, Macedonia, Epirus, Greece proper, the Greek isles, and Illyria) and of Asia Minor (present-day Turkey). The empire combined Roman political tradition, Hellenic culture, and Christian beliefs. Greek was the prevalent language, but Latin long continued in official use.
See the table entitled Rulers of the Byzantine Empire for a list of all the Byzantine emperors and the years they reigned.
Early Centuries
The characteristic Eastern influence began with Constantine I, who also introduced Christianity. Orthodoxy triumphed over Arianism under Arcadius' predecessor, Theodosius I, but violent religious controversy was chronic. The reigns (395–527) of Arcadius, Theodosius II, Marcian, Leo I, Leo II, Zeno, Anastasius I, and Justin I were marked by the invasions of the Visigoths under Alaric I, of the Huns of Attila, and of the Avars, the Slavs, the Bulgars (see Bulgaria), and the Persians. After the Western Empire fell (476) to Odoacer, Italy, Gaul, and Spain were theoretically united under Zeno but were actually dominated by, respectively, the Ostrogoths, the Franks, and the Visigoths, while Africa was under the Vandals. During this period arose the heresies of Nestorianism and Monophysitism and the political parties of Blues and Greens to divide the Byzantines.
Revival and Hellenization
Under the rule (527–65) of Justinian I and Theodora, Byzantine power grew. Their great generals, Belisarius and Narses, checked the Persians, repressed political factions, and recovered Italy and Africa, while Tribonian helped the emperor to codify Roman law. During Justinian's reign a great revival of Hellenism took place in literature, and Byzantine art and architecture entered their most glorious period.
Much was lost again under his successors. The Lombards conquered most of Italy; however, the Pentapolis (Rimini, Ancona, Fano, Pesaro, and Senigallia), Rome, Sardinia, Corsica, Liguria, and the coasts of S Italy and Sicily long remained under Byzantine rule, and at Ravenna the exarchs governed until 751. The Persians, under Khosrow I, made great gains against the empire, though Emperor Maurice temporarily checked them in 591.
The emperor Heraclius (610–41) defeated the Persians but was barely able to save Constantinople from the Avars. Muslim conquests soon afterward wrested Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Africa, and Sicily from the empire. Heraclius's attempt to reconcile Monophysitism and orthodoxy merely led to the new heresy of Monotheletism. His military reorganization of the provinces into themes proved effective and was continued by Constans II (641–48). Constantine IV (668–85) saved Constantinople from Arab attack.
The 7th cent. was marked by increasing Hellenization of the empire, outwardly symbolized by the adoption of the Greek title Basileus by the emperors. The church, under the patriarch of Constantinople, became increasingly important in public affairs. Theology, cultivated by emperors and monks alike, was pushed to extremes of subtlety. Literature and art became chiefly religious.
Under Justinian II and his successors the empire was again menaced by Arabs and Bulgars, but the Isaurian emperors Leo III (717–41) and Constantine V stopped the Arab advance and recovered Asia Minor. The grave issue of iconoclasm, which they precipitated, led to the loss of Rome. In 800, during the reign of Irene, the Frank Charlemagne was crowned emperor of the West at Rome. Thus ended even the theoretical primacy of Byzantium over Europe.
A Truly Eastern State
The political division of East and West was paralleled by a religious schism, intensified by the patriarch Photius, between the Roman and the Orthodox Eastern Church, later culminating in a complete break (1054). In all aspects the Byzantine Empire, having lost its claim to universality, became a Greek monarchy, though Constantinople still remained the center of both Greek and Roman civilization. Compared with its intellectuals, artists, writers, and artisans, those of Western Europe were crude and barbarous, though sometimes more vigorous and original.
