The eastern half of the Roman Empire proved less vulnerable to external attack, thanks in part to its geographic location. It also benefited greatly from a stronger administrative center and internal political stability, as well as great wealth compared with other states of the early medieval period. As a result of these advantages, the Eastern Roman Empire, variously known as the Byzantine Empire or Byzantium, was able to survive for centuries after the fall of Rome. Though Byzantium was ruled by Roman law and Roman political institutions, and its official language was Latin, Greek was also widely spoken, and students received education in Greek history, literature and culture.
In terms of religion, the Council of Chalcedon in officially established the division of the Christian world into separate patriarchates, including Rome where the patriarch would later call himself pope , Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. Even after the Islamic empire absorbed Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem in the seventh century, the Byzantine emperor would remain the spiritual leader of most eastern Christians. Justinian I, who took power in and would rule until his death in , was the first great ruler of the Byzantine Empire.
Many great monuments of the empire would be built under Justinian, including the spectacular domed Church of Holy Wisdom, or Hagia Sophia. Justinian also reformed and codified Roman law, establishing a Byzantine legal code that would endure for centuries and help shape the modern concept of the state.
Debts incurred through war had left the empire in dire financial straits, however, and his successors were forced to heavily tax Byzantine citizens in order to keep the empire afloat. During the seventh and eighth centuries, attacks from the Persian Empire and from Slavs, combined with internal political instability and economic regression, threatened the vast empire. A new, even more serious threat arose in the form of Islam , founded by the prophet Muhammad in Mecca in In , Muslim armies began their assault on the Byzantine Empire by storming into Syria.
During the eighth and early ninth centuries, Byzantine emperors beginning with Leo III in spearheaded a movement that denied the holiness of icons, or religious images, and prohibited their worship or veneration. Though it stretched over less territory, Byzantium had more control over trade, more wealth and more international prestige than under Justinian.
The strong imperial government patronized Byzantine art, including now-cherished Byzantine mosaics. Rulers also began restoring churches, palaces and other cultural institutions and promoting the study of ancient Greek history and literature. Greek became the official language of the state, and a flourishing culture of monasticism was centered on Mount Athos in northeastern Greece.
Monks administered many institutions orphanages, schools, hospitals in everyday life, and Byzantine missionaries won many converts to Christianity among the Slavic peoples of the central and eastern Balkans including Bulgaria and Serbia and Russia. The end of the 11th century saw the beginning of the Crusades , the series of holy wars waged by European Christians against Muslims in the Near East from to As armies from France, Germany and Italy poured into Byzantium, Alexius tried to force their leaders to swear an oath of loyalty to him in order to guarantee that land regained from the Turks would be restored to his empire.
After Western and Byzantine forces recaptured Nicaea in Asia Minor from the Turks, Alexius and his army retreated, drawing accusations of betrayal from the Crusaders. During the subsequent Crusades, animosity continued to build between Byzantium and the West, culminating in the conquest and looting of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade in Many refugees from Constantinople fled to Nicaea, site of a Byzantine government-in-exile that would retake the capital and overthrow Latin rule in During the rule of the Palaiologan emperors, beginning with Michael VIII in , the economy of the once-mighty Byzantine state was crippled, and never regained its former stature.
He presented a system of Byzantine historiography in his work Corpus Historiae Byzantinae , in order to "distinguish ancient Roman from medieval Greek history without drawing attention to their ancient predecessors". Standardization of the term began gradually in the 18th century, when French authors such as Montesquieu began to popularize it. Hieronymus himself was influenced by the rift caused by the 9th century dispute between Byzantines and Franks. The Franks under Charlemagne 's newly formed empire, and in concert with the Pope , attempted to legitimize their conquests by claiming inheritance of Roman rights in Italy.
The Donation of Constantine, one of the most famous forged documents in history, played a crucial role in this. Henceforth, it was prevalent in the West to refer to the emperor in Constantinople not by the usual Imperator Romanorum Emperor of the Romans which was now reserved for the Frankish monarch, but as Imperator Graecorum Emperor of the Greeks and the land as Imperium Graecorum , Graecia , Terra Graecorum or even Imperium Constantinopolitanum.
All of this was resented by the Byzantines, who viewed their Basileus as the only legitimate Roman Emperor. Identity, continuity, and consciousness " Byzantium may be defined as a multi-ethnic empire that emerged as a Christian empire, soon comprised the Hellenized empire of the East and ended its thousand-year history, in , as a Greek Orthodox state: An empire that became a nation, almost by the modern meaning of the word".
For instance, the scholar, teacher and translator, John Argyropoulos Constantinople, c. This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia with only minor checks and changes see www.
See also our Disclaimer. Flag of the late Empire. The Imperial emblem of the double-headed eagle. Byzantine Empire at its greatest extent c. Autocratic Monarchy. Byzantine Senate, until the 13th century. Empire permanently split into Eastern and Western halves, following the death of Theodosius I. Arab armies conquer the Levant and Egypt. Iconoclasm controversies. Macedonian dynasty established. Emperor Basil II campaigns annually against the Bulgarians, with the object of annihilating the Bulgar state.
The Bulgarian army is completely defeated at the Battle of Kleidon. Byzantine diplomacy realised very early the importance of winning the hearts and minds of their neighbours. Whenever possible, Byzantium turned them from potential enemies into friends.
Some of these public diplomacy techniques are still in use today. In the Empire, which existed for years, time always played an important role. Over such a long time span, the Byzantine Empire preserved many distinctive features, including the way it conducted diplomacy. Byzantine diplomacy mastered the use of time in its activities. With its solid institutions, Byzantine diplomacy was always ahead of the nomadic tribes, who were easily affected by disease and change of weather.
Thus, in times of conflict, the key for Byzantine diplomacy was to let time pass, in order to defuse tension and choose the right moment for counter-action. Byzantium realised the centrality of information for diplomacy and developed a very efficient organisational structure for collecting and processing information. The first intelligence service was established.
In addition, Byzantine merchants and priests were obliged to report about foreign territories. The Office of Barbaian Affairs collected and processed information. The relevance and strategy of managing information in diplomacy has not changed till our time. Many core elements of Byzantine diplomacy exist even now. They were passed on to the modern era via the Italian city states — mainly Venice.
From Italy, the way of running diplomacy moved to emerging European national states. France created the first formal Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the seventeenth century and was followed by other European states. When we remove the trappings of our time, we can see that — in essence — many tools of Byzantine diplomacy are still in use today. In May, our historical journey moves on to the Renaissance diplomacy of the Italian city states, the main successors to the tools and methods of Byzantine diplomacy.
Note: this text is the background document for the April Webina r on the Evolution of Diplomacy and Technology. In their ideological battle against religious Europe, they often used Byzantium as a historical case study for religious dogmatism and backwardness. In this text, we use it to describe the Byzantine Empire.
For example, Saints Cyril and Methodius develop the Cyrillic alphabet, and introduced church liturgies in Slavic languages in the ninth century. They challenged the dogma that Christian worship could only be held in Greek for orthodox Christians. Parallel development took place in Europe in the sixteenth century, when the Protestants challenged the monopoly of the Latin language and started translating the Bible into their own languages.
Previous enemies pagan Slavs became friends of the Empire. London: Penguin Books. Thank you Richard if I may so for your message and kind words. Your research on linking China, Byzantine and linguistics is fascinating. Our new project on humAInism aims to research an interplay between language, philosophy, history, diplomacy and AI. Please send me an e-mail jovank diplomacy. Warmest regards, Jovan.
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