In the empire the administrative machinery was huge, and competition among the courtiers was intense. Complex diplomacy, intrigue, and gross violence marked the course of events; yet moral decay did not prevent such emperors as Basil I, founder of the Macedonian dynasty, and his successors (notably Leo VI, Romanus I, Constantine VII, Nicephorus II, John I, and Basil II) from giving the empire a period of splendor and power (867–1025). The eastern frontier was pushed to the Euphrates River, the Bulgars were subjugated, and the Balkan Peninsula was recovered. Russia, converted to Christianity, became an outpost of Byzantine culture. In the unceasing struggle between the great landowners and the small peasantry, most of the emperors favored the peasants. Economic prosperity was paralleled by a new golden age in science, philosophy, and architecture.
The Ebb of Power
With the rule of Zoë (1028–50) anarchy and decline set in. The Seljuk Turks increased their attacks, and with the defeat (1071) of Romanus IV at Manzikert most of Asia Minor was permanently lost. The Normans under Robert Guiscard and Bohemond I seized S Italy and attacked the Balkans. Venice ruled the Adriatic and challenged Byzantine commercial dominance in the East, and the Bulgars and Serbs reasserted their independence.
Alexius I (1081–1118) took advantage of the First Crusade (see Crusades) to recover some territory in Asia Minor and to restore Byzantine prestige, but his successors of the Comnenus dynasty were at best able to postpone the disintegration of the empire. After the death (1180) of Manuel I the Angelus dynasty unwittingly precipitated the cataclysm of the Fourth Crusade. In 1204 the Crusaders and the Venetians sacked Constantinople and set up a new empire (see Constantinople, Latin Empire of) in Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece. The remainder of the empire broke into independent states, notably the empires of Nicaea and of Trebizond and the despotate of Epirus.
In 1261 the Nicaean emperor Michael VIII conquered most of the tottering Latin empire and reestablished the Byzantine Empire under the Palaeologus family (1261–1453). The reconstructed empire was soon attacked from all sides, notably by Charles I of Naples, by Venice, by the Ottoman Turks, by the new kingdoms of Serbia and Bulgaria, and by Catalonian adventurers under Roger de Flor. At the same time, the empire began to break down from within—the capital was at odds with the provinces; ambitious magnates were greedy for land and privileges; religious orders fought each other vigorously; and church and state were rivals for power.
Eventually the Turks encircled the empire and reduced it to Constantinople and its environs. Manuel II and John VIII vainly asked the West for aid, and, in 1453, Constantinople fell to Sultan Muhammad II after a final desperate defense under Constantine XI. This is one of the dates conventionally accepted as the beginning of the modern age. The collapse of the empire opened the way for the vast expansion of the Ottoman Empire to Vienna itself and also enabled Ivan III of Russia, son-in-law of Constantine XI, to claim a theoretical succession to the imperial title.
Bibliography
The classic, though biased, work on Byzantine history is Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. More recent standard works are those of J. B. Bury, C. Diehl, A. A. Vasil'ev, G. Ostrogorsky, and N. H. Baynes. See also studies by J. M. Hussey (1967, 1986), R. J. H. Jenkins (1967), D. Obolensky (1971), S. Runciman (1971, 1977), M. Angold (1985), and J. J. Norwich (1995).
Constantine I, the first Christian emperor of Rome (reigned 306–337), established a new eastern capital in 330 at a site unrivaled for its beauty and unmatched as a center for administration and trade. The Greek colony of Byzantium had prospered on its exports of salted bonito and other seafood. Now renamed Constantinopolis (modern Istanbul), it was destined to be the capital of the later Roman or Byzantine Empire for eleven hundred years.
The civilization of Constantinople is sometimes misunderstood as a poor imitation of classical Greece and Rome. From the perspective of medieval western Europe, however, Constantinople was a city of magic and mystery. Early French epics and romances tell of the wondrous foods, spices, drugs, and precious stones that could be found in the palaces of Constantinople.
Byzantine culture never ceased to develop and to innovate, and this is certainly true of its cuisine. Among favored game were the gazelles of inland Anatolia, and wild asses, of which herds were maintained in imperial parks. The seafood most appreciated by the Byzantines was botargo (salted mullet roe), and by the twelfth century they were familiar with caviar. Fruits largely unknown to the ancient world but appreciated in Constantinople included the aubergine (eggplant), lemons (via Armenia and Georgia), and the orange. The Byzantines were the first to try rosemary as a flavoring for roast lamb; they first used saffron in cookery. These aromatics, well known in the ancient world, had not previously been thought of as food ingredients.
Byzantine cheeses included mizithra (produced by the pastoral Vlachs of Thessaly and Macedonia) and Cretan prosphatos. As for bread, the bakers of Constantinople were in a most favored trade, according to the ninth century Book of the Eparch, a handbook of city administration: "bakers are never liable to be called for any public service, neither themselves nor their animals, to prevent any interruption of the baking of bread." Mastic and anise were among the aromatics used in baking.
The distinctive flavor of Byzantine cookery is best represented by sweets and sweet drinks. There are dishes that we would recognize as desserts: grouta, a sort of frumenty, sweetened with honey and studded with carob seeds or raisins; and rice pudding served with honey. Quince marmalade had been known to the Romans, but other jellies and conserves now made their appearance, based on pear, citron, and lemon. The increasing availability of sugar assisted the confectioner's inventiveness. Rose sugar, a popular medieval confection, may well have originated in Byzantium.
Flavored wines, a variant of the Roman conditum (spiced wine), became popular as did flavored soft drinks, which were consumed on fast days. The versions that were aromatized with mastic, aniseed, rose, and absinthe were especially popular; they are distant ancestors of the mastikha, vermouth, absinthe, ouzo, and pastis of the modern Mediterranean. A remarkable range of aromatics, which were either unknown to earlier Mediterranean peoples or used only as perfumes or in compound drugs, were added to Byzantine spiced wines: spikenard, gentian, yellow flag, stone parsley, spignel, valerian, putchuk, tejpat, storax, ginger grass, chamomile, and violet.
Two influences combined to produce the great range of powerful flavors at the heart of Byzantine cuisine. One was the Orthodox Christian church calendar, with its numerous fast days on which both meat and fish were proscribed: the rich (including rich abbots and ecclesiastics) gave their cooks full rein to produce fast-day dishes as piquant and varied as could be imagined. Byzantine pease pudding, a fast-day staple, was aromatized with nutmeg, an eastern spice unknown to the classical Greeks and Romans.
The second influence was that of dieticians. Ancient Greek and Roman dietary manuals had been addressed to experts. The Byzantine ones, however, were written for nonspecialists. As in classical Greece and Rome, physicians relied on the theory of the "four humors" (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, black bile) and prescribed diets aimed to achieve a proper balance of humors in each individual. The effect of each ingredient on the humors was therefore codified so that the desired balance could be maintained by a correct choice of dish and by a correct adjustment of ingredients, varying for the seasons, the weather, the time of day, and each individual's constitution and state of health. Dieticians sometimes recommended vegetarian meals, eaten with vinegar or other dressing. Spices and seasonings became ubiquitous, used both during the cooking process and at the table to amend the qualities of each dish. Fresh figs, if eaten in July, must be taken with salt. A daily glass of conditum, strong in spikenard, was recommended in March; anisaton, anise wine, was appropriate for April. These Byzantine dietary manuals are important sources of culinary history; botargo is first named in the eleventh century by the dietician Simeon Seth, who notes that it "should be avoided totally." The earliest work in this tradition is Anthimus's On the Observance of Foods, compiled by a Byzantine physician for a gothic monarch in the early sixth century.
The food of the poor of Constantinople was no doubt limited, though a poetic catalog of a poor family's larder (Prodromic Poems 2.38–45, probably twelfth century) includes numerous vegetables and locally grown fruits along with a considerable list of flavorings: vinegar, honey, pepper, cinnamon, cumin, caraway, salt, and others. Cheese, olives, and onions perhaps made up for a scarcity of meat. Timarion, a satirical poem of the twelfth century, suggests salt pork and cabbage stew as being a typical poor man's meal, eaten from the bowl with the fingers just as it would have been in contemporary western Europe. The staple of the Byzantine army was cereal food—wheat or barley—which might be prepared as bread, biscuits, or porridge. Inns and wine shops generally provided only basic fare. However, in the sixth-century Life of St. Theodore of Syceon, a Byzantine text, there is a reference to an inn that attracted customers by the quality of its food.
Annual fairs were a focus for the food trade. Important fairs were held at Thessalonica and Constantinople around St. Demetrius's day. Constantinople was known for specialized food markets. Sheep and cattle were driven to market to Constantinople from pastures far away in the Balkans, and eastern spices followed long-established trade routes through Trebizond, Mosul, and Alexandria. The populist emperor Manuel (1143–1180) liked to sample the hot street food of the capital, paying for his selection and waiting for change like any other citizen.
Medieval travelers to Byzantium did not always like the strange flavors they encountered. Garos, the fish sauce of the ancient world, which was much used as a flavoring by the Byzantines, was unfamiliar and often unappreciated. Many disliked resinated wine (comparable to modern retsina), which was simply "undrinkable" according to one Italian traveler, Liutprand of Cremona. However, foreigners were seduced by the confectionery, the can-died fruits, and the sweet wines. William of Rubruck, a thirteenth-century diplomat who was looking for presents to take from Constantinople to wild Khazaria, chose dried fruit, muscat wine, and fine biscuits.
The cuisine of the Byzantine Empire had a unique character of its own. It forms a bridge between the ancient world and the food of modern Greece and Turkey. In Constantinople astonishing flavor blends were commonplace. For example, roast pork was basted with honey wine; skate was spiced with caraway; wild duck was prepared with its sauce of wine; there was garos, mustard and cumin-salt, and black-eyed peas served with honey vinegar. Old recipes were adapted to new tastes; whereas ancient cooks had used fig leaves, thria, as edible wrappings for cooked food, during Byzantine times vine leaves were used in recipes, the precursors of modern dolmades.
When the future emperor Justin II (reigned 518–527) walked from his Dalmatian homeland to Constantinople in 470 as a penniless young man seeking service in the Imperial guard, we are told that he had nothing but army biscuits to keep him alive on his long march. This paximadion, or barley biscuit, makes the perfect link from the ancient, via the Byzantine, to the modern period. A classical Roman invention, popularized in the Byzantine Empire, it has many modern descendants: the Arabic bashmat, baqsimat, the Turkish beksemad, the Serbo-Croat peksimet, the Romanian pesmet, and the modern Greek paximadi.
Beyond the old boundaries of the Byzantine Empire, Byzantium's greatest legacy to western cookery may be summed up in these four things: the table fork, which entered Europe through Italy; marzipan, which appears to have originated in Armenia (the word is of Armenian origin); the samovar, which moved northward into Russian culture via the Greek Church; and the Cult of St. Nicholas, together with the gingerbread cookies associated with this Christmas saint.
Bibliography
Few Byzantine texts relevant to food are available in English translation. They include the following, cited in the text of the article: The Book of the Eparch [text, translation and studies] ed. by I. Dujcev. London: Variorum Reprints, 1970. The Works of Liudprand of Cremona, tr. by F. A. Wright. London: Routledge, 1930. Anthimus, De observatione ciborum: On the Observance of Foods edited and translated by Mark Grant. Totnes, Devon, U.K.: Prospect Books, 1996. Three Byzantine Saints, translated by E. Dawes and N. H. Baynes. Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1977. [Includes the Life of St. Theodore of Syceon.] The following, also cited above, are at present available only in Greek: Poèmes prodromiques en grec vulgaire, edited by D.-C. Hesseling, H. Pernot. Amsterdam: Müller, 1910. Simeonis Sethi syntagma de alimentorum facultatibus, ed. B. Langkavel. Leipzig: Teubner, 1868. Timarion, tr. by Barry Baldwin. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1984. The Mission of Friar William of Rubruck, translated by P. Jackson. London, 1990. For more information see: Dalby, Andrew. Siren Feasts. New York: Routledge, 1996. Chap. 9. Dalby, Andrew. Flavours of Byzantium. Totnes, Devon, U.K.: Prospect Books, 2003. A. Kazhdan, et al. The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
—Andrew Dalby
An empire, centered at Constantinople, that began as the eastern portion of the Roman Empire; it included parts of Europe and western Asia. As the western Roman Empire declined, the Byzantine Empire grew in importance, and it remained an important power in Europe until the eleventh century. The Byzantine Empire was conquered by Turkish forces in the fifteenth century.
The Byzantine emperor was an absolute ruler (see absolute monarchy), and the laws and customs associated with his empire were strict and complex. His rule was supported by the Christian Church in the region, which later became the independent Eastern Orthodox Church.
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The Byzantine Empire or Byzantium is the term conventionally used since the 19th century to describe the Greek-speaking Roman Empire of the Middle Ages, centered on its capital of Constantinople. The Empire is also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, although this name is more commonly used when referring to the time before the fall of the Western 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.[2] To its inhabitants, the Empire was simply the Roman Empire (Greek: Βασιλεία Ῥωμαίων) and its emperors continued the unbroken succession of Roman emperors. In the Islamic world it was known primarily as روم (Rûm, land of the "Romans").
There is no consensus on exactly when the Byzantine period of Roman history began. Many consider Emperor Constantine I (reigned AD 306–337) to be the first "Byzantine Emperor". It was he who moved the imperial capital in 330 from Rome to Byzantium, refounded as Constantinople, or Nova Roma ("New Rome").
Some date the beginnings of the Empire to 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 Augustulus, traditionally considered the last western Emperor, was deposed, thus leaving sole imperial authority with the emperor in the Greek East. Others point to the reorganization of the empire in the time of Heraclius (ca. 620) when Latin titles and usages were officially replaced with Greek versions.
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, Trebizond in 1461, and Monemvasia in 1471.
| Byzantine Empire Timeline | |
|---|---|
| 667 BC | The ancient city of Byzantium (the future Constantinople and future Istanbul) is founded. |
| ca. 509 BC - ca. A.d. 2nd Century | The rise of the Roman Empire. |
| ca. 235 - 284 | The "crisis of the 3rd century". |
| 292 | The reforms of Diocletian ("The Tetrarchy") |
| 330 | Constantine makes Byzantium into his capital(Nova Roma), which is renamed "Constantinople" (The City of Constantine), sometime after Constantine's death in 337. It would remain the capital of the Byzantine Empire, with a half-century exception, for over a thousand years. |
| 395 | The Empire is permanently split into eastern and western halves, following on the death of Theodosius I. |
| 527 | Justinian I is crowned "emperor". |
| April 7, 529 | The Codex Justinianus is promulgated. |
| 532–537 |
The Emperor, Justinian, builds the church of Hagia Sophia |
| 533–554 | Justinian's generals reconquer North Africa and Italy from the Vandals and the Ostrogoths. |
| 568 | The Lombard invasion results in the loss of most of Italy. |
| 634–641 | The Arab armies conquer the Levant and Egypt. In the following decades, they take most of North Africa (and later conquer Sicily as well). |
| 730–787 and 813–843 | The Iconoclasm controversies result in the loss of most of the Empire's remaining Italian territories, aside from some of the territories of the Mezzogiorno. |
| 843–1025 | The Macedonian dynasty is established and the Empire experiences a military and territorial revival. Byzantine scholars record and preserve many of the remaining ancient Greek and Roman texts. |
| 1002–1018 | The Emperor, Basil II, campaigns annually against the Bulgarians, with the object of annihilating the Bulgar state. |
| 1014 | The Bulgarian army is completely defeated at the Battle of Kleidon (Basil II becomes known as The Bulgar Slayer). |
| 1018 | Bulgaria surrenders and is annexed to the empire. The whole of the Balkans is incorporated into the Byzantine Empire, with the Danube as the new Imperial frontier to the north. |
| 1025 | With the death of Basil II, the zenith of the Empire's power is passed and the long decline of the Byzantine Empire begins. |
| 1054 | The Schism (split between Church in Rome and the Church in Constantinople). |
| 1071 | The Emperor, Romanos IV, is defeated by the Seljuk Turks at the Battle of Manzikert, losing his position in most of Asia Minor. In the same year, the last Byzantine outposts in Italy are conquered by the Normans. |
| 1081 | The Komnenos dynasty is established by Alexios I and Byzantium becomes involved in the Crusades. Economic prosperity generates new wealth; literature and the arts reach new heights. In Anatolia, the Turks become established. |
| 1091 | The Imperial armies defeat the Pechenegs at the Battle of Levounion. |
| 1097 | The recapture of Nicaea from the Turks by the Byzantine armies and the First Crusaders. |
| 1097-1176 | The Byzantine armies recapture the coasts of Asia Minor from the
Turks, and push east towards central Anatolia. The Crusader
|
| 1122 | The Byzantines defeat the Pechenegs at the Battle of Beroia. |
| 1167 | The Byzantine armies win a decisive victory over the Hungarians at the Battle of Sirmium and Hungary subsequently becomes a Byzantine client state. |
| 1176 | The Battle of Myriokephalon and the Emperor, Manuel I Komnenos, attempts to capture Konya, the capital of the Seljuk Turks. He is forced to withdraw after the destruction of his siege equipment. This is the effective end of the Imperial attempts to recover Anatolian plateau. |
| 1180 | With the death of the Emperor, Manuel I Komnenos, the decline of the Empire recommences. |
| 1185 | A successful rebellion is organized in Bulgaria and other lands are lost in the Balkans. |
| 1204 | Constantinople is conquered by Crusaders, attempting to establish a Latin Empire. |
| 1261 | Constantinople is reconquered by the Patriarch of Constantinople sponsored Emperor of Nicaea, Michael VIII Palaiologos, re-establishing Greek rule of a terminally diminished empire. |
| 1453 | The Ottoman Turks conquer Constantinople, and with the death of Constantine XI Palaiologos, the last de facto emperor of the Byzantine Empire, the Byzantine Empire comes to an end. |
The term Byzantine Empire is an invention of historians and was never used during the Empire's lifetime. The Empire's name in Greek was Basileia tōn Rōmaiōn or just Rōmania (Greek: Βασιλεία Ρωμαίων—a translation of the Latin name of the Roman Empire), Imperium Romanorum (Latin: Imperium Romanum). The description of the Empire as "Byzantine" began in Western Europe in 1557, when German historian Hieronymus Wolf published his work Corpus Historiæ Byzantinæ, a collection of Byzantine sources. The publication in 1648 of the Byzantine du Louvre (Corpus Scriptorum Historiæ Byzantinæ), and in 1680 of Du Cange's Historia Byzantina further popularized the use of Byzantine among French authors, such as Montesquieu.[3] Before this, the Empire was described by Western Europeans as Imperium Graecorum (Empire of the Greeks)—Byzantine claims to Roman inheritance had been actively contested from at least the time of the coronation of Charlemagne as Imperator Augustus by Pope Leo III in 800. Whenever the Popes or the rulers of the West wanted to make use of the name "Roman" to refer to the Byzantine emperors, they preferred the term "Imperator Romæorum" instead of "Imperator Romanorum", a title reserved only for Charlemagne and his successors.[4]
During the 3rd century, three crises threatened the Roman Empire: external invasions, internal civil wars and an economy riddled with weaknesses and problems.[5] The city of Rome gradually became less important as an administrative centre. The crisis of the 3rd century displayed the defects of the heterogeneous system of government that Augustus had established to administer his immense dominion. His successors had introduced some modifications, but events made it clearer that a new, more centralised and more uniform system was required.[6]
Diocletian was responsible for creating a new administrative system (the tetrarchy).[6] He associated himself with a co-emperor, or Augustus. Each Augustus then adopted a young colleague, or Caesar, to share in the rule and eventually to succeed the senior partner. After the abdication of Diocletian and Maximian the tetrachy collapsed, and Constantine I replaced it with the dynastic principle of hereditary succession.[7]
![The Baptism of Constantine painted by Raphael's pupils (1520–1524, fresco, Vatican City, Apostolic Palace). Eusebius of Caesaria records that, as was customary among Christian converts at the time, Constantine delayed receiving baptism until shortly before his death.[8]](http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/e/e3/180px-Constantine%27s_baptism.jpg)
Constantine moved the seat of the Empire, and introduced important changes into its civil and religious constitution.[9] In 330, he founded Constantinople as a second Rome on the site of Byzantium, which was well-positioned astride the trade routes between East and West; it was a superb base from which to guard the Danube river, and was reasonably close to the Eastern frontiers. Constantine also began the building of the great fortified walls, which were expanded and rebuilt in subsequent ages. According to Edward Gibbon, "Constantine was not insensible to the ambition of founding a city which might perpetuate the glory of his own name."[10] And indeed Constantine's city flourished mightily throughout the Middle Ages. J. B. Bury asserts that "the foundation of Constantinople [...] inaugurated a permanent division between the Eastern and Western, the Greek and the Latin, halves of the Empire – a division to which events had already pointed – and affected decisively the whole subsequent history of Europe."[6]
Constantine built upon the administrative reforms introduced by Diocletian.[11] He stabilized the coinage (the gold solidus that he introduced became a highly prized and stable currency[12]), and made changes to the structure of the army. To divide administrative responsibilities, Constantine replaced the single praetorian prefect, who had traditionally exercized both military and civil functions, with regional prefects enjoying civil authority alone. In the course of the 4th century, four great sections emerged from these Constantinian beginnings, and the practice of separating civil from military authority persisted until the 7th century.[13]
Under Constantine, Christianity did not become the exclusive religion of the state, but enjoyed imperial preference, since the Emperor supported it with generous privileges: clerics were exempted from personal services and taxation, Christians were preferred for administrative posts, and bishops were entrusted with judicial responsibilities.[14] Constantine established the principle that emperors should not settle questions of doctrine, but should summon general ecclesiastical councils for that purpose. The Synod of Arles was convened by Constantine, and the First Council of Nicaea showcased his claim to be head of the Church.[15]
The state of the empire in 395 may be described in terms of the outcome of Constantine's work. The dynastic principle was established so firmly that the emperor who died in that year, Theodosius I, could bequeath the imperial office jointly to his sons: Arcadius in the East and Honorius in the West. Theodosius was the last emperor to rule over the full extent of the empire in both its halves.[16]
The Eastern Empire was largely spared the difficulties faced by the West in the third and fourth centuries, due in part to a more firmly established urban culture and greater financial resources, which allowed it to placate invaders with tribute and pay barbarian mercenaries. Throughout the fifth century, various invading armies overran the Western Empire but spared the east. Theodosius II further fortified the walls of Constantinople, leaving the city impenetrable to attacks; they were not breached until 1204. To fend off the Huns of Attila, Theodosius gave them subsidies (purportedly 300 kg (700 lb) of gold).[17] Moreover, he favored merchants living in Constantinople who traded with the barbarians.
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, his empire collapsed and Constantinople initiated 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 by supporting the rise of the Isaurians, a semi-barbarian tribe living 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 military leader, as was the Roman tradition, but from the Patriarch of Constantinople, representing the ecclesiastical hierarchy. This change became permanent, and in the Middle Ages the religious characteristic of the coronation completely supplanted 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 Suebi, the Vandals had taken Africa, and Gaul was 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 succeeded to the throne
as
To recover Italy, Zeno could only negotiate with the Ostrogoths of Theodoric, who had 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, m
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